I think it has a lot more to do with inhibitions. Normal inhibitions against harm to oneself and others are surprisingly hard to overcome. Although all of us have probably experienced the effects of alcohol, the way it dissolves those inhibitions is very interesting.

But illicit drugs aside, to engage in serial murder you have to be dis-inhibited for a sustained period of time, or have regular episodes. This idea is backed up by what we already know from the thousands of serial killers who have been caught.

Here’s a little thought experiment, take a knife and try to give yourself a cut (don’t actually do this). What stops you, or at least what makes it really hard? Lack of motive? Suppose you hate yourself, would that motive allow you to do it? Most people would probably say yes, but it’s probably not true. Now ask yourself, would it be easier to do if I was also drunk? Medical science suggests people who cut themselves are as much able to do so because of the loss of inhibition that accompanies certain mental illnesses as they’re because they feel negatively towards themselves. Motive is nothing compared to loss of inhibitions. People are often not aware of the way inhibitions shape their actions, most people do not perceive their influence.

Now you might think, yeah but that’s self preservation, what’s it got to do with harming others? Well if we have empathy we will project those same emotions onto others and we will experience the same inhibition towards harming ourselves as we do them. Psychopaths don’t feel empathy, so they have no inhibition from harming others.

Now you might think, yeah but that’s self preservation, what’s it got to do with harming others? Well if we have empathy we will project those same emotions onto others and we will experience the same inhibition towards harming ourselves as we do them. Psychopaths don’t feel empathy, so they have no inhibition from harming others.

TK definitely had a motive. He expressed extreme bitterness about being socially awkward and deprived of romantic relationships, manifesting in a hatred towards women. And obviously, from the Unabomber crimes we know of his willingness to inflict violence without remorse.

TK WAS a killer, but when I think of him as potentially being Zodiac, the same question always pops up in my mind: would he have been able to perform the Lake Baryessa attack? I mean, leaving a bomb in a parking lot or mail bomb people is one thing, but stabbing them is something completely different (at least I imagine). I really have a hard time imagining good old Ted coming so close to his victims, although many things found in his cabin are astounding as far as the Zodiac case (the hood, the explainations about coding, etc.) Also, I am pretty sure the places where Zodiac murders occured were not picked at random. To me they meant a lot in the personal life history of the killer.

…but stabbing them is something completely different (at least I imagine).

TK did a lot more hunting and trapping that a bunch of us will ever do, combined. He actually made a living that way. He was no stranger to close quarters. Hunting is one of Z’s main metaphors.

…but stabbing them is something completely different (at least I imagine).

TK did a lot more hunting and trapping that a bunch of us will ever do, combined. He actually made a living that way. He was no stranger to close quarters. Hunting is one of Z’s main metaphors.

I still consider TK a solid suspect too. You’re right, he was a hunter and so was Zodiac. Unfortunately, if TK was Zodiac, we will never know, because the FBI won’t let us.

…but stabbing them is something completely different (at least I imagine).

TK did a lot more hunting and trapping that a bunch of us will ever do, combined. He actually made a living that way. He was no stranger to close quarters. Hunting is one of Z’s main metaphors.

This is true and we shouldn’t diminish the act of bombing, it’s done from a great distance and we know it’s easier for most people to kill from a distance. But "easier" and "easy" aren’t the same thing. TK was capable of distance killing and slaughtering animals, this removes a lot of the mental hurdles of up close killing.

I will also point out that in another recent thread, you note that when Z stopped going out to murder people, suddenly, you say, he switched to writing about killing them with bombs.

Good observations Jelberg and Margie.

No, Margie, I had never seen that before. You are right, the way Ted writes that Y is almost exactly like how Zodiac did it in his code.

You mentioned maybe seeing part of a name in the 340. Consider the following.

In the 340 cipher, as it was printed in newspapers, the letters to form ‘THEODOR J KACZYNSKI" appear in a somewhat systematic and logical way. Given all the letters in the 340, I am sure you can get hundreds of names. What I note here is the following – IF, and I acknowledge it is a big "IF", Zodiac wanted to hide his real name in the cipher, there is an inherent logic in putting his first name in the first line (or two), his middle name or initial on the middle line, and his last name at the end, at the bottom on the last two lines.

Allowing for backwards letters and filled in "O" ‘s to still stand for the letter, you can get "THEODOR" on the first line, or if you want no backwards or filled in letters, "THEODR" on the first two lines; (the middle initial J in the middle of the middle line) and allowing for one backwards "K" to stand for a "K", you can get "KAC ZYN SKI" on the last two lines, in a 18 letter section. The name KACZYNSKI has three syllables of three letters each.

What are the odds that in an 18 character section at the end of the code, all 9 letters of the Kaczynski name would appear by chance?

