LIKELY INTENDED MESSAGE:
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE. DEATH IS LIFE. (73 characters).
ZODIAC CIPHERS |
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Congratulations to Dave Oranchak, Sam Blake, Jarl Van Eycke, and all the others who contributed to cracking the 340 cipher after fifty-one years of mystery. A fantastic achievement in finally unearthing the solution to the Zodiac Killer's masterpiece code. It would be even more pleasurable if he were alive to see this day. 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. (73 characters).
LIKELY INTENDED MESSAGE: I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE. DEATH IS LIFE. (73 characters). 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? 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. There appears a close correlation in the language the Zodiac Killer adopted in his communications, to the newspaper articles he read. But how much of this is a simple case of scanning old newspapers and forging links between the words used in each? Something triggered the Zodiac Killer to begin a victim count on November 8th 1969, when he chronologically laid out the months of his murders in the following fashion: Des July Aug Sept Oct = 7". The Zodiac Killer, annoyed by the lack of front page coverage after his three murders and three cryptograms back in August, switched to murder by knife at Lake Berryessa after reading the extensive front page coverage of the August 3rd 1969 Snoozy & Furlong stabbings in the San Francisco Chronicle. His declarative statement of "by knife" on the car door at Lake Berryessa, a defiant response to this lack of front page coverage. The Zodiac Killer was effectively stating "do I now get front page coverage". The San Francisco Chronicle made the connection Zodiac had hoped for, by eventually linking him to the Snoozy & Furlong murders. By confronting Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard at Lake Berryessa with a bladed instrument, he was prompting the newspapers to forge a link between the September 27th 1969 and August 3rd 1969 attacks. On October 19th 1969, the San Francisco Examiner sent a message to the Zodiac Killer, stating "Five people are dead. Let there be no more killings. Police say you are intelligent. If you are, then listen to reason. You are being hunted everywhere in the state, and nation. You are alone in this world. You can share your secrets with no one. No friend can help you. You are as much a victim of your crimes as those whose lives you snuffed out. You cannot walk the streets a free man. There is no safety for you, anywhere. And you will be caught, there is no doubt. You face life as a hunted, tormented animal - unless you help yourself. We ask that you give yourself up to the Examiner. We offer you no protection, and no sympathy. But we do offer you fair treatment, the assurance of medical help and the full benefits of your legal rights. And we offer to tell your story. Why have you killed? How has life wronged you? Call the City Editor of the Examiner any time, day or night. The telephone number is (415) 781 24 24. Call collect. Your call will not be traced". There are several things in this article that may have resonated with the Zodiac Killer, ultimately inspiring his choice of wording within the Dripping Pen card on November 8th 1969. The Zodiac Killer had urged the police and newspapers to make the connection to the Snoozy & Furlong murders, by not only switching his mode of attack on September 27th 1969, but by also adding the additional text of "by knife" on the car door. The San Francisco Examiner stated "Five people are dead. Let there be no more killings". On November 8th 1969, the Zodiac Killer would declare seven victims in defiance, by chronologically listing the months of his attacks: Des July Aug Sept Oct = 7". He was effectively saying "do you get the message now". The San Francisco Examiner article continued by adopting the isolationist language of "You are being hunted everywhere in the state, and nation. You are alone in this world. You can share your secrets with no one. No friend can help you". This statement may have also struck a nerve with the Zodiac Killer, who replied in the Dripping Pen card with "I get awfully lonely when I am ignored, so lonely I could do my thing." The Examiner article continued: "There is no safety for you, anywhere. And you will be caught, there is no doubt". On November 9th 1969 in the Bus Bomb letter, the Zodiac Killer reiterated the words "The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them", also reminiscent of the wording used by the sadistic caller to Daniel Williams during this period, by way of “I’m too smart for them" when referring to the police over the phone. It is also unsurprising that the Zodiac Killer would respond to "And you will be caught, there is no doubt", with "There's no doubt I will do my Thing!" on November 21st 1969, while providing yet another code. One month after the November 21st 1969 letter to the San Jose Police Department, the Zodiac Killer wrote to Melvin Belli at 1228 Montgomery Street in San Francisco. The San Francisco Examiner article stated "No friend can help you. You are as much a victim of your crimes as those whose lives you snuffed out. You cannot walk the streets a free man. There is no safety for you, anywhere. And you will be caught, there is no doubt. You face life as a hunted, tormented animal - unless you help yourself. We ask that you give yourself up to the Examiner. We offer you no protection, and no sympathy. But we do offer you fair treatment, the assurance of medical help". Thrice the San Francisco Examiner mentioned the word "help" in respect to the Zodiac Killer, so did he ultimately respond in mocking fashion four times via Melvin Belli? The Zodiac Killer adopted a pleading tone in the December 20th 1969 letter, stating "The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me", along with "I cannot reach out for help because of this thing in me wont let me". the brief "Please help me", and "Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer". The Zodiac Killer also continued the theme of a "thing" in three of the four communications. Is this a case of "seek and you will find" with respect to the newspapers and language used by the killer, or did he feed off the newspapers and deliberately engineer his communications as a direct response to the articles he read? I will let you decide Daniel Williams, a Salesian High School teacher in Richmond, received ten days of sadistic telephone calls beginning on October 23rd 1969 from a man claiming to be the Zodiac Killer. These calls were probably dismissed as the genuine Zodiac Killer because of the language adopted in the calls, mimicking the hoax caller who addressed Melvin Belli on the Jim Dunbar Show on October 22nd 1969. Daniel Williams would recall that the menacing caller would also "sob and complain of headaches". However, the calls to Daniel Williams shouldn't be ruled out on this basis, because two months later the real Zodiac Killer did speak of "losing control" and having difficulty "holding it in check" when writing to Melvin Belli on December 20th 1969. In previous articles covering this topic, the city of Richmond was identified as a possible future target on his Bus Bomb crosshairs. Also, the phraseology of “I’m too smart for them" by the sadistic caller to Daniel Williams was compared to the passage in the Bus Bomb letter of "I have been too clever for them". However, there is a little bit more. It was November 2nd 1969 when Daniel Williams received the final call from the man presumably