Here is a current description of the Financial Crimes Unit at the San Francisco Police Department: Tasked with the investigation of financial crimes including but not limited to: access card fraud, Bunco cases, check fraud, counterfeit currency, counterfeit trademark, embezzlement, false financial statements, forgery, identity theft, internet fraud, elder financial abuse, non-return of rental property, real estate and notary fraud, and theft by false pretense or deceit. This is the equivalent department that long time partner of Inspector David Toschi transferred to after leaving homicide detail. The transfer of William Armstrong to fraud detail was mentioned on August 26th 1976 in the San Francisco Chronicle on the same day an advertisement was placed in the personal column of the same newspaper, reading "ZODIAC, Your partner is in DEEP REAL ESTATE. You're next. The Imperial Wizard can save you. Surrender to him or I'll terminate your case. R.A."

The use of "You're next" has been highlighted in several potential Zodiac communications, so it's not unusual to find it yet again appearing in a personal advertisement headed by the pseudonym "ZODIAC". The standalone use of the "Zodiac" pseudonym was allied to the pasted wording "YOU ARE NEXT" in the Edward C. Adams communication on October 17th 1970, and a letter postmarked Montclair, California (near Riverside) on November 10th 1969, addressed to an individual in Clarinda, Iowa, that carried the message "Mr. (redacted) Your Next. The Zodiac". Neither of which had been released into the public domain by 1976. Therefore, the author of the advertisement in the personal column was somewhat mirroring two communications they could never have seen, unless they were the same individual.  

The wording in the personal advertisement was clearly borrowing from the newspaper article about the Zodiac Killer, mentioning that David Toschi's partner was in DEEP REAL ESTATE. William Armstrong had transferred to fraud detail, which dealt in real estate and mortgage fraud (as shown above). It appears that the threat to "terminate your case" was a direct threat towards David Toschi, who was the only San Francisco detective currently investigating the Zodiac Killer case in 1976.

Inspector David Toschi was also assigned to the "Zebra murders" investigation in the years prior to the placement of this advertisement. These racially motivated murders on white people in San Francisco in 1973 and 1974 were perpetrated by black muslims. On April 28th 1974 many arrests were made, with Mayor Joseph Alioti releasing a statement that read in part "The San Francisco police, under the leadership of Chief Donald Scott, have pierced the veil of a vicious ring of murders called "DEATH ANGELS." The local group is a division of a larger organization dedicated to the murder and mutilation of whites and dissident Blacks. The pattern of killing is by random street shooting or hacking to death with machete, cleaver or knife. Decapitation or other forms of mayhem bring special credit from the organization for the killers. Hitchhikers are a particular prey. "DEATH ANGELS," a kind of reverse Ku Klux Klan, is based on the muddled aberrations clearly outside the mainstream of Islamic religions. In my opinion, it represents as much a potential threat to Blacks as to whites. Members are usually characterized by trim, neat appearance, and purport to live by a puritanical code of moral conduct. They are fanatical believers in Black separatism. The training of young boys fourteen years of age and over in what they call "martial arts" is a practice of this group. It consists of teaching manual methods and techniques of killing or incapacitating".

The Zebra murders investigation was heavily criticized by many black community leaders and the public alike, drawing comparisons to the Zodiac Killer case in the Bay Area. This was evident from KRON-TV News footage on April 18th 1974, in which Reverend Cecil Williams likened the actions of police to a race war and argued that innocent black individuals were being stopped by the police - often several times - based on nothing more than their skin color. He stated "When, in fact, the Zodiac Killer and his picture came out in the newspapers, as well as television, a print of what they thought the Zodiac Killer to look like, they did, in fact, not begin to create a dragnet and a police state as it relates to white participants. So it's inherently discriminatory". 

