4/20/70 "My name is" Letter & Cipher Mailed to the SF Chronicle - Zodiac Discussion Forum

SFPD Haight Park substation Bombing, February 16, 1970

Teg>Ean — Tue, 20 Dec 2022 23:05:30 +0000

April 20, 1970 letter: “I hope you do not think that I was the one who wiped out that blue meannie with a bomb at the cop station. Even though I talked about killing school children with one. It just wouldn't do to move in on someone elses territory”

The bombing mentioned by Zodiac in his April 20 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle most likely refers to an explosion at the SFPD Upper Haight Park substation at 1899 Waller Street on February 16, 1970 at 10:50pm. As a result of that explosion, sergeant Brian V. McDonnell lost his life and officer Robert Fogarty sustained injuries to his face and legs as a result of shrapnel from a pipe bomb placed on a window ledge on the southern end of the station. Eight other officers were also injured.

https://i.ibb.co/tQw89n2/Haight-Park-location.png

To my knowledge, nobody was ever criminally charged in association with this explosion and it remains unsolved to this day. A fingerprint was found on a fragment of the pipe bomb in 1999 which led to the case being briefly re-opened, but this never led to any arrest. According to a 2007 article by Jim Zamora, two caucasian men in a pink VW bus were spotted by witnesses fleeing the scene with their lights off shortly before the explosion ( link )

At the time of the bombing on February 16, the most recent correspondence to have been attributed to Zodiac was the letter to Melvin Belli received December 20, 1969. The next Zodiac letter would be received by the San Francisco Chronicle on April 20, 1970 (quoted above).

The story was covered by KPIX-TV on the following day, February 17, 1970 in a report from Dave Monsees, available online from the Bay Area Television Archive, cited below. In that coverage, mayor Joseph Alioto visited the substation following the attack and made the following statement to reporters:

“...I'd say the relationship between this and the Berkeley police episode would indicate that there is some connection between the two. We are going to have a very, very vigorous investigation. It will be an all out investigation to bring these kind of maniacs to justice. We'll get'em there. We're offering a reward of five thousand dollars to anybody who will supply information leading to the arrest and conviction of those who did this thing.”

https://i.ibb.co/n69J1kb/KPIX-TV-Mayor.png

link

There was an additional article published the same day on pg. 3 of The Desert Sun in Palm Springs, California that included additional details about the bomb, mentioned a reported sighting of one Caucasian male associated with a pink van, and stated that a US Army bomb squad was summoned from the Presidio to provide assistance at the scene, though the nature of their participation is given no elaboration. This article offers no mention of a reward associated with the apprehension of responsible parties.

link

*Note: This article has been cited previously on Richard Grinell's website in an article on this very subject, which I will link at the end. If it's been discussed elsewhere by other researchers, I'm sorry if I've failed to acknowledge it. I simply haven't encountered it out in the wild.

The televised coverage by KPIX-TV in particular might have been influential in Zodiac's choice of talking points in the April 20 letter, in which he proffers,

“I am mildly cerous as to how much money you have on my head now.”

KPIX-TV Channel 5 is not the same channel that hosted the infamous 1969 broadcast of A.M. San Francisco with Jim Dunbar and Melvin Belli where a person claiming to be Zodiac called into. That was broadcast on KGO-TV Channel 7. In fact, that constituted multiple broadcasts, beginning with an initial call into the show by the claimant during the regularly scheduled block of A.M. San Francisco during which time arrangements were made for Mevin Belli to attend another broadcast on KGO-TV that took place around 2am. Unfortunately, many details of this, including the programming block for AM San Francisco and the exact date of the broadcast is a bit muddled online, but I believe that CBS rebroadcast portions of the call on October 22, 1969 and I assume it probably occurred either that morning or the previous day. It doesn't really matter for the present topic other than to establish Zodiac most likely had access to a TV set prior to the February 17, 1970 KPIX-TV newscast, which we know thanks to the plaintext of the z340 cipher.

Final note regarding this coverage; my presumption is that, in 1970, the Newscast for KPIX-TV, later channel 5, consisted of a 30 minute broadcast in the evening, but I have not found original information that would further specify this programming block. Admittedly, I didn't look that hard since my priory objective here is to aggregate information on this topic for research purposes.