impersonating the Zodiac Killer, with the menacing threat of “You’re the dead duck". He would then leave his house in Martinez and return later, only to find his screen door pried open and arsenic in his soft drink. Fortunately for Daniel Williams he noticed the metallic taste and spat it out, which undoubtedly saved his life. Clearly the murder of Daniel Williams had been thwarted, meaning the perpetrator had unfinished business. This is why I find the Zodiac Killer's opening statement in the Bus Bomb letter particularly unusual. The opening line of the November 9th 1969 communication began "This is the Zodiac speaking up to the end of Oct I have killed 7 people". But why didn't he just declare "This is the Zodiac speaking. I have killed 7 people to date", or "This is the Zodiac speaking. I have murdered 7 people". He deliberately chose to say "up to the end of Oct", almost like there was a murder he was still engineering or was attempting to complete between the end of October and November 9th 1969. In other words, he had unfinished business. Bearing in mind the murder attempt on Daniel Williams took place on November 2nd 1969, he may have been signalling by the statement of "up to the end of Oct" that he wasn't finished with Daniel Williams just yet. Especially when we consider that just a few lines later he issued the statement of "The police shall never catch me, because I have been too clever for them", in extremely similar fashion to “I’m too smart for them" spoken over the phone to Daniel Williams. When we couple these observations with his Dripping Pen card on November 8th 1969, the story becomes a little more intriguing. It too gives the impression of unfinished business. The card read "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. PS could you print this new cipher in your frunt page? I get aufully lonely when I am ignored, so lonely I could do my Thing !!!!!! Des July Aug Sept Oct = 7". The wording of "I though you would nead a good laugh before you hear the bad news". appears to indicate that the Zodiac Killer has, or is actively seeking to generate some bad news - which would usually involve murder. He then qualifies this statement by adding "You won't get the news for a while yet". This could indicate that he had plans for murder, but was yet to complete his mission. If he was the caller and poisoner of Daniel Williams, his failed murder attempt may have inspired the statement of "up to the end of Oct" and "You won't get the news for a while yet" in reference to his continued pursuit of the Richmond school teacher. Ironically, the Dripping Pen card would be accompanied by the Zodiac Killer's second lengthy cryptogram, the first of which was cracked by a Salinas High School teacher. RELEVANT ARTICLES: THE PROMISE OF MURDER ON LINE 5 A KILLER ON LINE FIVE THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. On October 22nd 1969, the San Francisco Examiner and Dr. D.C.B. Marsh of The American Cryptogram Association designed a newspaper article with the express intention of trapping the narcissistic Zodiac Killer into inadvertently giving us his name, by carefully dropping key words into the framework of the article. The Zodiac Killer, it can be argued, took up the challenge and was led by the wording in the article. Dr. D.C.B. Marsh stated "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". It is perfectly conceivable that by dropping the name of Edgar Allan Poe, who was synonymous with coded challenges to his audience, into the newspaper article in an offhand way, Dr. D.C.B. Marsh was probably hoping the Zodiac Killer would use the techniques of Poe in offering us his name in subsequent ciphers. This would allow Marsh to narrow down the avenues of encryption used in any future Zodiac correspondence. When we consider the November 8th 1969 and April 20th 1970 codes of Zodiac, in comparison to Poe's A Few Words on Secret Writing, it is conceivable that the Zodiac Killer brought an essay from the last century into the heart of the Bay Area and presented this historic offering to The American Cryptogram Association. So, after reading this newspaper article, the Zodiac Killer toddled off to the nearest library and searched for the works of Edgar Allan Poe. He arrived at A Few Words on Secret Writing - and remembering that Marsh had invited him to create a cipher "however complicated" - the Zodiac Killer took a prompt from the Poe essay and did completely the opposite. Wouldn't it be expected by observers, having had his 408 cipher cracked in a matter of days by the Harden's - and being challenged by Marsh to create a cipher "however complicated" - that the Zodiac Killer would dish out the mother of all ciphers. A cipher so devilishly fiendish, we would still be sweating over it 50 years later. The Zodiac Killer, knowing this would be expected of him, did completely the opposite and created a cipher on November 8th 1969 so unbelievably easy, that it still slipped through the cracks of the over-thinking mind. Not only that, but he got his idea from the wording of Edgar Allan Poe, as Marsh had hoped. The essay of Poe stated "Many of the cryptographs were dated in Philadelphia, and several of those which urged the subject of a bet were written by gentlemen of this city. Out of, perhaps, one hundred ciphers altogether received, there was only one which we did not immediately succeed in resolving. This one we demonstrated to be an imposition — that is to say, we fully proved it a jargon of random characters, having no meaning whatever". The Zodiac Killer wasn't one in a hundred, more like one in several million, so he certainly wasn't going to play by the rules. He now knew that he was going to create a cipher of nonsense, but not entirely without meaning. The Zodiac Killer studiously continued down the essay just one paragraph, until the wording triggered off the second light bulb in his head. It stated "A very common, and somewhat too obvious mode of secret correspondence, is the following. A card is interspersed, at irregular intervals, with oblong spaces, about the length of ordinary words of three syllables in a bourgeois type. Another card is made exactly coinciding. One is in possession of each party. When a letter is to be written, the key-card is placed upon the paper, and words conveying the true meaning inscribed in the spaces. The card is then removed and the blanks filled up, so as to make out a signification different from the real one. When the person addressed receives the cipher, he has merely to apply to it his own card, when the superfluous words are concealed, and the significant ones alone appear. The chief objection to this cryptograph is the difficulty of so filling the blanks as not to give a forced appearance to the sentences. Differences, also, in the handwriting, between the words written in the spaces, and those inscribed upon removal of the card, will always be detected by a close observer". Or, the card is punched with 13 holes, which when placed in true 'Dick Tracy' style over the 340 cipher, reveals the skeletonized version of Paradice and Slaves bisecting the cipher, 17 by 17 in cruciform. The rest of the 340 cipher filled with random noise, but fashioned in such a way to give the appearance of design, by forming the tell-tale signs of a real cipher. The Zodiac Killer even had the brazen cheek to correct one character of nothing, thereby feeding the false notion of a cipher he was conscientiously trying to get right. He even had the time to sign his work of art on the bottom line of his masterpiece. A work of art, but a work of fiction, that has been believed as credible for longer than Robert