The first part of this presentation is from a previous article.
On October 22nd 1969, the San Francisco Examiner newspaper published an article by Will Stevens, which laid down a challenge from Professor D.C.B. Marsh of the American Cryptogram Association (ACA) to the Zodiac Killer, attempting to coax him into revealing his name.

The newspaper stated "Dr Marsh told the Examiner today: "The killer wouldn't dare, as he claimed in letters to the newspapers, to reveal his name in the cipher to established cryptogram experts. He knows, to quote Edgar Allan Poe, that any cipher created by man can be solved by man. Zodiac has not told the truth in his cipher messages to the Examiner, the Chronicle and the Vallejo Times-Herald. Zodiac has not done this, because to tell the complete truth in relation to his name -in cipher code - would lead to his capture. I invite Zodiac to send The American Cryptogram Association a cipher code - however complicated - which will truly and honestly include his name".

Professor D.C.B. Marsh was probably hoping the Zodiac Killer would employ a cryptographic technique featured in the works of Edgar Allan Poe, thereby making any future cipher mailed by the Zodiac Killer easier to crack. As it turned out, the Zodiac Killer's 340 cipher mailed on November 8th 1969 could be solved using the scytale method of encryption detailed in Edgar Allan Poe's essay A Few Words on Secret Writing in the very first paragraph. We have Professor D.C.B. Marsh of the American Cryptogram Association creating the trigger, by inserting Edgar Allan Poe into the mind of the Zodiac Killer. The Zodiac Killer then created the 340 cipher that could be deciphered using the scytale method featured in Poe's A Few Words on Secret Writing. Therefore, what are the odds that one of Edgar Allan Poe's poems would partially appear in the solution to the 340 cipher?

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME - THAT WASN’T ME ON THE TV SHOW - WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME - I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE - SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH - I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH.   

"To One in Paradise" was written by Edgar Allan Poe. This poem was first published as part of the short story titled "The Visionary" (later retitled as "The Assignation"). The poem was also published under the names "To lanthe in Heaven" and "To One Beloved". The title "To One in Paradise" was used in the February 25, 1843 Saturday Musuem. This poem was written after the death of Poe's wife. He writes that she was his life and he lived for her and now he looks forward to the future where they will be together again in death. link.

The Zodiac Killer would eventually mail the April 20th 1970 letter containing a 13 character code, prefixed with "My name is". The 340 cipher could be solved with the scytale method of decryption featured in Poe's essay A Few Words on Secret Writing, so it was extremely noteworthy that the second encryption technique covered in Poe's A Few Words on Secret Writing involved splitting the alphabet A through M, and N through Z. The Zodiac Killer's code on April 20th 1970 began with "A", ended with "M", and was 13 characters in length (half the alphabet). But why did the Zodiac Killer prefix the code with "My name is"? Edgar Allan Poe's only complete novel was entitled "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket". The very first line of this book read  "My name is Arthur Gordon Pym". 

On the morning of October 27th 1970 the San Francisco Chronicle featured an article by Paul Avery entitled "A Jack the Ripper Theory on Slayings", highlighting the recent murder of Jackie Truss (16) on October 24th 1970, whose tortured, slashed and beaten nude body was discovered in the early morning hours on the "tree-lined" Laurel Street (between Jackson & Pacific Streets) in Presidio Heights. She had ligature marks on her wrists, her throat and eyelids had been slit with a knife, she had been partially disemboweled and her killer had tortured her "by fire".

Jackie Truss was the third in a series of similar murders, beginning with Brenda Joyce Vance (23) on August 4th 1970, who had also been tortured, burnt and bludgeoned to death, and found on the sidewalk of Golden Gate Avenue. On August 30th 1970 Janice Smith was discovered in a condemned dwelling on Webster Street, having been tied, slashed with a long-bladed dagger and burnt. In 1973 somebody was eventually charged with the first two murders and was thought to be responsible for the third. The final murder was unlikely to have been committed by the Zodiac Killer, but did he mail the Halloween card to Paul Avery on the afternoon of October 27th 1970 in response to the newspaper article by Paul Avery from that morning, entitled "A Jack the Ripper Theory on Slayings"? After all, the Zodiac Killer wasn't immune to insinuating his involvement in murders he played no part in. He never outright claimed the murders of Donna Lass, Kathie Snoozy and Debra Furlong, but left many cryptic clues throughout his campaign of literary terrorism suggesting he was the responsible.  

