Ultimately underwhelming, though showed promise in episode one.

Bates was the inspired choice to get into the narrative, but by episode 5, our intrepid cold case investigators lose Sullivan completely.

Like many before them, they appeared bogged down into detail which ultimately remained unresolved, and so resulted in a fail, editorially, for what was billed as a 5 part solution for the many who have known and followed these notorious suspects for years.

That the "codebreakers" came in with their own underwhelming conclusions, unfortunately, reinforced what the two field investigators failed to bring out.

As anyone who has spent a week on the 340 knows, you can make it say anything you want for the first 3rd, essentially what the heralded expert did. It is one solution, fair enough, we will give him that, but it can not be the definitive solution because it leaves too much of the ciphertext encoded.

The omission of a timeline of Sullivan’s mental state including hospitalization(s), Kane’s automobile history and numerous addresses, and the confusing witness testimony regarding height, weight, stockiness or lack thereof, only served to extend questions when the heavily touted "new" DNA evidence gave way to the big empty ‘you gotta be kidding.’ No cruising backroads near Benecia or Vallejo even mentioned as part of an MO.

Bates fingernails had DNA under them, a comparison to the spatter profile was a no brainer, we HAVE to know that if only to rule in the hypothesis the show’s editorial direction takes.

Both Sullivan and Kane cremated, yes? At least tell audience this so we know investigators are aware of the same limitations handicapping anyone in here following along.

Lastly, the handwriting "expert" has to be seen as a joke, because her dubious opinion that the Albany letter, long discounted by other experts, is Z, is left as fact — weakening the show in it’s totality, in a way that cuts into everything else which was presented (which included many red herrings). If the case is about anything it’s about handwriting; anyone here who has studied the handwriting can see a "d" or an "r" and know it’s Z, but not her, the only expert in her field consulted on camera. No cogent analysis of handwriting was finally presented, and so further controversies about handwriting were also not framed in their correct light.

The Bates info including military footwear was compelling; the Mikado witness who was "in show" in 1969 is previously known but to see him tell that on camera was terrific, as was the archivist of comic books with "by knife" etc. To see that was good stuff.

Without DNA and fingerprints we can trust, to identify Z, we are left with:

1. Handwriting, aided by,
2. Ramifications of Bates ruled as Zodiac victim, leading to
3. The narrative that Ferrin "knew" her attacker.

Sub-narratives
a) military connections
b) Gilbert and Sullivan, other ‘popular’ culture, concept of Z speaking like a ‘foreigner."
c) any ballistics on slugs/weapons so far unrecovered.

I was surprised to see that newspaper photo of Ross and the report on the movie. Is that available online anywhere? It was new to me.

Wait, so the lass family and Harvey Hines created a missing person poster for donna with a cipher included on it?

Yes, Donna’s sister and nephew created it. As has been said about the poster, the area code in the phone number did not exist until 1997, the reward amount was quite high to have been offered back in the 70s, the typical reward back then would have been in the $500-$1000 range and I believe it was Glurk who noticed the font of the text on the poster was a font found on something that was computer generated.

Harvey Hines suspect was Larry Cane, Larry Cane live in the South Lake Tahoe area at that time and until his death.

The lass family and Harvey Hines created a missing person flyer for Donna which included a cipher, which when decoded leads one from the casino where Donna disappeared to donner pass?

Is it just me or does this seem a bit morbid and disrespectful? Specially for family to perpetrate…

I fully believe you, it just seems like a bizarre thing for family to do…

That was NOT decoded properly. How on Earth anyone could come up with those directions from that, well…

Someone most certainly looked at google maps, or made the trek themselves, then appointed what they found to the code work. I think the code was created for attention to Donna’s case and a possible Zodiac link. Nothing more.

This is the proposed "solution" to the Donna Lass Reward Poster that was made by someone many years ago, so long ago I don’t recall who proposed it, I know it wasn’t me! There are three unsolved symbols, two are the same symbol. It was thought at the time that the three symbols stood for the word YOU with the first letter in the word deliberately misspelled to mimic Zodiac’s misspellings in the Z408.

Certainly symbols 8-16 in the second line spell Donna Lass.

Indeed, already some interesting discussion about that in 2012..the ‘beware’ solution is not complete, however it might at least partially correct.

QT

I’m assuming they edited out the part where sal and tatman show the theatre guy a picture of Ross and Kane to see if one of them looked like the weirdo he was talking about? I mean, they did show pictures,right?

Theatre Guy: I have that weirdo’s face seared into my memory.

Sal & Mains: If only there was a way to check this guy’s memory against pictures of our "suspects" from that time period. Oh well.

Aaannnd another red herring it would seem. Otherwise, yeah, just show him the damn picture. Better yet develop a photo lineup because showing single pictures is quite obviously suggestive and would definitely be prejudicial in court…unless of course your perp is dead.

