If the wording of the Confession letter had been withheld from the newspapers in 1966, it would make any similarities between the Confession letter and Riverside Desktop Poem more significant. It appears that the majority of the text from the Confession letter wasn't released until November 1968, when it was published in the Press-Enterprise newspaper. Here is a brief section from a previous article:making a comparison between the Desktop Poem and Confession letter, both of which begin with a title.

​The title of the Desktop Poem was "Sick of living/unwilling to die".  When we look at the Confession letter the author types two sentences carrying the similar wording of "She was then very willing to talk to me" and "she went very willingly".  The Confession letter author also typed "I am not sick. I am insane". In other words, the Desktop Poem title is embedded in the story of the Confession letter. The Desktop Poem concludes with the wording "She won't die, this time someone'll find her. Just wait till next time", suggestive of an impending death - and mirrored in the Confession letter when the author types the word "time" on a further three occasions and utilizes the word "die" in the same string of wording, by stating "When we were away from the library walking, I said it was about time. She asked me "about time for what". I said it was about time for her to die".   

Is this enough correlation to point to one author of the Riverside Desktop Poem and Confession letter? And could the author of the Bates letters (whoever that may be) be responsible for the two previous communications. Recently, the Riverside Police Department have stated that somebody contacted them via a letter in 2016 claiming responsibilty for the three Bates letters postmarked April 30th 1967. "The author apologized for sending the letters and said it was a sick joke. The author admitted that he was not the Zodiac killer or the killer of Cheri Jo Bates and was just looking for attention". But was the individual who made this admission in 2016 telling the truth? Despite the three Bates letters containing only eight words, they managed to continue the theme of the previous two communications in 1966. The Desktop Poem was titled "Sick of living/unwilling to die". The Confession letter harbored the wording "I said it was about time for her to die" (meaning Bates had to die). Then, five months later, the three Bates letters contained the wording "Bates had to die there will be more" and "She had to die there will be more". In addition, all three communications ended with the threat of further murder. The ending of each carried the wording "Just wait till next time", "I am stalking your girls now" and "There will be more". It is also noteworthy that the Zodiac Killer never wrote the wording "to die", "die" or "died" in any of his communications spanning eighteen years.

Here is some additional information regarding the Confession letter. Before the development of photographic copiers, a carbon copy was the under-copy of a typed or written document placed over carbon paper and the under-copy sheet itself (not to be confused with the carbon print family of photographic reproduction processes). When copies of business letters were so produced, it was customary to use the acronym "CC" or "cc" before a colon and below the writer's signature to inform the principal recipient that carbon copies had been made and distributed to the parties listed after the colon. With the advent of word processors and e-mail, "cc" is used as a merely formal indication of the distribution of letters to secondary recipients. A sheet of carbon paper is placed between two or more sheets of paper. The pressure applied by the writing implement (pen, pencil, typewriter or impact printer) to the top sheet causes pigment from the carbon paper to reproduce the similar mark on the copy sheet(s). More than one copy can be made by stacking several sheets with carbon paper between each pair. Four or five copies is a practical limit. The top sheet is the original and each of the additional sheets is called a carbon copy. A sheet of carbon paper is placed between two or more sheets of paper. The pressure applied by the writing implement (pen, pencil, typewriter or impact printer) to the top sheet causes pigment from the carbon paper to reproduce the similar mark on the copy sheet(s). More than one copy can be made by stacking several sheets with carbon paper between each pair. Four or five copies is a practical limit. The top sheet is the original and each of the additional sheets is called a carbon copy. Wikipedia. .

Robert Graysmith in Zodiac Unmasked stated "November 29, 1966. Two carbon copies of a "confession" letter sent to the press and Riverside Police. Zodiac typed on a sandwich of Teletype paper and carbon paper and mailed the faintest, the fourth and fifth impressions. The original typed top page was never sent". Ordinarily it is wise to double check anything Robert Graysmith claimed, however, in this instance his claims appear to concur with Wikipedia that four or five copies is perfectly feasible in this instance. The fact that the Confession letter was cut at the top and bottom suggests the paper used was taken from a Teletype roll

Colin Marchelletta ([email protected]), creator of the Zodiac Killer Library on Facebook, has now developed a Zodiac Ciphers free website app which is now available on Google Play. Colin has invested considerable time and effort into this project, so hopefully you will find this application useful should you choose to install it. 