While ultimately I personally consider the topic of broadcast consumption by Zodiac in regards to the Haight Park bombing to be of primarily historical import, trivial from an investigative standpoint, others might disagree and desire a broader survey of contemporary news coverage related to the bombing, so included below are notes regarding the accessibility of articles from the Vallejo Times Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, and San Francisco Examiner.

Regarding the SF Chronicle, I am unable to comment on the contents of any associated coverage on February 17, 1970. It is possibly available through their online archives, behind a pay wall, but I am not personally going to pay for it at this time.

link

Articles from the Vallejo Times Herald from February 17, 1970 may be on microfilm somewhere in California and I have no access to it.

link

The San Francisco Examiner dated February 17, 1970 led page 1 with the Headline “PARK POLICE BOMBED: Berkeley Blast Link Suspected.” This article is available from Newspapers.com and while I do not know the specific contents of that article, I do know that the word “reward” is used in the first line of paragraph 2.

https://i.ibb.co/FwD9Fvv/SFExaminer-Haight-Park-Article.png

link

The bombing at the Haight Park substation was considered by police at the time to be part of a wave of similar attacks at that time and was not exclusive to California. While the case was never solved, it is generally maintained that the likely culprits were members of the Weather Underground, a militant, counter cultural organization that originated at the University of Michigan in 1969 that sought violent action to destabilize what it considered to be an Imperialist power in the form of the US Government. They detonated bombs at the US Capitol in 1971, the Pentagon in 1972 and the US State Department building in 1975.

As mentioned, Richard Grinell has covered this topic on his website, while extending the discussion into the broader topic of bomb threats elsewhere in the canon of Zodiac correspondence and incorporation some additional biographical information about sergeant Brian McDonnell. That can be viewed here: zodiacciphers.com

Could there be anything to this?

Mange4444 — Sun, 01 Aug 2021 16:01:26 +0000

Hi guys.

Some months ago I was sitting around doing nothing when decided to revisit David Oranchak's video where he presents the solution to the 340. After watching the video I decided to try the cipher key on the "my name is"-cipher. What I got back was just nonsens but then I decided to put it into an online anagram-solver. At the time I did'nt realize that I accidentaly exchanged an "A" with a "D" but what I got back was a bit of a surprice. One posible word generated by the symbols I entered (however entered slightly incorrect) was "Dendera Zodiac".

Now I am aware that this is stretching it and as I mentioned, I'm aware that I made a misstake in the entered text but I can't help but wanting to share it. Also I know that there has been theories surrounding posible connections to Egyptology in regards to the mentioning of slaves and also some symbols that showed up on the halloween card that the Zodiac sent. Also from what I understand some of the earliest examples of cryptology stems from ancient Egypt.

So what do you say? Could there be something to the scentence:

"This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is Dendera Zodiac“?

PS: I'm really not saying that this is something at all but still, a somewhat interesting coincidence :). Also, appoligies for the bad writing. I'm not a native english speaker ;)

Screenshot_20210801_180050_com.facebook.katana_edit_1770195223543951.jpg

Solution = sr gyke ause key?

Sjoerd — Thu, 11 Feb 2021 14:19:54 +0000

Since in the 408 cipher, GYKE translated to AUSE using the cipher key (Gyke Ause Key), I figured, maybe that's the name in the My Name Is cipher. A poster on the old Zodiac Killer message board named Hurley said maybe the cipher starts with a title, like mister or mr. sir is also a title. The 13 letter cipher looks like this written out AENZ8K8M8YNAM. That gives us 3 8's, two N's and two M's and two A's. sr gyke ause key has three e's, two s's, two k's and two y's. We match the 8's to the E, the A to the S, The N to the Y and the M to the K. the rest of the symbols we match up to the lone symbols in the name SR GYKE AUSE KEY in alphabetical order. These are R G A U so matching the cipher symbols to the letters, it would come out like this. SRYGEAEKEUYSK Annagramed, this could come out as SR GYKE AUSE KEY. Interestingly, if you look at the non annagramed solution, it sounds like siry gaykeusk, which almost sounds like siry gaikowski. you know, siry as in "yes siry bob". Siry would then be similar to sir, I guess. It may even sound like Sorry, Gaikowski, as in a sarcastic way to apologize for the Zodiac crimes. Sorry I did that, signed off, gaikowski. This is all speculation, of course.