I think it is unlikely that the Zodiac Killer was not aware of the Zebra murders, his name being brought up by comparison, and the involvement of Inspector David Toschi in the investigation, in a climate described as a race war. The Zodiac Killer wasn't averse to implementing newspaper and television coverage into his later communications, so the personal advertisement that threatened "The Imperial Wizard can save you. Surrender to him or I'll terminate your case", could have carried a racial element pertaining to a perceived war on black people. The Zodiac Killer may have been suggesting to Inspector David Toschi that he needed to submit to the teachings of the Imperial Wizard and Ku Klux Klan as his savior or he would be terminated from his current case. This is the only feasible connection I could find to link Inspector David Toschi to the Ku Klux Klan, who were described by Mayor Alioto as the reverse of the "Death Angels".   

If the personal advertisement was placed by the Zodiac Killer on August 26th 1976, one has to question how he could draw inspiration from a newspaper article that was published on the same day. To fashion an advertisement based upon this article he would had to have had advanced knowledge of its contents, which could only be realistically achieved if he was somehow connected to the newspaper or law enforcement. 

Greetings to Mo from Egypt.

Two of the least understood communications possibly mailed by the Zodiac Killer were the Day-by-day forecast for Cancer and Day-by-day forecast for Leo horoscopes, with the first mailed from Sacramento to the Sacramento Bee newspaper on December 10th 1969 and the second from San Francisco to the San Francisco Newspaper Printing Company, P.O. Box 3100, Rincon Annex, San Francisco on December 11th 1969. The Day-by-day forecast for Cancer pasted horoscope page contained the prominent words Want, Zodiac and Watch, and the phrase "Birds Fly South". One notable feature on the horoscope page was the word "Cancer", which had been ringed in the page title.

​The following day, on December 11th 1969, the Day-by-day forecast for Leo horoscope page was mailed, but the word Leo had not been ringed in the page title. However, this communication arrived one day after the abduction and eventual murder of Leona Roberts, whose body was ultimately discovered alongside Bolinas Lagoon in Marin County on December 28th 1969. The coroner concluded she had been kept alive for a duration of 10 to 14 days after her abduction, with the sheriff's office stating she had been dead about 10 days. This suggests she was murdered (or had died in captivity) sometime between December 18th and December 24th 1969. This makes the Day-by-day Forecast for Leo(na Roberts) horoscope page very interesting indeed. Additionally, neither of these two communications (with one containing the word Zodiac) were public knowledge on January 4th 1970, when somebody telephoned Peggy Trainer, identified himself as the Zodiac Killer, and stated she would be his next victim. Peggy Trainer lived in the same building at 749 Tormey Avenue, Rodeo, where Leona Roberts was abducted from. 

The Day-by-day forecast for Cancer horoscope page was mailed on the same day as Leona Roberts abduction, containing the phrase "Birds Fly South". It has been difficult to find the meaning behind the author's choice of pasted words, but one thing we know about the Zodiac Killer is his inspiration was often sourced from literature and film, such as the short story The Most Dangerous Game by Richard Connell, first published on January 19th 1924 (or the resulting 1932 film version), the Gilbert & Sullivan comic opera, The Mikado, and The Exorcist film (1973), inspired by William Peter Blatty's 1971 book, to name just a few.

When the Birds Fly South is a fantasy novel by Stanton A. Coblentz, first published by The Wings Press, Mill Valley in Marin County in 1945, and reprinted in 1951. The story features Dan Prescott, an American adventurer, who discovers the hidden valley of Sobul in a mountainous region of Afghanistan, inhabited by a strange race of winged people known as the "Ibandru". He falls in love with one of them, Yasma, and they marry in a scene of general celebration. When fall comes, however, the Ibandru abandon their valley to fly south with the birds for the winter.

Bearing in mind this novel was first published in Marin County and has Birds Fly South in the title, it seems extremely coincidental that the body of Leona Roberts would be found alongside Bolinas Lagoon in Marin County, which is a major north-south Pacific Flyway for migratory birds in America, extending from Alaska to Patagonia. Every year, migratory birds travel some or all of this distance both in spring and in fall, following food sources, heading to breeding grounds, or travelling to overwintering sites.