There is a reasonable argument to be had, that the Confession letter mailed on November 29th 1966 was created by the same author as the Riverside Desktop Poem, with both being created at around the same time by somebody who had access to the Riverside library photocopier and the desktops themselves - possibly a young student who lived in Riverside and attended the college. The author of the Riverside Desktop Poem may have split his poem into two parts: The first part reminiscing in the present tense about the April 1965 attempted murder of a young female student on the Riverside City College campus, who narrowly escaped death after being stabbed by Rolland Taft. A newspaper article entitled "Clean-cut Youth Sought In Stabbing" was released shortly after the attack, that seemed to mirror the opening two words of the Riverside Desktop Poem, and detailed on Ricardo Gomez's MK Zodiac website. The first part of the poem was correct when it asserted "she won't die, this time someone'll find her". The young woman fled the attack and sought help from a nearby residence and was rushed to hospital. The second part of the poem reminisced in the present tense that the next woman would not be so lucky, by stating "Just wait till next time. r h." That person may have been Cheri Jo Bates, brutally stabbed on October 30th 1966 close to the Riverside City College library annex and found on Halloween morning. The newspapers detailed that screams were heard on the night of October 30th 1966 but that her body was discovered the morning of Halloween, so the author of the Desktop Poem may have been using this date when he added Riverside, Halloween at the end of the poem.   

If the wording of the Confession letter had been withheld from the newspapers in 1966, it would make any similarities between the Confession letter and Riverside Desktop Poem more significant. It appears that the majority of the text from the Confession letter wasn't released until November 1968, when it was published in the Press-Enterprise newspaper. Let us make a comparison between the Desktop Poem and Confession letter, both of which begin with a title. The title of the Desktop Poem was "Sick of living/unwilling to die".  When we look at the Confession letter the author types two sentences carrying the similar wording of "She was then very willing to talk to me" and "she went very willingly".  The Confession letter author also typed "I am not sick. I am insane". In other words, the Desktop Poem title is embedded in the story of the Confession letter. The Desktop Poem concludes with the wording "She won't die, this time someone'll find her. Just wait till next time", suggestive of an impending death - and mirrored in the Confession letter when the author types the word "time" on a further three occasions and utilizes the word "die" in the same string of wording, by stating "When we were away from the library walking, I said it was about time. She asked me "about time for what". I said it was about time for her to die".   

There is every chance that the author of these two communications was a young prankster connected to the Riverside City College campus and library, who had knowledge of both attacks in 1965 and 1966, and gleaned everything about these two young women from the newspapers. The connection to both these attacks can be reasoned in the Riverside Desktop Poem, along with the claim of one author being responsible for both communications by the very wording they utilized.   

It has been speculated that Donna Lass, who was nearing the end of her shift, was abducted from the parking lot of the Sahara Tahoe Hotel & Casino on September 6th 1970, having possibly been lured there by claim of a false emergency from her abductor and bundled into a waiting vehicle. Harvey Hines stated in the Tahoe Daily Tribune that "There was a lot of evidence inside the Sahara Tahoe Casino that she left directly from there. She was a very personal person and she left a lot of personal items behind; an opened letter, a dirty uniform, and on her log a pen was dragged from the last word she wrote on the page". The last entry according to Mary Pilker (Donna's sister) was "patient complains of". Ten months later, on July 13th 1971, Trudy Ann Hiler (22) went missing from Cal Neva Lodge & Casino after finishing her shift, reported as being bundled into a vehicle in the parking lot of the casino. It was situated on the northern tip of Lake Tahoe just three miles from Incline Village. Trudy Ann Hiler was found strangled and stabbed two days later under a rock ledge between the casino and lake shore. The man who found the body also reported the abduction. That man was Michael Anselmo (18 at the time of the murder), who worked as a busboy in the same casino as Trudy. The following year he received life in prison for the murder of the young woman. He spent 47 years in jail before being released. I wonder where he got the idea of her being bundled into a vehicle in the parking lot?

