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 Introduction

 Investigative Method

 My San Francisco

Year of the Zodiac:

 Lake Herman Rd. 12-20-1968

 Blue Rock Springs 7-4-1969

 The Zodiac Speaks

 Lake Berryessa 9-27-1969

 San Francisco  10-11-1969

Gamester of Death:

 Poison Pen Pal

 Claims and Mistakes

 The Kathleen Johns Incident

 Cheri Jo Bates

 Zodiac & The “Nightingale Murders”

On the Track of The Zodiac:

 Gaviota Revisited

 Gaviota Crime Scene Investigated

 The Case of “Sandy”

 Cracking the 340 Cipher

 Blue Rock Springs Reconstructed

 Blue Rock Springs: Silencer or Not?

 Benicia: Where the Cross Hairs Meet

 From Folklore to Fact: cases in detail

 “Nary a Conspiracy”

 The Zodiac Speaks: A Pattern

 Zodiac: a profile in person & paper

My Suspect:

 A Man Known as Beard

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Investigative Method

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         In the late 1960s a serial killer
quickly and clumsily killed his victims as
     an ante in a game he was developing. It was
       Murder and Seek. He named himself The ZODIAC,
           the master controller. He was both the hunter and he made
             himself the hunted. His costumes ranged from the bland and
                 obsolete to bizarre theatricality. Sadly, he was successful in his game.
                     To this day nobody knows his identity. Over 40 years later, only
                               amateur sleuths and private detectives hound his trail.

 The Zodiac Killer

Gamester of Death

The ZODIAC Speaks

     Most serial killers speak solely through the modus operandi of their crimes. Sometimes this is best. One voice is speaking. But ZODIAC decided to make a game of his crime spree. He brought in the public, the authorities, and the press by using the best avenue— the newspapers. This gave us 2 voices. They are very different, and this adds a curve to trying to unravel the killer’s identity and actual motive. His speech was far more consistent than his modus operandi. His modus operandi changed— from shooting to stabbing, from couples to a single cab driver— but the execution of his crimes remained essentially clumsy. His speech, however, was much smoother.

     The ZODIAC’s game was, in fact, executed much better than his crimes. The newspapers obliged only because, basically, ZODIAC extorted them by threatening to kill more if they didn’t. He used cryptograms, so that we were all intrigued. Nothing occupies the human mind more than a puzzle. He made himself the hunted and he essentially made us all potential pawns in his murder game.  His quick, clumsy drive-by killings were enough to convince the whole Bay Area he was capable of doing everything he claimed in his letters. Naturally, we paid attention. A little, obscure man became the center of all the Bay Area as a result.

       Let’s limit this page to the first installment of his game— those letters and cryptograms that came in between July 31, 1969, and September 27, 1969, when he fulfilled his threats to kill again.

       The first solid communication was on July 31, 1969.

       The backdrop: on the late night of July 4, 1969, a couple— Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau— were shot point blank while they sat in Ferrin’s car in the isolated Blue Rock Springs Park parking lot on the outskirts of Vallejo, California, a North Bay town in the San Francisco Bay Area. About 40 minutes later, the shooter called the Vallejo Police and boasted of the killing. He then took responsibility for an unsolved killing that had happened down nearby Lake Herman Road on December 20, 1968, over 6 months before.

       His precise words, as taken down by operator, Nancy Slover, were:

               “I want to report a double murder. If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway
                     to the public park you will find the kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9
                     millimeter luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.”

     The goodbye was taunting, haunting, a bit sarcastic.

     The next communication was his first letter. Three near-identical letters arrived at the Vallejo Times-Herald, the San Francisco Examiner and the San Francisco Chronicle, on August 31, 1969. With each letter there was one-third of a cipher. See below.              

ZletterAug31-1969page1icon ZletterAug31-1969page2icon 408ciphersicon ZChronicleCiperpartAug4-1969icon

   Well, he’s brisk to do business. He establishes who he is and then the second page is the threat to print the cipher. Ultimately the cipher is everything. It is the purpose of the letter, the reason he must prove he’s the killer first, and then the extortion is to make sure they print it. He wanted his audience no matter what. Nothing less than the whole Bay Area. There is no mention of the moniker “Zodiac.” He merely signs it with a cross hairs, suggestive of a gun scope.

