Zodiac's 340 character cipher has been solved!

The full text of the cipher is:

[quote]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

And here is a video by David Oranchek, showing how the cipher was solved:

amazing!

proof that the guy was a nutcase and couldn't spell

PARADICE? New life is life? and then a run on sentence?

How did this dolt evade the police .

Paradice. Oh, dear.

When it comes to that final run on sentence, some people in the comments have posited that if you move it around slightly it becomes:

[quote]I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE. LIFE IS DEATH.

or

[quote]...DEATH IS LIFE.

I have this image now of the ending of "Zodiac" being re-shot where r5 meets up with Arthur Leigh Allen and gives him a good scolding and hissing for his misspellings.

"Why, it's an even more egregious crime than all of the murders put together! HISSSSSS! HISSSSSS, I say!"

Damn it OP, I wanted to start this thread!

Oh well, this is amazing. Zodiac is one of my recurring obsessions.

Sorry, mate ;). If it makes you feel any better this was the first time I ever got in early enough myself, usually I come to these things very late, when everyone else has moved on, ha!

so it seems he believed in life after death? not an atheist?

I hope this means that they are close to capturing him!

R11 Zodiac's belief (who knows whether he really meant it) in an afterlife in "paradice" with slaves appeared in his previous writings.

I recently rewatched Mindhunter, and in it Ed Kemper says a similar thing about slaves in the afterlife as Zodiac did. Not sure if this was true to life or made up for the show though.

I'm glad they cracked Mitt Romney's code

"proof that the guy was a nutcase and couldn't spell"

Actually, the Zodiac used deliberate misspellings and would thrown extra letters into words in other ciphers, because that's a good way to foil codebreakers who are looking for recognizable patterns. And you can't complain about the results, it's taken the combined efforts of God know how many amateur and professional codebreakers FIFTY YEARS to break this amateur cipher.

So he's Muslim?

R5, I bet the misspellings were on purpose and he knew better.

[Quote] So he's Muslim?

Or some sort of religious loon.

I would much prefer Taradise.

This shit baffled scads of law enforcement and feds for over 50 fucking years and this is the reveal? What a fucking let down! Fuck!😩

Does this mean Ted "Grandpa Munster" Cruz will be arrested soon?

I'm pretty sure the Zodiac Killer is still alive. And, it's ANGELA LANSBURY!!!!!!!!! You can't prove it's not true.

Does Brenda Dickson have an alibi?

R21, his personal mythology (he thought he could “enslave” the people he killed and bind them to him in the afterlife) was known before this stuff was decoded. He probably created the ciphers just to torment the police. He was one of those serial killers who liked to taunt those who were trying to track him.

How long before we hear they didn’t do this correctly?

Did anyone previously try cracking this? What had they come up with?

What kind of person comes up with these? Does it show intelligence?

Well, that message was kind of a letdown. We waited 51 years for THAT?

He’s such a bore.

Arthur Leigh Allen was exonerated via DNA and his writings being linked to the crime were laughed at by handwriting experts.

Ugh, sounds like he is a total Sagittarius. My ex was one so I would know.

So who do you think Zodiac was?

[quote] because I now have enough slaves to work for me.”

As if the murders weren’t bad enough, he’s a slave owner too?

ZODIAC IS CANCELED!!

R33, see R23

R33, he was probably someone the police never even identified as a suspect.

"He probably created the ciphers just to torment the police. "

Oh yeah! He didn't kill that many people, officially, the reason he's still talked about today is that he conducted a one-man reign of terror. His publicity-mongering and taunting and ciphers kept him in the headlines when murders didn't, and it caught the public imagination well enough that we're still talking about it today.

At least modern serial killers don't pull that shit any more, modern forensics can trace too many things. I don't think it's possible to send letters or messages to the news or police without giving away your location or DNA.

Satanic activities- the slave ref and paradise (meaning hell for him).

Were all the ciphers cracked?

[quote]I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE

But he'll never be to me.

Cheeseburger. Cheeseburger. No Coke. Pepsi. Chips.

Yeah, after all of that time, the actual cipher is rather underwhelming. I thought it would provide some clue as to his identity. It doesn't look like this helps move this cold case any closer towards being solved. But I'm not a murder investigator, so what do I know?

Zodiac spelling "paradise" with a C isn't surprising, because that's exactly how he spelled it in the cipher that was solved back in 1969 (as pointed out by Sylvia at R13).

R25 Isn't that was Dahmer believed? That he could enslave people....

Sounds like the Zodiac read a book about Ancient Egypt.

It is jibberish by an insane killer. Still, we dont know who he is.