Graysmith. Several paragraphs later, and in order, the Zodiac Killer arrived at the Marsh trigger. Remember the challenge laid down by the eminent cryptographer: "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, which will truly and honestly include his name". This challenge is whirring around Zodiac's brain when he observes the piece of text in Poe's essay that mimics the challenge of Marsh. The text reads "This challenge has elicited but a single response, which is embraced in the following letter. The only quarrel we have with the epistle, is that its writer has declined giving us his name in full. We beg that he will take an early opportunity of doing this, and thus relieve us of the chance of that suspicion which was attached to the cryptography of the weekly journal above-mentioned — the suspicion of inditing ciphers to ourselves. The postmark of the letter is Stonington, Conn. S———————, CT., APRIL 21, 1841". When we consider the challenge of Dr. D.C.B. Marsh to encourage the Zodiac Killer to give us his name in cipher form, with an encryption technique of a split alphabet presented in A Few Words on Secret Writing (shown below) - in combination with the postmark of April 21st above - then it is rather revealing that Zodiac should begin his April 20th 1970 cipher with "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you. My name is....", and form it into 13 characters beginning with A, and ending with M. The Zodiac Killer was kind of mischievous like that. It turned out that Zodiac didn't give us his name in full in the 13 character cipher, but he did give us something. THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. It is now fairly clear that the Tim Holt comic book connection, discovered by Tahoe27 in 2013, was integral to the Zodiac Killer agenda from the very outset. His determination to gather slaves for the afterlife by way of gun, knife, rope and fire, was probably rooted more in fantasy than reality, but it would feature heavily through four cryptic communications. When the Zodiac Killer realized there was inadequate information in the June 26th 1970 Mount Diablo code, he rectified the situation in just 30 days, giving us the answer to where the bomb was set via two prominent Zodiac crosshairs and a small piece of text. When the Zodiac Killer crafted and mailed the 340 cipher on November 8th 1969, he again gave us insufficient information to decode. However, he did state "PS could you print this new cipher in your frunt page?" But just like the Mount Diablo code to which he gave us the answer in 30 days, he would give us the full answer to the 340 cipher in only 29 days. For anybody believing that the two Fairfield letters mailed on December 7th 1969 and December 16th 1969 were just a hoaxer, unrelated to Zodiac, then they have to explain, not only what purpose they served, but how the 38 character code manufactured by a lazy imbecile, incapable of even recreating a credible Zodiac Killer communication, just so happened to design five lines of 12, 7, 5, 6 and 8 characters, which could by sheer accident allow by fire, by rope, by knife, by gun, slaves and paradice to fall nicely onto each line. Ten words, self-contained on each line, which just happened to correlate with the October 27th 1970 Halloween card, ten months in the making. Not to mention, that by fire, by rope, by knife, by gun, slaves and paradice can be found in the "word search" 340 cipher just 29 days prior, in exactly the same design as the Halloween card. Any doubts that the December 7th 1969 coding was a hint to the solution of the 340 cipher, should have been lessened by the inclusion of many repeating sequences of characters from the November 8th 1969 offering. The above configuration in the 340 cipher will probably be described as accidental by eminent codebreakers. However, if the December 7th 1969 author was just an ignorant charlaton, bereft of the solution to the 340 cipher, who just slapped a quick and meaningless 38 character code together, then it has to be purely by chance once again, that he managed to fortuitously create a code of 38 characters that mimicked the exact character count of by fire, by rope, by knife, by gun, slaves and paradice, present in two other cryptic communications mailed by the Zodiac Killer. Not only was this extremely lucky, but the clown impersonator of Zodiac, would for a futher time, just happen to create another cryptic addition on December 16th 1969 that mimicked the Zodiac designs in the 340 cipher and Halloween card. The Zodiac Killer was rather quite polite on November 8th 1969, when he cordially requested "could you print this new cipher in your frunt page?" However, after 38 days his patience was running thin, aghast at the inability of code breakers to pry open his simplistic cipher. In fact, he was starting to get bloody pissed off with authorities, demanding "you better print" in his December 16th 1969 letter (see right). Underneath his demand was yet another clue to his 340 cipher, and a design that again mimicked the yet to be mailed Halloween card. The Tim Holt comic book connection unearthed by Tahoe27 (displayed in the Halloween card), not only contained the four phrases of by gun, by knife, by rope and by fire in each quadrant, but they were preceded by the word "death" in the comic itself. Exactly as depicted in the configuration on the right. There are five characters, followed by four crosshairs placed around a larger crossed circle. This hoaxer was certainly having a bit of luck, creating 38 characters to mimic the Halloween card words of paradice, slaves, by gun, by knife, by rope and by fire, but also mimicking the design - including each mode of murder by the possible 5-letter introduction of "death", found on the wheel of the Tim Holt comic book. The luck doesn't end there mind. The author of the December 7th 1969 letter wrote the words "I just need help". The phrase "please help me" would appear thrice in the authenticated Melvin Belli letter on December 20th 1969, despite the fact neither of the two Fairfield letters were ever published in the newspapers. Damn, this hoaxer is seemingly getting a lot of things correct, even thirteen days and ten months in advance. The notion of a Zodiac Killer, who bragged, boasted and put pen to paper at every opportunity, is seemingly disregarded when it comes to his codes and ciphers. We are led to believe that a killer with marker pen diarrhea, writing to the newspapers on an almost monthly basis for two years, managed to keep his big fat trap shut for just over fifty years with respect to his codes. The designs in the December 7th 1969, December 16th 1969 and October 27th 1970 communications suggest otherwise. He would give us the answer to the 340 cipher in just 29 days (albeit inadequate), and give us the answer to the Mount Diablo code in only 30 days, when the Little List letter rolled along. The idea of a killer with extreme patience, upwards of 50 years, is not a killer I recognise. THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. Professor D.C.B. Marsh told the San Francisco Examiner on October 22nd 1969: "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 Allen 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". According to Edgar Allen Poe, any cipher created by man can be solved by man. Which is why Zodiac created the apologetic "sorry no cipher". The video has a minor error - the "rope" in the bottom right quadrant should look like the image on the left. Click to enlarge. The following will be extremely speculatory and should not to be taken too seriously, but I wanted to examine the prompt by Professor