Mike Rodelli stated in his book The Hunt For Zodiac:The Inconceivable Double Life of a Notorious Serial Killer that the "All points bulletin (APB} went out over three police radio channels and was heard by all units". The closest police unit were Officers Armond Pelissetti and Frank Peda, who (in Armond Pelissetti's own words) arrived very quickly at 9:55 pm. The exact time doesn't really matter for the following observations, because Officers Donald Fouke and Eric Zelms in a second police unit also got the APB at the same time, as they were traveling northbound on Presidio Avenue, just past Washington Street, One of the three teenagers who observed Zodiac in and around the taxicab that night had ventured to the intersection of Washington and Cherry, where he pleaded with Officer Armond Pelissetti "He's getting away, He's getting away. He's right there", gesturing toward Zodiac as he approached the corner of Jackson and Cherry Street.

We will afford Officer Armond Pelissetti a very quick arrival time (let us say 30 seconds). If he arrived at 9:55 pm, then he must have received the APB at 9:54:30 - and so must Officer Donald Fouke. Officer Armond Pelissetti is now at the corner of Washington and Cherry at 9:55 pm, with Lindsey Robbins yelling at him and pointing out Zodiac approaching to north end of Cherry Street. Therefore, the Zodiac Killer is approximately 10 seconds shy of vanishing from Cherry Street, at 9:55 pm. If Officer Donald Fouke also got the APB at 9:54:30, his 819 meter journey to Jackson and Maple Street, at a modest 35 mph (allowing for intersections), is a journey time of 60 seconds. He stated he saw a man (believed to be Zodiac} approaching the intersection of Jackson and Maple, before this man headed north on Maple. This sighting was at 9:55:30 - meaning Zodiac was approaching the intersection of Jackson and Cherry at 9:55 pm at the very earliest, while also present near the intersection of Jackson and Maple.at 9:55:30, separated by at least 450 feet.(a journey time of at least 1 minute 37 seconds at normal walking speed}.   

Let us flip this scenario on its head and show how the timeline simply isn't possible. Officer Donald Fouke would be viewing Zodiac approaching the intersection of Jackson and Maple at 9:55:30. The Zodiac Killer's jouney time from Washington and Cherry to Jackson and Maple is approximately 2 minutes 37 seconds (p.s. 2 cops pulled a goof abot 3 min after I left the cab}. Officer Donald Fouke spotted Zodiac at 9:55:30. Therefore, the Zodiac Killer began his journey just shy of 2 minutes and 37 seconds earlier from the intersection of Washington and Cherry. This means Zodiac would have been beginning his journey from the intersection of Washington and Cherry (by the taxicab} at about 9:52:53 (before the time of the reported attack). But Armond Pelissetti arrived at 9:55 pm at the earliest. So how did Zodiac take 2 minutes and 7 seconds to not even reach the intersection of Jackson and Cherry? Imagine Officer Armond Pelissetti taking a more reasonable one minute to arrive at the crime scene  - Zodiac would then have taken 2 minutes 37 seconds to travel up Cherry and still be in view to both officer and teenager. 

If the Zodiac Killer was spotted by Officer Donald Fouke at 9:55:30, having left the intersection of Washington and Cherry at 9:52:53, then he must reasonably be at the north end of Cherry by 9:53:53 at the latest. But for Officer Armond Pelissetti to see Zodiac there at 9:53:53, he must have received the initial radio dispatch 30 seconds earlier, at 9:53:23, which happens to be 1 minute 37 seconds before the reported time of the attack at 9:55 pm. I have been very generous with the timeline regarding Officer Armond Pelissetti and the Lindsey Robbins sighting of Zodiac, but whichever way you cut it, the timeline doesn't make sense. Even if we say that both Officer Armond Pelissetti and Lindsey were correct, and saw Zodiac approaching the intersection of Jackson and Cherry at 9:55 pm. Then we have to add a minimum of 1 minute and 37 seconds for Zodiac to be spotted by Officer Donald Fouke approaching Jackson and Maple. That would be 9:56:37, thereby making Officer Donald Fouke's journey time from Washington Street and Presidio Avenue to Jackson and Maple, a 2 minute and 7 second journey, traveling at 14.4 mph. The longer Officer Armond Pelissetti took to arrive at the crime scene, the more unbelievable the timeline becomes. If he arrived at the intersection of Washington and Cherry at 9:55 pm and it took him only one minute, he must have got the APB at 9:54 pm, which Officer Donald Fouke received also. Now Officer Armond Pelissetti is observing Zodiac at the top of Cherry at 9:55 pm, while Officer Donald Fouke would be observing Zodiac at 9:55 pm at Jackson and Maple, which is obviously not possible.  

Mike Rodelli stated in his book that as Officer Donald Fouke passed the intersection of Jackson and Maple they saw the "man about 100 feet west of the corner of Maple. The man was in no hurry and kept his head down as he walked. When he got to a residence just west of Maple (3712 Jackson Street) he casually turned left and began to ascend a flight of stairs to that residence". Although, Donald Fouke in his November 12th 1969 memorandum, recalled no such story - stating a man was "walking in an easterly direction on Jackson Street and then turned north on Maple Street". Mike Rodelli then stated Officer Donald Fouke (having a description of a Negro Male Adult from the initial dispartch) continued onward toward Cherry Street and the crime scene. The distance from 3712 Jackson Street to the corner of Cherry Street is 340 feet (traveling at 30 mph, would take approximately 8-10 seconds). 

"Meanwhile, Officer Armond Pelissetti had been examining the cab", and once he got the amended description to a white male he got on the radio to update everybody. He then traveled up Cherry Street cautiously, using his police training to make sure he "did not get his head blown off". Mike Rodelli described that "as Pelissetti carefully made his way up the block, the patrol car carrying Officers Fouke and Zelms rounded the corner (Fouke having spotted the man near Maple Street seconds earlier) and they stopped and spoke". They had a brief conversation about the updated description, "as finally the corrected APB description from SFPD Dispatch came over the air on the channel Fouke was monitoring that evening, which was different from the channel over which it had initially been broadcast by Pelissetti". 

Officer Armond Pelissetti received the amended description to a white male at the crime scene by the kids. which according to Mike was eventually aired by SFPD Dispatch as Pelissetti spoke to Fouke nearing the top of Cherry. But if Officer Donald Fouke had only spotted "the man near Maple Street seconds earlier", then he had passed the Zodiac Killer just over a minute into his journey from the initial dispatch at Washington Street and Presidio Avenue. That means Officer Donald Fouke met Officer Armond Pelissetti at the top of Cherry no longer than 90 seconds after he received the initial dispatch. Therefore, Armond Pelissetti had to travel to the crime scene after receiving the initial dispatch (at least 30 seconds), have his interactions with the teenagers, check on Paul Stine in the taxicab, update everybody on the radio to the amended description, and then travel up Cherry Street in a cautious fashion so he "did not get his head blown off" in a grand total of just 90 seconds in order to meet Donald Fouke at the top of Cherry. The journey up Cherry Street in cautious fashion, on its own, would take 90 seconds. Again showing the massive discrepancy in the timeline offered up by this order of events.

Mike quoted Bryan Hartnell in the 1989 Crimes of the Century TV show regarding the height and weight of the suspect at Lake Berryessa, suggesting that Zodiac may have skewed his appearance at Presidio Heights using "lifts in his shoes" and possibly "three sweaters" under a loose fitting jacket - obviously to create a different body shape to that of Kjell Qvale, and so disguise his appearance. 

What Mike does not tell you, is the quote by Officer Donald Fouke in the 1989 Crimes of the Century show, in which he stated "We proceeded on Jackson Street towards Arguello continuing our search. As we arrived at Arguello Street the description of the suspect was changed to a white male adult - believing this suspect was possibly the one involved in the shooting we entered the Presidio of San Francisco and conducted a search on West Pacific Avenue, the opposite side of the wall and the last direction we observed the suspect going, we did not find the suspect." Here he gets the updated description to the white male adult on Arguello Boulevard, not at the top of Cherry Street as mentioned earlier. If we are going to use quotes from the 1989 TV show (or even the 2007 documentary), then why was this omitted from the storyline? Cherry picking certain quotes, while failing to mention others, can be used to guide the reader towards your particular narrative. The question that has to be asked, is what was Officer Donald Fouke doing traveling away from the crime scene he is supposed to be responding to, when supposedly he is still under the impression he is searching for a black male adult - unless Zodiac directed him that way. We can of course just conveniently ignore this statement by Officer Donald Fouke if it's not very helpful.

