ZODIAC CIPHERS
RICHARD GRINELL, COVENTRY, ENGLAND
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OUT TO LUNCH

4/8/2018

 
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The Zodiac Killer's first three attacks were on couples, before switching to the murder of Paul Stine in Presidio Heights, San Francisco on October 11th 1969. It was considered that he may have 'changed his way of collecting slaves' in the fourth attack, due to the newspaper coverage, insinuating or suggesting he targeted the females primarily and likely feared the males, or the crimes themselves had a sexual component. However, an attack on a lone person in San Francisco was probably cemented in his mind, at least as early as July 31st 1969. Two of the three letters postmarked July 31st were mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner, and both failed to mention couples: The Chronicle letter stated "I will cruse around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend". The Examiner letter stated "I will cruse around killing people who are alone at night untill Sun Night or un till I kill a dozen people". The Vallejo Times-Herald letter was the only letter that mentioned couples: "I will cruse around and pick of all stray people or coupples that are alone then move on to kill some more untill I have killed over a dozen people". This tends to indicate the Zodiac Killer was well aware of his locations of opportunity and the 'availability' of courting couples in Vallejo as opposed to San Francisco. 

The following observation may be reading a little too much into the Zodiac's wording, but the Vallejo Times-Herald communication is the only one of the three letters he used the past tense regarding his mailing of the letters. He used the phrase "
Here is a cyipher or that is part of one. the other 2 parts have been mailed to the S.F. Examiner + the S.F. Chronicle",  whereas in the San Francisco communications used the present tense: "The other 2 parts are being mailed to the Vallejo Times + S.F. Chronicle" and "Here is part of a cipher the other 2 parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors of the Vallejo Times and SF Examiner". If he was a resident of Vallejo, and was going to post all three communications somewhere in or near the Richmond District of San Francisco, which he did, then subconsciously on his future return to his residence in Vallejo, he would have posted the other two communications (to the Examiner and Chronicle). That is because he is associating the Vallejo Times-Herald with his home location. The letter he is sending to the Vallejo Times-Herald is close to his residence, so he labels the two San Francisco communications containing the word Vallejo, as are being mailed, because he is projecting further ahead. This subconscious use of words may very early on have told us exactly where the Zodiac Killer lived - somewhere he knew that couples were readily available over the weekend, before he returned to work in San Francisco on Monday morning.    

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One always has to question why the killer after the Blue Rock Springs attack on Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau, who apparently lived in San Francisco, wouldn't just make the phone call somewhere equidistant between Vallejo and San Francisco, rather than from a payphone relatively close to the crime scene and extremely close to the police station. Why was he apparently constrained in choosing a payphone 10 minutes from the crime scene, yet 40 minutes after the double shooting, if it wasn't for the fact he lived in the Vallejo area, or extremely close to the payphone?

If the killer lived in Vallejo and traveled to San Francisco weekly for his occupation, then where did he work?. There are plenty of reasons to believe the Zodiac Killer knew the Presidio Heights area fairly well. If you are going to murder a taxicab driver in an affluent, built-up area, in the heart of San Francisco, it would have been advisable to know everything about the area and your likely escape route in advance. There are two ways to enter San Francisco by vehicle from Vallejo - either by the Golden Gate Bridge or Oakland Bay Bridge. Either journey from Vallejo to the Richmond District is approximately the same distance. But if you entered via the Golden Gate Bridge every day, you would certainly have every opportunity to become accustomed to the roadways in and around the Presidio Park area. This is the area the Zodiac Killer may have left his vehicle - somewhere on the fringes of the park, by West Pacific Avenue or Lyon Street, towards the east. 

A man fitting the description of Zodiac was seen running into the Julius Khan playground minutes after the murder of Paul Stine - a description that virtually matched that of the three teenagers and Officer Donald Fouke. If we contend this wasn't the killer, then we have to conveniently dismiss this independent eyewitness testimony as erroneous. Even Dave Toschi believed this was a viable sighting, as search dogs and police vehicles were stationed alongside the Julius Khan playground. A passage in Robert Graysmith's book Zodiac appears to corroborate the premise that eyewitnesses at, or near Spruce Street, observed a man running into Julius Khan playground, which tallies with the October 12th 1969 San Francisco Chronicle article. Here is the excerpt: "The detectives heard from neighbors that a stocky figure was seen dashing across Julius Khan playground and into the dense undergrowth of the Presidio. The dog patrol units, seven of the best search dogs in the country, gathered at the front entrance of the Presidio and were deployed one at a time in various directions. Armstrong and Toschi considered the possibilities. Had the killer gone quickly through the dark woods and emerged from the Presidio at Richardson Avenue, and taken Highway 101 past Fort Point onto the Golden Gate Bridge and vanished into Marin County". Richardson Avenue leads onto Highway 101 and the Golden Gate Bridge - a route the killer would be completely familiar with, had he traveled this way to and from work each day. Even if he didn't travel this exact route, and he worked in the Richmond District area, he would surely be familiar with the surrounding area and his best escape route from the intersection of Washington and Cherry.  