If Zodiac were still alive, I think the best we could hope for out of the solving of this code is that it sparks a need in him for attention again, like BTK. He really did seem to be very much an attention hound. I know he said in a letter that he thought killing was the biggest thrill, but it does come across like he enjoyed creating fear through his letters and threats even more, and was able to sustain himself off of that for a lot longer, rather than having to continue killing.

This is the crime I want most to see solved in my lifetime, and this is the only confirmed Zodiac development in my lifetime. Never thought I would see it. The last confirmed development in the Zodiac case was a letter postmarked January 29, 1974.

This was more of a let down than "drink your Ovaltine".

We did solve it. You just weren't listening.

R48, me too. I still hold out hope. After all, since I started getting interested in true crime as a teen (c. 2000), three big cases that were unsolved at that time are now solved: BTK, Green River killer and EAR/ONS.

Zodiac is one of those cases with so much mythology around it. If solved, I wouldn't mind betting a lot of what we think we know about it isn't actually relevant to his crimes.

Is there any chance of familial DNA cracking his identity? Surely, the Zodiac has a frau niece or distant cousin who just had to know her 23andMe.

[R17] Or Mormon. My money's on the latter.

Oooh good an excuse to rewatch Zodiac on Netflix. Great movie if you're up to something scary.

Zodiac is one of my favourite movies. I don't love a lot of his other work, but I really enjoyed the attention to detail in Zodiac, how successfully creepy it was, and also how beautifully it was shot.

I will never be able to listen to Hurdy Gurdy Man without chills.

Rebus puzzles like [image of two dice] "pair o' dice" were big around that era and fit with the riddler/cypher MO.

Coincidentally, SO's up-the-street neighbor was a criminal documents expert -- handwriting analysis, specifically -- for the State on multiple Zodiac messages.

R55, yeah, it was easily one of the best movies of the 2000s, IMO. It holds up.

R54 RDJ great in that. Could get.

The scene where Zodiac disappears behind the tree and Celia wonders where he's gone.

The talk show scene with Melvin Belli.

The Kathleen Johns scene.

The 'Is there somebody else here?' basement scene.

These all are so creepy. Oh, and while it doesn't get me now, I remember the first time watching it getting creeped out when RDJ is meeting a contact in some disused area to discuss Cheri Jo Bates. Especially as he had been threatened by Zodiac by that point.

The zodiac killer story scared me as a child. We lived in West LA at the time it was all happening.

I re-watched the movie recently and I was disappointed. It didn't seem as good as I remembered it, and the ending seemed abrupt.

You're slipping, DL.

Cops talk that way. About killing to have slaves in the afterlife.

The other one that will probably never be solved now: the Black Dahlia. Perhaps, Its too late, but damn I would've loved to know more details. There are theories, but I don't think they hold up. Even the son of George Hodel was inaccurate because the photo he built his theory around is, in fact, not Elizabeth Short.

That's an interesting comment, R63. The Zodiac seemed to be aware that it was important that he communicate in a way that the police could use to establish that the messages were coming from the actual killer.

I think r56 is written in cipher.

WTF?

[quote] Isn't that was Dahmer believed? That he could enslave people....

Yes, r44. He didn’t start out trying to kill them, but to enslave them. When he drilled into their heads he thought it would make them zombie-like and he’d have control over them.

The Zodiac didn't have any idea that it would take decades to solve his ciphers, so it's not likely he put identifying information in them. The contents of this one make it seem like he thought it would get solved relatively quickly.

Maybe he meant Paradise, California. Too bad it burned to the ground a few years ago.

What if the Zodiac is perfectly sane and knows some Egypt witchcraft that could enslave the soul of his victims in his afterlife?

He stopped killing because he thought he got enough slave for himself.

Jake knew he’d never put his name in a cypher...

Watching Zodiac tonight. Love that movie.

[quote] so it seems he believed in life after death?

But did he believe in life after love?

DNA??

Paradise Island?

R68 If I remember correctly, Zodiac had just had one of his ciphers cracked by a husband/wife a few months before he sent this one. He probably deliberately increased the complexity to see how long it would take. This also probably explains the ciphers sent claiming to have the coordinates of a bomb—he was probably watching the location to figure out if they were cracking his code.

Zodiac was such an attention-whore, I imagined he would've given a death-bed confession at the very end.

Somebody link the Mitt Romney is the Zodiac thread. That shit was compelling and I truly believe correct.

He looks just like the police sketch

Ha ha, Mitt! Someone solved your cipher!