After the brief meeting with Officer Armond Pelissetti in the upper reaches of Cherry Street, in which Officer Donald Fouke had seconds earlier spotted the Zodiac Killer just past Maple Street, Donald Fouke made a three-point turn and headed off north on Cherry and west on Jackson. Armond Pelissetti then traveled up to the corner and headed east on Jackson to the intersection of Jackson and Maple, where he spotted a dog walker (Kjell Qvale/Zodiac) as he turned to go back toward Washington Street.
The 100 foot journey that the Zodiac Killer has from 3712 Jackson Street to the corner of Jackson and Maple, is approximately 22 seconds traveling at normal walking speed. This gives Donald Fouke ample time to travel to the corner of Jackson and Cherry and bump into Armond Pelissetti. The Zodiac Killer would now be roughly at the intersection of Jackson and Maple, while the two officers began their brief exchange. In the time it now takes for Officer Armond Pelissetti to travel the short distance to the top of Cherry Street and negotiate the journey east to the intersection of Jackson and Maple (approximately 500 feet in total distance) to spot Kjell Qvale, would mean that the Zodiac Killer (if Kjell Qvale) has to do the following.

Kjell Qvale would have to travel 370 feet to reach the front door of his residence (80 seconds}, possibly change his clothes (including the "three sweaters" and "lifts in his shoes" maybe), ditch the weapon, put his dog on the leach and immediately travel back to the intersection of Jackson and Maple (another 80 seconds) to be spotted by Officer Armond Pelissetti in Maple Street. This is a bare minimum of four minutes (longer if he entered the rear of his residence}. I shall let you decide if it took Armond Pelissetti four minutes to negotiate this journey east - and whether Kjell Qvale could reasonably manage everything he did at home, as well as traveling away from the Jackson and Maple intersection, and back again, before Armond Pelissetti arrived.  

If we conclude that both Officer Donald Fouke and Lindsey Robbins saw Zodiac, then something about the story isn't correct. This has been covered several times before - but until I get a different answer to "your quibbling about minutes" (which is not an answer), the story remains impossible in its current form. Begin the video below at 1 minute.    

We know the Zodiac Killer was an avid reader of the newspapers, often replying to law enforcement officers such as Vallejo Police Chief Jack E. Stiltz and Captain Martin Lee, as well as arbitrary content from the newspaper articles themselves. Therefore, would it be any great surprise if he found his pseudonym in the newspapers as well. Covered very briefly on Zodiac Killer Mystery forum and Tom Voigt's old message board, this finding deserved another showing. The Zodiac Killer and the influence of astrology has been widely covered throughout the years, but below we have a column that featured daily over several decades in many newspapers, including the Vallejo Times-Herald throughout the relevant time period of the Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs attacks. The Star Gazer astrology column was created by Clay R. Pollan and ran in over 400 newspapers. He was a newspaper editor and publisher for many years, and founded the Inter-American Features Syndicate in the mid 1940s which distributed Star Gazer and Scram-lets puzzles.

The columns began with "To develop the message for (day), read words corresponding to numbers of your Zodiac birth sign". We mention the Zodiac Killer crosshairs being found in conjunction with the word "Zodiac" on a watch, but here we have a column that would have featured in the Vallejo Times-Herald in 1969, that contained a hidden message within the Zodiac horoscope - and on July 31st 1969, the Zodiac Killer mailed a hidden message in three portions of code, one of which was sent to the Vallejo Times-Herald, and one which was mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, in which he wrote "In this cipher is my idenity". Is it conceivable that the inspiration for his pseudonym was derived from this Zodiac horoscope, which further inspired him to begin his letter writing campaign with a concealed message?  

Twenty-one years later, could the Zodiac Killer have returned and used the very same technique, when he mailed the Celebrity Cypher. Luis Campos, born in Santiago, Dominican Republic is an inventor, poet and cryptographer who created puzzles and ciphers for the United Features Syndicate of New York, beginning in 1983. He would create six celebrity ciphers a week, featuring famous quotes from well-known people, past and present. The reader had to identify the person and quote from the encoded text. The characters in the cryptograms were deliberately spaced into separate words, as shown below.  

On September 25th 1990, somebody mailed the Celebrity Cypher to the Vallejo Times-Herald, approximately three months before the 1990 'Eureka' card - often associated with the Zodiac Killer. Bearing in mind the 408 cipher mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald on July 31st 1969, many have pondered whether this postcard was mailed by the Bay Area murderer.

We may now have two sets of Zodiac communications inspired by the hidden messages of Clay R. Pollan and Luis Campos, with the Vallejo Times-Herald the common denominator in both instances. We know the Zodiac Killer derived inspiration from the newspapers, but did this inspiration extend to mimicking the art of hidden messaging? This concept could have extended even further, when the Zodiac Killer designed his infamous unsolved 340 cipher, that may have been taken straight from the Dick Tracy comic and breakfast cereals of children - again receiving widespread publicity in the newspapers. See the Dick Tracy 340 Cipher article. 

The Zodiac Killer placed a phone call to police dispatcher Nancy Slover at 12:40 am on July 5th 1969, reporting his attack on Michael Mageau and Darlene Ferrin at Blue Rock Springs Park, while also stating he was responsible for the Lake Herman Road double murder on December 20th 1968. Although universally regarded as a payphone call with incorrect directions from Zodiac, this was never the case. The directions he gave were totally accurate and make perfect sense by the addition of one full stop in the message, described as the "substance of the statement" and not a verbatim transcription in the police report. The full explanation can be found here - but here is a depiction of what should have been transcribed by police.  

Recently, the phone call "trace" has been discussed again on the Zodiac forums, which I believe is probably the most important topic regarding the home address of the Zodiac Killer. The original transcription of the payphone message is below, containing two crucial times. 12:40 am: The time the payphone call from Zodiac was received, and 12:47 am: The time Mrs Johnson notified police that the call had been traced to a payphone at the intersection of Springs Road and Tuolumne Street in Vallejo.    

How they achieved the trace in 1969 will not be discussed here, suffice to say, they located the correct payphone. The Zodiac Killer stated in his August 4th 1969 letter, that "when I hung the phone up the damn thing began to ring & that drew his attention to me + my car". It is therefore very likely that this trace resulted in the payphone being rung back by PT&T opersators, much to the annoyance of Zodiac. If it wasn't rung back, then it's clear that the Zodiac Killer used this story to invent an eyewitness who saw his "brown car" as a ruse. Assuming the payphone was contacted by a PT&T operator, we have to consider the time that this occurred. Let us evaluate two scenarios, bearing in mind the Zodiac phone call would have lasted no longer than 30 seconds.

[1] The phone call by Zodiac was completed at 12:40:30. Let us assume that Betty Main traced the call very quickly, at about 12:41 am. She would have done this in full knowledge of the seriousness of the call, possibly regarding four murders. So if she understood the gravity of the call and the need for police to respond quickly to the payphone at the intersection of Springs Road and Tuolumne Street, why did the police get the call from PT&T operator, Mrs Johnson, six minutes later? Are we to assume that they just sat on their hands for six full minutes. This makes no sense.

It is common knowledge that in many knife attacks, such as the one perpetrated on Cheri Jo Bates in Riverside on October 30th 1966, the attacker will often cut themselves with their own knife. The Riverside Police Department (who for the most part did a thorough investigation) must have considered this a strong possibility bearing in mind the viciousness of the attack on the young woman. The Cheri Jo Bates autopsy findings showed extensive defensive wounds on her hands and arms, with the majority of the brutal attack focused on the upper part of her body (from the breasts upwards). The attack had all the hallmarks of somebody known to the victim, planned in advance by the disabling of her prized Volkswagen Beetle. Law enforcement stated that "the driveway adjacent to 3680 Terracina Street was so churned up it looked like a tractor had been over the ground. The girl, who was very athletic, put up a terrific struggle." The driveway and the autopsy report undeniably proved that Cheri Jo Bates did not exit this world like "a lamb to the slaughter", rather a woman who fought valiantly to the last. The police scoured for clues in the alleyway and noted that "at the murder scene, drops of blood were leading from the body to Terracina Street, indicating to the detectives that the murderer had walked back to the street following the slaying". This being the case, they must have considered that the drops of blood could have originated from the killer, who may well have cut himself "when the knife broke".

Cheri Jo Bates was found lying face down in the alleyway, 100 feet from Terracina Drive by groundskeeper Cleophus Martin the following morning. The knife used in the attack was described by Captain Cross as a pocket knife with a "3-inch blade or less." Had the blood really dripped off this small knife leaving a trail all the way to Terracina Drive, or was the killer now nursing an injury.

Mitochondrial DNA was extracted from the crime scene evidence in 1999/2000, leading to a DNA concentration of  0.003 nanograms per microliter being retrieved from a discarded cigarette butt found in the alleyway, and 0.01 nanograms per microliter being retrieved from the hair discovered at the base of Cheri Jo Bates' right thumb. There is however, no mention of the blood from the alleyway floor. This blood trail could be a combination of blood from the knife and blood from the killer, but the longer the trail extends, the likelier it becomes that it originates from the bloodstream of the murderer.