D.C.B. Marsh who told the Examiner on October 22nd 1969: "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 Allen 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". When recently promoting the notion of a killer providing us with all the solutions to his ciphers in Three Months After the Mount Diablo Code, it was considered that the Zodiac Killer did respond to Dr. Marsh, but he certainly wasn't going to be as forthcoming as to provide us with his full name as Dr. Marsh had honestly requested. Hence the idea that he did give us his name, albeit in the abridged version of his initials which he supplied to us in the October 5th 1970 '13 Hole' Postcard. When this was slotted into the April 20th 1970 '13 Symbol' Cipher it read like so: "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is Fk, I'm crackproof". The Zodiac Killer had in effect answered the request of Dr. Marsh, although in a rather devious manner. However, Dr. Marsh issued this challenge on October 22nd 1969 and the 340 Cipher came before the 13 Symbol Cipher. One of the most prominent features in the 340 Cipher is the sixth line where he corrects a forward facing K to a backwards facing K, similar in nature to the way he reversed the "Fk, I'm crackproof" phrase on the 13 Hole Postcard. The proximity of F and K can be noted in these two outstanding features - and possibly the Zodiac thought it mildly amusing to provide his name to Dr. Marsh in the extremely "complicated" manner of reversing his name or initials. Everybody was searching for a stunningly complicated solution to the 340 character cipher as Dr. Marsh had requested, so the Zodiac Killer gave us the complete opposite. The connection between the 13 Hole Postcard and 13 Symbol Cipher was not only bound in the "Fk, I'm crackproof" solution, but the two phrases he used in each communication didn't go unnoticed either. The Zodiac Killer inextricably tied the two correspondences together using similar phraseology, such as "What is the price tag now" and "how much money you have on my head now". 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). This news was likely what prompted the Zodiac Killer to open this communication with the words "I am mildly cerous as to how much money you have on my head now". Or could there be another more subtle clue in these phrases with regard to his name? Where on the April 20th 1970 letter and throughout much of his communications to date (including the 340 Cipher) could money or a price tag be found on a head? The 13 Symbol Cipher letter carried a dated 1966 Franklin D. Roosevelt stamp, where indeed "money" or a "price tag" could be found 'on' the head of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Was this a subtle hint to his first name of "Franklin" or "Frank". This would satisfy the F part of "Fk, I'm crackproof" - but as stated earlier, very speculative to say the least. Another communication where he promised us his name was the October 27th 1970 'Halloween' Card, in which he gave us an odd-looking symbol and placed it on the left side of the envelope and the Halloween Card inner, followed by the letter Z. The correct way to address an envelope is to write the sender's name and address in the top left corner of the envelope, shown here on a Youtube video, and the recipient address (in this case Paul Avery) in the center of the envelope. Therefore, this strange symbol could equate to the sender's name. Since we are looking for the initials of the Zodiac Killer (which may be reversed for a third time), it is extremely promising that we have an F looking character on the right side yet again. I don't like too much manipulation and the use of mathematics anymore, but on this occasion I will choose the path of least resistance and take the 7 and 4 dots to equal 11 (K being the 11th letter of the alphabet) - and therefore give us a joined K and F for his name on the return section of the envelope. Unfortunately, manipulation such as this always leads to the possibility of multiple solutions, so we have to be guarded to any conclusions we make. Finally, I would like to take a look at the sister card to the Halloween Card mailed in the December of 1990. It too promised us his name. The greeting card was again from our Secret Pal just like the Halloween Card twenty years earlier - it began with the message "FROM YOUR SECRET PAL CAN'T GUESS WHO I AM YET? WELL, LOOK INSIDE AND YOU'LL FIND OUT". Then promised to keep us guessing on the card inner. All the Zodiac Killer added to the card inner was a Xerox copy of some "keys". It really couldn't be any simpler. The card outer stated "From your secret pal, can't guess who I am yet? Well, look inside and you'll find out" followed by "keys". This may very well be the final really complicated answer to the challenge laid down by Dr. Marsh all those years earlier. The surname of Keys, Keyes or Keays would satisfy the K of FK, from the phrase "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is Fk, I'm crackproof". This mocking response to Professor D.C.B. Marsh, who requested that the Zodiac Killer "send The American Cryptogram Association a cipher code - however complicated - which will truly and honestly include his name" was probably befitting of the Zodiac Killer. The answer may have been simpler than we could ever of imagined. Return to sender: Franklin Keys (or alternate options above). Of course, I am not claiming this to be the answer regarding the identity of the Zodiac Killer, but it would be rather appropriate for the Zodiac Killer to have begun his letter writing campaign with Franklin on the stamps of his July 31st 1969 trinity of communications, and ended with his surname of Keys in 1990 - and thumb a finger to all the cipher experts trying vainly to crack his extremely complicated ciphers, when the answer was literally staring us in the face all along. THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. The Zodiac Killer gave us the answers to his six unsolved ciphers by March 13th 1971 without ambiguity, but effectively gave us all the answers by October 27th 1970. It is important to read Three Months After the Mount Diablo Code to understand all of the following, but I shall give a very brief recap. The Zodiac gave us the answer to the Mount Diablo code (32 symbol Cipher} in the Little List Letter on July 26th 1970. In fact, he gave us the answer word for word, in the form of Radians and 5 inches along the radians (all we had to do was add the number 5 where he placed the arrow and hashtag}. The 13 Hole Postcard on October 5th 1970 gave us the answer to the 13 Symbol Cipher word for word, in the form of Fk I'm crackproof. The Halloween Card on October 27th 1970 gave us the answer to the 340 Cipher word for word, in the form of Paradice and Slaves. No mathematics was required and no manipulation was needed - all we had to do, was use the three phrases that Zodiac provided us with in three consecutive communications, to answer the three previously unsolved ciphers. But that wasn't all. The Zodiac gave us the answer to both the Fairfield Letter codes of December 7th and 16th of 1969, again word for word using the Halloween Card. The 18 unsolved characters in the 408 cipher he again gave us the solution word for word, using the trinity of communications on July 31st 1969 and following letter on August 4th 1969, when he revealed his pseudonym to the world. However, there is even more. The Zodiac Killer's 408 Cipher was effectively a written message that he enciphered into characters. When you take a look at the decoded message, it isn't structured and organized - because one line or row bleeds into the following. The