On January 29th 1974 the Zodiac Killer tempted us with his name by writing "Signed, yours truley" and then placing an extract from The Mikado's Tit-Willow verse. The implication being that the Zodiac Killer's name may be found within the verse. In 2017, I noticed that the complete Tit-Willow verse from Gilbert & Sullivan's play had the phrase "my name is" within the wording "my name isn't", reminiscent of the April 20th 1970 letter stating "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is....", followed by a 13 character code.

The full Tit-Willow verse read "my name Isn't Willow, tit-willow, tit-willow", so could this have featured in the 13 character code? The Zodiac Killer could have playfully used Tit-Willow as his name on April 20th 1970, before reversing this on January 29th 1974 by invoking the Tit-Willow verse in his Exorcist letter. The proposed suggestion being "My name is only Tit-Willow". Although this solution fails by using the plaintext letters "T" and "I" to represent the ciphertext "circled 8", the three "circled 8's" can spell "TIT". One would like to believe that the Zodiac Killer - knowing his 13 character code was practically unsolvable - would have given us a clue in his later letters. So was the "Signed, yours truley" phrase, followed by "my name isn't" in 1974, that clue?   

Recently I showed a plausible link between James Hogg's 1824 novel The Suicide's Grave: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and "The Exorcist" movie released in 1973, both of which centered around demonic possession. But what I didn't contemplate at the time of writing, is what triggered the Zodiac Killer to select a portion of The Mikado verse containing the wording "suicide's grave", if indeed it was a deliberate choice for the reasons previously stated. After all, this was a novel released 150 years previously.

It goes without saying that the Zodiac Killer often referenced, or was triggered by recent newspaper articles he had read - so the idea of the "suicide's grave" could have germinated in the mind of the Zodiac Killer just before he mailed The Exorcist letter on January 29th 1974. Therefore, what are the odds of the "suicide's grave" being mentioned in the newspapers the day before "The Exorcist" letter was postmarked, that tied into the Japanese themed "The Mikado" (Tit-Willow) and the Asian style characters at the foot of the letter? In total, we would have "The Exorcist" movie and the "suicide's grave" of demonic possession, the Tit-Willow verse from a Japanese satirical comedy, a Japanese relevant newspaper headline on January 28th 1974 referencing the "suicide's grave" of Kao Kang and some Asian symbolism arranged at the bottom of The Exorcist letter. The content in the article below appeared in several newspapers, but this one was published on January 28th 1974, with the inset image (bottom right) from January 26th 1974. They tell of the demise of Kao Kang to his suicide's grave. 

Kao Kang was a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader during the Chinese Civil War and the early years of the People's Republic of China (PRC) before he became the victim of the first major purge within the party since before 1949. The events surrounding Gao's purge, the so-called "Gao Gang Affair". After disagreements with Chairman Mao Zedong, and apparently distraught, Gao Gang (also called Kao Kang) made several attempts to talk to Mao Zedong but was refused an audience with the Chairman. It is possible that Mao avoided facing Gao because of the secret talks between the two men that had prompted Gao's attempts to advance his own position. Gao tried to shoot himself during the February meetings and succeeded in poisoning himself in August 1954. After his suicide, in 1955, Gao was formally expelled from the Party. Gao's ally, Rao, was also expelled from the CCP, and was jailed until his death in 1975. Gao's death not only brought closure of the most immediate sort to the affair but also made sure that he was duly remembered in a dishonorable fashion as a traitor to the party. Wikipedia.

The Exorcist letter mailed on January 29th 1974 is a curious blend of film and theater, where the Zodiac Killer gives us his opinion on the recent movie The Exorcist (1973) stating "I saw + think "The Exorcist" was the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen", before oddly switching to a small portion of the Tit-Willow verse from The Mikado (1885), adding "Signed, yours truley: He plunged him self into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the sucides grave tit willo tit willo tit willo".

One might expect a running theme between the message in "The Exorcist" film and "The Mikado" verse, other than they are two forms of entertainment. Why did the Zodiac Killer choose to blend these seemingly strange bedfellows? The Exorcist movie was about the demonic possession of a young 12-year-old girl and the battle between good and evil, therefore we have to consider a possible connection to this and the chosen phrase from Tit-Willow.