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The website (now not available online) crackproof.com examined the Zodiac communications and their associated postmarks. This indicated that the July 31st 1969 '408' letters were franked in the Central Richmond District, and the Paul Stine letter, mailed two days after the murder, was franked in the Inner Richmond District. This doesn't mean they were necessarily posted here, but processed at this location (these letters were franked 1A and 1B). However, they were very likely posted by the killer somewhere in the northwest region of San Francisco, with Richmond being a strong possibility. This area and vicinity is an extremely significant area when it comes to the exploits of the Zodiac Killer in San Francisco. This can be seen in the Google map diagram below.     

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The only claimed Zodiac victim outside of the canonical five and Bay Area, known to have once lived in San Francisco was Donna Lass, who disappeared on September 6th 1970 from South Lake Tahoe. She worked at the Letterman General Hospital in the Presido and resided at 4122 Balboa Street in the Outer Richmond District. Did she ever cross paths with the Zodiac Killer while she worked here?

On April 20th 1970, the 13-Symbol cipher arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle stating "I am mildly cerous as to how much money you have on my head now.  I hope you do not think that I was the one who wiped out that blue meannie with a bomb at the cop station.  Even though I talked about killing school children with one. It just wouldn't doo to move in on someone else's teritory.  But there is more glory in killing a cop than a cid because a cop can shoot back.  I have killed ten people to date. It would have been a lot more except that my bus bomb was a dud.  I was swamped out by the rain we had a while back". In the letter, the Zodiac Killer was referring to the murder of San Francisco police officer Brian McDonnell on February 16th 1970, two months earlier, when a bomb packed with fence staples exploded on an outside ledge of the 1899 Waller Street, Park Police Station in the Upper Haight neighborhood. This location, bordering Golden Gate Park and the Richmond District areas, is only 1.45 miles south of the Paul Stine crime scene.  
PictureSgt Richard Radetich
The next Zodiac communication was the Dragon card mailed on April 28th 1970, depicting what appears to be characters from a novel by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, in which Don Quixote, on his horse Rocinante, and Sancho Panza his squire, perched on a donkey called El rucio, embark on a mission to restore chivalry. The Zodiac Killer wrote on the face of the card "I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my Blast". Was this a case of Zodiac rubbing salt into the wounds of the San Francisco Police Department, choosing this card for a specific reason. The 1899 Waller Street Police Station is situated on the boundary of the San Francisco Golden Gate Park, in which the memorial statue of Miguel de Cervantes, featuring Don Quixote and Sancho Panza sits. So was this card really just a random choice, or was Zodiac simply "needling the blue pigs"?

In the following correspondence, the Button letter, on June 26th 1970, the Zodiac Killer suggested he may have been responsible for the murder of Sgt Richard Radetich a week earlier. Officer Radetich was gunned down by three shots from a .38 caliber revolver at point blank range through the driver side window of his vehicle while in the process of serving a parking ticket. He was sat in his police car near 643 Waller Street, San Francisco, in the Lower Haight District, where he sustained life threatening injuries and subsequently died 15 hours later. 643 Waller Street is only just over a mile from the Golden Gate Park and the Richmond District of San Francisco. One can see the clustering of these Zodiac 'events' within the northwest corner of San Francisco, and around the Richmond District area. Even the Dripping Pen card mailed on November 8th 1969, was supposedly mailed just south of this area.

Nobody can definitively pin down the likely profession of the Zodiac Killer, but did it reside somewhere in this region, and somewhere he could mail his communications to and from work. The question is always asked: Why would the Zodiac Killer mail a noticeable amount of his correspondence from the vicinity of where he worked? - that would be stupid. The answer probably lies within the geographical profiling term the least effort principle. That, when a human can exert the least effort in accomplishing a given task (with little risk), they probably will. Obviously, he realized that the ability to trace a letter or card back to a particular mailing point is practically impossible. Only to the area the letter was franked. 

The final observation on the map above, is the locality and proximity of the three golf courses to the Richmond District - bearing in mind the golf course adjacent to the Blue Rock Springs parking lot. Could the Zodiac Killer have worked at one of these locations, or did he play golf on a regular basis, taking his scorecard from the clubhouse into the very communications he mailed? 

John
4/8/2018 03:52:10 pm

Great article, Richard. A lot to chew on. Regarding what profession Zodiac did...my theory-- maybe he was a mailman and the Richmond District was his beat?