​The Day-by-day forecast for Cancer communication was not only mailed on the day of Leona Roberts' abduction, containing the pasted word "Zodiac", but contained the phrase "Birds Fly South", present in the title of a book first published in Marin County, where the body of Leona Roberts was ultimately found alongside the north-south Pacific Flyway of migratory birds at Bolinas Lagoon. When we factor in the Day-by-day Forecast for Leo(na Roberts) horoscope page and the telephone call on January 4th 1970 in absence of either of these communications being made public, can we really lay all this at the door of coincidence?  

The American Greetings card or Eureka card was believed to have been mailed by the Zodiac Killer in December 1990, depicting a wintry scene of a snowman and rabbit on its exterior, with an accompanying prewritten message of "FROM YOUR SECRET PAL CAN'T GUESS WHO I AM YET? WELL, LOOK INSIDE AND YOU'LL FIND OUT...". Once opened it revealed the prewritten reply of "...THAT I'M GONNA KEEP YOU GUESSIN'! HAPPY HOLIDAYS, ANYWAY". No additional writing from the sender was found on the card inner.

Many Zodiac Killer enthusiasts have questioned over the last sixteen years whether the imagery on the original American Greetings card was altered by the sender of the communication. These individuals have considered that the Zodiac Killer may have manipulated the snowman to look like Groucho Marx, because he was cast as Ko-Ko in The Mikado, reciting both A More Humane Mikado and  As Some Day it May Happen, two Gilbert & Sullivan acts used by the Zodiac Killer in his Little List letter mailed on July 26th 1970.

The designer of the card was George Schill, a contract artist with the American Greetings Card Company (Corporation) for 38 years, who informed me that all the imagery on the card (including the snowman) is exactly as he created it. In other words, nothing was added to the card outer by the Zodiac Killer. George, who retired several years ago, remarked "I did create the card as shown" and that "The ‘“guess who“ copy is typical of a greeting card friendship/secret admirer type of card, and I added the Groucho Marx glasses which are cliche". George's website lists his accomplishments as an illustrator, stating "my work has garnered a number of awards and has been selected for inclusion in the NY Society of Illustrators Annuals, Communication Arts, Printʼs Regional Design Annuals, and the Addyʼs. In addition to my freelance work, I have designed thousands of greeting cards as a contract artist with the humor divisions at American Greetings, where I also write gags, develop characters, and concept new lines. Several of my cards have been nominated for the National Cartoonist Society Reuben Award".

I would like to thank George for supplying me with this information and clearing up some of the outstanding questions regarding the design of the Eureka card. You can visit George's website at https://www.georgeschill.com/   

David Oranchak has just released another excellent Youtube video on his Let's Crack Zodiac series, examining the numeric codes of Theodore Kaczynski, the Unabomber, who killed three and injured twenty-three in a seventeen year reign of terror between 1978 and 1995. David Oranchak has delivered the often complex and difficult topic of cryptography to the masses by attempting to simplify this topic through his visual presentations, orchestrated in such a way, it elevates the understanding of the many who once found the art of cryptography perplexing and impenetrable. One of the key members of the team that finally broke the Zodiac Killer's 340 cipher after fifty-one years, alongside Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke,

David Oranchak has sought to demystify the specialized skills of codebreaking through eighteen well produced videos. Although some uncharitable individuals claim the hard work in breaking the 340 cipher was achieved predominantly through the use of computers, this overlooks the fact that we have had these powerful computers for many years with no resolution until 2020, the requirement to develop new systems such as "zkdecrypto", and the human input required to recognize the Zodiac Killer's language as it emerges from the noise. These three gentlemen achieved what every other person failed to surmount in over fifty years - and for this - they deserve all the accolades they have been rightly bestowed. 