Assuming that the blood was retrieved along the whole trail to Terracina Drive, it would have been extremely routine forensic work in 1966 to determine the blood group of the submitted samples. Cheri Jo Bates' blood type detailed at autopsy is rare in the USA population. It was AB RhD positive, which accounts for only 3.4% of the American population. Any samples submitted that were not an AB blood group were almost certainly from her killer. However, even if the submitted samples were of the same blood group as Cheri Jo Bates, it still doesn't eliminate the possibility of the samples having originated from her murderer. He may have had the same blood type.

The tail of the blood drops would have indicated the directional movement of the killer towards Terracina Drive (as opposed to away), but should also have revealed which side of the alleyway the killer was favoring as he headed towards Terracina Drive - and the likely location of his parked vehicle (assuming he had one). If he had no vehicle, then it could have told us which side of the city he was heading to reach his residence. The diameter of the blood drops (reducing in size or not) could also tell us whether this was a freshly dripping wound, or the gradually reducing volume of blood falling from a knife blade. If the killer was telling the truth when he stated "I plunged the knife into her and it broke", then it is quite possible there was no knife to be dripping. No broken blade was found at autopsy, so it is perfectly conceivable that the hinge mechanism of the small pocket knife may have given way when striking the back of Cheri Jo Bates.

A female earwitness described "an awful scream between 10:15 pm and 10:45 pm, and then about two minutes of silence, and finally the sound of an old car starting up". If the author of the Confession Letter was really the killer of Cheri Jo Bates, then we can estimate the location of his vehicle, assuming the earwithness was hearing the actual murder take place. By combining the direction of the blood trail to one side of Terracina Drive, with the two minute interval from "scream to vehicle starting up", we can use the details in the Confession Letter to pinpoint fairly accurately the location of his vehicle. 
The Confession Letter stated "She let out a scream once and I kicked her in the head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her and it broke. I then finished the job out cutting her throat". If this is when he "finished the job out" before leaving the scene, then he had two minutes to "kick her in the head, plunge the knife into her, cut her throat" and walk to his waiting vehicle. Allotting about 45 seconds at the murder scene, he has approximately 75 seconds to negotiate the 100 feet to Terracina Drive, and the rest to reach his vehicle. Traveling at an average walking speed of 1.4 meters per second, the 100 feet (30.48 meter) journey would take about 22 seconds, leaving 53 seconds walking time on Terracina Drive. That would mean a vehicle parked 243 feet (74 meters or 81 yards) from the alleyway. Cheri Jo Bates' Volkswagen Beetle was parked 75 yards (68 meters) east of the alleyway, just beyond the library annex. This rough estimate, would place the killer's vehicle only 6 yards (18 feet) behind the vehicle of Cheri Jo Bates (had he exited the alleyway east) - the ideal spot to offer her assistance when her vehicle failed to start - and the near exact location of the Tucker Torpedo (or Studebaker) described in Robert Graysmith's book.       

Two letters were mailed and postmarked February 1st 1988 and February 8th 1988 to McDonald's at 2 Northgate Park, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Both contained the word "attention" written on the envelope, with the first stating "attn. dan r." and the second likely the full name (hence why it is redacted). The February 1st 1988 correspondence had an accompanying hand- printed sheet of paper, likely beginning "dear Dan this is the Zodiac speaking", along with accompanying printed cutouts entitled "CHINESE ZODIAC", and beginning "The Chinese Zodiac..." and "Many Chinese believe..." The February 8th 1988 correspondence had a sheet of graph paper with the hand-printed beginning "This is the Zodiac (speaking)" and accompanying form entitled "McDonald's Profile Change Notice", upon which was the hand-written message "This is shit..."

Q4 Envelope postmarked "CHATTANOOGA, TN 374 PM 1 FEB 1988" bearing the printed address "McDONALDS 2 NORTHGATE PARK CHATTANOOGA TENN. 37343 attn. dan r."

Q1 Envelope postmarked "CHATT_NOOGA, TN 374 PM 8 FEB 1988" bearing the printed address "McDonald's 2 NORTh Gate Park CHattanooga Tenn. 37343 Attention (redacted)".

ALSO SUBMITTED: McDonald's form entitled "FILET-O-FISH/CHICKEN McNUGGETS/PIES Station Observation Checklist G7/G8/G9".

The McDonald's is not present there today and it doesn't appear one was present at this location in 1988 either, but I thought I would drop down to street level on Google maps and take a peek at 2 Northgate Park, Chattanooga. Amazingly, this is the view that confronted me (although when this logo was adopted I am unsure). 119 miles separates this location and 1611 Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia, where another alleged Zodiac communication was mailed on March 8th 1981 to the television station WXIA-TV "11 Alive", claiming involvement in the Atlanta Child Murders. 

I wanted to find who the target of one (probably both) of the letters was, regarding the address of "attn. dan r.". After a little digging it was discovered that the CEO of Greenleaf Center, Inc./North Georgia, a Foreign Profit Corporation with a last annual registration year of 1988, was Dan B. Page. The address was 1 Northgate Park, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

"According to public records DAN PAGE B is connected with one company - Greenleaf Center, Inc./North Georgia . This person is appointed in Greenleaf Center, Inc./North Georgia as a CEO. This company was incorporated about thirty-seven years, ago in October of 1982 in Chattanooga. The company is listed as Withdrawn in Georgia companies records". The address listed here is 2 Northgate Park, Chattanooga, Tennessee.

Greenleaf Center, Inc./North Georgia is a Georgia Foreign Profit Corporation filed on October 14, 1982. The company's filing status is listed as Withdrawn and its File Number is J251556. The Registered Agent on file for this company is R. Lindsay Shuff and is located at 500 Greenleaf Circle, Ft Oglethorpe, GA 30742. The company's principal address is 1 Northgate Park Ste 201, Chattanooga, TN 37415-6912. The company has 3 principals on record. The principals are Dianna Gilbert from Chattanooga TN, Page B, Dan from Chattanooga TN, and Lindsay R. Shuff from Chattanooga TN. link

The February 1st 1988 envelope admittedly states "attn. dan r.", but with the dates and address matching, one can only assume that the sender got the middle initial incorrect (unless you know better in comments). We have these communications and the March 8th 1981 "Peachtree" Letter, with a loose Georgia connection, separated by 119 miles.

It is now your job to make the connection between between McDonald's, China and the addressee in question - assuming we have the right person.

The following article will coalesce several pieces of work from 2019 into one cogent story regarding a handful of communications mailed by the Zodiac Killer in 1970. For some, the following will be repetitive, for which I apologize. It will hopefully make the case that the Zodiac Killer was winding down his operations and ultimately revealing the answers to his Z340, Z32 and Z13 ciphers and codes, to which he knew were practically unsolvable without such a prompt. The Zodiac Killer was a narcissistic braggart, who boasted of his exploits and threatened all and sundry with the possibility of more murders and mayhem if his demands were not met, including the claim he had killed far more than could be accounted for. If we applied the same model to his ciphers and codes, we would have expected him to be unable to resist giving us the answers - or at the very least - some clues to break open his puzzles. The notion of a killer keeping deathly silent on the solutions to his codes for up to 50 years, runs contrary to everything we know about the Bay Area murderer during his brief but deadly reign. That is why I don't believe he did.

The story begins with the final thing he wrote on the July 26th 1970 Little List Letter, and finishes just two communications later with the October 27th 1970 Halloween Card. All the answers to his codes were contained in just three short months. The end of the Little List Letter read "PS. The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians and # inches along the radians". The Z32 was the easiest code to crack because the Zodiac Killer just gave us the answer above - the code concerned "Radians and inches along the radians". Why make it any more complicated than it has to be? A code of 29 unique symbols within a total of 32 characters is simply not solvable without a key - and there is insufficient wording on the 13 Hole Postcard, Halloween Card or Los Angeles Letter written in plain English to formulate any such key. The Z32 is even worse than giving us the English alphabet of 26 letters, replacing M with A, W with B and H with C and saying "now solve it". There is no transposition key present in the remaining three communications from October 5th 1970 to March 13th 1971, so if the Zodiac Killer was to be consistent in his inability to resist revealing his deeds, then the only realistic alternative is he gave us all the answers instead.