By August 4th 1969 the Zodiac Killer had shot four young people, killed three and mailed four letters, including three parts of a 408 character cryptogram. However, this didn't afford him the front page coverage from the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner that he thought he richly deserved. The August 6th 1969 front page coverage in the Chronicle, featuring the brutal stabbings of teenagers Kathie Reyne Snoozy and Deborah Gaye Furlong in San Jose, was almost certainly the inspiration for the Zodiac Killer to switch from gun to knife and appear on the shores of Lake Berryessa brandishing a long-bladed weapon. This murder and attempted murder on September 27th 1969 secured him front page coverage due to the brutality of the attack. So why would the Zodiac Killer revert back to the use of a gun in his next attack. The answer may lie in the newspaper articles subsequent to the Lake Berryessa attack, in which the Zodiac Killer was portrayed as a psychotic, sexual deviant who likely focused heavily on the female sex. As explained in the previous article, the Zodiac Killer did not specifically target couples, or primarily direct his ire towards the female, but this didn't stop the sensationalized newspaper articles and the irresponsible statements by law enforcement, who portrayed the Zodiac Killer as a man starved of a meaningful heterosexual relationship, with an underlying sexual problem.

This was exemplified by the San Francisco Examiner on October 1st 1969, just ten days before the Zodiac Killer targeted a lone male in San Francisco on October 11th 1969. The Examiner ran with the headline "Sex Fiend Sought For Six Killings", followed by the opening paragraph of "A psychotic killer police say brutally slays females for sexual gratification is loose in the North Bay today". If you are wondering where the San Francisco Examiner got six killings from - they had incorporated the murders of Snoozy and Furlong in San Jose, who were also mentioned in the newspaper article (which is what the Zodiac Killer had hoped for by committing the Berryessa attack). The newspaper article continued by stating the Zodiac Killer was "a mentally ill person, who must get his sex gratification from the act of killing. With a gun it was not as much as a knife. He wants to be caught". If you want to drive the Zodiac Killer back to killing with a gun and targeting a lone male by design, then these are the sort of irresponsible statements you release in the newspapers, rather than attempting to pacify the killer into writing more communications or another cryptogram. It really isn't any surprise that the Zodiac Killer entered the taxicab of Paul Stine just ten days later. If you need any more proof that the Zodiac Killer was inspired by this newspaper article, take a look at the wording in the Paul Stine letter on October 13th 1969. The killer wrote "I am the same man who did in the people in the north bay area", in response to the newspaper article which stated the Zodiac Killer was "loose in the North Bay today". Law enforcement also claimed that the Zodiac Killer wanted "to be caught" in the Examiner. The Zodiac Killer replied in the Paul Stine letter: "The S.F. police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly". It is also little surprise, that the Zodiac Killer accepted these six killings - added on Paul Stine - and claimed seven murders on November 8th 1969 in the Dripping Pen card, with the addition of the "Aug" murders of Snoozy and Furlong, attributed to him in this newspaper article.    

Peter Sutcliffe (The Yorkshire Ripper) was found guilty of murdering thirteen women between 1975 and 1980 in Manchester and West Yorkshire, England, claiming he received a divine message from God to rid the streets of prostitutes. However, many serial killers target sex workers because they have diminished family ties and will readily enter a stranger's vehicle, meaning they can be wilfully driven to a remote location and murdered with little to no chance of being observed. Their victim will often not be noticed missing for a lengthy period of time (if at all), and valuable forensic evidence will degrade.

Many people claim that the Zodiac Killer targeted couples, born from a feeling of sexual frustration, or that he harbored a feeling of inadequacy because he was unable to form a meaningful relationship himself. While this cannot be ruled out entirely, the evidence does not support this conclusion.

In his earlier crimes, the Zodiac Killer simply targeted locations where he knew there would be vulnerable people in remote settings. Choosing somewhere like Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs places his attack site in a rural location, with the maximum possible chance of not being detected in the commission of his crime. It is no surprise he found victims at these locations, such as David Faraday (17) & Betty Lou Jensen (16) at Lake Herman Road, and Michael Mageau (19) & Darlene Ferrin (22) at Blue Rock Springs. These were young heterosexual couples seeking a bit of privacy late at night - and much more likely to become targets of the Zodiac Killer than homosexual couples, who statistically are a much smaller percentage of American society. The Zodiac Killer was also much more likely to encounter young victims parked up in these areas, because older people are less likely to make-out inside vehicles in remote locations, when they have many more options available to them. Therefore, from a statistical standpoint, it isn't surprising that the Zodiac Killer's victims were young, white heterosexual couples. The premise of a killer targeting locations is backed up by the Zodiac Killer, who told us he wasn't only targeting young couples in his very first communications.