I'm not totally up on all the ins and outs of the case, but have they talked about what *kind* of a cipher it is and what that might say about the background of the man who devised it? I know with the misspellings and other misdirections (extra letters), it might be hard to determine just how much skill was needed to encode it. I've read a lot of evidence and timelines, but I don't remember ever reading profiles or much about his motive. (I mean, he was a psycho killer, but what was his internal reasoning?)

Amazing it took 50 years to crack his cipher. Didn't the FBI or LE enlist military intelligence and their mathematicians, programmer and encryption specialists? He must have been rather brilliant in a Theodore Kaczynski way. I'm sure cops must have investigated local universities' math and computer sciences departments. Kaczynski, incidentally, was a math professor at Berkeley from '67-'69.

R81, didn't some people think the Unabomber and Zodiac were one and the same? Kaczynski being a professor in the Bay Area at the time seemed to fuel some of the speculation.

r81, you don't have to be brilliant to do a cipher

Should’ve been a best pic nominee in 2007. I would’ve taken There Will Be Blood out which is pretty boring except Daniel Day Lewis and his Oscar winning scene chewing.

Oh my God, I promise to go back and read, but HAD to stop at r49 lmao!!!!!! That is EXACTLY what this feels like!!! “Drink your Ovaltine!!!!!!!!!!” WW for r49 ha!

Unsolved Mysteries did a segment in 1996 on the possibility of Kaczynski being the Zodiac, after his arrest but before his trial.

Ted K would be too scared to confront people personally.

Romney, on the other hand, was a natural bully.

They put shit like this in newspapers

R47, I was just going to post that. Maybe he’ll be like BTK - a Boomer idiot who doesn’t understand modern technology and gets caught. lol

They need to DNA test the stamps again. If he didn’t lick them, find out who did. They must remember doing that for somebody. They can narrow it down by family and see if any of the suspects had any links to Zodiac.

I think the DNA would be too degraded by now.

One of the things that creeped me out when I was first reading about Zodiac in around 2002 was that on the forums there would be weird posters sometimes and the question was raised that if Zodiac were still alive and he is such a narcissist, could it be possible that he would join these forums? I could imagine him doing that.

R91, I read that they only have enough left to run a single test, so they have to wait for technology to be more sophisticated. Don’t quote me on that though, maybe it was just a poster here, but I thought I read an article or maybe it was a podcast. Or maybe they did test the last sample but it was inconclusive??? Anyone here know?

Let’s wait to hear that Zodiac was female!

So who it or was the most likely culprit?

R96 Richard Gaikowski

In every thread we have someone who insists repeatedly that it's obviously Richard Gaikowski, but if you actually look up the information out there, it's not even close to being definitive.

R81 Spies routinely use one-time pads that are unbreakable, and are not written/created by geniuses or mathematicians.

The only people who are worse than a psychopathic killer are the ones who spend their entire life’s work trying to decipher a serial killer. Let that sink in.

[quote] Let that sink in.

*eyeroll*

R98 Never said it was definitive. The question was, "Who is the *most likely* culprit?"

To my mind, Gaikowski IS the most likely culprit. I've never seen any other suspect put forward as convincing as he is.

Gaikowski doesn't seem convincing at all to me. He's a possible suspect because someone put his name forward and because he's dead, and so people are free to accuse him of anything. Otherwise the descriptions of him don't suggest that he had the isolated, authoritarian personality the Zodiac killer seems to have had.

It's completely possible that the police, who were very limited with what they could do with physical evidence, never so much as interviewed the actual killer.

And it says....nothing of interest.

[quote]So he's Muslim?

Only if you're a complete imbecile who still thinks the 72 thing referred to virgins when it actually translates to grapes, but then, a lot of you guys live to be willfully ignorant.

[quote] And it says....nothing of interest.

He sent four ciphers. The first one was cracked quickly.

Did anyone really think he would send a cipher to police that, if it was cracked as quickly as the first one, would say “I’m John Jones. I’m the Zodiac Killer. I’m at 123 Main St. Come and get me”? He’d have to be an idiot.

Gaikowski isn't a plausible suspect. The real killer will probably be someone who was never a suspect at all. Look at the Golden State Killer. DeAngelo wasn't on anyone's radar.

There’s another theory that there was no Zodiac killer and that all the crimes were unrelated and that someone in law enforcement began writing the letters as a hoax.

Isn't Gaikowski the favourite suspect of Tom Voigt? That already makes me wary of considering him the Zodiac.

Is it even possible that someone could do this and no else else knew they were doing it? I really wonder if someone out there does know something. This guy was such a narcissist. We like to think of these people as being unable to help themselves and having to continue killing until they’re caught. BTK killed that theory. I guess it’s very possible that this person is still alive and may get off on being in the news again. Let’s hope he responds via media and gets his ass caught.

