It has long been thought that the Zodiac Killer had a penchant for the theater, movies and comic books, based upon his letter writing to the newspapers. We don't know whether this was a protracted case of misdirection by the Zodiac Killer, who was simply playing to the audience, or whether the themes he portrayed in his communications were an extension of himself. We know that he was inspired by the exact words of Merian C. Cooper, the associate producer of "The Most Dangerous Game" (1932), when he created his 408 cryptogram and enciphered the phrase "man is the most dangerous animal of all" - but did any other movies have an influence in the design of his July 31st 1969 letters to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle?
The Zodiac Killer wrote "In this cipher is my idenity" in the Chronicle letter, to which he added the third portion of cipher, stating "I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife". In other words, he promised us an identity, but when the 408 cipher was decoded he assured us that it wouldn't be his name. We know of two identities for the Bay Area murderer [1] The "Zodiac", and [2] "Z". These appeared first in the August 4th 1969 "Debut" letter, and the October 27th 1970 "Halloween" card. One of these identities should be hidden in the 408 cipher if the Zodiac Killer was telling the truth. Unfortunately we have 18 unsolved characters in the 408 cipher which nobody has adequately explained, until David Oranchak highlighted the concept of a missing line.
The Zodiac Killer wrote "In this cipher is my idenity" in the Chronicle letter, to which he added the third portion of cipher, stating "I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife". In other words, he promised us an identity, but when the 408 cipher was decoded he assured us that it wouldn't be his name. We know of two identities for the Bay Area murderer [1] The "Zodiac", and [2] "Z". These appeared first in the August 4th 1969 "Debut" letter, and the October 27th 1970 "Halloween" card. One of these identities should be hidden in the 408 cipher if the Zodiac Killer was telling the truth. Unfortunately we have 18 unsolved characters in the 408 cipher which nobody has adequately explained, until David Oranchak highlighted the concept of a missing line.
One other movie that the Zodiac Killer may have been influenced by was "The Mark of Zorro" released in 1920 and 1940, featuring an individual who had a secret identity of Don Diego de la Vega, a wealthy nobleman who lived in Los Angeles during the Spanish colonial era. By night, he transformed into the masked vigilante "Zorro" (Z), fighting the injustice and oppression of the corrupt. This duality allowed him to operate with impunity, as his true identity remained hidden from those he sought to neutralize. He was a type of masked superhero who left his signature or identity in the form of the letter "Z", often carved onto his slain victims by virtue of his sword. Somebody the Zodiac Killer may have identified with when he masked up for his "adventure" on the shores of Lake Berryessa on September 27th 1969, armed with a bayonet-type weapon. The whole concept of Zorro was a masked man who had ties to early California, whose "secret identity" was cloaked behind the letter "Z" that signed his perilous work. Sounds like the October 27th 1970 "secret pal" card, signed with a "Z". But how does the word "identity" and the signature "Z" tie in with the 408 cipher. The letter mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper on July 31st 1969 carried the wording "In this cipher is my idenity", so where is the letter "Z" in the third and final portion of cipher mailed to the Chronicle?
THE "MARK OF ZORRO" (1940) WAS RELEASED IN THE USA (AND CALIFORNIA) ON NOVEMBER 8TH, WHICH TIED WITH THE DATE OF HIS FOLLOWING 340 CIPHER
Count Zaroff was the murderous host of "Ship Trap" Island, where unlucky sailors were lured to their fate of being hunted for sport in "The Most Dangerous Game" (1932). Zorro was the masked avenger seeking to right the wrongs of society with his trademark signature that struck fear into his adversaries. The Zodiac Killer seemingly flipped the script and lashed out at the innocent in a society that he had developed an animosity towards - but in all cases - the leading protagonist carried an identity beginning with the letter "Z". Bearing in mind that these two movies may have had an influence on the thinking of the Zodiac Killer, it isn't unrealistic to believe he adopted the letter "Z" from the pseudonym "Zodiac" and inserted it in position 408 in his cipher. An identify just like "Zorro".
It is a fair to good assumption that the Zodiac Killer made a draft version of his 408 message in a grid of 17 by 24 characters, to be enciphered and mailed in three parts of 136 characters to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle - but he made a mistake during this process when moving from the San Francisco Examiner to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. The problem was that the first three lines of the Chronicle section may have all began with the letter "E", so he likely accidentally missed out line 17 from his draft version of the message and continued his enciphering to the Chronicle beginning on line 18 instead (see associated image).
This created the error in the deciphered message of "The best part of it is that when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the (?) I have killed will become my slaves". His letters to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle described his potential dozen victims as being "couples", "stray people", "lone people" or "people who are alone in the night". Therefore, the missing line preceding "I HAVE KILLED" probably contained these descriptors. The original message could have read "The best part of it is that when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the lone or stray people I have killed will become my slaves". Had the Zodiac Killer not made this error, we would have been left with one unexplained character in position 408 (the letter E).
It is a fair to good assumption that the Zodiac Killer made a draft version of his 408 message in a grid of 17 by 24 characters, to be enciphered and mailed in three parts of 136 characters to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle - but he made a mistake during this process when moving from the San Francisco Examiner to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper. The problem was that the first three lines of the Chronicle section may have all began with the letter "E", so he likely accidentally missed out line 17 from his draft version of the message and continued his enciphering to the Chronicle beginning on line 18 instead (see associated image).
This created the error in the deciphered message of "The best part of it is that when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the (?) I have killed will become my slaves". His letters to the Vallejo Times-Herald, San Francisco Examiner and San Francisco Chronicle described his potential dozen victims as being "couples", "stray people", "lone people" or "people who are alone in the night". Therefore, the missing line preceding "I HAVE KILLED" probably contained these descriptors. The original message could have read "The best part of it is that when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the lone or stray people I have killed will become my slaves". Had the Zodiac Killer not made this error, we would have been left with one unexplained character in position 408 (the letter E).
David Oranchak noted in his 408 cipher analysis that the Zodiac Killer adopted noticeable cycles in his encryption technique when allocating ciphertext characters to the same plaintext letter. Below is one for the plaintext letter "E", which David shows here in his YouTube video.
It appeared that the Zodiac Killer's original message read perfectly well for 407 characters (finishing with "for my afterlife"), but then he placed the letter "E" to end the 408 message. Was this his identity or signature we had to further decode? The plaintext letter "E" is first represented by the letter "Z" in Zodiac's cycled code key above. Is it possible that we had to run this anomalous letter through the key for a second time to reveal his true identity? Could this be the link between the Bates letters mailed in Riverside in 1967, thereby binding the two cases together through a trinity of communications spanning two years?
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