Not only did the Zodiac Killer give us the answer to the 32 character code on a separate line, he capitalized the first "Radians" to effectively tell us this was the beginning of the solution (he didn't capitalize the second "radians", so why the first). You need look no further than the Paul Stine police report to notice that the hashtag symbol is used in conjunction with a number. The Zodiac Killer by use of an arrow pointer underneath the hashtag, was telling us to replace the hashtag with a number value. The Mount Diablo map scale was 6.4 miles to the inch, so it is probably unsurprising that the "Mt Diablo code would concern inches". In this instance, I have placed the number 5 into place, giving us the answer to the code of "Radians and 5 inches along the radians" (which is 32 letters in length). The reason for 5 inches is self explanatory, because 4 or 6 inches from Mount Diablo to San Francisco would fall into the sea on the east and west side. The San Francisco element will be covered shortly. The Zodiac Killer also gave us a second set of crosshairs (shown below).

This was the first time the Zodiac Killer had ever placed an accentuated zero within his crosshairs alongside the acronym SFPD. This had to be the second clue to the location of the bomb. The hashtag and arrow signified the value of inches required, so this had to signify the radian value. By some massive stroke of luck (almost beyond belief), the bold, black accentuated circle fell over 246 degrees on a compass rose - which is 4 radians and magnetic north (17 degrees in 1970). Therefore, the target of his bomb must have been 4 radians and magnetic north, and 5 inches along the radians. 

All Zodiac's bomb threats were focused towards the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Police Department, so placing this bomb location alongside the acronym SFPD should tell us that the threat was most likely focused toward a police station. By another massive stroke of luck, when we travel 4 radians and 5 inches from Mount Diablo, the target area for the bomb lies right by Ingleside Police Station. Allowing for a degree of flexibility of less than 1%, by the Zodiac Killer rounding off his radians and inches, along with the black circle diameter, no other San Francisco police station comes close. However, we need to find a location where a school bus would be traveling from north to south (with the sun to the east), that has an embankment on the right side (as displayed on the April 20th 1970 bomb diagram), with easy and covert access to that embankment, and within a few hundred feet from Ingleside Police Station. The Zodiac Killer certainly wouldn't have wanted to attract attention by parking on the road itself, but by accessing the incline from a secondary location - likely at the top of the embankment - he could achieve this task in relative anonymity. Fortunately for us, that location sits only 230 feet from Ingleside Police Station. The perfect location for the Zodiac Killer to target a school bus and thumb his nose at the San Francisco Police Department, with covert access to the top of the embankment via the car park of San Francisco City College.             

Then came the 13 Hole Postcard punched in the style of a 'Dick Tracy' code with a "red crucifix decoder". What are the chances that if we arranged the 13 holes into the shape of a cross and place it over the midsection of the 340 cipher both horizontally and vertically, it would reveal the wording "paradice" and "slaves"? Then, what are the chances that the Zodiac Killer would write "paradice" and "slaves" in his next communication in a cross formation on the card, accompanied by "sorry no cipher" in a cross formation on the inside of the Halloween Card envelope? - totaling three cross formations - but supposedly, all created for absolutely no reason whatsoever in just two communications. Isn't it more believable they were created for purpose. The Zodiac Killer could easily have written "sorry no cipher" just the once, but deliberately fashioned it this way to tell us that the 340 character cipher was not a cipher after all. It was simply a design of "paradice" and "slaves" as exhibited by the Halloween Card. Throw in a few bigrams, pivots and 'corrected sixth line', and hopefully it will look convincing. 

All these clues from the back end of the Little List Letter to the Halloween Card giving us the literal answer to both the Z340 and Z32 in "paradice" and "slaves", and "Radians and 5 inches along the radians". Could either the 13 Hole Postcard or Halloween Card give us the answer to the Z13 as well? Again, totally unsolvable because of its limited number of characters, the Zodiac Killer could either keep quiet for up to fifty years or give us the answer.

From a previous article: On January 29th 1970, the Yellow Cab Company put up a thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of the Zodiac Killer. In addition, the Teamsters Union which represents the Yellow Cab Company were reported in the San Francisco Chronicle to be considering offering a further reward on February 8th 1970 in the case of Paul Stine and Charles Jarman (another taxicab murder victim). The April 20th 1970 letter gave us the code and was immediately followed by "I am mildly cerous as to how much money you have on my head now". The October 5th 1970 postcard gave us the possible solution of "Fk, I'm crackproof" and was immediately followed by "What is the price tag now". These are the only two communications in which the Zodiac Killer asked the police the price of his capture. These two communications not only had a code and an answer that fitted the code, but both were followed by the exact same question. When the Zodiac Killer was designing his 13 Hole Postcard, it is very likely he had at his disposal a copy of his original April 20th 1970 letter, or the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper cutting below, to which he was now supplying the answer. This may have been the trigger that influenced him to repeat the phrase "how much money you have on my head now" into the very similar "What is the price tag now". The Zodiac Killer, in essence, had inadvertently bound both communications together through phraseology, as well as code and solution.   

The Zodiac Killer introduction would now give us his name (albeit his initials) in absence of his full name. It would also read fluently as a sentence, as follows: "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is Fk, I'm crackproof". Nobody realistically believed he was going to supply his full name, but this way he satisfies the promise in a restricted format. Two communications mailed nearly six months apart, with a solution that satisfies the code, as well as a satisfactory introduction to the code - and both followed by the same question.    

This isn't a case of dragging wording from the entire Zodiac collection of cards and letters, but using just the two crosshairs of the Little List Letter, followed by the 13 Hole Postcard and Halloween Card. The bold, black circle and "PS. The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians and # inches along the radians" to answer the Z32. The 13 holes, red cross, "paradice" and "slaves", and "sorry no cipher" to answer the Z340. And finally, "Fk, I'm crackproof" to give us a shorthanded version of his name, while still retaining his anonymity. The alternative is that the codes are genuine, the designs on the 13 Hole Postcard and Halloween Card are devoid of any purposeful meaning, and the big-headed, braggart called Zodiac, kept his lips 'butoned' for however many years afterwards.  

It is clear that everything contained in the November 29th 1966 Confession Letter was harvested from the newspapers, and whoever created the typed letter was deliberately dragging orchestrated words from the newspapers into their narrative. Below I have used one particular article to demonstrate how the author used superfluous and unnecessary verbiage to flesh out the Confession Letter and convince us they were the killer of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966. 

The author begins by ladening their introduction with "young and beautiful" and "beautiful blond" just like the newspapers, in order to build the narrative of believability. The author then describes the disabling of the Volkswagen Beetle by disconnecting the "middle wire from the distributor" - another name for the coil wire described in the newspaper publication shown below. This was a key ingredient to convince investigators they were genuine, despite the fact they had approximately four weeks to uncover what the coil wire was. Quote from Liveaboutdotcom: "The ignition coil is the unit that takes your relatively weak battery power and turns it into a spark powerful enough to ignite fuel vapor. Inside ​a traditional ignition coil are two coils of wire on top of each other. These coils are called windings. One winding is called the primary winding, the other is the secondary. The primary winding gets the juice together to make a spark and the secondary sends it out the door to the distributor. You'll see three contacts on an ignition coil unless it has an external plug, in which case the contacts are hidden inside the case. The large contact in the middle is where the coil wire goes (the wire that links the coil to the distributor cap}. There is also a 12V+ wire that connects to a positive power source. The third contact communicates information to the rest of the car, like the tachometer". link.

The Confession letter continues with a vague reference to their car being down the street, which has been gleaned from the anonymous female earwitness account in the newspaper, telling us they heard a "car driving away". This anonymous earwitness account was further harvested for another part of the story, where the murderer apparently kicked Cheri Jo Bates in the head to stop her screaming, stating "she let out a scream once and I kicked her head to shut her up". The female earwitness described "a muffled scream" - almost as though it had been curtailed by a kick in the head.

An appeal for the weapon to be found was broadcasted by police almost immediately, describing it as a small knife or pocket knife, but it was never found. Why would a proclaimed big, brave, boasting killer add the phrase "with a small knife at her throat", if they were not using this to confirm the size of the knife described by police? The addition of the word "small" was totally unnecessary and devoid of any good reason, other than to convince the reader of the Confession Letter they were in fact the killer. If you read the multiple newspaper publications regarding the murder of Cheri Jo Bates, the overwhelming consensus is of a young woman "stabbed in the back, with her throat slashed", despite the fact that the autopsy showed far more wounds on the young woman's body, indicative of a prolonged and violent struggle between Cheri Jo Bates and her assailant. The Confession Letter just parroted these articles, stating "I plunged the knife into her, then finished the job out cutting her throat". The plunging of the knife was referencing the stab in the back, and the cutting of her throat just mimicked her throat being slashed. The fact that the author knew nothing about the intricacies of the crime was evident when they claimed "she went willingly, didn't put up a struggle and went to the slaughter like a lamb" - all of which were clearly untrue, and corroborated by not only the autopsy findings, but the freshly churned up driveway alongside the library.  