Zodiac Killer didn't contain his words within the confines of one row. For example, when he opened the cipher with "I like killing people", the letter E is positioned at the beginning of the second row. This randomness is not displayed in the answers to his remaining six unsolved portions of code. The answer to the 18 unsolved characters, the 340 Cipher, the two Fairfield letters, the 13 Symbol Cipher and the 32 Symbol Cipher are all organized and deliberately structured, where every single solution and word is contained within each line - and does not leak from one row to another. Let us take a look at the 13 Symbol Cipher that exhibits symmetry within its design. I don't have to explain the above, because its structure and symmetry is there for all to see. The Zodiac Killer had already responded to prompts by Vallejo Police Chief Jack Stiltz to send more details to prove the letter writer and killer were one and the same. The more the Zodiac Killer wrote, not only lessened his time for killing, but may have provided additional clues to detectives regarding his identity. This tactic was likely adopted by Professor D.C.B. Marsh in the October 22nd 1969 San Francisco Examiner newspaper article by Will Stevens, which laid down a challenge to the Zodiac Killer to reveal his name. The newspaper stated Dr Marsh told the Examiner today: "The killer wouldn't dare, as he claimed in letters to the newspapers, to reveal his name in the cipher to established cryptogram experts. He knows, to quote Edgar Allen 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 above invitation by Dr. Marsh, quoting Edgar Allen Poe, was met with the 13 Symbol Cipher that mirrored a code used in Poe's A Few Words on Secret Writing. The alphabet being split A to M, and N to Z. The 13 Symbol Cipher began with A and ended with M. So it was logical to place the alphabet alongside the 13 Symbol Cipher and see if any patterns emerged by counting the numerical difference between corresponding characters. This resulted. I don't want to labor the point again, so for a full explanation please visit the article Embedded Symmetry Suffice to say, that when the Zodiac's solution or answer to the 13 Symbol Cipher was inserted into the code above, it showed an organized and structured pattern without a word bleeding from one end of the cipher to the other. The Zodiac Killer gave us the cyclical solution of Fk I'm crackproof on October 5th 1970, and followed this up with the line "This is the Zodiac speaking Like I have allways said, I am crack proof" on March 13th 1971. But in the Los Angeles Letter you will notice he separates "crackproof" to "crack proof", exactly how it is found in the 13 Symbol Cipher. It does not bleed from the end of the cipher to the start. The first 8 begins FK. The second 8 begins IM. The third 8 begins CRACKPROOF. But CRACK and PROOF are separated, without either word being fragmented. The FK and IM also fit nicely around the existing K and M in the cipher. The cipher solution maintains an organized and symmetrical appearance. The introduction on the April 20th 1970 letter now read "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is Fk, I'm crackproof". He was leading us into the belief these were his initials. The Paradice and Slaves configuration from the Halloween Card to the 340 Cipher also exhibited form, with Paradice exactly bisecting the columns of the 340 Cipher, and Slaves exactly bisecting the rows of the 340 Cipher in a 17 X 17 pattern. Each word contained within a row or column. The Halloween Card envelope providing us with "sorry no cipher" in a cross formation, not only telling us that the 340 wasn't a standard cipher, but the design of the 340 was to be found in a cross formation. The 32 Symbol Cipher also adhered to a solution where no word bled from one row to another. The 32 Symbol Cipher contained two rows of 17 and 15 characters - obviously created this way for a purpose. When we discovered that the number 5 was to be inserted into the cipher using the arrow and hashtag, the answer of Radians and 5 inches along the radians again fell perfectly into the 32 Symbol Cipher with no word extending from one line to another. You will notice that when the Zodiac Killer provided us with the answer in the July 26th 1970 Little List Letter, he self-contained the answer on a separate line, with the first Radians beginning with a capital letter. This was the beginning of the code solution. "PS. The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians and # inches along the radians" was in fact Radians and 5 inches along the radians. When this is placed into the 32 Symbol Cipher, you will notice that once again it retains separation, with "inches" ending line one, and "along" beginning line two. Each word is contained within the line. This organization and structure flies in the face of the solved portion of the 408 Cipher and implies a deliberate and calculated design. But we need to take it even further. Explained in greater detail in the article The Answer to the Z38 Code, the structure of the Zodiac 38 character cipher was pointed out. The code below has been structured with different character counts on each line (unlike the 408 and 340 ciphers), but is instead arranged in a formation of 12 characters on line one, 7 characters on line two, 5 characters on line three, 6 characters on line four and 8 characters on line five. This may suggest that the words are contained separately on each line, without running from one line to another. We would expect Slaves and Paradice to be grouped together - and the last two lines satisfy this character count of 6 and 8. We then have three lines remaining of 12, 7 and 5 characters. By Gun satisfies the 5 characters, By Knife satisfies the 7 characters, and By Fire, By Rope satisfies the 12 characters. This forms the basis of the completed 38 character code solution, mimicking the second Fairfield Letter design and the exact wording on the Halloween Card configuration. Furthermore, no word extends from one line to another, exactly as displayed in the above codes. So far (including the Tim Holt comic book unearthed by Tahoe27), every single solution or answer to the ciphers can be achieved using the exact words employed by Zodiac from three consecutive communications spanning July 26th 1970 to October 27th 1970. [1] Radians and 5 inches along the radians [2] Fk I'm crackproof [3] Paradise and Slaves, and [4] By Fire, By Gun, By Rope, By Knife, Paradice and Slaves. And none extend or bleed into another line, or from end to beginning in the 13 Symbol Cipher. That is five ciphers down with one to go. The Zodiac Killer claimed that his 408 Cipher contained his identity or pseudonym. What was important to the Bay Area murderer was the structure exhibited by all the above codes. The characters he used were of no particular significance, because they weren't designed to be solved without future Zodiac input. This input came towards the end of his letter writing campaign, when he supplied us all the answers in just three consecutive communications. He was effectively wrapping up business. There was no way a man with such an inflated ego and inability to resist writing to the newspapers, could keep the secret to his ciphers for upwards of five decades. The answer to the 408 Cipher was given to us in just four days, contained in the trinity of July 31st 1969 letters and the August 4th 1969 'Debut of Zodiac' Letter. He claimed his identity was in the 408 cipher - and we know his identity was "Zodiac" because he gave us his pseudonym. All we then had to do, was fit Zodiac around the declaration of who he was.