This is what he wrote in the July 31st 1969 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle: "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".  This is what he wrote in the July 31st 1969 letter to the San Francisco Examiner: "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". This is what he wrote in the July 31st 1969 letter to the Vallejo Times-Herald: "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". His possible familiarity with Vallejo and his previous attacks, may be the reason he only used the word "couples" in the Vallejo Times-Herald communication, but even here, he was open to the possibility of picking off stray people, placing them first on his list.  

Does anybody believe that the Zodiac Killer, had he encountered two women, two men, or a single person at either location on December 20th 1968 or July 4th 1969, he would have turned around and just gone home? When the Zodiac Killer arrived on the shores of Lake Berryessa on September 27th 1969 he may have first considered attacking the three young women from Pacific Union College, before switching his attention to Bryan Hartnell & Cecelia Shepard approximately two hours later. It isn't just people today that speculate the Zodiac Killer was an inadequate, sexually frustrated deviant, searching for lone couples to destroy their dreams and obliterate something he couldn't attain for himself - the newspapers of the day painted a picture of a man who was driven by animalistic urges beyond his control, who primarily took his greatest anger out on the women at each setting. This may very well be the reason the Zodiac Killer targeted a lone male at Presidio Heights on October 11th 1969. The murder of Paul Stine designed to show law enforcement and the newspapers that he was quite capable of killing lone people in the night, while dispelling the myth he focused his hatred primarily towards the female sex.

At Lake Herman Road nearing midnight, David Faraday was the biggest threat, so the Zodiac Killer executed the young man at point blank range, leaving Betty Lou Jensen fleeing into the darkness of the turnout. The inevitable result of which, was more bullets being fired at a moving target. At Blue Rock Springs, Darlene Ferrin was struck directly five times, while Michael Mageau was struck four times. So no great disparity there. Cecelia Shepard was stabbed ten times at Lake Berryessa compared to the six times of Bryan Hartnell, because he played dead and Cecelia Shepard didn't - understandably terrified and writhing around - desperately attempting to avoid the plunging knife. At Presidio Heights no female was involved. So again, there is no evidence that the Zodiac Killer specifically vented his hatred towards the female sex. This is just another myth that will long continue, irrespective of any evidence to the contrary. The Zodiac Killer story is just that.

Many Zodiac enthusiasts, researchers and authors have attempted to profile the Zodiac Killer by examining the nature of his attacks and the content contained within the communications. Inevitably, no author who is promoting a suspect would ever endorse or recommend an accredited (or otherwise) profiler whose analysis of the Zodiac Killer doesn't conform to the suspect they are selling. There will be a variety of different opinions on the type of person the Zodiac Killer was, so it's a simple process of finding the profiler that fits snugly to the case you are arguing. This is the essence of confirmation bias. Many book authors have made the argument that the Zodiac Killer was an intelligent, or extremely clever individual, who deliberately misspelled words, and wrote in an erratic fashion to convince us he was less intelligent than he was. The case is often argued by pointing out the Dragon card mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle on April 28th 1970, in which the Zodiac Killer managed to write "buttons" and "butons" in the same correspondence. However, this seems a very poor deception, if indeed, this is what it was. The author will point out the misspellings by the Zodiac Killer, arguing this was a deliberate and intentional deception on his part.

As the book unfolds, the author will analyze the communications and reach various conclusions based on their content, claiming that the Zodiac Killer had a fascination or interest in the theater, pointing out the letters that featured The Mikado. Then present you with information that connects their suspect to the theatre. They will use the mention of "radians" in the July 26th 1970 letter to point out the Zodiac Killer was an intelligent person, who could have known about radians through his profession - but only if their suspect had a profession that would make this claim possible. They may point out the cryptograms as evidence for their suspect, if their suspect worked with computers, possessed any code breaking books, or had a background in mathematics. The author will carefully select elements of the communications that seem to bolster the argument for their suspect, while conveniently ignoring the elements that seem to go nowhere. This isn't a criticism - it's the obvious reality of selling a story - and the flawed approach of viewing the case through the lens of a suspect.

