The opening line of the "Exorcist" letter mailed on January 29th 1974 borrowed from the newspaper coverage of the 1973 film which won four Golden Globe awards at the Beverly Hilton hotel in Beverly Hills, California on January 26th 1974, Having received four awards for "Best Film", "Best Director", "Best Supporting Actress" and "Best Screenplay", the Zodiac Killer chose to mock the film's achievements by writing "I saw + think "The Exorcist" was the best saterical comidy". He then featured a verse from "The Mikado", a British comic opera by Arthur Seymour Sullivan and William Schwenck Gilbert, based in a fictionalised version of Japan.

After plagiarising a verse from Tit-Wllow, the Zodiac Killer then added what appears to be Japanese style symbolism at the foot of the letter, preceded by a threat, which read  "If I do not see this note in your paper, I will do something nasty, which you know I'm capable of doing". Kevin Robert Brooks "To Kill" is the arguable frontrunner of solutions to this strange array of characters. If the Zodiac Killer had watched "The Exorcist" movie in the days or weeks before writing this letter, did anything in the film contain Japanese characters that may have inspired him to add this symbolism to his communication addressed to the San Francisco Chronicle?

In "The Exorcist" movie, Father Karras takes audio recordings of the possessed Regan to a university language laboratory. The laboratory director (played by John Mahon) analyses the eerie, garbled noises and realises that the demonic speech is actually English spoken in reverse. The red writing on the wall of the laboratory in the above image reads "TASUKETE" (タスケテ) which is Japanese for "Help me", that appears on possessed Regan's torso in the very next scene. In Japanese writing, this is written in Katakana (the phonetic alphabet used for foreign words and emphasis). It serves as a subtle, eerie Easter egg placed in the background of the scene, mirroring the demonic possession. This personal pronoun (of "Me") was used by Zodiac in the "Exorcist" letter on January 29th 1974, when he wrote "Me-37, SFPD-0". To the left of "Me" in the "Exorcist" letter are a group of Japanese style symbols. To the left of "Help me" on the wall of the language laboratory are a row of Japanese symbols. The plea of "Help me" featured three times in the "Melvin Belli" letter on December 20th 1969. 

Zodiac researcher, Jibberjabber, pointed me in the direction of the highlighted Katakana symbol on the left, which resembles one of the Japanese style characters used by the Zodiac Killer in his Exorcist letter. However, we have hit a roadblock since, and have been unable to properly identify any of the remaining characters. It might be very useful to "decode" the Japanese writing shown in the visible image below, because if the Zodiac Killer saw "The Exorcist" movie as he claimed, he may have "thinked" a little longer than we thought.

"The Most Dangerous Game" was released into US cinemas on September 16th 1932 following much publicity, with its associate producer Merian C. Cooper sought by the press to give comment on his latest venture. He duly obliged by giving reporters the quote of "man is the most dangerous animal of all", which was published in a handful of newspapers such as the Oregon Daily Journal on September 27th 1932. Bearing in mind the Zodiac Killer used this exact quote in his July 31st 1969 cipher---that most agree was referring to "The Most Dangerous Game" movie---it's extremely unlikely this was chosen by accident. Either the Zodiac Killer drew this sequence of eight words from memory, or he made a conscious decision to visit the library and search the newspaper microfiche for memorable quotes to apply to his opening communications, which he had ample time to prepare after the Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs attacks on December 20th 1968 and July 5th 1969 respectively.

Many things point to a killer who attached a sighting implement to his gun and ventured into the fields surrounding the Gate #10 turnout on December 20th 1968---implying that the eventual murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen may never have happened if the Zodiac Killer's earlier searches had turned out to be successful---and probably why he wrote "there was no need to use the gunsights" in his August 4th 1969 letter. The "pencil flashlight" would have been extremely useful in the extreme darkness of the field, but less so in the turnout with the additional lighting from both vehicles. The movement of a killer into the surrounding wilderness is also explained by the vacant white Chevrolet Impala sitting idle in the Lake Herman Road turnout for a minimum of one hour on at least two separate occasions. A driver who very likely walked beyond the road and turnout on a dark, freezing night in December with a distinct purpose in mind. A purpose that would reflect the content of the July 31st 1969 and August 4th 1969 letters, in which a killer would search for prey in the forest using a mounted flashlight, that necessitated him leaving his vehicle for an extended period of time. The 408 cipher was the motivation for the crimes, whereas the accompanying text in the letters was the proof. 

The above newspaper article---had the Zodiac Killer searched the library microfiche regarding the 1932 movie release---would have been the sort of reporting that would have caught his eye. This was the most comprehensive newspaper article containing the phrase "man is the most dangerous animal of all" that the Zodiac Killer would have come across, so may have heavily influenced the language chosen in the opening section of his 408 cipher.

After plagiarising the Merian C. Cooper quote "man is the most dangerous animal of all", the newspaper article read "his career has been a succession of thrilling adventures in which the most ferocious beasts have figured". The Zodiac wrote "to kill something gives me the most thrilling experience".  The newspaper article told of a "big game hunter tracking down and killing wild beasts". The Zodiac Killer wrote of "killing wild game". The opening gambit of his 408 cipher somewhat mirrored the Oregon Daily Journal newspaper article from September 27th 1932, about a movie exploring the notion of hunting human prey in the wild. The is the story of two killers---Count Zaroff and the Zodiac Killer---both armed with a .22 small calibre weapon in search of the ultimate prize. Unfortunately, one of them was real, despite some current Zodiac researchers attempting to turn him into the fiction that preceded him.