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?)

I hope you are correct, but if you are, it would appear they have a living suspect, which would clear both of the HC suspects. No worries about compromising a prosecution because you don’t try dead perps.

Typically, a show that ‘breaks news,’ while doing investigative filming will leak that fact to accredited media to boost ratings ahead of the episode air. If a police investigation is ongoing such that it may involve imminent arrests, they may ask producers to sit in information — usually not so with a cold case however.

With incarcerated suspects, lawyers may request to get questions ahead of their clients sitting down in front of cameras. Riverside police do not want to be embarrassed by someone coming in, using their own files sitting there and solve the case. They were likely promised this would not happen, and by introducing new evidence with new technology, thus the cooperation. Easily the best part of the show.

… Easily the best part of the show.

At least it seems to be the most valuable and useful thing they have done. DNA evidence is pretty solid. Most of the rest is circumstantial, which becomes less and less valuable as the case grows colder simply because witnesses either die or have been influenced by things like this TV show that tend to skew the memories of even the best witnesses. Trying to accurately recall something from 50 years ago that may not have even seemed significant at the time is a monumental task. Physical evidence tends to age much better. I sure wish we would have had the DNA technology we do now when I was in law enforcement.

As an aside, I think Mike (morf13) knows more about this than we do as he hinted about it a while back. It will be very interesting to see the outcome in the coming days, months or years.

"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.

The gentleman who says he cracked the code did it by using a hunch. He replaced the first 9 characters of the 340 cipher with the phrase "HERE IT IS". A phrase that was used by another famous unknown killer in the late 1940"s————-The Black Dahlia killer. Then from the cipher he realized that the next characters had double letters. Once he substituted the phrase "I KILL" he says he was off to the races. Now here is my question. Why couldn’t they take the letters H E R E I T I S I K I L L and tell the supercomputer that these are the letters for the first 13 ciphers of the 340 cipher and then instructed the computer to come up with the rest. Wouldn’t it have come up with the same results thereby proving that his solution is correct? I’m not a computer scientist but if his solution is correct then the supercomputer should validate that solution. Just my 5 cents. Using the scientific method a hypothesis using inductive logic must be testable even falsifiable and it seems to me that the computer could have been used as a check on his results.

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?)

I hope you are correct, but if you are, it would appear they have a living suspect, which would clear both of the HC suspects. No worries about compromising a prosecution because you don’t try dead perps.

A win, win for both. They get to go with Sullivan and Kane without blowing the fact that neither one had anything to do with Riverside, while Riverside gets added confirmation of their own testing results. But, would Riverside wait for the sake of the documentary?. I highly doubt that as this airing could scare the perp into hiding… and any arrest by now, would be known.

In Zodiac’s immediate confirmed correspondence after the November 8th/9th communications he mailed the Melvin Belli letter, apparently drawing inspiration from the Lipstick Killer William Heirens. So the idea he drew inspiration from the Black Dahlia case just under 2 months earlier is not a fanciful idea.

In Zodiac’s immediate confirmed correspondence after the November 8th/9th communications he mailed the Melvin Belli letter, apparently drawing inspiration from the Lipstick Killer William Heirens. So the idea he drew inspiration from the Black Dahlia case just under 2 months earlier is not a fanciful idea.

I think he got inspiration from a lot of things like that.

Was great seeing your contributions to the show, Tahoe, and appreciate your thoughtful comments on this thread.

Thank you serya. Very nice of you to say.

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.

There is still no definitive connection between this "weirdo" and zodiac.

This "weirdo" could have just been a creepy opera fan…

I mean, if the "weirdo" turns out to be Kane or Sullivan, or Marshall, then I guess this could be significant, but all and all it could have just been some random guy.

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.

Yeah, I could not find much regarding how it was decoded, I know it done was using anagrams, but still could not find a detailed explanation.

So did those who created the flyer ever state what message the cipher was truly hiding?

Hi folks –

First time poster to this site. Have been a lurker, mostly on Tom V’s site, and have had an interest in the Zodiac case since seeing the Fincher movie and then reading Graysmith’s book.