Shawn
4/8/2018 07:18:07 pm

I guess "franked" is the British equivalent to the American term of "Postmarked".

Richard
4/8/2018 11:55:46 pm

Yes, a stamp or an official mark on (a letter or parcel) to indicate that postage has been paid or does not need to be paid.

Richard
4/8/2018 11:58:21 pm

Certainly John, Zodiac could have been anything. I was a postman/mailman for 19 years and the job certainly can send you crazy.

Richard
4/9/2018 05:05:30 am

Here's a tricky question for somebody. Imagine conjoined twins were living in a residence when a guest came over for tea. The guest says something inappropriate, so one of the twins grabs a nearby gun and shoots the guest. How do they jail that person for life, while not punishing the other for doing nothing.

Drew
4/9/2018 08:50:24 am

Imprison the shooter, hire the hapless sibling as a guard. There's usually some bickering but quite simple really unless the twins are different genders and we have to get creative with community service assignments. We deal with issues like this fairly often in Canada.

Drew
4/9/2018 09:14:59 am

There is some great observations here Richard. It is amazing how the Richmond district seems like a hotbed for Zodiac activity and perhaps less amazing that I had never noticed! The residence near Vallejo with employment near Richmond San Francisco theory is developing nicely into a solid profile of the killer. It is likely that no theory will seem inarguable but the Golden Gate work route clicks for me. I now have little doubt that he was connected to both the Vallejo and San Francisco areas.

Have you cross referenced the geographical implications of the 69/70 flood data to see how that may align with these ideas? I know that you have written about it but I haven't re-read it. If there is a region within the Richmond area that incurred flooding at this time I think it could be another speculative brick in the wall. Thanks for putting this together man, this is exactly the stuff I'm looking for!

Richard
4/9/2018 10:13:49 am

I have yet to find any relevant flooding in the Richmond District. The area north of Richardson Avenue along the coast was susceptible to flooding, but not a particular area of interest. Nothing in 69/70 of any note. With any street having a climb on either side, the nadir could easily be susceptible to flash flooding that overwhelms the drainage system. Possibly Zodiac's claim of being flooded out was just an excuse to buy time and extend his bomb threat duration. I don't know of many Zodiac sleuths who ever took this threat seriously, although it obviously had to be a concern in 1970. Maybe the concession of Zodiac saying his basement was flooded and the bomb was a dud, was in his mind convincing the police he was trying but failing, keeping San Francisco on high alert. But certainly his bus bomb diagrams showing a school bus cutting off the sunlight and circuit, thereby detonating the explosives was pretty meaningless, as any vehicle of similar height would have achieved the same result. He would have needed a remote timer, with one eye on the road. I don't believe he was ever in the process of manufacturing an explosive device, or death machine. He probably had a rudimentary knowledge of electrical circuits- certainly enough to create a crude design. I may be wrong mind.

Drew
4/9/2018 01:42:57 pm

"Possibly Zodiac's claim of being flooded out was just an excuse to buy time and extend his bomb threat duration."

This is an agreeable appraisal to me. I don't think he was taken seriously as a bomber by the authorities even though they eventually did publish his threats and diagrams. The flood reference as well I believe was pure poppycock.

Shelli
4/10/2018 12:59:38 pm

Rich, have you looked into the Presidio fracas on Oct 11 1968, In which an AWOL prisoner was shot by a guard in an escape attempt? I wondered what you thought.

Richard
4/10/2018 01:47:08 pm

You mean one year before the Stine murder. If so I haven't come across that Shelli. Have you got any extra details or links to the story.

Shelli
4/10/2018 02:34:06 pm

http://www.foundsf.org/index.php?title=The_Presidio_Mutiny_of_1968

Richard
4/10/2018 10:47:49 pm

Yes, I remember reading about this a while back. Interesting history regarding the Presidio (including the tunnels). Trying to forge any connection to Zodiac would be speculative and extremely difficult at this stage. Nevertheless it's a useful backstory to the climate of the area in the late 1960s and early 1970s, something the Zodiac was keen to mention in some of his communications. He certainly had one toe in the past, constantly referencing or inferring historical material.

Shelli
4/10/2018 02:40:10 pm

This is way more than conspiracy. This base is the HQ for Army Psycological Operations.

BB
5/22/2018 10:31:08 am

talk about conspiracy

DB Cooper's Identity Revealed at Press Conference 5/17/18 Walter Reca

Cooper/Reca was a black operator.


Comments are closed.
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    The Zodiac Killer may have given us the answer almost word-for-word when he wrote PS. The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians & # inches along the radians. The code solution identified was Estimate: Four Radians and Five Inches To read more, click the image.
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