When the newspaper articles about the Lake Herman Road murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were tailing off by March 1969, what inspired the Zodiac Killer to start using cryptograms within his opening letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald on July 31st 1969? As we've seen with many other letters mailed by the Zodiac Killer, his primary inspiration for the design of his communications comes from recent newspaper articles. As reported in the "Hartford Courant" newspaper on March 2nd 1969 (and others), Joseph Verner Reed released a book called "Fun With Cryptograms" in 1968 and "Fun With Codes" in January 1969, ranging from easy to extremely difficult challenges.
Joseph Verner Reed "was a hustling theatrical entrepreneur in New York, a land developer in Florida, a diplomat in Paris, a newspaper reporter, art collector, author and loving compiler of word games and cryptograms". Quote from the New York Times. His cryptograms featured in newspapers around the USA on a regular basis over many years and throughout 1969. His love of cryptograms and word games, ever present, and often under the banner of puzzles in the newspapers, reminds one of the "concerned citizen" card mailed on August 10th 1969 to Sergeant John Lynch, which stated "Working puzzles criptograms and word puzzles is one of my pleasures". However, that is the least interesting thing about Joseph Verner Reed and a possible Zodiac connection.
Joseph Verner Reed "was a hustling theatrical entrepreneur in New York, a land developer in Florida, a diplomat in Paris, a newspaper reporter, art collector, author and loving compiler of word games and cryptograms". Quote from the New York Times. His cryptograms featured in newspapers around the USA on a regular basis over many years and throughout 1969. His love of cryptograms and word games, ever present, and often under the banner of puzzles in the newspapers, reminds one of the "concerned citizen" card mailed on August 10th 1969 to Sergeant John Lynch, which stated "Working puzzles criptograms and word puzzles is one of my pleasures". However, that is the least interesting thing about Joseph Verner Reed and a possible Zodiac connection.
Did the Zodiac Killer employ a play on words when he wrote "I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper. In this cipher is my idenity [sic]" in his message to the San Francisco Chronicle, or when he began his 408 cipher with "I like killing people because it is so much fun", and finally wrote "By the way, are the police having a good time with the code" in his "Debut of Zodiac" letter on August 4th 1969. His use of the word "fun" and the phrase "good time with the code", not dissimilar to Joseph Verner Reed's book entitled "Fun With Codes". The Zodiac Killer altering "fun with codes" into the singular "good time with the code". But the crucial part is where the Zodiac Killer offers us his identity within the cryptogram (name being part of identity)..I wondered what inspired the Zodiac Killer to claim he embedded his name within the cryptogram, despite later admitting in the decoded 408 that his promise was an empty one, by stating "I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife". Joseph Verner Reed would place his name within the cryptograms he designed (his forename and middle initial), as can be seen in the numerous examples from 1969 shown below. Joseph Verner Reed's book was advertised in the newspapers in 1969, we have the similarity of "fun" and "good time" with codes, and we have the promise and deliverance of a name within a cryptogram by the Zodiac Killer and Joseph Verner Reed respectively.
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