There is an extremely interesting thread on the Zodiac Killer Site forum, initiated by Paul_Averly under the title The 340 is a Skytale Cipher. He begins "Major Congrats to doranchak! If anyone could do it, he and his team were definitely the ones! I too have something to contribute to this major breakthrough". Please take a read.

The Skytale Cipher technique involves rolling a band around a rod, to which a message is applied. When the band is unrolled the message is scrambled in ciphertext form. Only by re-wrapping the band around a same sized rod will the message reappear. I have followed the thread and the technique appears to work on the text of the 340 cipher as shown here. The thread ponders the question of where did the Zodiac Killer get his inspiration for the design of the 340 cipher, that baffled investigators for fifty-one years until Dave Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke cracked the cipher on December 3rd 2020. 

There is a strong possibility the answer lies in the October 22nd 1969 San Francisco Examiner newspaper article by Will Stevens, entitled Cipher Expert Dares Zodiac to Tell Name, in which Dr. D.C.B Marsh laid down a challenge to the Zodiac Killer. 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".

The key line the Zodiac Killer may have picked up on was "He knows, to quote Edgar Allan Poe, that any cipher created by man can be solved by man". So, where would the Zodiac Killer go to design a cipher? He would go to Edgar Allan Poe and create a cipher described at length in one of Poe's well known Essays. This is the first section of Edgar Allan Poe's A Few Words on Secret Writing:

As we can scarcely imagine a time when there did not exist a necessity, or at least a desire, of transmitting information from one individual to another, in such manner as to elude general comprehension; so we may well suppose the practice of writing in cipher to be of great antiquity. De La Guilletiere, therefore, who, in his “Lacedaemon Ancient and Modern,” maintains that the Spartans were the inventors of Cryptography, is obviously in error. He speaks of the scytala as being the origin of the art; but he should only have cited it as one of its earliest instances, so far as our records extend. The scytalae were two wooden Cylinders, precisely similar in all respects. The general of an army, in going upon any expedition, received from the ephori one of these cylinders, while the other remained in their possession. If either party had occasion to communicate with the other, a narrow strip of parchment was so wrapped around the scytala that the edges of the skin fitted accurately each to each. The writing was then inscribed longitudinally, and the epistle unrolled and dispatched. If, by mischance, the messenger was intercepted, the letter proved unintelligible to his captors. If he reached his destination safely, however, the party addressed had only to involve the second Winder in the strip to decipher the inscription. The transmission to our own times of this obvious mode of cryptography is due, probably, to the historical uses of the scytala, rather than to anything else. Similar means of secret intercommunication must have existed almost contemporaneously with the invention of letters.

It may be as well to remark, in passing, that in none of the treatises on the subject of this paper which have fallen under our cognizance, have we observed any suggestion of a method — other than those which apply alike to all ciphers — for the solution of the cipher by scytala. We read of instances, indeed, in which the intercepted parchments were deciphered; but we are not informed that this was ever done except accidentally. Yet a solution might be obtained with absolute certainty in this manner. The strip of skin being intercepted, let there be prepared a cone of great length comparatively–say six feet long–and whose circumference at base shall at least equal the length of the strip. Let this latter be rolled upon the cone near the base, edge to edge, as above described; then, still keeping edge to edge, and maintaining the parchment close upon the cone, let it be gradually slipped towards the apex. In this process, some of those words, syllables, or letters, whose connection is intended, will be sure to come together at that point of the cone where its diameter equals that of the scytala upon which the cipher was written. And as, in passing up the cone to its apex, all possible diameters are passed over, there is no chance of a failure. The circumference of the scytala being thus ascertained, a similar one can be made, and the cipher applied to it.

The Zodiac Killer reads this article and adopts the very technique described by Edgar Allan Poe, an author and cryptographer mentioned by Dr. D.C.B Marsh. But this isn't all. Where did the inspiration for the Zodiac Killer's third cipher come from? The immediate next passage of  A Few Words on Secret Writing further describes cryptographic techniques, showing the splitting of the alphabet into ABCDEFGHIJKLM and NOPQRSTUVWXYZ, creating two portions of thirteen letters. The Zodiac Killer's April 20th 1970 communication was a 13-Symbol cipher beginning with A and ending with M. I will let you unravel the rest. Here is the relevant passage:

"Were two individuals, totally unpractised in cryptography, desirous of holding by letter a correspondence which should be unintelligible to all but themselves, it is most probable that they would at once think of a peculiar alphabet, to which each should have a key. At first it would, perhaps, be arranged that a should stand for z, b for y, c for x, d for w, &c. &c.; that is to say, the order of the letters would be reversed. Upon second thoughts, this arrangement appearing too obvious, a more complex mode would be adopted. The first thirteen letters might be written beneath the last thirteen, thus:
n o p q r s t u v w x y z
a b c d e f g h i j k I m; and, so placed, a might stand for n and n for a, o for b and b for a, &c. &c. This, again, having an air of regularity which might be fathomed, the key alphabet might be constructed absolutely at random".

Again, the following section of A Few Words on Secret Writing details a shifting alphabet using two concentric circles, where the outer circle and inner circle have a common center. Using the alphabet and your message, it is possible to encode your message while turning the outer circle a set number of places between each encryption to increase difficulty. Here is the excerpt from the Essay:

A letter composed of such characters would have an intricate appearance unquestionably. If, still, however, it did not give full satisfaction, the idea of a perpetually shifting alphabet might be conceived, and thus effected. Let two circular pieces of pasteboard be prepared, one about half an inch in diameter less than the other. Let the centre of the smaller be placed upon the centre of the larger, and secured for a moment from slipping; while radii are drawn from the common centre to the circumference of the smaller circle, and thus extended to the circumference of the greater. Let there be twenty-six of these radii, forming on each pasteboard twenty-six spaces. In each of these spaces on the under circle write one of the letters of the alphabet, so that the whole alphabet be written– if at random so much the better. Do the same with the upper circle. Now run a pin through the common centre, and let the upper circle revolve, while the under one is held fast. Now stop the revolution of the upper circle, and, while both lie still, write the epistle required; using for a that letter in the smaller circle which tallies with a in the larger, for b that letter in the smaller circle which tallies with b in the larger &c. &c. In order that an epistle thus written may be read by the person for whom it is intended, it is only necessary that he should have in his possession circles constructed as those just described, and that he should know any two of the characters (one in the under and one in the upper circle) which were In juxta-position when his correspondent wrote the cipher. Upon this latter point he is informed by looking at the two initial letters of the document, which serve as a key. Thus, if he sees a m at the beginning, he concludes that, by turning his circles so as to put these characters in conjunction, he will arrive at the alphabet employed.    

This is extremely pertinent when we consider the design of the 13-Symbol cipher on April 20th 1970. It contains three circled eights, all the components of which are present on the Union Cipher Disk. This cipher disk employs the same technique described by Edgar Allan Poe above, but more importantly it contains the numbers 000 and 888 on its face, exactly the same as Zodiac added to his 13-Symbol cipher. Was the Zodiac Killer hinting that the concentric circle had to be rotated at these particular points during encipherment?