How could someone have an executioner’s costume and no one saw it? Where do you get something like that? Make it? Surely that would stick out in someone’s home. lol.

There wasn’t any sexual assault, right? This guy just liked to kill for the sake of it?

The handwriting is extremely close, IMHO.

Yep, no sexual assault involved. Mostly shooting, apart from the Lake Berryessa couple, so mostly he didn't even have to get that close to his victims.

My friend was telling me the other night that latest theories are linking murderous impulses to the sexual drive in the sense that they are particularly strong in younger men and fade as the men get older. So whereas we've been told for so long that killers are compulsive and continue killing, it's thought more likely now that the impulse gets less and less as they age. Which makes sense when you look at killers like BTK as you say R110.

Richard was the prime suspect.

I'm curious about the solution but I'm not curious enough to sit through a youtube video. Why don't they write out how they solved it?

R112, I wonder how age and its corresponding limitations has to do with that, as contrasted with sexual satisfaction.

Why is Zodiac killer so famous? There have been many serial killers with way bigger number of dead bodies behind them, before and after him.

One of the reasons is because, much like Jack the Ripper, he’s never been caught.

There are many serial killers that never been caught.

Like who, r118?

Tell me their names dammit.

Buck would have never mispelled a serial killer manifesto.

R116, partially because of the letters he sent to the media to garner attention for himself

Yes, R116, he was a relentless self-promoter: have himself a name, wore a costume, wrote letters, created the ciphers, and quoted The Mikado. Three people, including a police dispatcher, are thought to have heard his voice.

The earlier DNA sample was done around 20 years ago, and they couldn’t get much because at that time they weren’t able to separate the DNA from the glue. Once that problem was solved, they tried gain a couple of years ago, but I can’t find anywhere whether they ever announced the results. It’s possible they quietly uploaded it to the genealogy sites and are waiting to get a match.

[Quote]Is it even possible that someone could do this and no else else knew they were doing it?

Oh, absolutely. People with psychoses like his are loners and isolate. Paranoia contributes to this, but their particular psychosis informs them that the are special and different from others and need to keep themselves apart. They also have social skills deficits that make interaction with others hard. A typical sociopathic/psychopathic killer who thinks he's smarter and has planned perfect crimes might brag to acquaintances who are also criminals.

Theodore Kaczynski was so isolative and removed from society that it wasn't until his brother, who recognized TK's writing style, came forward to identify him.

BTK wasn’t a loner in fact quite the opposite. He wouldn’t have been caught had he resisted his urge to taunt the local media. He even visited the news station that he’d sent a series of letters to, he was as psychopathic as one could get.

"Is it even possible that someone could do this and no else else knew they were doing it? "

It was absolutely possible for a serial killer to walk unknown through 20th century California, if they could afford their own place. A bachelor who went to his job during the day, who had no close friends or SO, who didn't have intrusive relatives living nearby... could keep his secret life as a killer quiet. He could go to his job and go home at night to a bachelor pad where other people were rarely invited in, because as R124 says, a serial killer is expected to be socially and psychologically isolative. In his lonely hovel he could work on his ciphers and polish his gun, and drive to the far corners of the urban sprawl to look for isolated post office boxes and good murder sites, all without anyone having a clue.

Although of course, there has been speculation that Darlene Ferrin was killed because she DID know something. Well, if he made the mistake of trying to impress a girl by showing her his horrific hobbies he wouldn't be the first straight man to make that mistake, but it wasn't a mistake he made twice.

R83 no, just very aggressive!

R110, I think that the Zodiac was a weekend killer, meaning he had a regular job but lived alone. He could have had all of his creepy stuff but passed as an ordinary citizen.

Did he kill on or around holidays, or am I misremembering? Betty-Lou and David were at Christmas time weren't they? And Darlene and Mike at 4th of July... can't remember the other two, just that the gaps between became less.

R129, the dates: December 20, 1968; July 4, 1969; September 27, 1969; October 11, 1969.

Thanks R130. Are September 27 and October 11 on or around holidays in the US?

Does anyone have any insight to the Zodiac's threats against the Vallejo school bus? I grew up in Sacramento around the time (born in '64) and while I knew about the Zodiac killings (perpetually on the news; kids knew) my parents must have protected me because I never heard about the school bus threat until reading it here on DL several years ago.

That was a huge departure from previous MO, right? Could it have been someone else? Very strange switch from "worldly adults" to school kids.

I can only imagine the fear some kids felt. We had the East Area Rapist (eventual GSK serial killer down I-80), when I was in 5th grade when my family moved to East Sacramento even though assaults were 3-4 miles away. I was scared shitless. Helicopters were a nightly occurrence.