I found the series to be pretty disappointing, and I hope that Morf and the others here that contributed to it don’t take offense. I would blame the show’s producers for that. The Mt. Diablo excursion seemed to a reach and waste of time, and the Donner Pass trip was a wild goose chase inspired by the cipher on the Lass reward poster that (apparently) the Lass family created. Also, it didn’t seem fair that the show implied that theories & evidence that were already out there was ‘discovered’ by people on the show.

WTH was the point of Carmel "writing" that poem? lol

It really jumped the shark in the season finally of hyping the "solved" cipher giving a suspect name but we can’t tell you until the FBI and CIA have looked at it. Then when they all agree it could be accurate they do the big reveal,

Richard Nixon.

Oh for Gods sake, I mean they may have cracked it and it may be that he put in Nixon as a joke, but why the secrecy other then to make the viewer think they were gonna get a real name?

I do not know why I keep falling for these shows (Oak Island, HH Holmes Hunting Hitler ect) but I do and get annoyed every time. They stretch this stuff so far out trying to get as many episodes as they can.

I worked a lot of cases and the amount of work "Accomplished" in this season amounted to one full day of work. Its just like any cold case, find un reported DNA and compare it. Reach out to all wits and see if anything new has come up.

The sketch at the top of this page is from some teenagers at the Stein murder. Just take pics of all known suspects, find those former teenagers and show them the pics. If they have already done this then just say so. I cant believe they weren’t shown photo line ups of every known suspect by the SFPD. A wit good enough to give you a sketch is good enough to ID from a pic and if they can’t ID from a pic then we need to rethink the validity of the sketch.

As far as the show goes, I don’t blame those who contributed from this site for the faults of the show, you have to blame the structure of commercial television in general, they probably have to make the show in that manner regardless of who contributes.

I actually like the zodiac show, I mean, I do not like a good deal of the baseless claims, and buildups and let-downs, and some parts of the show are a waste of time, but there are pieces which are informative and productive. (I also like the oak island show, but I have a high tolerance for nonsense)

Quite a few of the History Channel shows are over for me, before they begin. I analogize them to Click Bait on YouTube. The Curse of Oak Island is the one exception for me, because Rick & Marty Lagina are absolute fanatics about the subject. I know Tim Kennedy and, other than the opportunity to travel around the world (which we did in the Army), can’t understand why he would want to be a part of that train wreck.

The Zodiac show was one giant disappointment, and I blame the producers. The Carmel "super computer" was a bad Hollywood joke. I liked Bauer’s KISS theory on Z340, with the non-ciphered letters and the gibberish. If Bauer’s decryption is correct, I’m not the least bit surprised that Zodiac didn’t include his name but rather that of President Nixon’s. If I were to give my opinion of Zodiac’s profile, I would have to say he is/was a mentally ill, cowardly, unimaginative, raging egoist who never got any kind of validation from anyone. Military? If he was, he never served out a full term and may have been discharged, due to disciplinary/mental health issues, further reinforcing the non-validation….couldn’t even get that right. The boots could have been bought in any Army/Navy store.

My theory for the gibberish in Z304 stems from the quick solving of Z408. I don’t think he was capable of creating a proper encryption; Z408 shows the simplicity of his "cipher". If he was mentally ill, he would have been enraged when Z408 was decrypted, so what better way to get back at and re-captivate your "audience" than throw something out there in the style of Z408 but not? I can imagine him screaming, "Okay you f’ers, let’s see you solve this!" Some of it would have solvable elements, to keep people from losing interest, but then the rest would be gobbledygook thus restoring his sense of superiority, as people rack their brains out for the next several decades trying to decipher Z304.

Sullivan’s hospitalization for bi-polar/schizophrenia, coupled with the uncanny resemblance to the police sketch, his ties to Albany and then Riverside College, would lead me to name him as my only suspect. I’m surprised he was never questioned by law enforcement. What’s even more surprising to me is that there is very little information about him online. He supposedly died in ’77, but has that ever been confirmed?