The Union Cipher Disk from the American Civil War was 3.75 inches (95 mm) in diameter and made of light yellow heavy card stock. It consisted of two concentric disks of unequal size revolving on a central pivot. The disks were divided along their outer edges into 30 equal compartments. The smaller inner disk contained letters, terminations and word pauses, while the outer disk contained groups of signal numbers. For easier recognition, the number eight represented two. The initials A.J.M. represent the Chief Signal Officer General Albert J. Myer.

A cipher disk is an enciphering and deciphering tool developed in 1470 by the Italian architect and author Leon Battista Alberti. He constructed a device, (eponymously called the Alberti cipher disk) consisting of two concentric circular plates mounted one on top of the other. The larger plate is called the "stationary" and the smaller one the "moveable" since the smaller one could move on top of the "stationary". The first incarnation of the disk had plates made of copper and featured the alphabet, in order, inscribed on the outer edge of each disk in cells split evenly along the circumference of the circle. This enabled the two alphabets to move relative to each other creating an easy to use key. Rather than using an impractical and complicated table indicating the encryption method, one could use the much simpler cipher disk. This made both encryption and decryption faster, simpler and less prone to error. Wikipedia. 

If the Zodiac Killer was inspired to seek out Edgar Allan Poe by the words of Dr. D.C.B Marsh in the San Francisco Examiner on October 22nd 1969, then the A Few Words on Secret Writing had all the components required for his second and third ciphers. It had the Skytale Cipher (shown by Paul_Averly to work on the 340 cipher), followed by Poe's description of splitting the alphabet into two parts of thirteen (one beginning with A and ending with M just like the 13-Symbol cipher), and finally, the description of two concentric circles to encode a message, just like the Union Cipher Disk that contained 000 and 888.       

The following is probably better answered by Dave Oranchak, who recently, alongside Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke cracked the Zodiac 340 cipher from November 8th 1969. The correlation between the Halloween card and 340 cipher has long been considered, but is it a comparison that deserves any further attention in light of the encryption techniques used by the Zodiac Killer when designing his 340 cipher? Is the comparison between the two communications justified?

On October 27th 1970, the Zodiac Killer mailed the Halloween card with a configuration of "paradice" and "slaves" in cruciform. In each quadrant of this design we had four methods of death (knife, gun, fire and rope), preceded by the word "By". The "paradice" and "slaves" element can be shown to exist on the canvas of the 340 cipher, bisecting it both horizontally and veritically in a 17 by 17 formation, imitating the cruciform design within the Halloween card. The four "By" words are present in each quadrant of the 340 cipher. The writing on the envelope stamp of "In the beginning God" falls nicely into the beginning line of the 340 cipher, with the word "God" landing squarely over the ciphertext supplied by the Zodiac Killer. The LAV of Paul Averly on the envelope also appears to be underlined. And finally, we have the Zodiac pseudonym visibly present on the final line of the 340 cipher, albeit slightly altered. Almost as though he was signing the canvas of his masterpiece.

Did the Zodiac Killer provide two puzzles on November 8th 1969? A superficial design on the canvas of the 340 cipher akin to a design on the cover of a book, with a hidden message that lay beneath the imagery in the form of a cryptogram.  

If the Zodiac Killer designed his 340 cipher key randomly by just allotting ciphertext characters to plaintext characters, what are the chances that all these above observations would fall out by chance and be highlighted a year later in the Halloween card design? However, if the Zodiac Killer began the 340 encipherment of the canvas first, with "paradice" and "slaves", "by", "God" and the near signature of Zodiac, he would be able to manipulate a superficial design onto the face of the 340 cipher before continuing to encode the rest of the message underneath. The "sorry no cipher" phrase written on the flap of the Halloween card envelope in cruciform, I wrongly concluded was a hint that the 340 cipher was not a genuine cryptogram. But was the "sorry no cipher" on the cover of the Halloween card somehow related to the cover of the 340 cipher?

The desire to unearth hidden meanings in the Zodiac communications is an insatiable one, that often leads to conclusions with no foundation or basis in reality (and the above interpretations may be one such example). Dave Oranchak would be able to shed much more light on the above comparisons made between the Halloween card and 340 cipher from a statistical standpoint, expanding upon the premise of a Zodiac Killer creating two puzzles for the price of one, or destroying the notion once and for all. It would answer the question of whether the Zodiac Killer created a superficial design and signed the canvas of his masterpiece cipher, or whether it is just a picture created in nothing more than the mind.

To this day the vast majority of people believe the Exorcist letter to be a genuine Zodiac communication. If this is the case, then the 1978 letter should also be considered genuine Zodiac material, if you believe the findings of Alan Keel as testified to by Zodiac investigator Mike Rodelli. According to Mike, Alan Keel, Criminalist at the San Francisco Police Department, San Francisco, California from 1996 to 1999, had "analyzed two letters, one of which is the 1978 'forgery', and finds that this letter and one of the 1974 letters are loaded with saliva and cells. He then easily extracts DNA from both of these letters using the more primitive DNA technology of that time and finds that the DNA matches between those two letters, thus proving that one person sent both".

The only two communications tested in the San Francisco Police Department DNA  report  for cells, from 1974 onwards, were the Exorcist letter and 1978 letter. Therefore, these were the only letters that could reasonably have matched for DNA. Two of the other 1974 communications were not processed for DNA, and the SLA letter wasn't even listed as a "suspected Zodiac correspondence".

It is highly likely that the 1978 letter wasn't ruled out through DNA (just placed on the list and attributed in comments as not an authentic Zodiac letter}. Had it been ruled out through DNA, then it would have been an admission from the San Francisco Police Department that the DNA from the 1978 letter either matched somebody they knew wasn't Zodiac (such as David Toschi), or the DNA originated from a female. If the DNA from David Toschi had matched the 1978 letter, then logically they should have ruled out the Exorcist letter too, according to the findings of Alan Keel. But the San Francisco Police Department didn't attribute the Exorcist letter in comments as not an authentic Zodiac letter, in effect, leaving it under the general heading of Suspected Zodiac Correspondence. Therefore, by reverse logic, we can conclude that if the Exorcist letter is deemed a Suspected Zodiac Correspondence, then we must conclude the 1978 letter is a Suspected Zodiac Correspondence, according to not only the findings of Alan Keel, but the fact that none of the other 1974 letters were tested for DNA (hence why none have any findings in comments in the DNA table). If Alan Keel is correct, then it is impossible to accept the Exorcist letter as genuine Zodiac material without embracing the validity of the 1978 letter also. 

Mike Morford has placed the Exorcist letter under Confirmed Zodiac Letters on the Zodiac Killer Site forum, as have other Zodiac websites. If Alan Keel's findings show that one of the 1974 communications matched in DNA to the 1978 letter, then by the SFPD's own admission in the DNA report, that neither the SLA letter, Citizen card and Red Phantom letter were ever tested for the presence of saliva, it becomes obvious that only the Exorcist letter could have matched in DNA to the 1978 letter. This corroborates the claim of Alan Keel when he stated "that the 1978 letter and one of the 1974 letters are loaded with saliva and cells". Suspects like Ross Sullivan would be eliminated if Alan Keel is correct, because Ross Sullivan died a year before the 1978 letter was mailed.

