1) What book would you recommend? Which do you feel is the best on this subject, and why? If you thing Graysmith is worth reading even though he besmirches Allen please say why. Also the Times 17 one seems pretty far-fetched as an idea.

I wouldn’t recommend reading any book. I would read his letters, read the police reports/autopsy reports, any newspapers/television reports and, study all. Formulate your own opinions based on that study. For whatever you read book wise or watch via movie is the opinion of another. If any had been right the Zodiac would be identified by now. After your fairly solid in your opinions of the case then read whatever you like and consider other opinions as it relates to your work.

Welcome to the site.

Soze

[1] Personally marienbad I wouldn’t read any books. If you want straight talking facts the Zodiac Killer Facts website would be a good place to start, reading his articles and the accumulated police reports and sketches. http://zodiackillerfacts.com/

[2] The Wing Walker boots alone are not enough to suggest a military angle, as you alluded, there were many surplus stores available in 1969. You mentioned that the Zodiac was seemingly on a publicity campaign. What might be more telling in the Zodiac case, is what we don’t know about him and what he didn’t do, and this factors into your "where did the Zodiac live" question.
We know that Zodiac made a payphone call 40 minutes after the Blue Rock Springs attack. Where did he go during this time period. The payphone was only 10 minutes from the crime scene. This may suggest he went home to ditch any incriminating evidence and the smoking gun, before returning to the payphone. This period of time is telling, and may reveal more about the killer than his actual crime. Had the killer lived in San Francisco (where the majority of his letters were directed), why hang around Vallejo for this time period before making the payphone call, why not head to San Francisco, where a phone call anywhere en route would have been the safer option. The Presidio Heights murder was the only crime he may have committed without a vehicle, so it could possibly be the closest to his residence. Many serial killers begin their crimes closer to home (their comfort zone) before travelling outward with increased confidence. If the Zodiac Killer had a regular job, Monday to Friday, 9 to 5, then it is understandable his first two crimes, which were committed on a Friday, were closer to home. His next two crimes on a Saturday (his day off), the constraints are not there, so he ventures further afield, Napa and San Francisco. These simple facts may tend to focus our attention to Vallejo or Benicia as a possible home base for the Zodiac Killer. But as we know this killer was unconventional, even by serial killer standards.
The other avenue to explore, is what he didn’t do from March 1971 to January 1974, considering he was driven by ego and publicity. One month after the Los Angeles letter of March 13th 1971, a Zodiac film was released on April 7th directed by Tom Hanson, and later that year the blockbuster ‘Dirty Harry’ movie, based on the Zodiac Killer, was released on December 23rd 1971 directed by Don Siegel. The Zodiac Killer however remained quiet for nearly three years. It would seem unimaginable that a killer who so craved attention and publicity would fail to capitalize on such a veritable banquet in his name, unless of course he was indisposed, and brings forth the question of where outward mail would be vetted. The first answer is not difficult.

[3] I don’t personally believe he made the first cipher easy, it may be a sign of his inexperience regarding ciphers. The 340 cipher has never been solved, because it has likely been created with either an unconventional method or with a key. Without the key, that may be text from an unidentified book, it could nigh on be unsolvable. My guess is he realized fairly quickly nobody was going to solve it and the key may lie in subsequent letters. It’s a matter of recognizing it.

[4] The reduction in gaps may suggest a gaining in confidence, however there is another option.
What we notice is that his early crimes, if we believe he lived in Vallejo, began at Lake Herman Road, relatively close by, similar to Blue Rock Springs, he then ventured 50 miles to Lake Berryessa and finally 40 miles to Presidio Heights, slightly shorter than Lake Berryessa, but nevertheless his crimes were becoming more spread.
As the radius of his murders widened, his immediate correspondence after each crime shortened. His first contact on July 31st 1969 was just over 7 months after the Lake Herman Road murders, but only 27 days after Blue Rock Springs, his murder of Paul Stine was the next furthest at 40 miles and he corresponded only 2 days later, when he mailed a swatch of Paul Stine’s shirt to the San Francisco Chronicle on October 13th 1969 and finally with the Lake Berryessa attack, 50 miles and furthest from Vallejo, he wasted no time declaring himself the killer, writing on the car door of Bryan Hartnell’s Karmann Ghia minutes after the attack. In other words the further he was away from his home residence, the greater his compunction to mail, or in the case of Lake Berryessa to write, what is in effect useable evidence, to authorities sooner. He felt the risk was greatly reduced in police centering the investigation to letters and crimes with an increased ‘buffer zone’. The need for a significant delay between the Lake Herman Road murders and the August 31st 1969 letters, was inherent of a man who knew he was just too close for comfort and the heat had to dissipate. To wittingly pull the investigation of the Lake Herman Road double murder away from the desired route it had taken, may have veered the focus elsewhere, indeed, somewhere closer to home and something the Zodiac Killer was keen to avoid.