The Little List letter on July 26th 1970 (but not released to the public until October 12th 1970 by Paul Avery) told of the Zodiac Killer's desire to "torture all 13 of my slaves that I have waiting for me in Paradice" and that "Others shall have pine splinters driven under their nails + then burned". The Zodiac Killer continued his infatuation with torture, writing that "Others will hang by their thumbs + burn in the sun". The newspaper article below about Jackie Truss, released in the days before the Halloween card, told of a girl "tortured by fire", with a fractured skull and slit eyelids, lying on a "tree-lined" street, that were all key ingredients on the Halloween card, which contained a victim count above the skull, thirteen eyes (with eyelids and eyelashes) and the four methods of death "By Fire, By Gun, By Rope and By Knife". The Halloween card also had red eyes added to the skull on the card outer. A card that was personally addressed to Paul Avery, who had written about the knife slaying of Jackie Truss, whose body was found in Presidio Heights days earlier, who had been tortured "by fire".

Jackie had been living with a man in the Marina District at the time of her death, who police were attempting to trace at the time of this newspaper article. It was suspected that she had been murdered at a residential location and dumped adjacent to 55 Laurel Street near the Presidio Park, evident by the lack of blood at the crime scene, not withstanding the fact that this location was not conducive to such a depraved murder. It was estimated that she had been dead for less than one hour when her body was discovered by two college students on Saturday, October 24th 1970 at 2:45am.   

Thanks to Zodiac researcher Cragle for sending me this information. ​

The information provided here will be nothing new to people who have read the comments of the previous article, but I wanted to expand on that article for people who don't want to trawl through the comments section.

On November 16th 1970 Paul Avery produced a comprehensive newspaper article about a potential connection of Zodiac to the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates and the associated communications, which included the Desktop Poem. The newspaper article detailed the two Confession letters mailed on November 29th 1966 and read "Two unstamped envelopes, one addressed in large black print to the Riverside Press-Enterprise, the other to "Homicide Detail", were dropped into a rural mailbox". The newspaper article then detailed the three "She/Bates Had to Die" letters from April 30th 1967 and the writing on the Riverside Desktop Poem.

The only communication featured visually on November 16th 1970 was the "She Had to Die" envelope mailed to the "Press Enterprise" newspaper, with two 4 cent Abraham Lincoln stamps issued on November 19th 1965 (see image below). In other words, Abraham Lincoln was integral to the "She Had to Die" envelope and the Paul Avery article. The next communication mailed by the Zodiac Killer to Paul Avery was the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971 featuring 4 cent pre-stamped Abraham Lincoln postage from 1962. The Pines postcard had insufficient postage for 1971, yet the Zodiac Killer chose this postcard from 9 years earlier. Was this a deliberate choice to mimic the postage from the "She Had to Die" envelope and send a subtle message to Paul Avery? The Pines postcard was the first and only time the Zodiac Killer used Abraham Lincoln postage during his known reign of terror. Ordinarily I would say this was coincidence, until you consider the Confession letter envelope mailed to the Riverside Press-Enterprise as well.    

The Confession letter envelope mailed to the Press-Enterprise newspaper (see below) also featured in the Paul Avery article on November 16th 1970, and was "addressed in large black print". This envelope contained the footnote of "attn: crime", meant for the crime department of their newspaper. As stated above, the next Zodiac communication addressed to Paul Avery was the Pines postcard carrying the footnote "att. Paul averly=chronicle" on the address side. Both of these footnotes were unconventionally placed in the bottom left corner under the address of the newspapers, rather than top and center, above the address. Since Paul Avery was involved in the coverage of "crime", both communications made a point of addressing the relevant personnel within the newspaper, using the word "attention". This was also the first and only time the Zodiac Killer did this in any of his correspondence. We now had the 4c Abraham Lincoln postage and "attention" seemingly mimicked from the Confession and ​"She Had to Die" envelopes, mailed to the Press-Enterprise newspaper. The Confession letter envelope to the Press-Enterprise newspaper had been made public on December 1st 1966, so it is possible the Pines card was deliberately engineered by the Zodiac Killer to somewhat mimic this communication.    

The final connection is more tenuous, but there is a strong argument that the Riverside Desktop author was reminiscing in the present tense about the attempted murder by knife of Miss Atwood. She was stabbed several times on the Riverside campus by Rolland Taft on April 13th 1965, but managed to escape and survive. Here is a relevant snippet from a previous article:

All we have to do to connect the desktop poem with the Confession letter, is look at the title of the desktop poem, which reads "Sick of living/unwilling to die". The desktop poem begins with "Sick of living", and the Confession letter states "I am not sick. I am insane". The desktop poem title uses the word "unwilling", to which the Confession letter states "She was then very willing to talk to me" and "She went very willingly". One referenced an unwillingness to die, whereas one claimed Cheri Jo Bates went "willingly" to her death. In other words, Miss Atwood resisted her death and didn't die "that time", but Cheri Jo Bates died hard and willingly. The desktop poem title uses the phrase "to die", with the Confession letter stating "I said it was about time. She asked me "about time for what". I said it was about time for her to die". This brings forth another connection between both communications with the word "time" central to both. The desktop poem uses the word "time" twice, when stating "She won't die, this time someone'll find her. Just wait till next time", whereas the Confession letter uses the word "time" three times by stating "I said it was about time. She asked me "about time for what". I said it was about time for her to die". We have the words "sick", "unwilling" (in root form) and "time" from the desktop poem, used 6 times in the Confession letter by way of "sick", "willing", "willingly", "time", "time" and "time". In fact, the words "die" and "time" are used in the same context in both communications by the sentences "she won't die, this time someone'll find her" and "I said it was about time for her to die". If you add in the three Bates letters of "Bates had to die", "She had to die" and "She had to die" into the equation, we have the phrase "to die" used 5 times in all three communications.

Miss Atwood escaped the clutches of Rolland Lin Taft in 1965, expressed by the desktop author when they stated "she won't die, this time someone'll find her", but reminded everybody that the next time Cheri Jo Bates wouldn't be so lucky by finishing the poem with "Just wait till next time. rh". That "next time" may well have been Riverside, Halloween, denoted by a lower case "r" and "h". 

Ricardo Gomez of Mk-Zodiac showed the possible inspiration for the Riverside Desktop poem through a newspaper article from - you've guessed it - the Press Enterprise once more. The newspaper carried the headline "Clean-Cut Youth Sought in Stabbing". This was the referring to the attempted murder of Miss Atwood, who undoubtedly would have had "blood spurting, dripping and spilling" over her dress. But the Desktop Poem began with "cut, clean", appearing to mimic the newspaper headline. The Desktop Poem seemed to borrow from the Press-Enterprise headline of "Clean-Cut Youth Sought in Stabbing" from April 17th 1965, as did the Pines postcard when it used the pasted word "Sought", despite being sourced from a later newspaper headline. If this last observation isn't stretching the truth too much, we now have the 4c Abraham Lincoln postage, the "attention" attribution in the bottom left corner, and the word "sought" from the Pines postcard relevant to the three Riverside "communications" from 1966 and 1967.

In January 1969 the "Inside Detective" magazine revealed details of the Cheri Jo Bates murder and the Confession letter mailed on November 29th 1966. The young woman was found close to the Riverside City College library on Halloween Day morning (October 31st 1966) by college caretaker, Cleophus Martin​.

Fast forward to October 27th 1970 and the Halloween card mailed by the Zodiac Killer, which Phil Sins believed contained characteristics of her murder and the 1966 typed letter. One of the main features of the Halloween card was the wording By Fire, By Gun, By Rope and By Knife, with the two Confession letters beginning with "The Confession" and the word "By", followed by several underscores. The Halloween card also featured the signature of "Z" for the first time, that three weeks later, on November 16th 1970, would become a pivotal argument of Paul Avery that the Zodiac Killer was claiming the murder of Cheri Jo Bates by using the letter "Z" to sign off two of the "Bates Had to Die" letters on April 30th 1967. In fact, the Halloween card communication used the letter "Z" twice, just like the 1967 letters (which had not been publicly released by October 27th 1970). This, off the back of the Little List letter on July 26th 1970, which contained the line "Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream + twich and sqwirm" and appeared to borrow wording from the Confession letter. However, this falls short of producing an undeniable link between Riverside and the Zodiac Killer. We must find something from 1966 that was unreleased to the public, which the Zodiac Killer could have slipped into his Bay Area communications. The obvious place to look was the two communications following the Halloween card.

On March 13th 1971, the Zodiac Killer insinuated his involvement in either the murder of Cheri Jo Bates or the Riverside communications by writing "I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more down there". He followed this up with the Pines postcard on March 22nd 1971, which like the Halloween card, was personally addressed to Paul Avery. Because Paul Avery authored the newspaper article on November 16th 1970 about Riverside and the Confession letters, did the Zodiac Killer give any incontrovertible proof of his involvement in Riverside in the only communication that carried the name of Paul Avery subsequent to this date? (ie: the Pines postcard).