If the SFPD had really deemed the 1978 letter not an authentic Zodiac letter through DNA, then barring a female author, they would have to know the identity of the person who licked the 1978 envelope, who they equally knew wasn't Zodiac. If this were the case, then they have been less than forthcoming with that information. But again, it doesn't explain why they haven't declared the Exorcist letter as not authentic if Alan Keel's findings are correct. Everything points to the fact that the 1978 letter was only ruled out through handwriting and placed into the DNA report under this assumption, thereby giving us the impression that the 1978 letter has categorically been ruled out as Zodiac correspondence, which it hasn't. 

If we conclude that the Exorcist letter and 1978 letter author are the same person, then researchers and forum members alike, who believe the Exorcist letter is authentic Zodiac correspondence, cannot use handwriting analysis as a reason to challenge the authenticity of the 1978 letter. Every time you argue against the 1978 letter on the basis of handwriting, you would be simultaneously negating the authenticity of the Exorcist letter. According to the findings of Alan Keel, you either embrace both letters as genuine communications, or you consign both to the increasing pile of hoaxed Zodiac correspondence.  

While running experiments through the AZ Decrypt on December 3rd 2020, Dave Oranchak noticed two sections of text which grabbed his attention. A partial message appeared within the array of gibberish of "hope you are trying to catch me" and "or the gas chamber", that ultimately provided the chink of light to finally decode the Zodiac Killer's seemingly impenetrable cipher. The Zodiac Killer usually responded to the recent newspaper articles he had read, so the reference to "gas chamber" in light of the recent Jim Dunbar Show on October 22nd 1969, finally opened the door to a cipher many believed would never be solved. The collaboration between Dave Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke was about to bring an early Christmas present to everybody who has followed the Zodiac case for many decades. The dedication of Dave Oranchak in continuing to believe that a possible solution existed, despite the nagging doubts that the cipher may have been non-cryptographic in nature, is testimony to a man who ultimately followed his beliefs and succeeded - and a man that I have huge admiration for. Congratulations to everybody involved in finally decoding the Zodiac Killer's 340 cipher (shown below).

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.

The inspiration for this message can be found in the pages of the San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle from October 22nd 1969 to October 25th 1969. The first challenge came on the same day (October 22nd) as the Jim Dunbar TV show aired, when Professor D.C.B. Marsh of the American Cryptogram Association challenged the Zodiac Killer "to reveal his name in the cipher to established cryptogram experts, however complicated". The Zodiac Killer certainly made his encryption process more complicated, but unsurprisingly didn't give us his name. However, it appears that this challenge was the catalyst for his second and third cryptograms. The following day, on October 23rd 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle released an article entitled A TV Runaround With Zodiac Calls. Whether the Zodiac Killer watched the Jim Dunbar Show is incidental, because this article (on left) contained the possible inspiration behind the Zodiac Killer stating "I am not afraid of the gas chamber".   

The San Francisco Chronicle article on October 24th 1969 headlined with That Wasn't Zodiac, Say 3 Who Know, to which the Zodiac Killer would reply in his message in the 340 cipher by confirming "That wasn't me on the TV show". Then, on October 25th 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle ran another article entitled Cops No Closer on Zodiac Identity, containing the text "Zodiac struck last on October 11 when he gunned down cab-driver Paul Stine on Washington Street in Presidio Heights. He revealed himself the killer in a letter sent to the Chronicle three days later. Since then he has remained silent". The question would be, how was the Zodiac Killer going to respond to the silence attributed to him by Paul Avery? Probably by choosing a greeting card with a Dripping Pen and accompanied by the words "Sorry I haven't written, but I just washed my pen". The increased complexity of the coding used, along with everything the Zodiac Killer wrote in the decrypted 340 cipher, was likely inspired by these four consecutive newspaper articles in October. If the 340 cipher was specifically crafted subsequent to his purchase of the Dripping Pen card, then this more complicated offering was dreamt up between October 25th 1969 and November 8th 1969.

The excellent work of Dave Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke has permanently closed one chapter of the Zodiac Killer story, but has opened many more. "The chase is better than the catch" comes to mind, when that relenting pursuit of something just out of reach is finally taken away. The exhilaration of finally discovering the solution to a 51-year-old mystery, tinged with the realization that the search is finally over. Everybody likes a good mystery. But that mystery is no more.

One new path to pursue, may lie in the three immediate communications following the 340 cipher. Those three being, the November 21st 1969 letter mailed to the San Jose Police Department and the two Fairfield letters mailed on December 7th 1969 and December 16th 1969. All three contained rudimentary coding that may, or may not be clues pertaining to the 340 cipher. The December 7th 1969 code was particularly interesting because it contained 38 characters, many of which ran in sequences mimicking the 340 cipher.

Here is just a simple observation regarding the two December codes in respect to the 340 cipher solution and the reference to "death" on two occasions. If we take a look at the small fragment of code on the December 16th 1969 letter, you will notice that its design somewhat mimics the configuration on the Halloween card. We have five characters, followed by four small crosshairs in each quadrant of the large crosshairs. This had similarity to "paradice" and "slaves" fashioned in cruciform on the Halloween card, accompanied by the four methods of "death" in each quadrant. The Tim Holt comic book, believed to be the inspiration behind the Halloween card, actually carried the full message of "death by knife", "death by rope", "death by gun" and "death by fire". Therefore, the five characters of coding on the December 16th 1969 letter (precedent to the crosshairs) could be the word "death".   

Then I decided to use the plaintext 'solution' of "death" and place these alphabetical characters into the Zodiac Killer's code mailed on December 7th 1969. You will notice that the letters "A" and "H" are both represented by a circle with vertical line bisecting its midsection (which is unfortunate), so I will only use the first four plaintext characters of "DEAT" and place them into the first four corresponding ciphertext characters that appear in the 38 character code on December 7th 1969. It's nothing earth shattering, but this section of the cipher caught my eye.

The movements of a killer before, during and after a crime can tell us so much about that person, without them even knowing they could be mapping out their own demise. If we can identify a killer's "anchor point", then we have a valuable location from which to springboard the rest of the investigation. An "anchor point" could be the killer's home location, place of work, or the number 48 bus terminus he used to commute to the neighborhood or city. It is effectively the art of using human nature against the person you are seeking for the crime. That person leaves a fingerprint on the map, which can then be analyzed to produce "hot zones" of particular interest. The "anchor point" could be the home residence of the killer, so identifying an approximate area where the killer may live is invaluable in focusing an investigation, often when resources are finite  This "anchor point" can often be the comfort zone (or area of familiarity)  that the killer will invariably retreat to after the commission of a murder.