The 340 message, claimed by many to be another rambling and meaningless collection of Zodiac tropes, has in fact, opened the window to many other Zodiac Killer communications such as the first Fairfield letter mailed on December 7th 1969 and the third Fairfield letter mailed on or around May 2nd 1971, both containing cryptograms known as the Z38 and Z148 respectively (the latter having been solved). Both of these communications were related to the 340 cipher through coding and messaging, despite the 340 cipher solution being decades away from being solved. The Z38 appeared to know the wording in the 340 cipher before the code was broken, and the text in the accompanying letter seemed to pre-empt the wording in the Melvin Belli letter mailed on December 20th 1969, just thirteen days later. The Fairfield letter on December 7th 1969 also pre-empted the phone call to an Oklahoma radio station later that day, in which the author of the letter and phone caller both mocked the caller to the Jim Dunbar Show and Melvin Belli on October 22nd 1969. The phone caller to Oklahoma, mimicking the person who rang into the Jim Dunbar Show, also stated he left California because "it got too hot for me", just like phone caller to the Palo Alto Times newspaper, who stated he had left San Francisco because "because I'm too hot there", less than a day before the Jim Dunbar TV Show. If that isn't enough evidence that the Zodiac Killer was the responsible, we have the solved message in the Z148 calling out both Karl Francis Werner and Eric Weill (the Jim Dunbar caller) as phonys, just like the message in the 340 cipher calling out Eric Well by stating "That wasn't me on the TV show". The Jim Dunbar TV show, in which a second phone call was received on February 5th 1970, from somebody that the San Francisco Chronicle and homicide detectives described as a phony. 

To ascertain whether a communication is authentic or unproven, we must get away from consistently using the reasoning of "handwriting and tone" as a throwaway line to examine Zodiac communications in a matter of minutes. The interconnectivity of Zodiac communications must be examined through the picture created by the Zodiac Killer throughout many years and multiple correspondences and phone calls, just like the story of the San Jose murders which spanned the time period of August 3rd 1969 to July 13th 1971, when the Zodiac Killer mailed the Monticello card to the San Francisco Chronicle.

The interconnectivity between the Monticello card and the Z148 character cipher (and Pines card), the interconnectivity between the Z148 cipher and Albany letter code mailed in 1973, and the interconnectivity between the second Fairfield letter mailed on December 16th 1969 to the phone call delivered to the San Jose Highway Patrol on December 19th 1969, are just a fraction of the strands in the spider web that link these occurrences together. Just staring at a letter for a handful of minutes and declaring it a hoax, is inadequate, when we consider that the Zodiac Killer was traveling on a journey of murder and domestic terrorism spanning many years. To view the whole picture, please open the links provided in this article.

I am fairly confident that the Z38 code mailed on December 7th 1969 is somehow related to the 340 and 148 character ciphers through its messaging. Both the Z340 and Z148 ciphers referenced Eric Weill (the caller to the Jim Dunbar Show), by stating "That wasn't me on the TV show" and "stop listening to phonys" - and the Z38 code was mailed on the same day that somebody rang the Oklahoma radio station mimicking Eric Weill. My contention is that all three were the Zodiac Killer.

​I am not confident I can crack the Zodiac Killer's Z38 cipher because, despite having some limited knowledge of cryptography, this pales into insignificance when compared to individuals such as David Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke, who ultimately broke the Zodiac Killer's masterpiece cipher. The recognition of the phrase "gas chamber" in the cryptogram was pivotal in understanding that the Zodiac Killer referenced recent newspaper articles (or the Jim Dunbar TV show) which detailed this very subject pertaining to Zodiac's capture. If we run with this concept, it may help to unearth the message in the Z38 code, which may (or may not) hold vital information of a contemporary nature and unlock the fifth of eight known enciphered messages. I have a strong belief that David Oranchak could make some valuable observations and inroads into the Z38 cipher if he chooses to tackle yet another Zodiac mystery, and thereby, attempt to close another chapter in this intriguing story.