I was skeptical of this one when they asked if the Mikado was showing at the time of Stine’s murder, and the guy immediately said yes. I was in every play we did in high school and I couldn’t tell you which year we did them, much less the actual date, and I have a lot fewer plays to recall than a guy who did professional productions. I suppose editing could have made this look more spontaneous than it actually was. If so, they need to fire the editor.

As a former police officer, I’m also uncomfortable with them zeroing in on only two suspects particularly with some of the shaky "evidence" they have produced so far. The librarian specifically stated that Ross Sullivan wore military BOOTS before the Bates murder. As Richard Grinnell (sp.?) pointed out elsewhere on this site. The heel print at the Bates murder was made by a military SHOE, a dress shoe to be exact, which is exactly what I thought when I first saw the picture of the shoe impression. So that bit of so-called evidence against Ross is a bust.

I would like to know more about the murder movie Ross supposedly was involved with though. If one could find a copy of the film, it would at least provide some better images of Ross. The ones I’ve seen so far are not especially helpful. It would also perhaps provide a glimpse at his gait. Was it "shuffling" or a limp? His build is really difficult to determine from the pictures I’ve seen as well.

I was really hoping they would show more of the Mikado stuff we talked about. There is so much more to it.

"The rest of the Cipher is GIBBERISH!"

Wow. Sorry, anyone that declares that it’s gibberish and says they solved the 340… didn’t solve the 340. I think the first few lines that were ‘solved’ are suspect also. I’m no cyber expert, but just because you can’t figure something out doesn’t make it gibberish. And how about that Carmen.. eh? Yikes.

"The rest of the Cipher is GIBBERISH!"

Wow. Sorry, anyone that declares that it’s gibberish and says they solved the 340… didn’t solve the 340. I think the first few lines that were ‘solved’ are suspect also. I’m no cyber expert, but just because you can’t figure something out doesn’t make it gibberish. And how about that Carmen.. eh? Yikes.

The supercomputer raises an interesting question. Given the description of its capabilities why didn’t it find a solution? If the computer isn’t finding patterns then perhaps what that implies is that the cipher is incomplete, constitutes more than one cipher, or (as was suggested on the show) is partially or completely gibberish. I do think, in retrospect, there is significance not only in what has been found but in the fact that so many cryptologists (and computers) have been employed against this and come up short of a conclusive decoding.

Look at it the other way around. Let’s suppose Zodiac is or was capable of producing a cipher of such complexity he has baffled all these experts and computers. So then we have this evil genius, no doubt with an off the charts IQ, rambling around Vallejo in an old beat up car shooting young people in between prolonged immersion into true detective magazines. Oh and he has trouble spelling, he’s wearing military surplus shoes, might hang out in a community college library, and has personality disorders which heat up into white hot rage periodically. And the funny thing is this person, of such impressive intellect and pronounced personality traits, isn’t noticed by friends and coworkers.

What I’m arguing is that after producing a rather pedestrian cipher with his first attempt Zodiac didn’t paint his masterpiece with the 340. He just cobbled together another ordinary cipher using much the same techniques he did earlier and scrambled some things round to throw off the people he assumed would be trying to decode it. And if he made it undecodeable by throwing in loads of inconsistent coding he knew couldn’t be deciphered then the laugh he would get at these people would be that much larger. Which again, argues that maybe the fellow on the Zodiac series who thinks part of 340 is just filler might not be completely off base. But I would feel better about his conclusion if the computer was applied against only the half he says he has decoded and came to the same conclusion.

I’m assuming they edited out the part where sal and tatman show the theatre guy a picture of Ross and Kane to see if one of them looked like the weirdo he was talking about? I mean, they did show pictures,right?

Theatre Guy: I have that weirdo’s face seared into my memory.

Sal & Mains: If only there was a way to check this guy’s memory against pictures of our "suspects" from that time period. Oh well.

Aaannnd another red herring it would seem. Otherwise, yeah, just show him the damn picture. Better yet develop a photo lineup because showing single pictures is quite obviously suggestive and would definitely be prejudicial in court…unless of course your perp is dead.

I was skeptical of this one when they asked if the Mikado was showing at the time of Stine’s murder, and the guy immediately said yes. I was in every play we did in high school and I couldn’t tell you which year we did them, much less the actual date, and I have a lot fewer plays to recall than a guy who did professional productions. I suppose editing could have made this look more spontaneous than it actually was. If so, they need to fire the editor.

As a former police officer, I’m also uncomfortable with them zeroing in on only two suspects particularly with some of the shaky "evidence" they have produced so far. The librarian specifically stated that Ross Sullivan wore military BOOTS before the Bates murder. As Richard Grinnell (sp.?) pointed out elsewhere on this site. The heel print at the Bates murder was made by a military SHOE, a dress shoe to be exact, which is exactly what I thought when I first saw the picture of the shoe impression. So that bit of so-called evidence against Ross is a bust.

I would like to know more about the murder movie Ross supposedly was involved with though. If one could find a copy of the film, it would at least provide some better images of Ross. The ones I’ve seen so far are not especially helpful. It would also perhaps provide a glimpse at his gait. Was it "shuffling" or a limp? His build is really difficult to determine from the pictures I’ve seen as well.