[5] His knowledge of the lovers lane sites almost certainly indicate an intimate knowledge of the area and the fact he was local to the area, or had lived there at some point in his life. Lake Herman was a rural, two lane road, with no street lighting and little traffic flow. He was probably driving between BRS and LHR for the opportunity to present itself.

[6] Vallejo

[7] I believe his claim of 37 victims is fantasy on his part. The Kathleen Johns abduction remains a possibility, but it raises the question, why claim a failed murder (if that was his intention) after stating five months earlier you were going to disguise your crimes. So you effectively disguise your crimes, then admit to a failed one. I believe he likely only committed 5 murders, but certainly no more than 7.

[8] Yours Truly Richard.

3) The first cipher seems incredibly easy to solve if a couple can solve it in their kitchen overnight, yet the Z340 cipher remains unsolved. Do you think the first was deliberately easy as he wanted it solved?

Z408 turned out to be fairly easy to solve. It turned out to be a homophonic substitution cipher. This suggests that he did not intend for it to be solved so easily, since homophonic ciphers are supposed to disguise the letter frequencies that make substitution ciphers easy to solve. I think he thought he was making it hard, but he didn’t make it hard enough.

I am not sure how quickly someone could go from making a simple cipher to making a very difficult to solve cipher, do you feel there was enough time for the Zodiac to do this, or do you think he deliberately made the first one easy? Also, how hard could he make a cipher back then without access to powerful computers? Or do you think he did have access to some powerful mainframe to help with this? Please note – I am obviously not an expert here, so if you want to demonstrate that it would be relatively easy, please show your working! (And explain said working – I know practically nothing about ciphers!)

In his day, there were many "pen-and-paper" ciphers available, which he could have read about in books, or as part of military training. These kinds of ciphers don’t require much effort to create. You simply follow a "recipe", applying certain tasks to the message you’re trying to encrypt. Here are some examples: http://users.telenet.be/d.rijmenants/en/handciphers.htm

It is not yet known if Z340 uses a known type of cipher, or if he invented a new one. Or if he didn’t bother enciphering a message at all. Or he simply screwed up the encipherment, causing the message to be lost forever.

Z340 still has homophonic features to it, so if there’s a real message, it seems likely he did something to it prior to performing the symbol substitutions. There is a deep and fruitful thread on this forum where people are very actively exploring these possibilities:

http://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=3196

To answer question #3… haven’t you heard yet, Don Harden WAS Zodiac?

Kidding, of course.

My honest opinion is that if the 340 is ever solved, it will prove that Zodiac, or whoever thought the whole thing up, was a genius. I think the 340 will tie in with other Zodiac things that were mailed in and that there are a lot of layers to all of it, but that it will end up being something completely brilliant.

I believe the first two areas were known make-out areas. Certainly the golf course parking lot was one. The fact that Zodiac was aware of this indicates he was deeply acquainted with that area, which tends to indicate he lived near there at some point.

It’s very hard to run down the relevant clues. There are too many, and they point in all sorts of directions. That’s what makes the case so indecipherable.

As far as timing, I think it’s important to realize that he killed on weekends, which profilers refer to as a "weekend offender." That tends to indicate he held a steady job. When you look at the fact that killings happened in outlying counties on weekends (until the Stine murder) but the letters were mailed from SF on weekdays, it suggests he had a day job in SF and lived in, say, Vallejo or nearby.