In the case of the Zodiac Killer, we have Springs Road & Tuolumne Street, 1231 Main Street, Lake Herman Road, Blue Rock Springs, Lake Berryessa and Presidio Heights as our bedrock. We then have his movements subsequent to each crime, the hour each crime was committed, and the wording he used in his letters describing each crime. Everything tells you something about the killer. We can utilize geographic profiling tools such as distance decay, target backcloth, buffer zone and the least effort principle (to name but a few), and use these in identifying the possible home location of the Zodiac Killer. Techniques that our killer would have been unaware of in 1968 and 1969, other the a rudimentary knowledge of preservation and deflection.

In two extremely informative videos on the Profiling Evil channel [1] [2], Dr. Spencer Chainey uses the "geography of crime" to examine several crimes. He demonstrates some of the above principles and a lot more besides, while showing us how police were able to identify Levi Bellfield, a serial killer from London, England, who was responsible for the murders of Marsha McDonnell, Amélie Delagrang and Milly Dowler between 2002 and 2004. He then covers the sexual assaults in Bath, England in 2004/2005 perpetrated by Adrian Warburton, along with the "Irvine Chair Burglaries" in Orange County over a period of two years, in which Raymond Lopez was eventually arrested in 2005. The "geography of crime" in each case, pivotal to apprehension. In the second video he analyzes the murders of "Jack the Ripper", who terrorized the streets of Whitechapel in London, England in 1888, again using maps to show us how the geography of his murders speaks volumes to where he likely lived. This tool is so undervalued in the Zodiac case.

The animosity of the Zodiac Killer toward law enforcement increased after Captain Martin Lee accused the Zodiac Killer of being a liar with respect to his escape into Presidio park, but at no time did the Zodiac Killer directly threaten to murder a cop until his two Fairfield letters were mailed on December 7th 1969 and December 16th 1969, both of which were seemingly disregarded as hoaxes and never published in the newspapers. The second Fairfield letter was particularly interesting because it actually provided a list of the number of cops he was going to kill in each city, including one in San Jose.

These were now direct threats to murder members of law enforcement. Not only had he never done this before, but to this point, no threats on San Jose had ever featured in any published newspaper articles. The San Jose letter mailed on November 21st 1969 also failed to make the newspapers, just like the two Fairfield letters. Yet, three days after the December 16th 1969 Fairfield letter, on December 19th 1969, somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer rang police dispatcher Shirley Searey at the San Jose Highway Patrol station issuing two threats that mirrored the contents of the Fairfield letter (despite the fact it was unpublished).

The Fairfield letter, mailed on December 16th 1969, contained the totals of police he wanted to kill. It also contained a picture of a dripping blade entitled The Bleeding Knife of Zodiac. This was effectively an extension of his "by knife" attribution on the car door of Bryan Hartnell at Lake Berryessa on September 27th 1969, glorifying in the fact he was responsible for the brutal stabbing of Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard alongside the Knoxville Road, as well as the frenzied murder of Kathie Snoozy and Debra Furlong on August 3rd 1969 in San Jose, which he would ultimately claim by the listing of "Aug" in his running victim count on the Dripping Pen card. The second Fairfield letter was clearly still in his mind (probably angered by its failure to be published), when he made the phone call to Shirley Searey at the San Jose Highway Patrol station on December 19th 1969. He now wasn't threatening to kill one cop in San Jose, he had upped that total to five, more in line with the rest of his list on December 16th 1969. The caller stated "I am going to kill five of you officers and a family of five between now and Monday". The phone call to the San Jose Highway Patrol station and the wording of "you officers", shouldn't leave anybody in any doubt as to where the threat was primarily aimed. Bearing in mind The Bleeding Knife of Zodiac drawing and the focus of the threat toward San Jose, we don't have to go very far to conclude which "family of five" he was threatening.   

The specificity of the threat to "kill a family of five" is highly suggestive that the caller had a particular family in mind. When you consider the caller was directing his threat toward the city of San Jose, take into account the "Bleeding Knife of Zodiac" drawing, his previous claim of responsibility for the Snoozy & Furlong murders in San Jose, and his annoyance at not receiving front page coverage in the Chronicle and Examiner newspapers subsequent to killing three people and mailing his cryptograms, the family of five becomes a little clearer. 

At the same time he was relegated to the inner pages of two high profile Bay Area newspapers, the murders of the two San Jose teenagers was extensively covered in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 6th 1969. The Zodiac Killer undoubtedly read this newspaper article - and it's probably an understatement to say - he must have been immeasurably displeased. We don't have to look very far in this publication to find the "family of five". 

The Zodiac Killer was already claiming the murder of Debra Furlong, so why not claim he was going to murder the rest of her family for maximum terror. Whether the police connected the dots is unknown, but it's unlikely he arrived at the figure of five randomly. If you look at the August 6th 1969 article here, you will notice the last two subheadings of "callers" and "children".
Under the banner of "callers" it describes the frustration of Glen Furlong (father of Debra) to the many annoying phone calls the family received, stating "On several occasions people have called and as soon as we answer, they hang up,"  He said his neighbors were "very sympathetic", but complained he found some of his phone calls "very disconcerting". Under the banner of "children" it lists his remaining children of Glen, 16; Floyd, 12, and Pamela, 11. With the Zodiac Killer having read this San Francisco Chronicle article (his inspiration for the Berryessa attack), it isn't very surprising that the "family of five" threatened by phone on December 19th 1969 would be Glen Furlong and his wife, along with their three children of Glen, Floyd and Pamela. 

This wasn't the only time the San Francisco Chronicle article on August 6th 1969 inspired the Zodiac Killer. It triggered his switch from gun to knife in the Lake Berryessa attack so as to secure front page coverage. It was also the inspiration for the wording "Near Monticello" on the July 13th 1971 communication, detailing the murder of Kathy Bilek on April 11th 1971. The Zodiac Killer very likely kept many of the newspaper cuttings relevant to the time he was operating - and this could have been one of them. What hoaxer in 1971, claiming to be the Zodiac Killer, could have remembered that Kathie Snoozy was buried at Oak Hill Memorial Park in the neighborhood of Monticello, with enough knowledge to have tied together the murders of Bilek, Snoozy and Furlong under one communication. The person who created the Monticello card on July 13th 1971 knew her burial location, because August 6th 1969 was a time extremely pertinent to him. A time when the Zodiac Killer would have been scouring the newspapers for updates on his 408 cipher and whether it had been decoded. The December 19th 1969 phone call to San Jose threatening a "family of five", more evidence that this newspaper article held high importance in the mind of a single perpetrator. That perpetrator being the Zodiac Killer.  

On October 22nd 1969 in the San Francisco Examiner, Dr. D.C.B. Marsh challenged the Zodiac Killer under the banner of Cipher Expert Dares Zodiac to Tell Name, to reveal something about his identity no matter how complicated. I doubt anybody with a modicum of intelligence seriously contemplated that the Zodiac Killer would supply us with his full name, however, the tactic of encouraging the Bay Area murderer to write more communications and possibly create a second cipher, had the potential to reveal more clues about the killer, while serving the secondary purpose of keeping him writing rather than killing.