R131, they were both Saturdays. October 12th, Sunday, was Columbus Day, but that doesn't seem evocative enough to warrant special treatment by a psycho. It's more likely that he went out on Saturdays because he was looking for couples in parked cars. December 20, 1968 and July 4, 1969 were Fridays, so the same rationale might apply.

Yeah that seems fair enough R133. I always wondered if the whole: "needs to kill on a holiday/full moon etc" stuff is just in movies and on TV and not a real life thing.

R134, Jack the Ripper, too, killed on Fridays/Saturdays/early Sunday mornings, when the streets were full of potential victims and he had time off. I think that's a common pattern. Lots of these guys, apparently, could keep it in check during the work week.

Robert Graysmith sold me on Arthur Leigh Allen. He seemed like such a perfect suspect, but guess he was wrong?

From what I have been led to believe, a lot of what Graysmith said tied the case to Allen never actually happened. Like the painting party. The whole Zodiac knew Darlene Ferrin thing is actually based on very little if I remember correctly.

There's so much mythology around this case.

r137, yes, that's true. Graysmith fudged a lot of the "evidence" to fit his theory.

Could he be Michael Aquino?

Dr Hodel?

Could he have been in law enforcement and one step ahead of everyone?

r140, impossible!

When I was reading about Gaikowski as a suspect, something that really struck me was that in the Gaik theory, he was at the painting party, and with the Arthur Leigh Allen theory, HE was at the painting party. It really made me question whether that painting party even happened.

Unfortunately there's someone who is so convinced it's Gaikowski that nearly every forum thread out there is dominated by this one guy and his 100 "reasons" why Gaik is the killer, and it's hard to find actual information, especially about the alleged painting party.

Darlene's sisters Pam and... the other one, I can't remember the name. She was played by Clea Duvall in the movie. Linda? Anyway, apparently they are both kind of, um, not all there. A bit prone to flights of fancy and dramatisation and such. And most of these stories that tie Darlene to the Zodiac (like the painting party, or the suggestion Darlene saw someone murdered etc) come from them.

God, your answer creeps me out to no end, r141.

"That was a huge departure from previous MO, right? Could it have been someone else? Very strange switch from "worldly adults" to school kids."

Well, he never carried out his threat to kill random children, so my guess is that he just wanted to grab attention and make everyone in the Bay Area afraid of him. Like I said above, he's famous because he successfully terrorized a major metropolitan area for years, with his campaign of publicity-whoring, puzzles, and fear-mongering, not because he killed a huge number of people.

I was a child at the time, and there was a year without trick-or-treating. All the parents in my area agreed to hold Halloween parties instead of taking the kids from door to door, because of the Zodiac's threats against children. Of course I was too young and stupid to be afraid, I was just pissed about missing the trick-or-treating and all that candy.

I wonder if this case will be solved. It’s frustrating like the black dahlia case or Jack the Ripper

I really hope that it is solved. The unfortunate thought I keep having though is that surely if he were still alive he'd be trying to get attention somehow? He fed off it, even more than BTK and BTK couldn't help start things up again. I could totally imagine him contacting someone after the movie made about his killings in particular. If he were still alive then, perhaps the only thing stopping him would've been if he'd noticed how BTK had only just been caught after drawing attention to himself again?

It's hard to believe he could just turn off his need for press attention and to taunt authorities. I wonder if he might have been committed to a state mental hospital (or recommitted if he was part of the releases associated with the community mental health movement). He clearly had schizophrenia of some type.

Is it possible that there were more than one killers and that all these killings weren't nade by the same guy aka Zodiac killer?

We finally found who the killer is!

[quote] This shit baffled scads of law enforcement and feds for over 50 fucking years and this is the reveal? What a fucking let down!

Actually Oranchak missed a line, which his decipher now reveals says:

[quote]My name is Arthur Leigh Allen snd I eat squirrels.

That would be very hard to believe, R149. After he ambushed the second couple (killing one of them), he admitted that he killed the first couple and revealed details only the killer would know. Similar story with the third couple, and the taxi driver.

I'm surprised they solved this cipher, as I'd concluded the rest of them were all gibberish meant to confound authorities. I'm still about 60-70% convinced it was Arthur Leigh Allen. The DNA that supposedly cleared him may or may not have even belonged to the Zodiac. And the smudgy fingerprints were basically useless. He was the best suspect there ever was.

Even if it was someone else, that person is likely to be long dead. It's sad and frustrating, but the odds of this case being definitively solved are close to zero. At least we finally got EAR/ONS (aka the Golden State Killer), whose body count was far higher than Zodiac's.