​The only time the Zodiac Killer used the word "attention" in his address on an envelope or postcard, was when he wrote "att. Paul averly=chronicle" on the address side of the Pines postcard. The only other time we see the word "attention" within the address of a communication linked to Zodiac, was the Confession letter envelope mailed to the Daily Enterprise in Riverside, with the wording "attn: crime". Bearing in mind that Paul Avery was instrumental in featuring the Confession letters in his newspaper article on November 16th 1970, it is noteworthy that the Zodiac Killer combined "attention" and "Paul Avery" four months later (on March 22nd 1971), when this same word was also abbreviated on the Confession letter envelope to the Daily Enterprise newspaper in 1966. It is standard practice to use the abbreviated form of "attention" (accompanied by a name) above the address on an envelope or postcard, but in both the Confession letter and Pines postcard the author abbreviates the word "attention" in the bottom left corner, under the address, Was this a further subtle clue of Zodiac's involvement in the Riverside communications? However, the Confession letter envelope mailed to the Daily Enterprise newspaper was released to the public on December 1st 1966 (see below).  PART TWO.   

In previous articles it has been considered that the shabbily dressed male about 40 to 45, described by the Zodiac Killer in his August 4th 1969 letter, may have been conjured out of thin air to alibi the claim that the Zodiac Killer was in his vehicle when he made the 12:40am phone call to Nancy Slover at the Vallejo Police Department on July 5th 1969. This being done to disguise the fact that he lived nearby and had walked to the payphone from his residence. The Zodiac stated "The man who told police that my car was brown was a negro about 40-45 rather shabbly dressed. I was in this phone booth having some fun with the Vallejo cop when he was walking by. When I hung the phone up the damn X@ thing began to ring & that drew his attention to me + my car". This statement appears to suggest that the Zodiac Killer had observed or knew that the black male had interacted with police, despite this individual not being mentioned in the police report or the newspapers prior to August 4th 1969. So if this individual was really passing the payphone on July 5th 1969, what can be extrapolated from this information?

​If the black male was in the vicinity of the payphone at 12:40an, it is not inconceivable that he could have picked up the latter part of the message that the Zodiac Killer was dictating to Nancy Slover when he said "I want to report a double murder. If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find the kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9 mm Luger. I also killed those kids last year.... Good-bye". In other words, the black male may have overheard the Zodiac say "They were shot with a 9 mm Luger", which he would later relay to police as "I shot them. I used a 9mm automatic". This version of the phone call was reported in several newspapers alongside the Nancy Slover version. When responding officers at Blue Rock Springs received the information that the payphone at Springs & Tuolumne had been identified as the location of the call, they immediately drove to the payphone to secure it for fingerprint retrieval. Had they scanned the area for potential suspects, it is not inconceivable that they located the black male, questioned him, and received some limited information about the payphone caller and the tail end of his message, which marginally differed from the recollection given by Nancy Slover. This information may have been withheld to protect the eyewitness.         

The big problem is that the phone call wasn't traced until 12:47am according to police reports (after Mrs Johnson was called). So if police had responded to the location of the payphone from Blue Rock Springs (as stated in the police report), they were not going to arrive at the payphone any earlier than 12:54am, at least 13 minutes after the Zodiac call ended. If the Zodiac Killer had observed a black man talking to police somewhere in the vicinity of the payphone and assumed he had told police about his brown car, then the Zodiac Killer must have still have been in the vicinity of the payphone himself. Could he have been observing the interaction between the police and this black male from his nearby residence? It's extremely unlikely his vehicle would have been openly parked on the street if his car had been observed by this eyewitness.

It is inconceivable that the payphone would have been rang at 12:47am with the Zodiac Killer still at the payphone, because he would have been standing at, or within earshot of the payphone for a minimum of 6 minutes. However, he must have heard the payphone ring because this detail wasn't released in the newspapers (unless he knew, or surmised that "ringback" was the method of tracing the call). So if he heard the payphone ring at 12:47am and saw the black male being questioned by police beyond 12:54am, one could argue that he was either in the neighborhood on foot, viewing proceedings from a clandestine location, or he was "peeking through his curtains" from a residence or building close by. A killer making a phone call at 12:40am while still in possession of his vehicle, should have been long gone by 12:47am. At the very least, a murderer not local to the area, should have put a reasonable distance between himself, his vehicle and the payphone by the time either of the above scenarios had unfolded. If there was no black male that morning, one has to question the reasoning behind this convenient eyewitness that Zodiac detailed so well.        

Released on August 5th 2024, Ross Geraci, host of the YouTube channel *Planet X Filmworks" focused on the post canonical activities of the Zodiac Killer with Canadian filmmaker Andrew Gray from the "Citizen Detective Podcast". Both regular contributors to the Zodiac Killer community over many years, they discussed general Zodiac topics and then ventured beyond the four confirmed attacks at Lake Herman Road, Blue Rock Springs, Lake Berryessa and Presidio Heights. To view this episode of the Zodiac files, please click the image below.    .