Initially, the Zodiac Killer had intended to leave 12 characters at the base of the 408 Cipher, but his accidental omission of the word "people" when he encoded his message, inadvertently left him with 18 unsolved characters. However, this was of no consequence - it was an easy adjustment. You will notice again, that the unsolved 18 characters are split into an ungainly 1 and 17 configuration. If we are to hold true to single words not bleeding from one line to another, then the single character must stand for I or A. We know that the Zodiac Killer was an egotist, beginning the 408 Cipher with "I like killing people because it is so much fun". He also began two of the July 31st letters with "I am the killer". So it wouldn't be any great leap of faith to believe that the isolated singular character on line 23 was "I". Coupling the "Zodiac" with "I am the killer" to produce "I am the Zodiac Killer" satisfies his declaration of identity and the 18 characters at the base of the 408 Cipher. We again have used only the words written by the Zodiac Killer - and no word extends from one line to another. The third of code containing his identity was mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, which is why he began that introduction with "This is the murderer". He was reserving "I am the Zodiac Killer" for the base of the 408 Cipher. We now have six unsolved portions of code answered, using only the words written by the Zodiac Killer in a total of four communications. Every single answer was organized and structured to remain within each row, line and column with no manipulation whatsoever. We can wait another 50 years for these codes to be "solved" - or believe they were all answered by October 27th 1970 from the pen of the Zodiac Killer. THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. The Zodiac Killer mailed the Paul Stine letter to the San Francisco Chronicle on October 13th 1969 and stated "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". Bearing in mind that the murderer had previously referenced the murders at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs Park under the umbrella of Vallejo on the car door of Bryan Hartnell's vehicle, it is clear that the switch to the north bay area was deliberately chosen to incorporate his latest attack at Lake Berryessa. The North Bay is a subregion of the San Francisco Bay Area, in California, United States. The largest city is Santa Rosa, which is the fifth-largest city in the Bay Area. It is the location of the Napa and Sonoma wine regions, and is the least populous and least urbanized part of the Bay Area. It consists of Marin, Napa, Solano and Sonoma counties. This is just the first of many times he referenced his Lake Berryessa attack on Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard, which claimed the life of the young woman. The November 8th 1969 'Drippng Pen' Card and 340 character cipher were pivotal to the Lake Berryessa attack in a number of ways. Up to this point, the Zodiac Killer had given us details of the two attacks in Benicia and Vallejo with "some facts which only I + the police know". and confirmed he was the murderer of Paul Stine by the addition of the blood stained shirt piece in the October 13th 1969 letter. Why should he then mail two communications in near tandem with one another, if one of them was not a belated offering? The wording on the front of the card, stating "Sorry I haven't written, but I just washed my pen" appeared chosen for purpose, because Lake Berryessa was the only attack he hadn't written about. Maybe it took the Zodiac time to search for an appropriate message and card, which fitted the bill regarding his exploits by the lake. Once he found a suitable card, he designed his 340 character cipher and mailed it alongside the Bus Bomb Letter, franked one day apart. If this were the case, then it's highly probable that the message in the 340 is relevant to Lake Berryessa as well. The image and writing on the card outer marries up perfectly with the Zodiac message on the card inner. The Zodiac supplied us with his crosshairs, which underneath he wrote the months of his claimed attacks ("Des, July, Aug, Sept, Oct = 7"). This mirrored the message he wrote on the car door of Bryan Hartnell's vehicle, where he also added the months of his crimes, thereby generating another link to the crime. These were the only two occasions he did this. The reason for the 'Dripping Pen' Card choice, was because when he wrote on the car door with the same hand that he had stabbed the young couple, he transferred blood onto the pen - and hence the sardonic introduction of "Sorry I haven't written, but I just washed my pen" and the imagery shown. When investigators released information to the newspapers about the Lake Berryessa attack, they deliberately withheld the attribution of "by knife" written at the foot of the message on the car door, so that any future correspondence by the killer could be authenticated. Captain Townsend stated "There were a couple of other things were holding back so we'll be able to identify the man if he wants to call us again". Those two things were "by knife". The Zodiac Killer didn't call again, but with this 'Dripping Pen' communication suggesting it had been washed because of blood, coupled with the design of the months under his crosshairs and the obvious addition of "sept", it is clear that this card was the response to the Lake Berryessa attack. If the Zodiac Killer apologized for not having written because his blood stained pen had been washed and gave us his attack months on the card inner - thereby replicating the design on the car door - then one could expect the "by knife" attribution to be present somewhere in the card or cipher as well. The card outer and card inner were inextricably linked by the act of Zodiac writing on the car door after the Berrryessa attack. Investigators asked the Zodiac Killer to confirm the "by knife" writing to prove he was the murderer and he duly obliged in the 340 character cipher. The Zodiac Killer placed "death by knife" in the bottom left quadrant of the 340 cipher and was confident that investigators wouldn't "get the news for a while". This turned out to be true, because the Zodiac Killer had to show us the workings of the 340 cipher nearly a year later, using By Fire, By Gun, By Rope, By Knife, Paradice, Slaves and Sorry No Cipher. Tahoe27 found the link between the Halloween Card and the Tim Holt comic book, where victims were placed on a Death Wheel. The four prominent execution methods featured on the cover were Death By Fire, Death By Gun, Death By Rope and Death By Knife, with the executioner spinning the wheel. Therefore, is it any great surprise that the Zodiac Killer turned up at Lake Berryessa dressed as an executioner and wrote "by knife" on the car door. This strongly suggests that the Tim Holt comic book not only played a major part in the October 27th 1970 Halloween Card, but in the Lake Berryessa attack, murder of Cecelia Shepard and the design of the 340 character cipher. The two communications mirror each other perfectly, with the Halloween Card even designed with an eye peering from behind a tree, mimicking the Lake Berryessa attack where Zodiac hid behind a tree to don his costume. For more information on the parallels between the Halloween Card and 340 cipher, please read Zodiac Admitted 340 Not a Real Cipher and The Answer to the Z38 Code. However, we mustn't forget that the months and total provided on the 'Dripping Pen' Card only referenced the Zodiac's claimed murder victims (the Aug attribution referring to the August 3rd 1969 Snoozy/Furlong murders). This may suggest that the 340 character cipher only contained a basic message with regards to the murder of Cecelia Shepard - and why the cipher began with the word "Her". The "By Knife" phrase in the bottom left quadrant of the 340 cipher was, in effect, the Zodiac Killer supplying the answer to investigators about the writing they concealed on the car door. Nobody said Zodiac was going to make it easy and play by the rules. The "By Knife" attribution was in fact "Death By Knife" from the wheel of the Tim Holt comic book. If we now read the 'Dripping Pen' Card from outer to inner, and through the 340 cipher, it effectively reads "Sorry I haven't written about the Lake Berryessa attack, but I just washed my pen of the blood. Des, July, Aug, Sept, Oct = 7. Her death by knife. Zodiac". The Halloween Card curiously contained 4-TEEN on the Lake Berryessa depiction. Only four teenagers had been murdered and claimed by Zodiac on November 8th 1969. They were David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Deborah Furlong and Kathy Snoozy. Two communications forever linked. # In medieval and ancient philosophy the Wheel of Fortune, or Rota Fortunae, is a symbol of the capricious nature of Fate. The wheel belongs to the goddess Fortuna (Greek equivalent Tyche) who spins it at random, changing the positions of those on the wheel: some suffer great misfortune, others gain windfalls. The metaphor was already a cliche in ancient times, complained about by Tacitus, but was greatly popularized for the Middle Ages by its extended treatment in the Consolation of Philosophy by Boethius from around 520. It became a common image in manuscripts of the