Oh, and the stuff about paradise and slaves was basically the Zodiac trolling the cops. No one thinks he was serious about that being his motive.

Arthur Leigh Allen is only "the best suspect there ever was" if you believe everything Graysmith wrote (which you shouldn't)

Not true, R154. And I don't believe everything Graysmith wrote (I don't think Zodiac murdered Bates, for one thing), but he got an awful lot right.

He got as much wrong as he got right. Arthur Leigh Allen didn't do it, he fudged "facts" to make Allen look like a better suspect than he was.

I'd say it definitely had to be the one person doing those five murders and two attempted murders. But I don't really see Zodiac being responsible for any of the others: Cheri Jo Bates, Donna Lass, the police man in the car etc. Once he had his reign of terror set up, I don't think he did anything much else except sit back and use people's heightened fear to "cash in" so to speak.

Kathleen Johns is an interesting one. The thing is, when I read up on what life was like in California back then, there seemed to be SO many weirdos around, and many cases of young women going missing while hitchhiking etc, that it really could've been a completely different person, and Zodiac just took credit once he saw the story in the paper. I don't know what I think about this case in particular. I don't think it's a cut and dried Zodiac attack, though.

It's interesting to read about the couple in 1963 who were killed on the beach. People believe that was a first kill for Zodiac, but who knows?

But after Darlene and Mike where attacked, he wrote a letter with information only he would know about that attack and the one at Lake Herman Road, same after Lake Berryessa, and he cut the shirt from Paul Stine and mailed bloody pieces of it in to different people, and all those communications are pretty conclusively linked to each other. After that it gets iffy. I don't get the whole connection to Donna Lass either - I think that was people reaching, because he never came out and said it, yet he was specific about other people. That Sierra Club postcard didn't really say anything conclusive.

There's also the case of John and Joyce Swindle. The honeymooning couple were killed by a sniper while walking along the beach.

I don't know what I think about Kathleen Johns either. I think I lean toward it not being Zodiac, but who knows? I think the Donna Lass connection was made when people started looking at Lawrence Kane as a Zodiac suspect. I do think Kane murdered Lass.

So do I R159. That seems the most likely thing in her case.

[Quote]what life was like in California back then, there seemed to be SO many weirdos around, and many cases of young women going missing while hitchhiking etc,

Yes. There was even one know as the Trailside Killer. He was initially called the Mt. Tamalpais killer because the initial killings were at this state park in Marin. He had long been on police radar after the attempted murder of (ready for this DL?) Lisa Rinna's mother in 1960. He was paroled seven years later and was initially a on the suspect list for the Zodiac killings. I don't recall how this guy was caught.

California was such an insane place from the late 60s to the early '80s. Stuff like this was routine news. So many serial killers.

Was Rick Marshall a good suspect?

[quote] when I read up on what life was like in California back then, there seemed to be SO many weirdos around, and many cases of young women going missing while hitchhiking etc

This is true. Years ago, I worked with a lady whose high school friend was killed in the early '70s. Her car broke down on the side of the freeway and her body was discovered dumped miles away in Riverside, way far from where the car was left abandoned. I don't know what was going on in California then, but there were some seriously bad dudes roaming around...

[quote]Let’s wait to hear that Zodiac was female!

With spellings like "paradice" I'm thinking we may be dealing with a black trans woman of color.

All you have to do is say the name of one of the suspects and the zodiac trolls go completely bonkers.

R165, if this case ever does gets solved, it's possible it'll be some anonymous man or rogue cop who wasn't on anybody's radar. That's what happened with Joseph DeAngelo.

Who are you referring r165 to?

𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐠 𝐁𝐚𝐧𝐠 by Vanilla Fudge, 1967:

Was Rick Marshall the one who worked in the movie theatre? If I'm remembering right, he was at one time thought to be the other main suspect alongside Arthur Leigh Allen.

What the hell is R100's problem?

No hobbies.

The thing about using the DNA sites is that unless you have an immediate relative who has submitted their DNA (so a child, if the Zodiac had any), the researchers have to start with a list of thousands (literally) of relatives with less than 1% DNA in common. And it's probable that none of those people even know where to begin or know who he is. That kind of research takes forever, and there is no way to do it quickly.

And on top of that, the DNA stuff has nothing to do really with companies like 23andme or Ancestry etc. You have to actually be interested enough and have the knowledge to take your raw data from those companies and then put it into something like GEDmatch which doesn't have the same protections. So that narrows down the field again.

R169, yes. He worked at a movie theatre that frequently showed The World's Most Dangerous Game and drew signs.