Personally, I wonder about the timing of the Dec. 1968 Faraday-Jensen murder. It happened on the last Friday before Christmas, the final day of school before vacation. I do wonder if that indicates he was a teacher or school system employee, or a college student/teacher. Or maybe he took Christmas week off from his job. Then the next killing happens on a holiday weekend.

But I wouldn’t put a lot of effort into finding a pattern in astrology, numerology or the lunar calendar. Even if that turned out to exist, I don’t think it would be a convincing part of solving the case.

Hi, I’ve been on this for about a month, and I like going to awl these sites that are good with statistics and the letturs, the 66 map and everything about the crime scene and i’m all about patturns and know nothing of code-breaking yet but I think he’s a Park Ranger, that’s how he knows all the areas and he has a lot of time alone to plan and do his deeds. He always has 2-25 minutes to being home-free in a Nashunal Park from all the crime scenes. One of my new clues is on the Phillips 66 map he gave us a border and the ‘6’ Map fold template to use as a Map Fold and Border Decoder and I’ve gotten 3 of 4 hits in a National Park(the other hit is 1.5 miles from a National Park) using the map fold Decoder. Also on the My Name Is cipher which is overlaid on top of the 340 from the middle ‘8’ to on top of the ‘X’ in the 340, the center of the 2 hyphen or hash-marks in the dead centur of his 340 cipher. back to the My Name Is cipher which is broken into a ‘V’ at the middle ‘8’ and on the N characters(4 up) it has 3 F hits (2 in the top ‘V’ and 1 in the bottom right ‘V’) and on the other hit I found is on the Zodiac symbol. These V’s are from the dead center bottom row and Dead centur middle row. I got more clues and videos on my page https://youtu.be/Z7OEO5uNFf0?list=PLEm0 … G62jo_iuIM and hopefully these new clews will help everyone. Sorry if I missed anything. This is Mae Brussell on the Zodiac Killer is a good listen and others by Mae Brussell you’d enjoy from back in the day. https://youtu.be/7f4c99pBi4g

Hi, it’s been awhile, hope your all doing well. This will help with your Zodiac searches and to narrow it down. Is it for sure the Zodiac was caucasian? http://murderpedia.org/usa/california.htm

That is a lot of killers in California over the years. As for Zodiac being Caucasian…from what I have read that fits the general consensus.
I read an article other day about mk-ultra, the lsd and drug experiments carried out covertly in an operation called ‘Midnight Climax.’ Reads for interesting stuff, and it makes one wonder what happened to the prostitutes afterwards. (Would the CIA or a secret government unit have silenced them to cover up these experiments in the 1960s?)
I also came across mk-zodiac, which is a theory that zodiac was a covering team effort and linked to this CIA activity. One report questions the ethical value of having xxx amount of citizens walking around after being poisoned (unknowingly) by CIA operatives in the San Fran and New York areas with lsd and other mind-altering drugs. This to me borders on conspiracy theory, but who knows? Stranger things have happened, but could such stuff give a reasonable explanation as to the boom in killers? Could this kind of subject matter also be linked to disinformation, to blindside from any truths?
Also worth noting that, according to the media of the time, SF and California were the places to come for the cultural experiences (the 60s flower power and free love, etc). To me, if I was hunting for prey, this drawing of people would have, unfortunately, presented many victims.

Since no one seems to like recommending Zodiac books, perhaps there are some that others may be willing to part with (at a fair price) to add to my library.

Thanks

CMLO, we do have a thread for the books where people give their opinions, pros, cons etc.

viewforum.php?f=90

Many books are available online for very little money. Go to Amazon and do a search for "Zodiac Killer" in "Books". At least you can get an idea of what books you might want to read. Some books are not worth the paper they are published on and others can be very insightful.

CMLO, we do have a thread for the books where people give their opinions, pros, cons etc.

viewforum.php?f=90

Many books are available online for very little money. Go to Amazon and do a search for "Zodiac Killer" in "Books". At least you can get an idea of what books you might want to read. Some books are not worth the paper they are published on and others can be very insightful.

Cool! Thanks, Seagull!