On October 25th 1969, law enforcement and the newspapers headlined with Cops No Closer on Zodiac Identity, probably attempting to guide the Zodiac Killer into producing his second cipher, writing in conciliatory tone "Homicide detectives in San Francisco, Vallejo and Napa said they are no closer to catching the cryptic killer than they were ten months ago - unless some clue to his identity is among the hundreds of leads still in the process of being checked out".

The next paragraph may have been the inspiration for the next Zodiac communication on November 8th 1969. The Chronicle article continued "Zodiac struck last on October 11 when he gunned down cab-driver Paul Stine on Washington Street in Presidio Heights. He revealed himself the killer in a letter sent to the Chronicle three days later. Since then he has remained silent". In the Dripping Pen card the Zodiac apologized by way of chosen image and wording, stating "Sorry I haven't written, but I just washed my pen". It was hypothesized that the second cipher was inspired by the language adopted in the newspapers, and the Dripping Pen card was specifically chosen in response to "Since then he has remained silent". If so, then there is a real possibility that the 340 cipher was created subsequent to October 25th 1969. 

On October 26th 1969 in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle they dedicated an entire section entitled Hymn to Murder, reminding the reader about the Zodiac Killer's 408 cipher, in part stating "Finally, a school teacher in Salinas broke the code by looking for the words "kill" and "killing". When deciphered, the messages proved to be a hymn to murder by an obviously disturbed person. There was, unfortunately, no clue to his identity in the cyphers".  Again, another newspaper article mentioning identity and ciphers, but this time describing them as a Hymn to Murder. Was it remotely possible that the Zodiac Killer responded to these strategic newspaper messages, bringing about the arrival of his second Hymn to Murder?

The next San Francisco Chronicle newspaper article on November 8th 1969 described the attempted poisoning of Daniel Williams, a Salesian High School teacher, on November 2nd 1969, that culminated a series of menacing phone calls by somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer, which began on October 23rd 1969. The language adopted in the Dripping Pen card and Bus Bomb letter strongly suggested that the Zodiac Killer may have been referring to his ongoing pursuit of Daniel Williams. In fact, the Dripping Pen card and accompanying cipher appeared a response to all of the newspaper articles beginning on October 22nd 1969 (including the attack on Daniel Williams), with the card being carefully chosen in response to Paul Avery, who stated that Zodiac had remained silent since his October 13th 1969 letter.

It is certainly possible that the 340 cipher could have been designed to relay a relatively simple superficial message, while still harboring an underlying cryptic message. A picture with a cryptographic solution under the canvas, if you will.

If the Zodiac Killer just allotted ciphertext characters to plaintext characters randomly, then how likely would it be to find the possibility of "paradice" and "slaves" bisecting the mid-section of the cipher both horizontally and vertically (17 by 17), as depicted in the Halloween card on October 27th 1970? How likely would it be for the alphabetical letters B and Y forming "BY" to fall together in each quadrant of the cipher, mimicking the Halloween card? How likely would it be for the cipher to begin with HER, forming the last three alphabetical letters of "cipher"? How likely is it that the near "Zodiac" on the final line would drop out through a randomly designed cipher? Then we have the "sorry no cipher" on the envelope inner of the Halloween card mimicking the formation of "paradice" and "slaves" in both communications.

And finally, we have the Genesis of the Hymn to Murder, found on the envelope of the Halloween card and possibly the 340 cipher. The stamp, commemorating the Apollo 8 launch on December 21st 1968, contains the words "In the beginning God", spoken by Bill Anders from the text of Genesis. This slots nicely onto the first line of the 340 cipher with the ciphertext of "GOD" positioned in acceptance at the very end. Even the half-darkened "O" looks eerily similar to the picture of the earth from the moon on the Halloween card stamp. Did "In the beginning God" introduce the Zodiac Killer's second Hymn to Murder?

When the Zodiac Killer discovered that Karl Francis Werner was arrested on April 29th 1971 for the slaying of Kathie Snoozy, Debra Furlong and Kathy Bilek, he was understandably horrified that two of the victims he had falsely claimed in the Dripping Pen card on November 8th 1969 were now being stripped from his running victim count. He was now faced with a choice of being seen as a brazen liar with his previous claims totally discredited, or continue the facade of clinging onto victims he was never responsible for. He would choose the latter. His response was almost immediate, likely mailing a letter (and 148 character cipher) sometime in early May of 1971, responding to two newspaper articles (one by Paul Avery) published on April 30th 1971 and May 1st 1971. His response was effectively an admission that the "Aug" on the Dripping Pen card was referring to the two murdered San Jose teenagers on August 3rd 1969 (Snoozy & Furlong). Here is the communication:

The 148 character code was deciphered to read: "Tis the Zodiac Speacking. Why can't you stop me. I can't stop killing. Stop listening t(o) phonys. If this is not on your front page in a week I will skin 3 little kids and make a suit from the skin". 

The two newspaper articles on April 30th 1971 and May 1st 1971 covered the arrest, arraignment and questioning of Karl Francis Werner, stating "He was immediately advised of his rights concerning any statements he may make and legal representation to which he is entitled, the detectives said. Werner was then taken to the scenes of the crimes. Late yesterday he was undergoing questioning. The detectives would not reveal what statements, if any, he had made concerning the killings of the three girls". The Zodiac Killer would respond with "Stop listening to phonys", desperately attempting to appeal to the San Francisco Chronicle and law enforcement that Karl Francis Werner was not the killer of the three girls. He was effectively telling investigators to not accept any admissions by Werner because he was the real killer. Up to this point, the Zodiac Killer had only claimed the murders of Snoozy & Furlong on August 3rd 1969, not the murder of Kathy Bilek, which occurred one month earlier on April 11th 1971 in the woods of Villa Montalvo in Saratoga. He now had to face the stark choice of abandoning the two victims he had claimed for nearly two years, or add Kathy Bilek to his ever burgeoning list. He had to either abandon two or embrace all three. It isn't surprising he chose the latter.

The headlines and text in the newspapers usually governed the majority of what he wrote in the communications he mailed. In this instance it was no different, utilizing the three headlines in the two newspapers. The headlines stated San Jose Student Held in Slaying of Three Girls, San Jose Student Held in Slaying of 3 Girls and Youth Arraigned in Knife Slayings of Three Girls. The Zodiac therefore promised to skin three kids if his latest letter was not published. He was effectively saying, give me front page coverage or you'll have another three young deaths on your hands.

The newspapers covered the severity of the injuries sustained by Snoozy, Furlong and Bilek, graphically describing the fact "Miss Bilek was stabbed 49 times with a short-bladed knife", while "Furlong and Snoozy were both stabbed more than 100 times with a similar weapon". The Zodiac callously responded, by not only threatening a further three kids, but by stating that he would "send a patch of human skin if their is some left over". This was obviously meant to suggest that after so many wounds on his victims, he would be lucky to find any undamaged skin left to mail.

The wording in the letter may also pinpoint the exact day this communication was postmarked. The two articles were published on April 30th 1971 and May 1st 1971, the latter of which was a Saturday. Therefore, his wording of "If this is not on your front page in a week" could suggest it was mailed over the weekend and postmarked Monday, May 3rd 1971.