Excellent points. There are all sorts of bells and whistles (the codes, the letters, the Zodiac costume) but it seems to me if you can’t solve the case without going back to Vallejo and working outward. Cut away all the distracting noise and you’ve still got three murders in the Vallejo area. Were there links between the victims in the first two cases? Even if not, all three are linked to a degree by geography. Instead of centering the inquiry around Vallejo it looks like the investigators started with two suspects and have worked back from there amplifying anything which appears to fit. I don’t think the codes will reveal much of anything because the point with Zodiac and the letters was "the game" and not conveying information. And what he does say in the codes is probably a mix of actual events, outright lies, and some fantasy. In fairness to the investigators on the show, we don’t know what they looked at early on and discarded. Maybe they did go to Vallejo early on and perhaps they are saving that for the next season of episodes.

Aaannnd another red herring it would seem. Otherwise, yeah, just show him the damn picture. Better yet develop a photo lineup because showing single pictures is quite obviously suggestive and would definitely be prejudicial in court…unless of course your perp is dead.

I was skeptical of this one when they asked if the Mikado was showing at the time of Stine’s murder, and the guy immediately said yes. I was in every play we did in high school and I couldn’t tell you which year we did them, much less the actual date, and I have a lot fewer plays to recall than a guy who did professional productions. I suppose editing could have made this look more spontaneous than it actually was. If so, they need to fire the editor.

As a former police officer, I’m also uncomfortable with them zeroing in on only two suspects particularly with some of the shaky "evidence" they have produced so far. The librarian specifically stated that Ross Sullivan wore military BOOTS before the Bates murder. As Richard Grinnell (sp.?) pointed out elsewhere on this site. The heel print at the Bates murder was made by a military SHOE, a dress shoe to be exact, which is exactly what I thought when I first saw the picture of the shoe impression. So that bit of so-called evidence against Ross is a bust.

I would like to know more about the murder movie Ross supposedly was involved with though. If one could find a copy of the film, it would at least provide some better images of Ross. The ones I’ve seen so far are not especially helpful. It would also perhaps provide a glimpse at his gait. Was it "shuffling" or a limp? His build is really difficult to determine from the pictures I’ve seen as well.

Excellent points. There are all sorts of bells and whistles (the codes, the letters, the Zodiac costume) but it seems to me if you can’t solve the case without going back to Vallejo and working outward. Cut away all the distracting noise and you’ve still got three murders in the Vallejo area. Were there links between the victims in the first two cases? Even if not, all three are linked to a degree by geography. Instead of centering the inquiry around Vallejo it looks like the investigators started with two suspects and have worked back from there amplifying anything which appears to fit. I don’t think the codes will reveal much of anything because the point with Zodiac and the letters was "the game" and not conveying information. And what he does say in the codes is probably a mix of actual events, outright lies, and some fantasy. In fairness to the investigators on the show, we don’t know what they looked at early on and discarded. Maybe they did go to Vallejo early on and perhaps they are saving that for the next season of episodes.

I guess what bothers me the most about this show, as opposed to Oak Island, is that we are talking about a cold blooded murderer. If they have information that could lead to solving this case, as old as it is, but they drag it out for the sake of selling products, that really pisses me off. Oak Island is about finding a treasure that may or may not have existed. This is about real crimes. Even if the perp is long dead, there are still family members out there that deserve to know. If the whole program is going to be hokey crap hyped to the max to sell advertising, they are certainly spitting on the victims and their families. I can wait for next season to see if Rick and Marty and the rest of the Oak Island crew find their treasure, but to halt an investigation, or worse yet, to have answers that are withheld until next year is bordering on criminal and is certainly unethical.

…but to halt an investigation, or worse yet, to have answers that are withheld until next year is bordering on criminal and is certainly unethical.

This should tell you something about the results of the investigation so far.

…but to halt an investigation, or worse yet, to have answers that are withheld until next year is bordering on criminal and is certainly unethical.

This should tell you something about the results of the investigation so far.

Well, yes, it certainly does that. I find myself being embarrassed for the two investigators because I assume they did much better as actual police officers when they weren’t being directed.

The code breakers and "super computer" are just a joke at this point. "I solved the 340 cypher…well, sort of, almost, but some of it I didn’t understand, so I don’t think it means anything, but by golly, I solved it."

All in all, I can see why the law enforcement agencies are reluctant to get involved with this outfit.

One thing I know is their investigation continues outside of filming. It’s not all for show.

I see why active agencies don’t want to get involved, and after that reward poster, I can see why they shouldn’t.

I think that Riverside PD shared CJB’s trousers with them for DNA analysis on condition that History Channel shared the results. When they did, Riverside got a match, and told them not to air the episodes as it would be prejudicial to the investigation. So HC filmed the scenes where the 2 guys meet with the DNA analysis scientist, and then couldn’t show them for this reason. I think series 2 will have the results, but we will know the result already by then as I doubt HC can stop Riverside publishing them (I am not a legal expert, anyone know this?)