However, the most important feature of the newspapers at the time, was the reporting of the anonymous call from a female earwitness who described "an awful scream between 10.15 pm and 10.45 pm, and then about two minutes of silence, and finally the sound of an old car starting up". This earwithness was described as anonymous in several newspaper publications.

The author of the Confession Letter claimed they made a call to the police or newspaper. However, the Riverside Police Department and the Riverside Press-Enterprise could not confirm any phone call made to them by the claimed killer of Cheri Jo Bates. Zodiac Killer Facts wrote "Police could not confirm a phone call to the police or the local newspaper, The Press-Enterprise. The letter was considered most suspicious. Kinkead offered a disturbing conclusion: “The person who wrote the confession is aware of facts about the homicide that only the killer would know. There is no doubt that the person who wrote the confession letter is our homicide suspect.” There has been no confirmation or admission that the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates made any phone calls subsequent to the crime, and as shown above, there is no evidence whatsoever that the killer and Confession Letter author are the same person. In fact, there is no evidence the author of the letter was even a man. Running the wording through many software programs has comprehensively indicated female authorship.

The only phone call we know of, was the anonymous call by a female the following day, describing screams being heard nearby. So, was the author of the Confession Letter when stating "Yes I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning" referring to this call - and pretending they were the anonymous caller as some form of practical joke. If so, then they would be claiming they were female by association. However, what they would not have known, was the extended version of this 'anonmous call' story, elaborated upon in the Inside Detective magazine on January 1969.

Other detectives interviewed residents of a nearby apartment building, A girl tenant in an apartment only a few doors from the dirt driveway where the body was discovered, told the detectives that she heard screaming and yelling about 10:30 pm. "Then I heard a muted scream, and then a loud sound like an old car being started up - this was about two minutes after I heard the first scream", the girl informant said. However, the girl admitted she had not called police that night to inform them of the sounds of apparent violence she had heard.  Inside Detective, 1969. 

The woman/girl was not anonymous because detectives had interviewed her in person at her apartment, but to any newspaper reader in 1966 they could have been forgiven for believing the woman was simply phoning police while remaining anonymous and unknown. Was the author of the Confession Letter, as they had done for all the details typed above, simply taken this "anonymous telephone caller" from the newspapers and claimed "Yes I did make that call to you also"? - and why the Riverside Police and Riverside Press-Enterprise recollect no phone call being received by the killer. If this were the case, then the author of the Confession Letter is effectively admitting they are a female, and certainly not the Zodiac Killer. If the author of the Confession Letter was actually the murderer of Cheri Jo Bates, then the young Riverside City College student could conceivably have been murdered by another woman - a story that I doubt many would believe.

If the Zodiac Killer was a resident of Vallejo or its surrounding areas, then a murder in the northwest corner of San Francisco would be the perfect choice for a number of reasons. With a vehicle positioned alongside the Presidio Park, a murder such as the one perpetrated on Paul Stine on October 11th 1969, would provide an escape from the big city in a matter of minutes via Highway 101 and the Golden Gate Bridge. If anything goes awry, the murderer has the added advantage of a wooded park for momentary respite from responding law enforcement. This is the one confirmed Zodiac attack where the killer would direct the victim to the scene of the crime and thereby control the location of his murder. Dr. Kim Rossmo stated "The San Francisco murder differs significantly from the Zodiac's other crimes. Up to this point he was hunting in locations that had a good probability of containing his desired victims. Target selection was a function of area, not of an individual. However, it is unlikely the Zodiac was successful in all his searches; serial killers typically engage in extensive hunting activities, and for every attack there are many unsuccessful search attempts. In San Francisco, however, the Zodiac controlled the situation through his selection of victim type. The need for such control could be indicative of the distance the Zodiac had to travel to the crime site. Criminals who travel longer distances to offend are less likely to use uncertain target selection techniques". The notion of a killer who lived a matter of blocks from the intersection of Washington and Cherry, while not impossible, presents a greater risk in a number of ways. Committing such a daring murder in your own neighborhood, possibly minutes from your residence, and hoping everything goes to plan without being spotted, is not the ideal choice after previously committing three successful crimes with a comfortable buffer zone around your residence. Why now bring your murderous exploits to the doorstep of your home?  

There is every chance this murder was planned meticulously, from the standpoint of a waiting vehicle and immediate separation from San Francisco. The trip sheet of Paul Stine had a destination of Washington and Maple, but the taxicab was discovered one block further west at the intersection of Washington and Cherry. The movement of the killer, backtracking east along Jackson Street towards the Jackson and Maple intersection, strongly indicated the initial murder site had been pencilled in for Washington and Maple. If we compare the last three Washington intersections of Cherry, Maple and Spruce, and swivel Google maps around each intersection, it is clearly noticeable that this is the best choice from the perspective of a killer keen to avoid eyewitnesses. This may have indicated a level of forethought and planning.

The Zodiac Killer was last seen running into Julius Khan playground by eyewitnesses at Spruce Street. Therefore, a murder committed at Washington and Maple would allow the Zodiac Killer a walking distance of just 86 meters northwards, before heading east along Jackson Street and out of sight from the crime scene. He now has 131 meters to Spruce Street and the seclusion of Presidio Park and Julius Khan playground. This allows him three phases of separation: [1] Up Maple and east on Jackson [2] Into the park to reach his vehicle, and [3] Into his vehicle and over the Golden Gate Bridge. However, something happened as the taxicab approached the intersection of Washington and Maple, that forced a change of plan and Paul Stine to travel one block further west to Washington and Cherry. The reason for this switch could be manyfold, such as pedestrians at the desired location or occupied vehicles in the vicinity of Washington and Maple. Despite all the best laid plans, the Zodiac Killer was still reliant on the timing of the taxicab approaching a populous area with any number of distractions.

In his letter to the San Francisco Chronicle two days after the murder, the Zodiac Killer began his communication "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". By his statement of "last night", it is clear he is preparing this letter on Sunday, October 12th 1969. The Zodiac Killer may have scouted the area in advance, highlighting Washington and Maple as his preferred kill site, but this doesn't necessarily mean he knew every street in the area by name. He could have checked a map the following day and noted that his murder occurred at Washington and Cherry, but it didn't appear that this was the case or of high priority to him.

The newspaper headlines the following day were obviously unaware that this was a Zodiac crime, when the San Francisco Chronicle wrote on October 12th "A Yellow Cab driver was found shot to death in his cab last night, the victim of an apparent robbery attempt in Presidio Heights". The article continued, stating "Police said three youngsters saw a scuffle near the cab, which was stopped on Washington Street, near Cherry Street, about 10 pm". Although this should have told the Zodiac Killer the location of the murder site, we are not in a position to determine what time he prepared and sealed this letter with respect to the San Francisco Chronicle publication. If he sealed it before the article's release, he may have been unfamiliar with the road he traveled up after leaving the taxicab. I don't suppose noting down the street name after the murder was high on his priority list. If the letter was prepared after the newspaper publication and he had read it, then writing "I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington St + Maple St last night" could have been a deliberate choice by the Zodiac Killer, signifying that he had knowledge of the destination contained within the trip sheet. There is no reason to conclude his writing of  "by Washington St + Maple St" was evidence of his unfamiliarity with the general area he was operating. 

The best chance of catching the Zodiac Killer is by re-examining all the evidence from his four crime scenes and hopefully extracting useable DNA from his communications mailed from 1969 to 1971. Unfortunately in recent years, despite the bloodstained shirt piece of the victim being mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle only two days after the murder, a select number of people still argue this murder could have been perpetrated by a hoaxer or group of nefarious individuals. So much so, this unknown third party decided that they should add a crime to the Zodiac portfolio that in no way resembled any previous Zodiac crimes. They were obviously aware of the murder and robbery attempt of Paul Stine, and thought they should gain access to the victim and surreptitiously tear a piece of bloodstained shirt from his body, before seeking out the trip sheet and noting the Washington and Maple destination. Or, they overheard Inspector David Toschi shouting out to all and sundry the contents of the trip sheet at the corner of Washington and Cherry, before sneaking onto the ambulance or creeping into the morgue unnoticed. Then finally, mimicking the Zodiac Killer's handwriting and threatening schoolchildren. The concept of creating well-thought-out counter narratives to the perceived narrative is a healthy one, but creating counter narratives for no other reason than you can, is counterproductive to ever pushing this case forward.

October 11th 2019 will mark the 50th anniversary of the murder of Paul Stine with little progress or resolution in sight. One day in the future the mask of the Zodiac Killer will hopefully be removed - the Zodiac circus will stop - and the traveling clowns will not be required to entertain the crowd anymore.