The Zodiac Killer now had one thing left to do - retrospectively claim the April 11th 1971 murder of Kathy Bilek in the woods of Villa Montalvo in Saratoga. He would do this on July 13th 1971, when he mailed the pasted Monticello card to the San Francisco Chronicle with the wording "Near Monticello Shought Victims 21 ...... In The Woods Dies April". The only unanswered question about this card was the reference to "Near Monticello". If we travel a few miles east of where Kathy Bilek was murdered, we arrive at the neighborhood of Monticello in San Jose. The neighborhood of Monticello holds one crucial secret as to why the Zodiac Killer wrote this on the July 13th 1971 card. It is the burial site of Kathie Snoozy, laid to rest in the Oak Hill Memorial Park, and forever the phonetic namesake of Kathy Bilek (although Zodiac would have read the spelling of Kathie as Kathy in the majority of newspapers). The Monticello card was not only designed to suggest the Zodiac Killer was the murderer of Kathy Bilek, but it pinpointed the burial site of Kathie Snoozy and his connection to the San Jose murders on August 3rd 1969. The Monticello card effectively bound the murders of all three girls together. It was a sinister communication, but extremely well designed.    

Daniel Williams (24), a Salesian High School teacher, started to receive malicious phone calls to his 1234 Bush Street, Martinez residence on October 23rd 1969. These calls continued for ten days and culminated with somebody breaking into his residence on November 2nd 1969 and lacing his 7-Up soft drink with enough arsenic to kill. The caller, claiming to be the Zodiac Killer, told Daniel Williams over the phone that he "had gone to a Martinez school in search of victims but left when he found police there", mocking law enforcement by stating “I’m too smart for them". This was considered particularly relevant because of the language Zodiac adopted on November 9th 1969 in the Bus Bomb letter mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle of "The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them".

The Zodiac Killer's wording was also considered suspicious in the Dripping Pen card, when on November 8th 1969 he stated "This is the Zodiac speaking. I though you would nead a good laugh before you hear the bad news. You won't get the news for a while yet". The wording smacked of unfinished business, especially when you consider that he wrote "up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people" in the following communication. It was now November 9th 1969, but he made a point of claiming seven victims only up to the end of October. These sections of text highly suggestive he was in the process of acquiring victim number eight. That victim could very well have entailed the ongoing pursuit of the Richmond High School teacher, Daniel Williams, to which this number had been reserved. These ideas may be speculative, but the story doesn't end there.

After the November 2nd 1969 attempted poisoning, Daniel Williams reported to police that the prowlings he had experienced around his residence during the time of the sadistic phone calls, continued after the break-in and failed poisoning. The persistent threats on the life of Daniel Williams would also fail to cease.

On Wednesday, November 5th 1969, somebody rang the Martinez Police Department at 12:30 am stating "There's going to be a shooting at 1234 Bush Street", before immediately hanging up. The threat to find victims at a Martinez school, coupled with the menacing phone calls were not dissimilar to recent Zodiac activity during the month of October. After the threat to shoot Daniel Williams at his residence, police instigated surveillance in the immediate area of Bush Street for the remainder of that morning, but no suspicious activity was detected. The next Zodiac Killer communications would be postmarked just two and three days later, with the promise of more bad news and a victim count left dangling at the end of October. If the perpetrator of the crimes inflicted upon Daniel Williams wasn't the Zodiac Killer, then it was a pretty determined hoaxer claiming to be him.

In the sadistic phone calls to Daniel Williams the caller also promised to "kill the lady in the blue house". On November 21st 1969, San Jose Police had to provide 24-hour surveillance for a woman, after somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer mailed a threatening letter identifying her as the target. The letter was accompanied by the wording "There's no doubt I will do my Thing!" reminiscent of the Dripping Pen card of "I could do my Thing". Of course, we don't know whether the threats in Martinez and San Jose were the infamous Zodiac Killer, but they certainly could have been.  

Just like the attempted poisoning of Daniel Williams on November 2nd 1969, the murder of Robert Michael Salem just prior to the Zodiac Killer's letter on April 20th 1970, is another case of possible Zodiac activity too readily dismissed. There are many potential clues in the April 20th 1970 letter to the Robert Salem murder, but here we shall focus on just one aspect of the case.

The Zodiac Killer likely switched to murder by knife at Lake Berryessa because of the contast he noted in newspaper coverage between his crimes and the double murder of Kathy Snoozy and Deborah Furlong in San Jose on August 3rd 1969. The Zodiac Killer had murdered three people, attempted to murder a fourth, and mailed four letters and three cryptograms to high profile Bay Area newspapers. Imagine his "consternation", when discovering that the highest circulation newspapers in the Bay Area ignored his demands and relegated the cryptic murderer of three into relative anonymity on their inner pages.

The San Francisco Chronicle published his cryptogram on page four, while the San Francisco Examiner had placed their portion of the cipher on a lowly page nine. This was shortly followed by a comprehensive front page article in the San Francisco Chronicle on August 6th 1969, covering the brutal stabbings of Snoozy & Furlong in San Jose. The Zodiac Killer, likely scouring the newspapers for information about himself and the ongoing effort to crack his 408 cryptogram, must have read this article and been understandably horrified. He now knew what he had to do to secure the front page coverage he felt he richly deserved - kill his next victims with a knife. This was probably the trigger for his emphasis of "by knife" written on the car door of Bryan Hartnell on September 27th 1969.  

The Zodiac Killer added the "August" murders into his Dripping Pen card on November 8th 1969, followed by a drawing entitled "The Bleeding Knife of Zodiac" on December 16th 1969. This fascination with knife murders likely continued on December 20th 1969 with his address to Melvin Belli. In this communication he used very similar wording connected to another knife murder on December 10th 1945. We know the Zodiac Killer kept abreast of the news, so did he read something in the newspapers on December 10th 1969, the anniversary of the murder of Frances Brown at her 3941 North Pine Grove apartment in Edgewater, Chicago? She had been savagely stabbed, with the knife left protruding from her neck, along with a bullet wound to her head.. Near her body, written in lipstick on the apartment wall, were the words "For heavens Sake catch me Before I kill more I cannot control myself". The Zodiac Killer wrote in the Melvin Belli letter "I will loose all controol of myself. Please help me. I can not remain in control for much longer". This is what makes the Robert Salem murder so very interesting.

Just shy of four months later (just prior to April 20th 1970), Robert Salem too was discovered murdered in his apartment, the victim of a repeated stabbing using a long-bladed knife. Just like the murder of Frances Brown (attributed to William Heirens), the murderer had written a "red message" (this time in blood) on the apartment wall of Robert Salem. It read "Satan Saves Zodiac" and was accompanied by the drawing of an Ankh, which was commonly held in the hands of ancient Egyptian deities (or being given by them to the pharaoh), to represent their power to sustain life and to revive human souls in the afterlife.