The origin of suicide's grave can be found in the then anonymous writings of James Hogg in 1824, a Scottish poet, novelist and essayist who published The Suicide's Grave: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner. "The plot concerns Robert Wringhim, a staunch Calvinist who, under the influence of the mysterious Gil-Martin, believes he is guaranteed Salvation and justified in killing those he believes are already damned by God. The novel has been classified among many genres, including gothic novel, psychological mystery, metafiction, satire and the study of totalitarian thought; it can also be thought of as an early example of modern crime fiction in which the story is told, for the most part, from the point of view of its criminal anti-hero. The action of the novel is located in a historically definable Scotland with accurately observed settings, and simultaneously implies a quasi-Christian world of angels, devils, and demonic possession. James Hogg's brief cameo role in the final pages of the novel is effectively his "signature" appended to the otherwise anonymous original publication. Wikipedia. 

​Emma John of The Guardian writes "If you think that the best response to religious extremism is to laugh at it, then James Hogg's most famous work, published in 1824, demands your full attention. A tale of demonic possession, it is also a caustic comedy, skewering the religious bigotry that existed among the era's Scottish Reformers".

The James Hogg novel has been described as comedic and satirical in nature, exactly the same as the Zodiac Killer described The Exorcist movie in 1974. Both "The Exorcist" and "The Suicide's Grave" are tales of demonic possession, so was the choice of "Tit-Willow" containing the wording of "Suicide's Grave" from The Mikado (1885), also released in the 19th century, just a fortunate coincidence, or did the Zodiac Killer deliberately create a running theme of demonic possession in his January 29th 1974 letter? The anonymous nature of James Hogg's book and cameo signature appears consistent with the mysterious "Signed, yours truley" adopted by the Zodiac Killer in his letter. The middle section of James Hogg's book is called "The Confession", describing a tale of murder, which portrays Robert Wringhim's descent into madness and believed murder of his brother, George, by stabbing him in the back. Despite being an obvious "clutching at straws", this is reminiscent of "The Confession" letter mailed in 1966 that describes a murderer who declares "I am insane" while stabbing Cheri Jo Bates once in the back. 

​The Zodiac Killer appeared to be a well-read individual with a penchant for the historical, so was the choice of The Exorcist movie and the "Suicide's Grave" reference another example of look long enough and you will find, or was the Zodiac Killer manufacturing his communications carefully and creatively, with meaning behind his madness?       

With 43,000 devotees to her YouTube channel as of March 17th 2024, Profiling With Pat Brown is heavily undersubscribed as a platform, deserving far more recognition than it currently garners. Using deductive reasoning, behavioural profiling and crime scene analysis, Pat Brown doesn't claim her primary focus is to solve crimes, moreover, her objective is to drive an investigation towards a more productive and realistic use of police resources, where funding and time can be best used to generate a positive outcome.

With many books such as Only the Truth, The Murder of Cleopatra, The Profiler, How to Save Your Daughter, Profile of the Disappearance of Madeleine McCann and Killing For Sport, and a host of television appearances, Pat Brown has been a valuable asset and resource to the crime community for many decades. In simplistic terms, her strength is using common sense and logic, a virtue sadly lacking in large parts of the crime community, where sensationalism and fantastical thinking, driven by money, clicks and likes, blinkers these individuals to creating meaningful and cogent analysis. When common sense becomes a rare commodity, it is incumbent for voices like Pat Brown to flourish and redirect people away from much of the noise of mainstream media, where the driving force is ratings and profit, not usually the truth.          

​Her approach to crime scene analysis and investigation is at the heart of her criticism for the United States legal system (and other countries), where 12 people from a "bus stop" can be housed in a court of law to adjudicate on something as important as a murder trial, where the life and death of an individual can invariably hang in the balance of jurors who are not sufficiently educated to prescribe such an outcome. Often jurors will be selected because they are beneficial to the prosecution or defence based on what they don't know. In a murder trial where biology and DNA is the compelling arm of the prosecution, the defence will rightly favour jurors who are ignorant to science, who can easily be bamboozled by a slick and disingenuous court jester, whose primary aim is to feed off this lack of knowledge.

​If you need to rewire your house, you consult with certified electrician with a history and proven track record behind them, but in the matter of life and death in a court setting, requiring an analytical brain with a knowledge of biology, forensics and crime scene analysis, you wouldn't ideally drag somebody off the street who likely knows nothing of the aforementioned attributes. With the very real possibility of somebody being sentenced to death in a US court of law, this should not be treated as a game, overseen by 12 random individuals who could potentially kill somebody, armed with an inadequate set of skills. 