Referencing the 340

Cragle — Fri, 15 Jan 2021 21:30:56 +0000

Just an observation but it’s interesting how this letter starts with referencing the 340 and then ends with a line taken from the 340. I wonder if the my name is cipher is somehow connected to the 340 I.e. possibly some sort of clue on how to decipher it ?

Male Culture around names

flyingember — Sun, 13 Dec 2020 06:10:18 +0000

So I was looking at this page at all the names http://zodiackillerciphers.com/wiki/ind ... _Solutions And it came to me, the message was written 50 years ago. It’s not necessarily a 26 character set writing out a full name. Maybe periods and spaces expanded the character set? That would foil frequency analysis even more than having multiple characters mean the same plaintext letter. There’s scholarly article out there that make the point one goal of 340 was to foil frequency analysis. So why does periods and spaces matter? It was common to use your first two initials in your name in formal usage, like in the form of A. A. Smith. I’ve seen other examples of a preferred name being like A. Adam Smith. L. Frank Baum is a famous example of that for. Joe L. Alioto, the mayor of San Francisco at the time, their name is 13 characters with spaces and periods. The last name could be up to 11 characters long if there’s no spaces or periods with two initials. It could be twelve if there’s only one initial. Initials could be at the end, like if they wrote it in the form Smith, A. A. Mimicking library sorting could make sense, in that era someone would have gone to a library to learn cryptography Thought this could be useful for someone to know, because we’re much more informal today than in the 1960s and a lot of attempts I found clearly forgot that. There’s also claims it could be unsolvable without the key. But remember the plaintext and the errors of 340 didn’t exist. It could be solvable with this new information. What if there’s clues in the uncorrected results? That there’s clues in how to shift the cipher text and clues for how to find the key within it. The order to read the text could be the least important thing about it. This is someone who said they weren’t afraid of the gas chamber, they had their slaves for the next life. Maybe they finally wanted to be caught and used some piece of text from a past cipher to encipher their final and most critical piece of information? That if someone was good enough to break their hardest cipher they would be able to get their name.

Not a Cipher

Cragle — Fri, 29 May 2020 17:04:02 +0000

Apologies if this has already been discussed but could it be possible that the code is not a cipher, but some other puzzle to be solved ? Z must have known that a cipher of this length could not have been definitively solved and verified due to it's shortness. So could there possibly be something else going on. There is a symmetry about the code :- 3 Letters 2 Symbols 1 Letter 1 Symbol 1 Letter 2 Symbols 3 Letters Also it is interesting that the first and last 3 letters contain all the letters to spell "Name". that would be a big coincidence in my mind. The below image should explain it a bit better. Also the remaining symbols are :- 3 "8"'s in circle's Aries Symbol Upside Down Zodiac Symbol K & M Could the K M possibly be inital's ? Could the 3 "8"'s mean 24 Could the Aries Symbol his Star sign Possibly 28 / 03

3 Billiard balls

Cragle — Wed, 17 Jul 2019 23:22:24 +0000

Has anybody considered that the 3 8 balls could be the clue. Z references billard players in later letters. At the time one of the best ever 3 cushion billiard players (Jay Bozeman) lived in Vallejo and was friends with Dean Ferrins father (Art) and played Bridge with him every week in Napa a block away from where the Napa phonecall took place.. The Zodiac was a billiard cue at the time (made by dufferin), the crosshairs symbol is also used in billiards to show where on the cue ball you should hit it to imply different types of spin. Even the Halloween card symbols could be a 3 cushion trick shot.