book, and then other media, where Fortuna, often blindfolded (second skeleton), turns a large wheel of the sort used in watermills, to which kings and other powerful figures are attached. The origin of the word is from the "wheel of fortune" - the zodiac, referring to the Celestial spheres of which the 8th holds the stars, and the 9th is where the signs of the zodiac are placed. The concept was first invented in Babylon and later developed by the ancient Greeks. Wikipedia. THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. In the article Three Months After the Mount Diablo Code we showed how the Zodiac Killer gave us the answers to his three main unsolved ciphers in three consecutive communications spanning July 26th 1970 to October 27th 1970. Here we will do exactly the same thing regarding the December 7th 1969 Fairfield Letter (the companion to the December 16th 1969 letter). The December 7th 1969 letter showed traits of the 408 cipher, in which the author had simply dragged characters from above to provide filler for the remaining 18 unsolved characters. In the December 7th 1969 letter he had dragged groups of characters from the 340 cipher in similar fashion. Tahoe27 made an excellent discovery when she linked the October 27th 1970 Halloween Card to the Tim Holt comic book, showing the connection to the configuration displayed on the card in the wording By Fire, By Gun, By Rope and By Knife. However, the Zodiac Killer had likely made this connection much earlier than October 27th 1970, when he designed the December 16th 1969 Fairfield Letter (shown on the left}. In this communication he gave us a rudimentary design of the Halloween Card configuration preceded by the word "death", thereby satisfying the Tim Holt comic book of "Death By Fire, By Gun, By Rope and By Knife. Below I have shown the interconnectivity between the Halloween Card, 340 cipher and both Fairfield letters, demonstrating how the Tim Holt comic book played a part in the design of them all, with By Fire, By Gun, By Rope, By Knife, Paradice and Slaves the running theme. The December 16th 1969 Fairfield Letter was essentially a very rudimentary precursor to the Halloween Card design of By Fire, By Gun, By Rope, By Knife, Paradice and Slaves. It was also very likely a clue to the December 7th 1969 code scribbled at the base of that letter, containing 38 characters. If this code followed the same way as all the others, in that the Zodiac Killer simply provided us with the answer to his codes in later communications, then what are the chances the solution depended on the wording in the Halloween Card, which mimicked the design of the second Fairfield Letter? The December 16th 1969 Fairfield Letter stated "Look for more blood", then provided us with the Halloween Card style design of large crosshairs surrounded by four smaller crosshairs in each quadrant, intended to signify By Fire, By Gun, By Rope, By Knife, Paradice and Slaves. But the Zodiac Killer inexplicably chose the over inflated promise of 38 more victims from San Francisco, San Jose, Vallejo, Napa, Fairfield, Sacramento and Oakland. Curiously, the exact same number as characters on the December 7th 1969 Fairfield Letter. These victims, likely to be murdered By Fire, By Gun, By Rope and By Knife. So, was there a correlation between the two letters using these words? You will notice that the code above hasn't been structured uniformly like the 408 and 340 ciphers, but instead arranged in a formation of 12 characters on line one, 7 characters on line two, 5 characters on line three, 6 characters on line four and 8 characters on line five.
This may suggest that the words are contained separately on each line, without running from one line to another. We would expect Slaves and Paradice to be grouped together - and the last two lines satisfy this character count of 6 and 8. We then have three lines remaining of 12, 7 and 5 characters. By Gun satisfies the 5 characters, By Knife satisfies the 7 characters, and By Fire, By Rope satisfies the 12 characters. This forms the basis of the completed 38 character code solution, mimicking the second Fairfield Letter design and the exact wording on the Halloween Card configuration. Furthermore, no word extends from one line to another, satisfying the non-uniformity displayed by the 38 character code. We now have By Fire, By Gun, By Rope, By Knife, Paradice and Slaves running through four communications - that of the Halloween Card, 340 cipher and both Fairfield letters. The Zodiac Killer yet again supplying us with the answer to one of his codes in subsequent communications. THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS. 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. You need look no further than the Paul Stine police report to notice that the hashtag symbol is used to represent the word "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 of "5 inches along the radians". 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 about 2%, 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 approximately 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 "Estimate: Four Radians and Five Inches". The 32 character code wasn't the complete solution, because the Zodiac Killer explicitly stated "the map coupled with the code will tell you where the bomb is set", which included magnetic north of 17 degrees in 1970. The code contained "four radians and five inches", to be coupled with the map which incorporated the magnetic north, giving us a total of 246.2 degrees. See The Blast Estimate of Zodiac and The Blast Estimate of Zodiac (Part Two) and The Blast Estimate of Zodiac (Part Three). 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. The three 8's (representing Jesus Christ in gematria), along with the number 8 which symbolizes a new beginning, actually begins each element of the phrase Fk I'm crackproof. In addition, when we begin the phrase on the first 8, it fits perfectly around the existing K and M already present in the code and thereby creating a cyclical format, where the code ends and begins with the same letter. The Little List Letter provided the solution to the Button Letter and Mount Diablo code that preceded it. His next communication, the 13 Hole Postcard, provided the solution to the 13 Symbol Cipher before that, and finally the Halloween Card provided the solution to the 340 cipher. Three chronological solves to the three previous ciphers - and the only thing we had to add was the number "5", for which he inserted the hashtag and arrow. Why look for convoluted and excessively complicated solutions to these ciphers, when the Zodiac Killer gave us all the answers literally word for word. 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.
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 a large chunk of the key a mere 31 days later in the form of an arrow and a hashtag, writing "Radians and # inches along the radians" on a separate line to distinguish the very fact. 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 miles to the inch, 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 inches component of "Radians + 5 inches along the radians" or "Radians and 5 inches along the radians". The full answer of "four radians and five inches", coupled with the magnetic north value of 17 degrees would be our guide. As with all the best puzzles, the answer is usually hidden in plain sight. Druzer, an avid Zodiac researcher, came up with a solution to the 32 character code which I believe is correct, when he suggested Estimate: four radians and five inches. This solution not only satisfies the 32 characters, but correlates three plaintext letters to the only three repeating ciphertext characters in the code, thereby providing a perfectly valid key. See The Blast Estimate of Zodiac, The Blast Estimate of Zodiac (Part Two). and The Blast Estimate of Zodiac (Part Three). The map scale is 6.4 miles to the inch. This gives us a distance of 6.4 multiplied by 5 (inches). Therefore, the bomb was to be set at 4 radians and magnetic north, and 32 miles from the peak of Mount Diablo. The only San Francisco Police Department that comes anywhere close is Ingleside Police Station. This San Francisco Police Department sits at 30.96 miles from the peak of Mount Diablo (4.84 inches). It also sits at 251 degrees from the peak of Mount Diablo (4.08 radians). The Zodiac Killer gave us a rough guide of 4 radians and magnetic north, and 5 inches (hence the word "estimate"). If he had given us the exact measurement, it would have been 4.08 radians and 4.84 inches, He was clearly giving us an approximate measurement. Since Ingleside Police Station was the only San Francisco Police Department anywhere close to these measurements, it's fairly obvious this was his target. The Zodiac Killer's distance in miles was 96.8% accurate. His angular accuracy in degrees was 98.0%. The Zodiac Killer was very unlikely to have selected a specific target that fell on an exact whole number of radians and inches. 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. With 29 unique characters in a 32 character code, any correlation between the characters and alphabetical solution was always going to be minimal, therefore it is encumbent upon us to look to other reasons for its design. The Blast Estimate of Zodiac (Part Three).