But if the author has concluded that the Zodiac Killer was serving us a deception by deliberately misspelling words in a communication, then why do they readily accept the remaining content of the communication to promote their suspect. The Zodiac Killer could have easily copied any text from any theater production, to deceive us into believing he had theatrical leanings. He could have read about radians in any magazine article or book, and simply incorporated them into his July 26th 1970 letter. If he can create deception in one element of his communications, he can incorporate deception throughout. Why do we readily accept he could have deliberately misspelled certain words to sell us a lie, yet not draw the same conclusion for everything else he presented? Therefore, when an author argues for a particular suspect based on the content of the Zodiac communications, they may be arguing for somebody the polar opposite of who we are really looking for. The Zodiac Killer may have offered us plenty of material with which to dissect and analyze the type of person we should be looking for, but the content he mailed to the newspapers was chosen by a killer many believe to be a liar. Running around town looking for people who played Ko-Ko The Lord High Executioner in school, may be just what the killer intended. While you're looking around one corner, the murderer appears from the other. If the author accepts the premise of a killer who used misdirection when he misspelled certain words, then they are building a house of cards when using the rest of the communications as an argument to support their suspect. In reality, their presentation is arguing against itself.

Beginning in 1991, John Walsh from the popular television show America's Most Wanted, started receiving a sequence of sinister letters and cryptograms that many have considered may have been authored by the infamous Zodiac Killer. The title of the fifth Scorpion cipher stated "Hi!, Remember me?", and was accompanied by a 180 character cryptogram. The implication being, we were supposed to infer it may have been the Zodiac Killer. But was it? The cryptogram had 155 unique characters, meaning any conventional technique of breaking this mystery was nigh on impossible. So I decided to take a look at previous Zodiac Killer encipherments and examine if any correlation exists between the Scorpion cipher and his solved cryptograms. In previous articles (visit links provided) a case has been presented to show that the 148 character cryptogram mailed in 1971 and the Albany letter mailed in 1973 are likely connected, as well as the 340 character cipher and 148 character cipher. [1] [2]. But let's take a look at the 148 character cipher and fifth Scorpion cipher. Below is the solved 148 character cipher, followed by the accompanying text that came with this communication.

This communication was signed with a "sun cross" rather than the usual Zodiac crosshairs, leading some to believe it was an obvious hoaxer. However, somebody prepared to mail a Zodiac communication complete with a 148 character cipher, is hardly likely to be ignorant of the Zodiac Killer crosshairs that adorned virtually every single communication mailed by the Bay Area murderer. This "sun cross" signature on the letter was also present in the cryptogram, in which it was determined to represent the letter "Z". Therefore, the author of this letter likely signed off with the letter "Z" to represent the "Zodiac", as he had done in the Halloween card on October 27th 1970. It was probably a clue to begin the decoding of the 148 character cipher. When the letter "Z" was used for the "sun cross" in the cipher, the inevitable phrase of "Zodiac Speaking" is revealed (see above). The "sun cross" is also twice present in the 180 character Scorpion cipher. If you take a look at the bottom of the 180 character cipher, the letter "Z" applied to the "sun cross" allows "Zodiac Speaking" to conveniently end the cryptogram. There is even room to place "The Zodiac Speaking" before the repeated letter "N" prevents further progress.       

The 148 character cipher had not been released into the public domain by the time the Scorpion ciphers arrived, but I have highlighted with a blue square the five symbols used in the Scorpion cipher that look eerily similar (and the same) as the 148 character cipher. The number "7" in both the 148 character cipher and Albany communications represented the letter "A". It is present in the Scorpion cipher also. Could the Zodiac Killer have teased us with the introduction of "Hi, Remember Me" and finished the message with "This is again the Zodiac speaking"?

Here are the other parts of the Scorpion cipher communications released Science Blogs.