Bearing in mind the propensity of the Zodiac Killer to respond to recent newspaper articles about himself, it would have crossed the minds of Zodiac researchers that the hidden message in the 340 cipher may have concerned the recent attempted poisoning of schoolteacher Daniel Williams by somebody claiming to be the Zodiac Killer. The logical conclusion may have been a hidden message regarding the murders of Kathie Snoozy & Debra Furlong, on account of the Zodiac Killer raising his victim count from five to seven in the Dripping Pen card. However, it ultimately transpired to be a rebuttal or rejection of Eric Weill, the Zodiac hoaxer who rang into the Jim Dunbar TV Show on October 22nd 1969. The Zodiac enciphered the message "That wasn't me on the TV show" and "I am not afraid of the gas chamber", based entirely upon the Zodiac imposter and the interaction with Jim Dunbar and Melvin Belli.
When the Zodiac Killer's seventh cipher/code was mailed shortly after the Snoozy & Furlong murders saw an arrest in the case, on April 30th 1971, it too would ultimately prove to contain a contemporary hidden message concerning the arrest and questioning of Karl Francis Werner. The 148 character cipher was probably mailed shortly after the arrest of Werner (likely May 2nd 1971 or just after). This cipher called out Werner as a phony, utilizing the wording of Inspector David Toschi and the newspaper headlines regarding a second phony Zodiac call on February 5th 1970, likely from Eric Weill once again. In fact, the Zodiac Killer didn't express an individual reference to Karl Francis Werner as a phony, he utilized the plural, enciphering "phonys" to bind Werner and Weill under one banner. In other words, the Zodiac Killer was calling out Eric Weill in the 148 character cipher, just as he had done in the 340 cipher on November 8th 1969 (through rebuttal). The 148 character message and accompanying letter was attempting to maintain his claim, not only to his perceived ownership of the Snoozy & Furlong murders, but the recent murder of Kathy Bilek on April 11th 1971, also accredited to Karl Francis Werner. The fact that both the 340 and 148 character ciphers indirectly referenced Eric Weill, inextricably links them to the same author, bearing in mind the 340 cipher was unsolved when the 148 character cipher was created and mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Based on the Zodiac Killer's ability to use phrases from newspapers many months and years ago when composing a new letter, there is every chance the Zodiac Killer kept a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about himself. In the newspaper clipping above, it stated "Homicide detectives later listened to a tape recording of the conversation and concluded that "Sam" was a phony". In the newspaper clipping below, with respect to the apprehension of Karl Francis Werner, it stated "Late yesterday he was undergoing questioning. The detectives would not reveal what statements, if any, he had made concerning the killings of the three girls". Therefore, it is with little surprise, the Zodiac Killer would respond to the April 30th 1971 article below, by urging that law enforcement "stop listening to phonys".
When the Zodiac Killer's seventh cipher/code was mailed shortly after the Snoozy & Furlong murders saw an arrest in the case, on April 30th 1971, it too would ultimately prove to contain a contemporary hidden message concerning the arrest and questioning of Karl Francis Werner. The 148 character cipher was probably mailed shortly after the arrest of Werner (likely May 2nd 1971 or just after). This cipher called out Werner as a phony, utilizing the wording of Inspector David Toschi and the newspaper headlines regarding a second phony Zodiac call on February 5th 1970, likely from Eric Weill once again. In fact, the Zodiac Killer didn't express an individual reference to Karl Francis Werner as a phony, he utilized the plural, enciphering "phonys" to bind Werner and Weill under one banner. In other words, the Zodiac Killer was calling out Eric Weill in the 148 character cipher, just as he had done in the 340 cipher on November 8th 1969 (through rebuttal). The 148 character message and accompanying letter was attempting to maintain his claim, not only to his perceived ownership of the Snoozy & Furlong murders, but the recent murder of Kathy Bilek on April 11th 1971, also accredited to Karl Francis Werner. The fact that both the 340 and 148 character ciphers indirectly referenced Eric Weill, inextricably links them to the same author, bearing in mind the 340 cipher was unsolved when the 148 character cipher was created and mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Based on the Zodiac Killer's ability to use phrases from newspapers many months and years ago when composing a new letter, there is every chance the Zodiac Killer kept a scrapbook of newspaper cuttings about himself. In the newspaper clipping above, it stated "Homicide detectives later listened to a tape recording of the conversation and concluded that "Sam" was a phony". In the newspaper clipping below, with respect to the apprehension of Karl Francis Werner, it stated "Late yesterday he was undergoing questioning. The detectives would not reveal what statements, if any, he had made concerning the killings of the three girls". Therefore, it is with little surprise, the Zodiac Killer would respond to the April 30th 1971 article below, by urging that law enforcement "stop listening to phonys".
The 340 cipher was unbroken by the time the 148 character cipher was mailed, so this probably explains why the Zodiac Killer reverted back to an extremely simple cipher in 1971. Having another message carrying a contemporary message lost in time, was probably not the ideal scenario for the Zodiac Killer. By signing off his accompanying letter in 1971 with a sun cross symbol, he was probably giving us a clue to his signature of "Z", because this symbol featured only once in the cipher, and it represented the plaintext letter of "Z" beginning the pseudonym "Zodiac". Quite a clever addition by the Bay Area murderer. The Zodiac Killer would further give us an eighth cipher/code on August 1st 1973, when the Albany letter was mailed with coding extremely similar to the one shown below.
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