In a previous article we compared a postcard from the Symbionese Liberation Army 'Hearnap' FBI files threatening the daughter of President Richard Nixon, to the Citizen Card purportedly mailed by the Zodiac Killer. The composition of the Citizen Card, expressing consternation and concern at the running of advertisements for the Badlands movie and signing off with "A citizen", was compared to the Richard Nixon Postcard with respect to "A concerned citizen". This, coupled with similarities between the February 3rd 1974 SLA Letter and a communication dated February 10th 1974 from the Symbionese Liberation Army, led to the conclusion that neither the Citizen Card or SLA Letter were penned by the Zodiac Killer. This has been questioned, leading to speculation that the Zodiac Killer may in fact have been responsible for both the Richard Nixon Postcard mailed on May 23rd 1974 and the Citizen Card mailed on May 8th 1974.     

Just prior to these two communications the Symbionese Liberation mailed a similar threat to Randolph Hearst stating "It now appears to SLA that he would rather sacrifice his daughters life than to print the truth to the American people". The message finished with "We wish C.B.S, A.B.C. or N.B.C. would dedicate one hour of national network time to the founder of C.C.S.D. so the man could deliver a message to the people that could save the nation from political disaster and economical destruction". The man they wanted to be given air time was Roland L. Hayes from the corporation of Concerned Citizens for Social Development (C.C.S.D) - and included his writings. This man clearly inspired the Symbionese Liberation Army with his message of fighting for the people against corporate greed and the likes of Randolph Hearst. Is it therefore surprising that several weeks later, a postcard was mailed to President Richard Nixon invoking a threat on his daughter and signing off with "A concerned citizen for freedom"? As can be seen in the excerpts below the SLA directive, Roland L. Hayes titled many of his sections "concerned citizens for social development" and subtitled one "The President", detailing President Richard Nixon on more than one occasion.

When we look at the wording on the Richard Nixon Postcard "Dear King, We know where Patty Hearst is. But wait till we get your daughter. A concerned citizen for freedom", the comparisons can be noted. With the Citizen Card sandwiched in between the Dear Mr. Chancellor Letter and the "Dear King" Richard Nixon Postcard, we have more cause for concern about the validity of the May 8th 1974 communication as a Zodiac Killer offering. It was directing its consternation at the running of ads by the San Francisco Chronicle and Examiner - two newspapers previously highlighted with ire by the Symbionese Liberation Army because of their connection to Randolph Hearst.

To view the entire FBI documents on this matter, visit page 400 of the Hearnap files, part 36 of 42.

Here is another interesting feature, discovered by investigators written on the apartment wall of a previously occupied Symbionese Liberation Army residence. The discovery would have been prior to the July 8th 1974 Red Phantom Letter, signing off with "the Red Phantom (red with rage)". The message scrawled on the wall began "Every day my rage grows fonder of the poison I pack into the heads of my bullets". But did this rage last until July 8th 1974?

The 13 Symbol Cipher is simply too short for any meaningful decryption without a key or the answer. It is certainly possible to arrive at the correct solution using a key provided by Zodiac, but then you have to prove that the key you have found is the correct one, and your implemented methodology is plausible. The best way to find the solution to the Z13, as it was for the 32 Symbol Cipher, is to do absolutely no work whatsoever and just let the Zodiac Killer give us the exact answer. On this occasion, the Zodiac Killer designed the code and waited nearly six months to supply us with a verbatim solution.

The first thing to examine in the 13 Symbol Cipher is the circled triple 8 configuration. This is the feature that stands out in the code the most and where one would envisage the answer residing. Identify the meaning of the three eights and in what context they were chosen, and half the battle may be won. We can add the numbers up to create birth years and ages, but without instruction to do so, it could be argued that the idea rests in our head and not the Zodiac's. Therefore, we shall take the number 888 as one complete entity.

In Christian numerology, the number 888 represents Jesus, or sometimes more specifically Christ the Redeemer. This representation may be justified either through gematria, by counting the letter values of the Greek transliteration of Jesus' name, or as an opposing value to 666, the number of the beast. Wikipedia. This could indicate a Christian element to the code, especially when we consider the Zodiac's Celtic Cross, a form of Christian cross featuring a nimbus or ring that emerged in Ireland and Britain in the Early Middle Ages. The shape, usually decorated with interlace and other motifs from Insular art, became popular for funerary monuments and other uses. Then we have the tenth character in the code, likened to an upside down Aries symbol. However, when we consider the above and the Zodiac Killer's musings of an afterlife, another possibility emerges. Christians adopted the anchor as a symbol of hope in future existence because the anchor was regarded in ancient times as a symbol of safety. For Christians, Christ is the unfailing hope of all who believe in him: Saint Peter, Saint Paul, and several of the early Church Fathers speak in this sense. The Epistle to the Hebrews 6:19-20 for the first time connects the idea of hope with the symbol of the anchor. Wikipedia. This effectively ties five of Zodiac's characters under the Christian banner and the premise of an afterlife.   

On January 29th 1970, the Yellow Cab Company put up a thousand dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of the Zodiac Killer. In addition, the Teamsters Union which represents the Yellow Cab Company were reported in the San Francisco Chronicle to be considering offering a further reward on February 8th 1970 in the case of Paul Stine and Charles Jarman (another taxicab murder victim). The April 20th 1970 letter gave us the code and was immediately followed by "I am mildly cerous as to how much money you have on my head now". The October 5th 1970 postcard gave us the possible solution of "Fk, I'm crackproof" and was immediately followed by "What is the price tag now". These are the only two communications in which the Zodiac Killer asked the police the price of his capture. These two communications not only had a code and an answer that fitted the code, but both were followed by the exact same question. When the Zodiac Killer was designing his 13 Hole Postcard, it is very likely he had at his disposal a copy of his original April 20th 1970 letter, or the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper cutting below, to which he was now supplying the answer. This may have been the trigger that influenced him to repeat the phrase "how much money you have on my head now" into the very similar "What is the price tag now". The Zodiac Killer, in essence, had inadvertently bound both communications together through phraseology, as well as code and solution.   

The Zodiac Killer introduction would now give us his name (albeit his initials) in absence of his full name. It would also read fluently as a sentence, as follows: "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is Fk, I'm crackproof". Nobody realistically believed he was going to supply his full name, but this way he satisfies the promise in a restricted format. Two communications mailed nearly six months apart, with a solution that satisfies the code, as well as a satisfactory introduction to the code - and both followed by the same question.  

THE ANSWER TO THE 32 SYMBOL CODE - STRAIGHT FROM THE HORSE'S MOUTH

This has been covered before, but I just wanted to expand in a little more detail without pinpointing a particular location.

How embarassing is the notion of a 50-year-old unsolved cipher, that we were given the answer to in just thirty one days? - and an answer that came straight from the horse's mouth. The 32 Symbol Cipher solution was served to us on a silver platter in the July 26th 1970 Little List Letter using the Zodiac crosshairs and six words. 

When the Button Letter was mailed on June 26th 1970, the Zodiac Killer gave us a map of San Francisco and Vicinity with his crosshairs centered over Mount Diablo, stating "the map coupled with this code will tell you where the bomb is set." If we were to find a perceived bomb, it is fairly obvious we have to travel a certain angle and distance from the top of Mount Diablo to find the location. Therefore, the 32 symbol code, if it served any purpose whatsoever, had to contain a measurement in the form of degrees and distance. The map scale was 6.4 miles to the inch - so that will be the distance the Zodiac Killer has to employ from Mount Diablo to make any sense. The degrees he used was radians, because he told us so in the July 26th 1970 Little List Letter. The Zodiac stated "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians". He is actually telling us that the 32 symbol code contains radians and inches in the solution.

"P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns (is about ) (has to do with) Radians + # inches along the radians". Any cipher expert such as David Oranchak, or quite frankly, any Joe Bloggs such as myself, will tell you that a 32 symbol code with only three repeating characters is unsolvable without a key. The Zodiac Killer was certainly no muppet - and clearly knew this when he concocted this jumble of random characters. But he gave us the key a mere 31 days later in the form of an arrow and a hashtag. He even gave us the answer of "Radians and # inches along the radians" on a separate line to distinguish the very fact. He then began the first "Radians" with a capital letter to emphasize this. We just had to key in the number. The symbol # is most commonly known as the number sign, The symbol is described as the "number" character in an 1853 treatise on bookkeeping, and its double meaning is described in a bookkeeping text from 1880. The instruction manual of the Blickensderfer model 5 typewriter (c. 1896) appears to refer to the symbol as the "number mark". Some early-20th-century U.S. sources refer to it as the "number sign", although this could also refer to the numero sign. A 1917 manual distinguishes between two uses of the sign: "number (written before a figure)"; and "pounds (written after a figure)". Mainstream use in the United States is as follows: when it prefixes a number, it is read as "number", as in "a #2 pencil" (indicating "a number-two pencil"). The one exception is with the # key on a phone, which is always referred to as the "pound key" or "pound". Thus instructions to dial an extension such as #77 are always read as "pound seven seven". Wikipedia.