     There are a few spelling errors in the letter, notably idenity, which may indicate he is spelling phonetically and has a regional dialect.

     It is not my desire here to inject and discuss theories in circulation today, but one theory is almost unavoidable here. It is widely speculated that the killer, soon to identify himself as The ZODIAC, somehow worked at one of the newspapers. Yet The ZODIAC’s demand that his ciphers should be published the very next day reflects gross ignorance about the newspaper business. Not only is it assuming the mail will arrive overnight, it is assuming that all would be processed and read the next morning by the appropriate staff. It also assumes the owners and chief editors of all papers in question would act so quickly so as to publish the ciphers. If ZODIAC was well acquainted with the newspaper business, he would have known he was demanding the impossible. This would only force him to act upon his threat. If he doesn’t, he loses all credibility. As the above article notes, his threat failed. The papers didn’t print the ciphers until Sunday August 3rd. There had been no kill rampage over the weekend.

     It can better be argued that ZODIAC was delayed in mailing his 3 letters and ciphers, and perhaps had intended that they be mailed earlier in the week. From what The ZODIAC did next, it can be inferred that he did not even live around the Bay Area, but rather visited it frequently on some form of business. When the request by Jack Stiltz, Vallejo’s Chief of Police, was printed in the newspapers asking for the writer of the ciphers to give more info in order to prove he should be taken seriously as the killer, The ZODIAC rushed off a letter that very day.

     Proving to people that he was the killer was one of ZODIAC’s prime reasons for originally writing. Without being accepted as the killer, his game of murder and seek— and thereby terrorizing an entire metropolitan area— fails. In his haste, he did something different.

     It is my contention he made a mistake. This paper was not what he used before. It was not Monarch-cut Eaton watermarked paper. It was “Fifth Avenue,” which was sold by Woolworths. This mistake becomes evident with time, for this is the only time he would use this paper. In a later letter he would revert to his original type of paper. We will develop this mistake elsewhere later. For now, it is best to continue.

     That ZODIAC wanted as wide an audience as possible is seen in his next action. In response to Vallejo’s Jack Stiltz, ZODIAC responded by writing not to the Vallejo Times Herald but to the San Francisco Examiner, which had a much wider circulation.

     The cipher was still unbroken when on August 4, 1969, the day after the papers published Stiltz’s statements, ZODIAC’s response came to the Examiner. The killer now announced himself.    

ZletterExaminerAug4-1969icon
ZletterExaminerAug4-1969-Page2icon
ZletterExaminerAug4-1969-Page3icon
The-10th-Victimicon

   The significant difference in the above letter, of course, is that now the killer had a handle, given to him by himself— “The Zodiac.” He’s called ZODIAC to this day by the police, but he referred to himself as “The Zodiac.” This accentuates his individual and controlling position, which he would later make explicit. His sense of sarcasm and black humor is also evident in that he, a killer, duly responding to a police chief’s request, writes “Dear Editor.”

     Many have debated on where this killer got the inspiration to give himself such a moniker, in hopes it may provide a clue. Some have suggested a 1939 Charlie Chan film (Charlie Chan at Treasure Island) in which Chan is pitted against the notorious Dr. Zodiac, a San Francisco charlatan medium who operates a vast net of blackmail. Since The ZODIAC is playing a game, another suggestion is that he is inspired by a book and movie The 10th Victim, which portrays a futuristic society in which there is the hunter and the hunted in a genuine deadly game allowed by law. Ricardo Gomez has uncovered that a variation of such a game, minus real life death, of course, was actually played on universities in Illinois in the 1960s. The “hunter” would win by slipping a little note to his unsuspecting victim: “This is the hunter speaking: you are dead.” The paperback version of the book features prominently on the cover the same cross hairs used by ZODIAC.

     Then there is my own discovery. It is no secret that The ZODIAC predominantly used a certain type of paper. It was Monarch-cut (7.25 inches x 10.5 inches) Eaton paper. Eaton actually made Zodiac-themed stationary paper. Each month (and therewith sign) was available.