My name is cipher

Quicktrader — Tue, 17 Oct 2017 15:29:31 +0000

A few thoughts regarding the my-name-is cipher: Assuming the 7/19/78 letter is authentic and Z CJB's murderer..according to the mentioned letter, Z's first name could be 'Paul' (my name is on the bottom lid of a scotch tape.. http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtop ... f=69&t=726 viewtopic.php?f=97&t=727&hilit=bottom+lid If those assumptions are correct, some circumstances should be considered: 1. Out of approximately 30,000 names (from different yearbooks, e.g. Ramona, Lompoc etc.), not even one single name matches the my-name-is cipher structure. 2. Most likely, the first four symbols of the cipher would represent the letters 'P', 'A', 'U', and 'L'. 3. Assuming each symbol representing one alphabetical letter, the second but last letter of the cipher cleartext would be a 'P'. Same with the third but last letter of the cipher, it'd represent a 'U'. This is valid for both, simple substitution as well as homophone substitution cipher types. A cipher cracking line could therefore look somehow like this: P A U L _ _ _ _ _ _ U P _ It should be considered further that on position 5, 7, 9 the cipher symbol is the same. Furthermore, the symbols on position 8 and 12 are equal, too. The cipher structure would therefore look somehow like this: P A U L ? _ ? # ? _ U P # One might replace the repeating symbols with letters to get a list of potential partial solutions, e.g. 'E' and 'M': P A U L E _ E M E _ U P M .. As you can see, such a partial solution is not very likely as there do not exist many names ending with '-UPM'. Such a list of cleartext structures is in fact not very long. Let it consist of no more than 676 values (26x26). It then is possible to preselect each value according to it's likeliness to represent a complete name. When doing so, one must realize that most of the cleartext combinations are very unlikely to represent a name. Instead, only a few ones have some potential, such as: P A U L H _ H A H _ U P A which could be interpreted as a 'Paul H. Chahlupa'. Frequent last names, such as Miller or Robertson etc. do not occur at all. In fact, the chance to complete the 'name from the bottom lid of a scotch tape' in a 'normal' way, is quite low. This again is not a surprise as we are already aware that out of approximately 30,000 names not even one could be matched to the cipher structure. At least unless someone doesn'T shuffle everything creating his 'own' cleartext (e.g. anagram & substitution..). Although not checked-out yet, other first names lead to similar difficulties (the 300 most frequent first names represent approximately 78% of the population). What caught my eye, however, was the following cleartext structure: P A U L S _ S Y S _ U P Y On the first look, when trying to place a last name, the structure doesn't make a lot of sense. On a second look, however, it could make sense: P A U L S U S Y S N U P Y A combination of three names, e.g. 'Paul, Susy and Snupy'. Or 'Paul, Susy, Stupy' with 'Stupy' for example being the last name of a Paul and a Susy is a possible solution. Of course this is a 'wild' theory somehow, however it represents the only logical conclusion according to the 7/19/78 letter. So far, I have not found any other name matching the my-name-is-cipher. In addition to that, the last name 'Stupy' is indeed present in the LA region. And, although I still believe that Z had mostly been acting alone, there do exist at least some hints that Z had a partner in crime (two persons being seen by witnesses at the CJB's crime scene, searching the watch with their flashlights). QT

Circle 8 Ranch

Barry S. — Fri, 16 Oct 2015 09:22:30 +0000

Since traveller1st killed my Triple Taurus hunch with some fancy Photoshoppin', here's some more. Check out these far-flung references. Circle 8 Ranch

Also a TV Program: Aired in the us as well.

Actual Ranches

There are/were Circle 8 ranches in Washington, Montana, Nevada, Texas and New Mexico

Circle 8-ers

Or maybe Z was a square-dancin' fool.

Triple Taurus

Barry S. — Sun, 11 Oct 2015 01:39:12 +0000

Sorry for all unrelated items posted on this topic. Just puzzling over this cipher. One other idea (and apologies if this has been written about elsewhere) is that if the circled 8's are indeed Taurus symbols then Z could be saying that he's a Triple Taurus... which, given the way the sun, moon and ascendant signs are determined would point to the date and location of Z's birth. Of course, I know next to nothing about astrology, so someone with more knowledge could maybe chime in. TAURUS THE POET

Persian Poet and astrologer Omar Khayyam was a triple Taurus who scandalized English Victorian readers with his erotic masterpiece, The Rubaiyat. "Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring, Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling: The Bird of Time has but a little way To flutter— and the Bird is on the Wing." sideralist.com