Pat Brown, as of writing, has compiled 628 videos covering solved and unsolved cases such as The Zodiac Killer, The Dardeen Family Murders, The Unsolved Disappearance of Jodi Huisentruit, Lizzie Borden, The Freeway Phantom, Sam Sheppard, The Springfield Three, The Annecy Shootings and Madeleine McCann, to name but a few. Many of these videos have a running time in excess of two hours, providing a comprehensive and thorough examination of each case. Described by Pat as an educational channel, it provides a rational and reasonable approach to the analysis of true crime, dispensing with the ridiculous and incoherent offerings churned out by other platforms in the genre. 

The aim of Pat Brown is to transfer the methodology of good criminal profiling into the mindset of detectives and their police departments, who can take on the responsibility, focus current investigations and cold cases down a more productive avenue, and hopefully achieve a higher success rate when identifying and arresting criminals. Investigations can often go awry when the thinking of those bestowed with solving crimes is flawed. Good criminal profiling can be the difference between apprehending a murderer or allowing them to kill again, so getting into the mind of a detective should take precedence over delving into the mind of a killer. Without changing the mind of the first, will allow the second more chance to evade justice.         


​Her YouTube channel is available to everybody, with a combination of standard video presentations and several live shows available on Patreon for 5 dollars a month, where you are able to participate in live chats. However, these live shows do become accessible to everybody after about a week, so nothing is excluded from public viewing. With a vast and impressive back catalogue of cases to delve into, hopefully you will subscribe to Pat's channel and help drive the subscribers beyond the 100K mark. In a true crime community peppered with erroneous and flawed analysis, the insightful and intelligent, but reasonable and logical approach adopted by Pat Brown is a breath of fresh air.

​To visit her YouTube live streams click here. To access The Pat Brown Criminal Profiling Agency with a link to her television appearances, news articles and books, visit PatBrownProfiling.Com.            

The number of individuals who have Zodiac Killer "pet suspects" has exponentially grown over the last two decades, proliferated through the wide reaching tentacles of the internet. Many (but not all), when pressed, have stated that they are 95 to 100% confident they have identified the Zodiac Killer in the murders of David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Darlene Ferrin, Cecelia Shepard and Paul Stine. It is fair to say that Zodiac investigators and enthusiasts such as Michael Morford, Mike Rodelli, Drew Beeson and Adam Ivester, naming William McDuff, Kjell Qvale, Don Cheney and John Parr Cox respectively, all fall into this category of confidence upwards of 95%. However, the number of people exhibiting such belief is much more widespread and not confined to these individuals. Furthermore, those who are prepared to write books, create long-standing YouTube channels and heavily contribute to Zodiac Killer forums naming their suspect over many years or even decades, do not do so unless they are utterly convinced they have identified the Zodiac Killer beyond a reasonable doubt.

So, if these individuals were the judge in a bench trial, where the decision of guilt or innocence fell squarely on their shoulders, how many Zodiac researchers would convict their own suspect based on their own research, and be prepared to sentence their suspect to death through capital punishment? In other words (assuming their suspect was still alive), would they be prepared to kill that person based on their internet research. It's a frightening thought, but it's a legitimate question. Assuming the Zodiac Killer is one individual - and using William McDuff, Kjell Qvale, Don Cheney and John Parr Cox as examples - it would mean that at a bare minimum, three innocent individuals would be executed by three Zodiac researchers. Multiply those suspects to 300 individuals, would mean that 299 people would be wrongly executed. The fact that 300 "suspects" can be identified beyond a reasonable doubt by Zodiac researchers, where at least 299 are totally innocent of the crime, shows beyond any doubt, how horrible a technique internet sleuthing is when pointing the finger at people for the Zodiac crimes.

​Every Zodiac researcher must believe they use better investigative techniques than everybody else, because if they didn't, they would be advocating for somebody else's suspect. This means that every researcher must be identifying flaws in other peoples reasoning, that they fail to recognise within themselves. It is this bias that is at the heart of flawed reasoning. Take this sort of reasoning and apply it to eleven followers of each proposed "suspect", and you have a jury of like-minded individuals you wouldn't want anywhere near a justice system deciding on the life or death of another human being.