If this was a copycat as police suspected, then we would have to conclude that the perpetrator (who didn't write the Belli letter) made the connection to the Frances Brown murder, which was concealed in the wording of the December 20th 1969 letter, and recreated her murder scene in the apartment of Robert Salem, with the Zodiac pseudonym attached. Or, the copycat inadvertently created the murder scene of Frances Brown in the 745 Stevenson Street, San Francisco apartment of Robert Salem, without any prior knowledge of the hidden meaning in the Melvin Belli letter, and just so happened to write the Zodiac pseudonym. The third option, is that the Zodiac Killer was responsible for the stabbing of Robert Salem and was deliberately linking the hidden message in the Melvin Belli letter to his latest murder, playing games with the police along the way. The final option may be that no connection exists between the wording on the Melvin Belli letter and the murder of Frances Brown. It is just another case of seeing things that aren't there.

LATEST UPDATE, INCLUDING POLICE REPORTS & PHOTOGRAPHS

The hostility exhibited by the Zodiac Killer toward police began on November 9th 1969 when he responded to what he believed were disparaging remarks by SFPD's Captain Martin Lee. In the San Francisco Chronicle on October 18th 1969 under the headline Zodiac Called a Clumsy Criminal, the newspaper listed the mistakes it believed were made by the Zodiac Killer.

Captain Martin Lee stated "His boast of being in the area we were searching was a lie. We had the whole area flooded with lights. We had seven police dogs and a large number of patrolmen searching the area tree by tree and bush by bush. The dogs are the best in the country". Captain Lee added that Zodiac's failure to mention the dogs and floodlights was proof "he wasn't anywhere in the vicinity". The Zodiac Killer responded on November 9th 1969 with "I have grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me. The dogs never came with in 2 blocks of me + they were to the west + there was only 2 groups of parking about 10 min apart then the motor cicles went by about 150 ft away going from south to north west". 

Captain Martin Lee also appeared on a KPIX News report on November 12th 1969, responding to the November 8th and November 9th communications. He mentioned the Zodiac Killer's aggressive temperament in the Bus Bomb letter, noting the shift in "tenor of this letter as opposed to the others. For the first time he has demonstrated a hostility toward police. Now we are blue pigs and such remarks as that. He has never been particularly interested in our profession before this".  Just over three weeks later this hostility would continue, when on December 7th 1969 the Zodiac Killer mailed a letter from Fairfield promising to "kill again, so expect it anytime. The will be a cop".  He would continue the threats on police in his following letter on December 16th 1969. In this letter he immediately began with "this state is in troulbe..I will go for the Goverment life", suggesting a shift in the Zodiac Killer's thinking to more high profile targets. Law enforcement operates primarily through governmental police agencies in the United States, so the threat to target "government life", bearing in mind his threat to kill a cop on December 7th 1969, it's a reasonable assumption that "government life" = cops. Especially when he listed a potential thirty-eight police targets at the foot of the December 16th 1969 letter.     

The shift exhibited toward police was brought about by the comments of Captain Martin Lee, resulting in the introduction to the Bus Bomb letter of "This is the Zodiac speaking up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people. I have grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me. So I shall change the way the collecting of slaves. I shall no longer announce to anyone. When I committ my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, + a few fake accidents, etc". Followed by the two Fairfield letters in December.

However, there was one other shift in the Zodiac Killer's communications subsequent to the KPIX interview with Captain Martin Lee on November 12th 1969. The police chief stated "I think the rambling, careless appearance of his notes is also a disguise. The cryptograms when he makes them can be absolute works of art as far as alignment both vertically and horizontally and space between the characters is concerned. I think that goes more toward the true picture of a man than the rambling notes that we've gotten". Captain Martin Lee believed the organized cryptograms structured like "works of art" were more toward the true picture of the Zodiac Killer. The next letter to a San Francisco newspaper was........    

The Zodiac Killer was extremely annoyed when he didn't get the publicity he felt he deserved, writing to the San Francisco Examiner on August 4th 1969 and informing the newspaper: "I was not happy to see that I did not get front page coverage". Page three of the Bus Bomb communication about "2 cops pulled a goof" insisted that the Chronicle "must print in paper", following it up on page six with "PS. Be shure to print the part I marked out on page 3 or I shall do my thing". On December 16th 1969 the Zodiac Killer mailed a letter from Fairfield demanding "you better print".

Subsequent to his October 13th 1969 letter claiming the killing of Paul Stine, the Bus Bomb letter was the immediate communication in which he elaborated upon the details of this crime, and the first and only time he highlighted a specific section of text, demanding "must print in paper".. One has to ask, what prompted the Zodiac Killer to highlight these sixteen lines of text and insist they are not omitted from the newspaper? This is the section of text where he claimed officers Donald Fouke and Eric Zelms stopped and spoke to him, before he directed them away from the crime scene on a wild goose chase. The details of this interaction (whether the officers stopped him or not) was never publicized in the newspapers prior to the arrival of the Bus Bomb letter. This clearly irritated the Zodiac Killer enough for him to demand its publication.

This insistence of "must print in paper" was probably caused by the failure of the San Francisco Chronicle to publicize his threat on schoolchildren twenty-five days earlier. The Zodiac wrote in his October 13th 1969 letter "I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington St + Maple St last night, to prove this here is a blood stained piece of his shirt. I am the same man who did in the people in the north bay area.The S.F. Police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcicles seeing who could make the most noise. The car drivers should have just parked their cars and sat there quietly waiting for me to come out of cover. School children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire + then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out". Unfortunately for the Zodiac Killer, the San Francisco Chronicle omitted the final paragraph (highlighted in blue).  

Law enforcement instructed the Chronicle newspaper to whitewash this section of text until they considered the best course of action, not wanting to instil widespread panic in the local community. The newspaper duly obliged on October 15th 1969, when under the banner of The Boastful Slayer they carried no mention of the threat on schoolchildren. This must have irked the Zodiac Killer, who delivered a malicious phone call to Santa Rosa on the same day, threatening to kill schoolchildren by way of a bomb on a school bus. This call, not only coincided with the October 15th 1969 newspaper article, but it carried the same threat as the omitted Zodiac text, almost certainly confirming that the phone caller to Santa Rosa was the Zodiac Killer. But why did the Zodiac Killer threaten Santa Rosa rather than the San Francisco Police Department?

Although this cannot be proven, I doubt the Zodiac Killer phoned the Santa Rosa Police Department or the Press Democrat newspaper, and just stated "I am the Zodiac and I am going to blow up a school bus and kill kids in Santa Rosa", before hanging up. It is extremely likely this threat was inspired by the omission of text from the Chronicle, and he promised to kill schoolchildren in Santa Rosa and other locations in the Bay Area if the San Francisco Chronicle didn't include the omitted threats from his original letter on October 13th 1969. It is possible that Santa Rosa authorities contacted the police in San Francisco, who backpedaled their initial decision to avoid more widespread threats. Two days later, on October 17th 1969, the Chronicle newspaper published the threat on schoolchildren under the headline of Astrologer Joins Hunt for Killer. Their decision to omit Zodiac's text was reversed inside of forty-eight hours. This demand to print wouldn't be forgotten by the Zodiac Killer on November 9th 1969.