The Zodiac Killer mailed us three parts of one cipher on July 31st 1969, to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald. In his communication to the Chronicle he stated "In this cipher is my idenity". Bearing in mind this is the only portion of cipher with unsolved characters, it could be argued that any identity the Zodiac was offering would be found at the signing off phase in this cipher. It didn't really matter, because only four days later he gave us his identity in the form of "This is the Zodiac Speaking". The Zodiac Killer clearly made a mistake when taking his draught message into his 408 cipher, accidentally omitting the word "people" from the final offering. If we therefore conclude his original identity to be left was actually six characters shorter, it would have reduced the 18 unsolved characters to 12. Using the first-person singular pronoun of "I", his identity at the base of the 408 cipher would read "I am the Zodiac", to become "I am the Zodiac Killer" upon realization of his mistake. The Bay Area murderer literally gave us the exact wording to his unsolved 18 characters through his introductions in the Examiner and Herald letters (both communications began with "I am the killer"). Once we knew the pseudonym or identity as Zodiac on August 4th 1969, the conversion to "I am the Zodiac Killer" was the next logical step. This would become a habit for the Zodiac Killer, who would ultimately give us the exact wording to solve his remaining three ciphers. Not only would he give us the solutions to the codes, but his practice of using 'filler' with no apparent correlation to the solution would continue. The Zodiac Killer was no master criminal in the style of Moriarty, but he was nobody's fool either. To make the false assumption he didn't understand ciphers or codes when creating his remaining three offerings to the San Francisco Chronicle, would be a misguided one. Even somebody with limited knowledge of coding, knows that giving us a 32 character code with 29 unique characters within its framework, is practically unsolvable without a key. You can literally fill in the blanks as you choose. Therefore, the only realistic solution to the two smaller codes can come in two forms: [1] The Zodiac Killer can give us a key to decrypt the code, or [2] He can simply give us the answer. The Zodiac Killer may well have chosen option two, and given us the entire solution to all his three unsolved codes in subsequent communications. In fact, the possibilty exists that he supplied us with all the answers in three consecutive communications from July 26th 1970 to October 27th 1970 - in the Little List Letter (07/26/70), 13 Hole Postcard (10/05/70) and Halloween Card (10/27/70). The Zodiac Killer was likely giving us all the solutions before slipping back into anonymity. The newspaper article on November 16th 1970 by Paul Avery, linking Zodiac to the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966, likely drew one final breath from the Zodiac Killer through 1971, before his race was run. The "key" phrases for the four codes are *in this cipher is my identity", "the Mt. Diablo code concerns radians and inches", "Fk, I'm crackproof" and "paradice and slaves". The 408 cipher we have examined, so we will now tackle the 32 symbol code. The Little List Letter mailed on July 26th 1970, one month after the Mount Diablo code (06/26/70), told us the code "concerns radians and # inches along the radians". It was as simple as adding in two figures to complete the code (hence the hashtag symbol denoting a number). The Zodiac gave us the exact wording for the solution, detailed here in a previous article. As stated above, the 32 symbol code with 29 unique characters couldn't be solved without a key or the answer. The Mount Diablo map and crosshairs were the framework, onto which we "coupled" the code for the location of the bomb. The answer was likely "4 radians and 5 inches along the radian", thereby giving us the solution word for word. An alternative to this solution (where only the hashtag is replaced by the number 5), is "P.S. The Mt. Diablo code concerns Radians and 5 inches along the radians". The Zodiac didn't necessarily have to incorporate the number 4 because we already knew the radian value from the bold, black circle provided on the Little List Letter crosshairs. The next solutions may have been given to us in the 13 Hole Postcard - that may ultimately become the most important communication of them all. By combining the "red crucifix" decoder and 13 punch-holes in true "Dick Tracy" style, the Paradice and Slaves formation would be revealed, bisecting the 340 cipher superficially along its mid-section both horizontally and vertically. See the article 'The Dick Tracy 340 Cipher'. The Zodiac Killer wrote Paradice and Slaves on the Halloween card in the identical formation it could be found on the face of the 340 cipher. Three clues within the space of three weeks. The Zodiac Killer also gave us the phrase "Fk, I'm crackproof" (upside down) on the 13 Hole Postcard. Apart from an expletive, the other viable option here, is the Zodiac Killer exclaiming that he is crackproof, preceded by his initials. The reason for this line of thinking, is the Zodiac Killer's wording before the 13 Symbol Cipher on April 20th 1970. The code is designed symmetrically and looks contrived, with three circled 8's fashioned at its center. The Zodiac Killer couldn't have supplied us with his name with any expectation it would be solved, because the code was simply too short and capable of providing us with thousands of solutions. However, he could provide us a solution to the code by giving us his initials. By doing it this way, he is in a roundabout way, giving us his name and a solution to the code that satisfies the introduction that preceded it: "This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you. My name is Fk, I'm crackproof". This solution not only fits into the 13 Symbol Cipher, but reads continuously if imagined in circular fashion. The Zodiac Killer gave us three 8's within a circle (the symbol of infinity, and regeneration and rebirth within Christianity), with the letters K and M positioned ideally in the code to fit "Fk, I'm crackproof" around. There are three elements to this phrase: Fk, I'm, and crackproof. When the entire phrase is slotted around the letters K and M, the number 8 begins each element of the phrase (as shown below). The Zodiac Killer had effectively given us the exact wording of "I am the Zodiac Killer", "Paradice and Slaves", "Fk I'm crackproof" and "Radians and (5) inches along the radians" - all of which can be inserted untouched into all four ciphers and provide us with solutions that don't require a key (The "paradice and slaves" solution would only be present on the "canvas" of the 340 cipher, so this would only be a superficial observation). The idea of a killer who constantly responded to the newspapers at every turn, somehow resisting the temptation to ever disclose the workings of his codes and ciphers is a difficult story to sell. If we are of the belief that the 32 and 13 character codes are simply too short and too variable to be solved, then without a key the Zodiac Killer likely supplied an alternative. In the case presented above, the "key" and "answer" could be described as exactly the same thing - and It was just a case of transferring the wording from one communication to another in at least three of the examples.
John Rose used Dave Oranchak's webtoy to create features of the Halloween Card in just an 81 character block around the center of the 340 cipher. Some have stated that the variability of the characters in this area of the cipher have allowed the freedom to manufacture such a result. While that may be the case, a larger pattern of Paradice and Slaves is replicated in a 17 X 17 formation along both same midsections, effectively mirroring the John Rose presentation. The fact that both are even achievable in the same cipher, is worthy of mention. The Bay Area braggart must have been itching to throw us a few clues to his unbroken codes and ciphers - so the notion that he didn't give us any before he disappeared into the twilight - is somehow difficult to swallow. |
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