Many Zodiac researchers cannot understand why others don't see their suspect as strongly as they see them - and would ideally wish that most people would agree with their conclusions. It's obviously more pleasurable when you have spent a long time researching and presenting a suspect, to have people concur with your findings, rather than reject them. If such a Zodiac researcher was the prosecutor in a jury trial where their suspect was on trial, it would be the clear objective of that researcher to sell their findings to 12 jury members and convince them of the suspect's guilt. If the jury members thought like the researcher, it could be argued that a guilty verdict and possible death sentence would be a satisfactory verdict for the Zodiac researcher, who has sold his beliefs beyond a reasonable doubt. If we scale this argument up to 300 Zodiac researchers, we would effectively have a potential 299 murderers by proxy. The question being - would these Zodiac researchers really see somebody executed based on the research they've compiled - or would they take a step backwards and consider the difference between belief and reality?   

Recently, I explored the likely reasoning behind the Symbionese Liberation Army (or a sympathizer of the group) choosing to use the phrase "red with rage" within the Red Phantom letter. On May 17th 1974, the last stand of six Symbionese Liberation Army members took place at 1466 East 54th Street in Los Angeles between the police and the left-wing militant group. Under heavy fire and tear gas grenades, Donald DeFreeze, Patricia Soltysik, Nancy Ling Perry, Angela Atwood, Camilla Hall and Willie Wolfe, all perished in the burning building. As a response to the Symbionese Liberation Army deaths, another left-wing group, the Weather Underground, set off a powerful bomb in the Old State Building in the early morning hours of May 31st 1974, shattering the reception room of Attorney General, Evelle J. Younger and causing considerable damage to three floors of the building. 

A few hours later, the Los Angeles Times and radio station KPFK were told to go to certain telephone booths where they would retrieve letters from the Weather Underground, expressing their condemnation of the killing of six SLA members, stating "To our sisters and brothers in the Symbionese Liberation Army we want to express with you and all free-loving people grief and rage at the deaths". This "grief and range" was reported heavily in the newspapers throughout the June of 1974, alongside a slew of psychological appraisals of the Symbionese Liberation Army by numerous psychiatrists, turning the "grief and rage" of the Weather Underground back onto the Symbionese Liberation Army, claiming their use of psychotic drugs and repressed hostility towards their parents manifested itself as a "rage reaction". Read full article. But what about the "Red Phantom" signature? 

On the same day that the Weather Underground expressed its "rage" at the deaths of six Symbionese Liberation Army members, the Symbionese Liberation Army delivered a letter signed "B Team Leader" to the television station KNXT stating that they had downed a Los Angeles Police Department helicopter in revenge for their compatriots, resulting in the death of Paul Gillen and the severe injury to three others (including two SWAT members).

​The Police Bell 206 Jetranger helicopter was claimed by the group to have been shot down using a Russian military-type anti-aircraft missile, despite the police claiming otherwise and attributing the helicopter crash to a mechanical failure of the rotor blades. The Russian designed 9K32 Strela-2 is a light-weight, shoulder-fired, surface-to-air missile system. It is designed to target aircraft at low altitudes with passive infrared-homing guidance and destroy them with a high-explosive warhead. Roughly 95–120 kills and several dozen damaged are attributed to Strela-2/2M hits between April 1972 and the Fall of Saigon in April 1975, almost all against helicopters and propeller-driven aircraft. Wikipedia. 

Was the "Red Phantom" signature mentioned by the Symbionese Liberation Army on July 8th 1974 taken from the comic book character "The Phantom" (from King Features Syndicate owned by Hearst communications), who converted it into the "Red Phantom" because of the covert Russian missile strike they claimed downed the LAPD helicopter? The irony of using military grade weaponry dubbed the "Red Phantom" wouldn't have been lost on the Symbionese Liberation Army, because of the recent retirement of a record-breaking Firebee drone at the Air Defence Weapons Center, nicknamed The "Red Phantom". It successfully avoided being destroyed with "enemy fire" for 87 missions before flying its last mission on November 12th 1973 and being retired in May 1974. The choice of this nickname by the Symbionese Liberation Army, in a mission deemed successful in bringing down an aerial "enemy combatant" using Russian military hardware, could be argued as strategic wordplay towards the police and military by a group who rejected wholesale the capitalism and imperialism of the American government.