In the film, Graysmith visits the house of a man named Vaughn who worked with Marshall, but he corrects Graysmith, admitting that it wasn't Marshall who did the handwriting for the posters, it was him.

With ear/ons, the DNA match was to a third or fourth cousin. They then had to bring in a genealogist to reconstruct a family tree to narrow it down to two first cousins, one of whom had alibis for the crimes. I think the amateur genealogist was actually a member of the family. It took awhile to do all that.

Has San Francisco always been violent? There have been so many infamous crimes. Why did gays move there?

I have 1502 third and fourth cousins on 23andme. I don't know who any of them are.

R176, a lot of "infamous" crimes does not necessarily mean a high crime rate overall. Because of proximity to media centers, crimes that happen in New York or CA usually get more attention than ones that happen in Bumfucke

Gay people would get discharged from the military in San Francisco and choose not to go home to the farm.

R176, this is almost lost in the mists of time, but in the sixties San Francisco was the center of the counter-culture—there was a lot of drugs and lot of chaos, and therefore a lot of crime. California crimes became famous, in part, because they represented the social upheaval and lawlessness of that time. The original villain of the-revenge-of-law-and-order Dirty Harry series *was* a lightly disguised Zodiac.

R180 trying to blame the counterculture when some of the violence was caused by cops and military types like....Joe DeAngelo. I bet Zodiac was a right-winger, too

R181, I wasn’t trying to blame the counterculture, I was musing on why certain crimes become famous, emblematic of their era. The Zodiac killer clearly was some sort of authoritarian—those are the type who use guns.

How did Arthur Leigh Allen get to 250 lbs at age 33 in 1967? That was huge back then. Wouldn’t witnesses have described a big fatty monster?

R183, yes, they would have. Allen was quite porky, with a distinct double chin, by 1967.

Meant to add:

R182 Zodiac wasn't an authoritarian. He used counter-culture lingo, called cops "pigs," and so on.

The only sketch of him he looked clean cut as hell. Buzzcut and glasses. Like military or cop! Or maybe most men looked like that back then.

I don't think it was Allen at all.

He looks like Piggly Wiggly’s mascot at r184.

[quote] Or maybe most men looked like that back then.

Zodiac looked like a high school science teacher in the police sketch, lol.

[quote]it will send me to paradice (sic)

I wonder how much more difficult it is to break codes when there are misspelled words.

"He used counter-culture lingo, called cops "pigs," and so on."

Yawn, it's called misdirecting.

He also hated hippies and the counterculture.

Can we all agree that he hated everyone?

"Has San Francisco always been violent? There have been so many infamous crimes. Why did gays move there?"

San Francisco has both been an emmigration/immigration hub since the 19th century, and hss had a reputation as Anything Goesville since the days of the Gold Rush. It was the major port city for the western US for a long time, so people came there from all over the world to start a new life in the US, or came from the eastern US to start a new life because they didn't fit in, and that was definitely still going on in the 1960s and 1970s. The city had been boasting that it had 10x as many bars as churches from the 19th century on, so people still came there in search of new lives in the 1960s and 1970s, all looking for new lives and a chance to be themselves. And that included hippies, and most definitely included gays, back before anyone seeking a new life was priced out of the area.

But I think that people who didn't fit in because they wanted to live out their dark fantasies came as well, and stayed because in mid-20th century California, they could stay hidden among all the mass of immigrants and refugees from stricter areas. Not that the California urban areas had a high crime rate at the time, but it wasn't a culture where people kept tabs on their neighbors.

[quote] Or maybe most men looked like that back then.

They did. Half of my uncles looked like Zodiac in the late 60s/early 70s.

OMG!!

R183, in Graysmith's book, Arthur Leigh Allen is described as "pear-shaped." He was a big 'ol pear-shaped man!

[quote] in Graysmith's book, Arthur Leigh Allen is described as "pear-shaped." He was a big 'ol pear-shaped man!

Are you thinking of the George R.R. Martin story of the same name, R196?

"Or maybe most men looked like that back then."

Not so much in the liberal Bay Area of the late 1960s and early 1970s. I grew up there, I was in grade school during that time period, and the crew-cut-and-horn-rims look was almost unknown there. There was only one neighborhood dad who had that look, and even when I was in grade school I thought he ought to grow out his hair and get more fashionable glasses, and maybe get some bell bottoms like the cool dads.

The crew-cut-and-horn-rims look was for midwestern transplants, conservatives, and people associated with the military, in the Bay Area of that era.

R197, thanks for that. That story was entertaining.

[quote] I wonder how much more difficult it is to break codes when there are misspelled words.

