Vallejo Times-Herald - Here is a cyipher or that is part of one. the other 2 parts have been mailed to the S.F. Examiner + the S.F. Chronicle I want you to print this cipher on your frunt page by Fry Afternoon Aug 1-69, If you do not do this I will go on a kill ram page Fry night that will last the whole week end. I will cruse around and pick of all stray people or coupples that are alone then move on to kill some more untill I have killed over a dozen people.
San Francisco Examiner - Here is a cipher or that is part of one. The other 2 parts are being mailed to the Vallejo Times + S.F. Chronicle I want you to print this cipher on the frunt page by Fry afternoon Aug 1-69. If you do not print this cipher, I will go on a kill rampage Fry night. This will last the whole weekend, I will cruse around killing people who are alone at night untill Sun Night or un till I kill a dozen people.
San Francisco Chronicle - Here is part of a cipher the other 2 parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors of the Vallejo Times and SF Examiner. I want you to print this cipher on the frunt page of your paper. In this cipher is my idenity. If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Fry.1st of Aug 69, I will go on a kill ram-Page Fry. night. I will cruse around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend.
In a previous article we examined the present and past tense usage in the three letters, along with the stamps applied to the envelope, to make the case for the Zodiac Killer being a Vallejo resident. The following will be nothing groundbreaking, but examines the phrases and grammar used by the author to paint a picture of the subject when considering his identity. The Zodiac Killer threatened chaos over the weekend if his codes were not published on the front page of the papers. Unfortunately for him, the main two publications refused to bow to his threats. On August 2nd 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle under the title Coded Clue in Murders placed one-third of his cipher on page 4, while the San Francisco Examiner under the banner Vallejo Mass Murder Threat Fails (despite publishing the entire cipher) relegated it to page 9 on August 3rd 1969. This lowly showing in the San Francisco Examiner clearly upset the Zodiac Killer the most, when he hurriedly delivered by hand the August 4th 1969 'Debut of Zodiac' letter to the Examiner, stating "I was not happy to see that I did not get front page coverage". Putting aside the December 16th 1969 'Fairfield' letter (which many dispute), he never wrote to the San Francisco Examiner again.
His communications to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald exemplified this knowledge of a Target Backcloth perfectly, when he only threatened to kill couples in his address to the Vallejo Times-Herald (or stray people). He knew exactly where to find them, despite the fact it was highly unlikely he would continue to kill in the same area again. The Zodiac Killer never used the word couples in his address to the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner, suggesting that his knowledge of the Target Backcloth was less comprehensive and more uncertain in this city- and why at San Francisco he would target a lone taxicab driver rather than target the location, as he did at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs. As Kim Rossmo stated "The San Francisco murder differs significantly from the Zodiac's other crimes. Up to this point he was hunting in locations that had a good probability of containing his desired victims. Target selection was a function of area, not of an individual. However, it is unlikely the Zodiac was successful in all his searches; serial killers typically engage in extensive hunting activities, and for every attack there are many unsuccessful search attempts. In San Francisco, however, the Zodiac controlled the situation through his selection of victim type. The need for such control could be indicative of the distance the Zodiac had to travel to the crime site. Criminals who travel longer distances to offend are less likely to use uncertain target selection techniques".
The Zodiac Killer wrote of "killing lone people in the night" or "killing people who are alone at night" to the Chronicle and Examiner, which is exactly what he did just over two months later on October 11th 1969, when Paul Stine was brutally gunned down inside his taxicab at Presidio Heights. The target selection began with the individual not the location. He then directed Paul Stine to an area to facilitate his best chance of escape. A Target Backcloth requires knowledge of an area and will govern to some extent the victims chosen, as displayed by some serial killers who target sex workers.
"I will go on a kill ram-Page Fry. night. I will cruse around all weekend" and "I will cruse around killing people who are alone at night untill Sun Night". The Zodiac Killer may potentially be limited in searching for courting couples on weekdays, but certainly not for lone victims in San Francisco, Vallejo or elsewhere Yet he has specifically tied himself to murder within the parameters of Friday night to Sunday night in these letters, and therefore highly suggestive he is employed on a weekday basis.
The Brentingham model of geographic profiling details an activity space where an individual lives, works and plays. The Zodiac Killer targeted the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald in his first communications to the newspapers, indicating that Vallejo and San Francisco were his primary sites of travel. He most likely lived and worked in both. The newspapers he chose and the location he lived, part of his mental map, exhibited to its fullest extent when he subconsciously used the present and past tense in his three July 31st 1969 letters
The Zodiac Killer - A Vallejo Resident [Part 2]