Three days after the Bus Bomb letter, on November 12th 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle under the banner of Zodiac's New Message printed the entirety of the "2 cops pulled a goof" section that Zodiac demanded they publish, which coincidentally fell on the same day as Officer Donald Fouke's interdepartmental memorandum of his encounter with a WMA on Jackson Street, shortly after the murder of Paul Stine. The Zodiac Killer's demand of "must print in paper" may have worked on both October 15th 1969 and November 9th 1969 - and why they are most likely the same person.  

ASSOCIATED ARTICLE: PROOF:OCTOBER 15TH 1969 SANTA ROSA CALLER WAS THE ZODIAC KILLER 

From October 23rd 1969 to November 2nd 1969, Daniel Williams, a Richmond High School teacher received a series of sadistic phone calls that culminated in somebody attempting to kill him by lacing his soft drink with arsenic. Had he not noticed the metallic taste and spat it out, Daniel Williams would have been a "dead duck" as the caller had promised.

In a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle postmarked October 13th 1969, the Zodiac Killer threatened to "wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire + then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out". A telephone threat to bomb a school bus and kill children from somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer was targeted at Santa Rosa on October 15th 1969, prior to the details about "wiping out a school bus and picking off the kiddies" had been released by the newspapers. There were reports of a possible gunshot being heard by a Santa Rosa bus driver on October 17th 1969. These threats on schoolchildren brought a massive response from school officials and law enforcement, who laid out extensive measures to combat the perceived threat by the Zodiac Killer. Extra security to the buses also came in the form of police vehicles shadowing the schoolchildren to and from their respective schools.

On October 21st 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle released an article entitled Fear Rides the Yellow Bus, stating "A climate of fear hangs over the Napa Valley. The fear is over "Zodiac" and his terrifying boast to "wipe out a school bus". No one takes the threat lightly, Zodiac has already struck here. The task of trying to insure the safety of 10,000 youngsters who ride the Napa Valley Unified School District is immense".  It was two days later that Daniel Williams started receiving menacing phone calls from a caller claiming to be the infamous Zodiac Killer. The caller stated that "he intended to kill several persons" and on one occasion said he "had gone to a Martinez school in search of victims but left when he found police there". Bearing in mind the heightened security around school buses and therefore school premises, this was entirely plausible. This could easily have been interpreted as an empty threat from another hoaxer, but it's a fair assumption that the phone caller and arsenic poisoner were one and the same. There were probably many idle hoaxers latching onto the Zodiac case during this period of uncertainty, but I doubt many were prepared to back up their threats with murder, as was the case in the attempted poisoning of Daniel Williams. If this person was prepared to kill a school teacher, then it's not beyond the realms of possibility he was prepared to kill schoolchildren in Martinez (where Daniel Williams lived) or the city of Richmond, where Daniel Williams taught at Salesian High School.   

If this was the Zodiac Killer, how did it come to be that Daniel Williams was selected as a possible target by the Bay Area murder? The Zodiac Killer may have selected Daniel Williams by staking out his school and following him home. He now has a credible victim who police won't dismiss as an attention seeker. Daniel Williams also teaches schoolchildren, making him the ideal target for the Zodiac Killer. When Daniel Williams relays the details of the "Zodiac" phone calls to police, such as the man claiming he "had gone to a Martinez school in search of victims but left when he found police there", it adds veracity to the threats in the current climate. In the mind of the Zodiac Killer, he knew that these phone calls would be readily dismissed as just another hoax by police, so he needed to elevate these threats to the next level and show law enforcement he wasn't just playing games.

The Zodiac Killer, by poisoning the soft drink of Daniel Williams with arsenic, having previously stated he "had gone to a Martinez school in search of victims but left when he found police there", must have concluded that his visit to a Martinez school, in accompaniment to Daniel Williams being a Richmond school teacher, was more than enough to occupy law enforcement on several fronts. He may have thought that if the police didn't take the threat of murder seriously, then they would likely take nothing seriously.

With the failed poisoning on November 2nd 1969, the Zodiac Killer wrote in the Bus Bomb letter "up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people", possibly indicating he hadn't yet finished with Daniel Williams (or possibly wanted us to believe that). When the phone caller to Daniel Williams mentioned his visit to a Martinez school, he concluded that police would never catch him because he was "too smart for them". In the Bus Bomb letter on November 9th 1969, the Zodiac Killer stated "The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them". The Zodiac Killer was certainly a clever wordsmith, but was he responsible for the attempted murder of Daniel Williams? 

Larry Lamotte (60), a former news director at commercial radio station KTOK in Oklahoma City, drowned off the coast of Florida in 2003 while swimming at Grayton Beach. There was nothing suspicious about his death, but Larry Lamotte spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle in an article featured on December 8th 1969. A man claiming to be the Zodiac Killer phoned a talk show host at KTOK on December 7th 1969 doing an awfully good impression of the man who rang the Jim Dunbar Show on October 22nd 1969, stating he left California because "it got too hot for me".

On October 22nd 1969, the Oakland Police Department took a call at 2:00 am from somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer, requesting that either Melvin Belli or Francis Lee Bailey, high profile lawyers at the time, appear on a chat show hosted by Jim Dunbar later that day. Melvin Belli agreed to appear on the show, to which a man would eventually contact via telephone, claiming not only his name was 'Sam', but by inference that he was the infamous Zodiac Killer. The call was later attributed to hoaxer, Eric Weill, whose  father's name just happened to be Sam.

Larry Lamotte thought that the man on the phone to KTOK appeared to be impersonating the caller who rang the Jim Dunbar Show on October 22nd 1969, so it's quite a coincidence that on the same day (October 22nd 1969) the Palo Alto Times newspaper carried a news story regarding a phone call from a man claiming to be the Zodiac Killer, stating he left San Francisco "because I'm too hot there".

The Palo Alto Times reported Patrol cars convoyed school buses around Palo Alto yesterday after a telephoned murder threat by a man claiming to be the Zodiac killer of five persons. The caller to the Palo Alto Times said he intended to "pick the kids off as they get on the school bus." The weird slayer, who signs himself "The Zodiac", made a similar threat in a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle last week after the Oct. 11 shooting of a taxi driver. Handwriting tests and descriptions of two victims who survived have convinced police that the same person. The district transportation supervisor said an armed guard might ride with each of the system's 25 buses. Officers in Napa and Vallejo, areas of the first three murderous attacks, some 75 miles north of Palo Alto, have been convoying police officers. Palo Alto Police Chief William Hydie called the new threat "extremely serious," but warned against over reaction to what might be a crank call.

We have two phone calls separated by one-and-a-half months, with both callers claiming they left the Bay Area because "because I'm too hot there" and "it got too hot for me". Either it's coincdence (and both are hoaxers), the second caller recalled the phrase used by the first caller one-and-a-half months earlier (and one caller may be Zodiac), or both phone calls were made by the Zodiac Killer, who was simply enjoying the terror he was inflicting on the people of northern California.