I would think it would be exceptionally difficult since you wouldn’t know if it’s a misspelling or you’re wrong, which could throw the entire thing off.

A San Francisco Chronicle reporter who has covered the Zodiac did a reddit "Ask Me Anything"

He also took questions about the Doodler serial killer, who targeted gay men in San Francisco in the 70s

"The crew-cut-and-horn-rims look was for midwestern transplants, conservatives, and people associated with the military, in the Bay Area of that era."

It's thought that Zodiac had military experience. The sketch looks like my dad circa 1968.

Victim Paul Stine also resembled the sketch. One of the craziest theories I've heard is that Stine was the Zodiac and he was killed by a copycat.

[quote] He also took questions about the Doodler serial killer,

Why was he so named? Did he draw? (I’m not being facetious, but I’ve heard nothing about this one and thought maybe instead of ciphers he sent the police doodles or something.)

He drew pictures of his victims.

Thank you, r205.

R206, a short summary of the Doodler case:

The Doodler’s survivors included a European diplomat, a nationally known celebrity, and a “well known San Francisco figure.”

[quote]The identity of the “nationally known” figure is one of the great secondary mysteries of the case. To my surprise, his name never leaked into the gay press. I asked Randall Alfred, the Sentinel’s news editor in 1975, who the entertainer might have been. “Was it Johnnie Ray? Was it Rock Hudson? Richard Chamberlain?” he said. “It was a time of very cheap airfare from L.A. to San Francisco.”

[quote]Of the three, only Chamberlin is still alive. “No comment,” said his manager.

Thanks, guys. Fascinating stuff.

"No comment" - that's interesting. If it wasn't him, why not just say that?

I'd heard mention of The Doodler before but not really read up on him before now. Interesting stuff, and creepy! I think I'd assumed he was called The Doodler because he had castrated the men, but it just occurred to me that that might seem weird if "doodle" wasn't a juvenile slang for a penis in the US. I wonder how many more men were attacked and never mentioned it because of the attitude towards being gay at the time?

Doodler had several very similar MOs. One was to sit down next to somebody at the bar, start sketching them and wait for them to strike up a conversation. I've heard many times over the years that the cops knew who he was but with no one willing to come forward, they never had enough evidence to prosecute. That suspect died years ago. And Richard Chamberlain was most often mentioned as the entertainer who refused out himself by testifying.

I know Rock Hudson spent quite a bit of time in San Francisco.

Re: Darlene Ferrin and the mysterious phone calls the night she died, I think later on her brother admitted that he had made them. They probably weren't even that weird but took on a significance afterwards, coming so quickly on the heels of her murder.

It sounds like Darlene, to put it as nicely as possible, was friends with a lot of different men even though she was married. A lot of the weirdness may have come from trying to keep that quiet afterwards and "strange" men hanging around really being her boyfriends.

No mention of a small foreign faction? Huh!

Solved.

so who is the zodiac?>

Some guy named Kaye, R217. It's in the article.

I cannot read it

It’s Lawrence “Larry” Kane. He died in 2010 and has long been a suspect.

No, it's not Kane. I'm sure it will turn out to be someone who was never considered a suspect in the first place (like the Golden State Killer or BTK)

R231, Kane is who the guy who allegedly cracked the cipher says it is.

When I cracked it, all the message said was "San Francisco - you in danger, girl!"

according to him Z32 stands for: «LABOR DAY FIND 45.069 NORT 58.719 WEST».

Z13 stands for: «My Name is KAYE».

Kaye, not Kane.

Read the article, R225. Larry Kane’s real name was Kaye.

[quote] When I cracked it, all the message said was "San Francisco - you in danger, girl!"

See, now that’s strange because I got

DRINK YOUR OVALTINE

Didn't he disappear suddenly and stop killing? Maybe he was killed by one of his prey?

what do you think about that mc gruber guy? new suspect

R221 = Zodiac

More updates

this guy was a Mormon........that is EXACTLY what they believe goes on after death........

.........

Ny Times Troll needs to die in a grease fire. Cut and paste, fat whore.

.........

[quote]I'm thinking we may be dealing with a black trans woman of color.

👏🏿 SAY! 👏🏿 HER! 👏🏿 NAME! 👏🏿

Lawrence Kane was a very creepy dude, whether he was involved in the Zodiac crimes or not (I think most people think he may have had something to do with Donna Lass at least). I was listening to the Monster podcast on the weekend and they told a story there of him apparently organising with a realtor to meet at some empty house out in the middle of nowhere. She gets there and there is no one there. Suddenly a hearse pulls up at the door. The guy driving it says he had had a call asking him to come and pick up a dead body.

Brrr!