     Did The ZODIAC already intend to use his name or was he only suggesting his game by signing the letters with the cross hairs? Only one thing is tangible, however. His first letter was merely signed with the cross hairs. His second letter begins with his pompous salutation that he is “The Zodiac Speaking.” It could be his success in baiting the newspapers that emboldened him to his new ostentation. Since the symbol also stands for the zodiacal system, it could be that the double meaning was intended all along or he now opted to use the Zodiac name.

     Stiltz was right to ask for more information, but one thing was wrong in the Vallejo newspaper report: the information ZODIAC initially offered could not have come from anybody who had been at the crime scene, for The ZODIAC had made a mistake . . . sort of. He had said that Jensen’s body was on her right side. She was, in fact, found face down. This was not a mistake. Rather ZODIAC revealed he had been a witness to the original position. From her position it was clear she had not been running but that she had collapsed backwards. (Her feet were facing in the direction she had fled, so it was clear she was no longer running but staggering just before she collapsed.) Laying on the right side is a rather precarious position. The expected stage of movement would be to roll face down or face up, depending to which side the body is leaning most. When ZODIAC left the scene, she must still have been on her right side. When Benicia Police got there, she was face down, having rolled over in the interim. The ZODIAC’s mistake was really no mistake. Her precarious death position simply wasn’t maintained and she rolled over to her face,  perhaps in response to him driving out in between her and the Rambler. Since he knew correctly that her feet were facing west, this “mistake” only confirms the obvious for us that he had really been there and that she rolled a bit after he left. ZODIAC’s “mistake” thus gave us a piece of information only he could have known. 

     Thanks to the publishing of all three cipher bits in the San Fran Chronicle/Examiner the cryptogram could be solved. It was a grueling 20 hours, but a Salinas couple, Don and Betty Harden, were able to crack it by known plain text attack.  They called the police. This is what the cipher read.            

I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERENCE IT IS EVEN BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAE WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN PARADICE AND ALL THEI HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOI DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTING OF SLAVES FOR MY AFTERLIFE. EBEORIETEMETHHPITI

     Simple Simon sentence structure. Plus, there are some really bad spelling mistakes. Some seem to be The ZODIAC’s bad spelling. Others are his own mistakes. Such as: DANGEROUE for DANGEROUS; THAE for THAT; THEI for THOSE I; SLOI for SLOW; and ATOP for STOP, etc.

     He gave us nothing . . .or did he?

     Individual sentences are logical. He gives reasons and draws conclusions that support his reasons. That’s all logic is.  It need not be laudable for it to be logical. Logic looks for such words as thus, therefore, because, if so, if then, so, such as. All indicate that a conclusion is coming based on what was just presented. ZODIAC liked to use because

     But the entire missive is illogical.

     I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUE ANAMAL OF ALL

       He presents himself as a thrill killer. Yet what had ZODIAC done? Nothing. In substance, he had attacked two unarmed couples of youngsters, the eldest being 22. Not very dangerous game. 

       He goes from thrill killing to wanting slaves in his afterlife. He must want teenagers for slaves, and, like Noah, wants them only in pairs.  But he does let us know that he went for the quick kill on the male. He shot Faraday once to the head. In his second letter, he admits he was going to kill Mageau with one shot to the head but Mageau moved. For simply wanting slaves, he seemed to prefer to riddle the female with holes. Jensen was shot 5 times; Ferrin 9 times.

     Ultimately, the serious point here is that he is impressing upon the Bay Area that he kills for his own motives and intends to continue. The game has begun.

     The Bay Area began to take it to heart. Those final 18 letters— EBEORIETEMETHHPITI—  frustrated everybody. They were deciphered correctly, but they made no sense. It was thought to contain his name and be a separate code. Was it an anagram? The name Robert Emmet, the Hippie, was suggested. Suffice it to say to this day that these last 18 letters still confound those who study the cipher.

     What he has inadvertently told us is that he doesn’t understand the newspaper business. He didn’t come through with his “kill rampage” and that therefore much of this can be idle threatening. But he is obviously the killer, and he wants to boast about it. More thrill. . .or intentional misleading. The press immediately labeled him the “Boastful Slayer” or “The Cipher Slayer.” This he was.

     Yet nothing else happened. No more killings. No more letters. The collective Bay Area police took note, waited out August, then September. Nothing.

     Then September 27 came around. It was the end of the month, but Lake Berryessa was far away.

 

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