All of Zodiac's bomb threats were mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper - even detailing the murder of San Francisco police officer Brian McDonnell on February 16th 1970, who suffered devastating and sadly fatal injuries when a bomb packed with fence staples exploded on an outside ledge of Park Police Station in the Upper Haight neighborhood of San Francisco. The Zodiac constantly signed off his communications with the barbed acronym SFPD = 0 and threatened "there is more glory in killing a cop than a cid because a cop can shoot back". If that wasn't enough, the Phillips 66 Road Map was labelled San Francisco and Vicinity.  Based on a map scale of 6.4 inches to the mile, only 5 inches would land in San Francisco (4 and 6 inches would fall into the sea, other than Treasure Island). Fortunately, the Zodiac Killer gave us the angle from Mount Diablo, courtesy of his bold, black circle on the Little List crosshairs. It fell 4 radians (and magnetic north) clockwise from his arrowed pointer, around the clock face he provided. Radians are usually measured counter-clockwise, but the Zodiac Killer placed the bold circle exactly 4 radians "set to Mag.N" clockwise.

The answer was now extremely simple. All we had to do was insert a number in place of the hashtag, shown by the big flashing arrow pointing us in the right direction. The hashtag conveniently preceded "inches", so it's here we will slot in the number 5 - and bingo - we have our answer to the devilishly difficult 32 Symbol Cipher: "Radians + 5 inches along the radians" or "Radians and 5 inches along the radians".  By some quirk of fate, this phrase with the addition of the number 5, just happens to be exactly 32 characters in length. What an absolute criminal mastermind the Zodiac Killer was, creating a code that we only had to add one character to. As with all the best puzzles, the answer is usually hidden in plain sight. There is a possibility that the code reads "4 radians and 5 inches along the radian", but because the Zodiac Killer inserted one hashtag, it is more likely this is the only addition required.        

In the Little List communication it is apparent that Zodiac Killer gave us two prominent crosshairs: [1] with the accentuated black circle with SFPD=0 alongside, and [2] the extra large crosshairs with "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians + # inches along the radians" scrawled across it. Attaching these important additions was clearly done for purpose, thereby informing us of the radian value required, and the correlation between the crosshairs on the Phillips 66 Map and the measurements of radians and inches. The importance of a second set of crosshairs and their position, regarding the solution of the 340 cipher on November 8th 1969 could be significant in that case also.

With 29 unique characters in a 32 character code, any correlation between the characters and alphabetical solution is going to be minimal. What we do have in the solution above, is no word running from one line to the next, with the letter C beginning the word radians at the start and end of the code. As with any cipher, the Zodiac Killer had the opportunity to provide us with a key in later communications, which he effectively did for cipher 2, 3 and 4 when he gave us the answers literally word for word. What we have to consider are the three "cryptic messages" he gave us in three consecutive communications from July 26th 1970 to October 27th 1970. The Zodiac Killer was giving us the solutions to the ciphers before his campaign ended, albeit he wanted us to put in a modicum of effort. He told us on July 26th 1970 that the Mount Diablo code concerns "radians and 5 inches along the radians" verbatim. He then gave us the cryptic "Fk I'm crackproof" that fortunately slots nicely into the 13 Symbol Cipher in a cyclical nature. And finally, he gave us "paradice and slaves" in a cross formation (17X17) that mimicked the 340 cipher formation exactly (adding sorry no cipher in the identical formation on the Halloween envelope inner). How can three consecutive "cryptic messages" just happen to seamlessly fall into each cipher with no effort required?

We can place thousands of names into the 13 Symbol Cipher and then attempt to justify why this is correct by providing additional information on the subject. There have been hundreds of "solutions" to the 340 cipher, when we know only one can realistically be correct. This demonstrates the subjectivity of the 340 cipher to conform to what you had already decided upon before the decoding process began. You have the predetermined answer in your head and work towards that goal to the exclusion of all others. Our own biases will govern the answer we require. The 32 Symbol Cipher is too character variable to be decoded using standard cryptographic techniques, and therefore can literally give rise to an infinite number of possibilities, requiring only three characters to match. What better way to solve the ciphers than straight from the horse's mouth. The Zodiac Killer supplied us with 32 characters in the Little List Letter, 14 characters in the 13 Hole Postcard (that began and ended in the same letter), and 13 characters in the Halloween Card - all of which required no 'square pegs in round holes' technique to land unadulterated into every cipher. The notion of a braggart remaining tight-lipped about his ciphers, while still staggering around the streets of America some 50 years later, deserves a book all by itself.  

THE CODE SOLUTIONS BY ZODIAC

In a series of articles it has been shown that the Zodiac Killer was extremely unlikely to have reappeared in 1974 firing off four communications - of which three were primarily aimed at the feature film industry, newspaper advertising and columnists - with the other referring to the SLA directly. If this was the Zodiac Killer, then it seems he had suddenly become a film critic, calling for the removal of advertisements for the Badlands movie and the cancelling of the San Francisco Chronicle's Count Marco column. The Zodiac Killer was suddenly objecting to murder glorification, the very thing he perpetrated to propel his pseudonym onto the pages of the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald. He was perfectly comfortable stabbing and shooting defenceless women in the back, but was now furious with the male chauvinist Count Marco for his ridicule of women. The claim that the Zodiac Killer had now apparently turned his life around and was repenting for his sins is an extremely difficult argument to sell, when we consider that a far better option exists with the left-wing militant organization of the Symbionese Liberation Army. This group fought for the rights of women, the oppressed and the hungry, albeit with a misguided view of how to achieve it. Their disdain for the Hearst Corporation, the capitalist media and the greedy corporations was evident in everything they wrote - and saturated throughout the four communications mailed from January 29th to July 8th of 1974. In a previous article, inspired by the findings of Rubislaw32, we showed a 5/23/74 communication that threatened the daughter of President Richard Nixon and signed off with "a concerned citizen", postmarked only 15 days after the "Citizen Card" purportedly mailed by the Zodiac Killer.    

It has been argued that the Symbionese Liberation Army mimicked the Zodiac Killer many times, but equally, some of their communications may have inadvertently been mistaken for the Bay Area murderer. Several members of the group even mimicked the Zodiac introduction of "This is the Zodiac Speaking" in a series of taped communications spanning February through June of 1974, with a barrage of threats toward Randolph A. Hearst, the newspapers and various corporate entities

On February 8th 1974, Donald David DeFreeze sent Taped Comminique No.4, beginning "My name is Cinque and to my comrades I am known as Cin. I am a Black man and a representative of Black people. I hold the rank of General Field Marshal in the United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army. Today I have received an order from the Symbionese War Council, the Court of the People, to the effect I am ordered to convey the following message in behalf of the SLA and to insert a taped word of comfort and verification that Patricia Campbell Hearst is alive and safe". This was one of many taped messages from members of the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974.  

The communique continued, protesting the Hearst family and their profiteering from murder and suffering, primarily through the newspapers of the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. Not surprising then, that on May 8th 1974, the San Francisco Chronicle should receive the "Citizen Card" stating "Sirs -- I would like to expression my consternation concerning your poor taste + lack of sympathy for the public, as evidenced by your running of the ads for the movie "Badlands", featuring the blurb: "In 1959 most people were killing time. Kit + Holly were killing people." In light of recent events, this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best (not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable) why don't you show some concern for public sensibilities + cut the ad?  A citizen". Followed only 15 days later from another "concerned citizen", threatening the White House of Richard Nixon, who is equally highlighted in the taped communiques of the Symbionese Liberation Army.  

Although the Hearst Corporation were not directly involved with the Exorcist and Badlands movies, the disdain for their involvement in "propaganda films for both national and international use" is apparent and relevant. when we consider the mocking nature of the Exorcist Letter towards the film on January 29th 1974, and the concern over the Badlands movie and its murder glorification in the newspapers through advertising on May 8th 1974. This is further bolstered when we consider the confrontation between Orson Welles and Randolph Hearst with regard to the "Citizen Kane" film (released on May 8th 1941 in Los Angeles), with Randolph Hearst demanding that the newspapers "cut the ads" for the film after becoming aware the movie was depicting him as the central character. The May 8th 1974 Citizen Card combined all the elements of "cutting ads", Randolph Hearst, Citizen Kane, "murder glorification" and the San Francisco Chronicle under one neat banner - and all referenced in the taped communiques of the Symbionese Liberation Army, spanning not only the Citizen Card, but encompassing all 1974 communications thought to be from the Zodiac Killer  

Then came the spoken introductions to some of the taped Symbionese Liberation Army messages. Was this further proof that the Symbionese Liberation Army were mimicking the Zodiac Killer, at a time when the newspapers were replete with column inches speculating the return of the Zodiac Killer?  

