Hey everyone,

I just joined this wonderful forum. (Thank you to admin for approving my account.)

The Zodiac case has been a minor interest of mine for a long time. Without going into too much detail, I’ll just say that I have a strong background in mathematics and enjoy puzzles and cryptography, so obviously there are significant elements of the case that are very appealing to me.

Random thoughts on case:

My gut is that the Zodiac was a reasonably intelligent schizophrenic who either died or was imprisoned/institutionalized in the late 70s. There is a possibility that he really was a genius who covered his tracks so thoroughly that he even intentionally mimicked being mentally ill in that way, but I don’t think it’s the most likely explanation.

I think both the Zodiac name and symbol come from the watch. If so, the watch obviously has some special meaning to him. Maybe a close relative gave him one and then died. Maybe a close friend had one during his young years and there is some deep, unresolved sexual issue at play. Who knows? But I do think that it’s the watch.

The strange symbol on the Halloween card is probably a twist on a rune. (Assuming the card is even real.) I don’t think the ranch explanation is even close on that one.

The 340 cipher could be gibberish, but if not, there probably is some keyword or some other kind of clue that leads the solver down the correct path. Also, I don’t think anyone who has read even the most basic book on cryptography would just use a straight forward one-time pad approach and expect people to ever be able to decrypt it and read the message, so that’s out.* And I think we should keep in mind that Zodiac was likely not an expert. Whatever clever approach he used, whether it be requiring a certain path to be followed first, folding, or whatever, his knowledge of actual cryptography probably did not exceed that found in a beginner’s guide. (*If he meant for the message to be read, we can probably assume that it can be… unless by attempting to be too smart, he messed with it so much that it effectively becomes unsolvable so to speak. That is a possibility I’ve considered and that would definitely suck. )

I have many more thoughts than the few above. Look forward to discussing the case with you all.