In previous articles I have attempted to show that the February 3rd 1974 SLA Letter was mailed by the Symbionese Liberation Army, along with the Citizen Card and Red Phantom Letter. However, the Exorcist Letter mailed on January 29th 1974 (five days earlier) is difficult to ascertain whether it was mailed by the Zodiac Killer or the left-wing militant group. The SLA Letter stated "Dear Mr Editor, Did you know that the initials SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) spell "sla", an old Norse word meaning "kill". a friend". Many have argued that the author of this correspondence incorrectly attributed the word "kill" to "sla" in Old Norse - but this is not true. 

Sla in Old Norse can be inferred as "kill", to which the author of this communication claimed. Sla in Old Norse means "to strike" or "to smite". The archaic use of the word "smite" as shown by the Merriam-Webster dictionary, defines "smite" as to kill or severely injure. In Wiktionary it is shown as the ability to strike down or kill with deadly force. So (in archaic usage like Old Norse) "sla" means "smite", and "smite" is used as "kill". Here is a PDF of Old Norse from York University, compiled by Ross G. Arthur. This will confirm that the author of the SLA Letter was correct all along. The author didn't write "Dear Mr Editor, Did you know that the initials SLA (Symbionese Liberation Army) spell "sla", an old Norse word with a direct translation to "kill". a friend". They used the word "meaning", which is something that it expresses or represents - and "sla" can represent or express the word "kill" through "smite". The whole communication was dedicated to highlighting the word "kill" through Old Norse.

Old Norse was a North Germanic language that was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements from about the 9th to the 13th centuries. The Proto-Norse language developed into Old Norse by the 8th century, and Old Norse began to develop into the modern North Germanic languages in the mid- to late 14th century, ending the language phase known as Old Norse. These dates, however, are not absolute, since written Old Norse is found well into the 15th century. Old Norse was divided into three dialects: Old West Norse, Old East Norse, and Old Gutnish. Old West and East Norse formed a dialect continuum, with no clear geographical boundary between them. For example, Old East Norse traits were found in eastern Norway, although Old Norwegian is classified as Old West Norse, and Old West Norse traits were found in western Sweden. Most speakers spoke Old East Norse in what is present day Denmark and Sweden. Old Gutnish, the more obscure dialectal branch, is sometimes included in the Old East Norse dialect due to geographical associations. It developed its own unique features and shared in changes to both other branches. Inscriptions have become synonymous with Runes. Wikipedia.

If the Symbionese Liberation Army were the architects of the SLA Letter, then the whitewashed symbols of the Exorcist Letter from the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper on January 31st 1974 would only be known to the designer of the SLA Letter, If those symbols also highlighted the word "kill" or the verb "to kill", we could conclude the SLA Letter was simply the answer to the Exorcist Letter. There have been several examples of people trying to compare runic symbols to the Halloween Card and Asian style characters to the Exorcist Letter. Kevin Robert Brooks, an avid Zodiac researcher, used neither in decoding the Exorcist Letter to spell the words "To Kill", and thereby tying the January 29th and February 3rd communications into one neat bundle (shown below).  

Bearing in mind the Old Norse element of the SLA Letter, I thought I would make a provisory attempt at looking for a runic connection to the Exorcist Letter that complimented Kevin Robert Brooks solution. There is an eastern Rhaetian language that used runic symbols. It is clear that in the centuries leading up to Roman imperial times, the Rhaetians had at least come under Etruscan influence, as the Rhaetic inscriptions are written in what appears to be a northern variant of the Etruscan alphabet. The ancient Roman sources mention the Rhaetic people as being reputedly of Etruscan origin, so there may at least have been some ethnic Etruscans who had settled in the region by that time. In the diagram below I have taken the Rhaetian symbols and their corresponding English letters to spell the combined wording T'Kill.

The letters K, I and L mimic the symbols used by Kevin Robert Brooks to form the word "kill", and the exclamation type symbol is used to form "T'Kil", thereby phonetically creating the sound "To Kill" using runic symbols (running from left to right on the Exorcist Letter). This last section is not claiming an answer in the slightest, just searching for a correlation between ancient or archaic characters in keeping with Old Norse from the following communication.

Nikki Alexandra Benedict (14) had left her friend Kathie Gomski's house in Halper Road, Poway on May 1st 1967 shortly after 6:00 pm, to walk the 2 1/2 mile journey to her home at 13530 Olive Tree Lane, when approximately 25 minutes into her journey her life was cruelly snatched away. She was just passing the intersection of 12784 Poway and Carriage Road, traveling along a dirt pathway that straddled the Poway Road, when a man laying in wait leapt from a grassy depression and viciously attacked the young teenage girl with a short-bladed knife. She had a knife wound to her neck and bruises on her elbows and knees, but the fatal injuries were two stab wounds that penetrated her heart. The young girl did not succumb to her injuries immediately, with a trail of blood extending 200 yards to the west side of Carriage Road as she desperately sought help near a local shopping center. At approximately 6:30 pm, an 11-year-old boy, Ronald Fisk, discovered the critically injured girl and raced away on his bicycle to seek help from his father, who worked at a nearby market store. Unfortunately, despite the best efforts of responding personnel, Nikki Benedict would be pronounced dead upon her arrival at Palomar Hospital.

Nikki Benedict would usually travel the 2.3 mile journey home from Meadowbrook Junior High School on the school bus, however, on this Monday she visited her friend Kathie in Halper Road to discuss an art project. Kathie was planning to escort Nikki along the initial part of her journey home, but was unable to accompany her friend because she had to stay home for her dinner. Nikki Benedict would have traveled south, before heading east alongside the Poway Road toward home, or traveled southeast from Halper Road to the intersection of Poway and Carriage Road, near to where her body was discovered. Whether she had been trailed by her attacker or had walked into his path has yet to be fully determined, but the attack was swift and deadly, with no robbery or sexual interference apparent. One eyewitness recalled a white man fleeing the scene, although no solid suspects have subsequently emerged from this sighting and the case has remained relatively trapped in time for just over 52 years.

Links have been forged to the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966, some six months earlier. She too was savagely attacked with a short-bladed knife, with the Zodiac Killer belatedly laying claim to her murder on March 13th 1971 when he wrote to the Los Angeles Times, stating "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". Poway, San Diego is 83 miles south of Terracina Drive in Riverside, where Cheri Jo Bates body was ultimately discovered on Halloween morning by Riverside City College caretaker, Cleophus Martin.

I always find it helpful to provide a map regarding any crime scenes, so below I have identified the relevant locations in the murder of Nikki Benedict, despite the fact the topography has changed over the last half-century.  

On the map I have highlighted a second attack - that of Patricia Lee Kuzara (7), who was murdered while walking home on Saturday, September 28th 1974, with her badly beaten body discovered the following morning in a field just off Midland and Hilleary Road, Poway, just alongside the First Baptist Church. She was just a few blocks from her home in Putney Road when the attacker struck, inflicting numerous blows to her head with a blunt instrument. She had been staying with family friends/babysitters approximately 2 1/2 miles away and had left shortly before dusk (6:30 pm) according to the friends. Why on earth a babysitter would allow a seven-year-old girl to walk this distance unaccompanied I have no idea? Four days after her body was discovered, a 40-inch long angle iron with pieces of wood attached was found on Hilleary Road. It was believed to have been innocently moved from its original location in the field. 

Sergeant Doug Clements was of the opinion that the killer probably lived nearby, creating understandable apprehension in the local community. The killing of Patty Lee Kuzara was only a mile from the murder site of Nikki Benedict, and both were attacked alongside the Poway Road in a grassy area. Both young girls lived only 660 meters from one another. Investigators in a press release stated that the Patty Lee Kuzara murder appeared sexually motivated, so whether any connection exists to the murder of Nikki Benedict is sheer speculation. Had the murderer of Nikki Benedict failed to complete his objective that day because of the vigorous defence she displayed in countering his attack, and therefore had chosen easier prey in his subsequent attacks? (if any). Of course, the two may be totally unrelated.

The question for most Zodiac sleuths, is whether any credence can be placed in his Los Angeles Letter of March 13th 1971, of "a hell of a lot more down there". The Zodiac Killer certainly claimed or insinuated many more murders than the canonical five attributed to him, so whether his exploits took him to Poway on May 1st 1967 is wholly dependent on which side of the fence you sit. The timeline bridges the gap between Riverside and Lake Herman Road - and the April 30th 1967 Bates' letters were mailed only one day before the murder of  Nikki Benedict - and did promise "there will be more".

Here is a complimentary video venerating the memory Nikki Benedict.