I keep thinking about this. It has to be beyond coincidence, and note that each of the 9 letters is in a different column. Like Margie said, maybe it is an indication how the columns of the 340 need to be rearranged.

This is of course pure speculation, but for a moment suppose… TK is Zodiac. He writes a cipher that has people, for almost 50 years, trying to solve to gain his identity. But his little private joke is that, in order to solve the cipher, one would first need to know his identity. In other words, if rearranging the 340 to spell out his name produces a legitimate solve, the 340 won’t have provided his identity – it will have confirmed it. A confession of sorts.

There is no way anyone would ever rearrange the 340 to spell out Kaczynski (I assume the backwards K represents the 2nd one) unless he had been caught or had somehow become a major suspect. So if this is how the 340 was constructed, it’s quite the catch-22 situation. His identity would be the key to the solve.

Is anyone else working on this theory?

I’m going to give a snapshot here of some of what I have been working on the past few years in regards to Kaczynski, Zodiac, codes and unsolved Midwest murders. And also provide a brief look at what I intend to be focusing on over the next few months, in terms of Zodiac and Kaczynski DNA.

Marshall – Thanks for your observations, comments and questions.

In regards to your question if anyone else is working on these theories, for many years, Doug Oswell was the main researcher looking into the theory that Kaczynski could have been the Zodiac before he became the Unabomber. For several years I have probably been the most active researcher pursuing the Kaczynski as Zodiac idea, researching it and posting evidence.

Over the last few years, at any given time, there have been anywhere from five to twelve members here contributing some research, ideas and/or comments on TJK = Z. Jelberg has recently posted some very interesting work.

Specifically in terms of the Zodiac codes revealing trademarks of the construction methods of TJK or the actual Kaczynski name itself, it has mainly been myself – AK Wilks – and Zander Kite.

Along the lines of what you are proposing, I maintain that TK hid his 18 letter name, Theodore J Kaczynski, in the "Unsolved 18", the final 18 letters of the otherwise solved Zodiac 408 code. I think he did this by way of a 0-3-6-9 Caesar shift code, which effectively hides the name so that it would likely never be detected unless you knew the name in advance. I also maintain that TJK hid a 13 letter variation of his name in the Zodiac 340 Code – Theo Kaczynski, which also appears in the 13 character My Name Is Code. As for the rest of the Zodiac Code research community, 95% of them reject most of my findings.

Although a study done by a skeptic, Aquiman, who works in computer probabilities at an Ivy League university, showed that the odds of the 18 letter TJK name appearing in a Caesar shift of the Unsolved 18 by chance was NOT the 50%, 25% or 10% as most claimed, but was in fact 1% or less.

Probability Chart By Aquiman

Odds of THEODOREJ & KACZYNSKI appearing in the 18 Unsolved by chance: 0.033 x 0.053 = 0.001749

Third line of the Zodiac 340, the Raw Proposed Solve by Graysmith, with a 0-3-6-9 Caesar Shift applied. The fourth line reads SEE A NAME. The sequence ZYN in the name KAC-ZYN-SKI can be formulated as shown, Z CAK NY THEO IKS or more readable as CAK NYZ THEO IKS, but this involves a "double dip".

In addition, in the summer of 1968 a killer of a male – female couple (and their children) in Michigan sent a letter to a newspaper giving info only the killer would know and demanding the words Dr. Guidini and ZODIUS appear in the newspaper. One year later male – female couple would be attacked in California and the killer wrote to a newspaper demanding ZODIAC appear in the paper.

Both ZODIUS & ZODIAC used a .22 with six right hand grooves and twists, police identified the weapon as a probable Sears JC Higgins, both used .22 Winchester Super X ammo, both spoke on the phone in a monotone robotic voice, both left messages or codes that contained the letters ROEBERT and emphasized EBE.

Doranchak (who does NOT find my code work valid) checked 200,000 words and names, and the only actual word or name that produces the names, GUIDINI, ZODIUS & ZODIAC in a 10-20-30 Caesar shift, left to right read, no anagrams, is KACZYNSKI.

Both the Santa Barbara June 1963 killer and the Michigan June 1968 killer killed a male – female couple, stacked bodies atop one another (former FBI agent John Douglas reports less than 1% of homicides involve posing), exposed part of the female’s sexual area and covered the bodies (SB = Towel. MICH = Blanket).

ZODIAC in 9/27/69 left writing at the scene, as did ZODIUS 6/68. The book Corroborating Evidence III shows evidence and pattern linking the nearby Lake Michigan murders of the Robison family to the nearby Lake Michigan murder of Valerie Percy on 9/18/66 to each other, and both to the Zodiac Killer.

Police suspect that whoever killed Valerie Percy on 9/18/66, in a brutal home invasion hammer and knife attack when the whole family was home, may have also killed the Bricca family in suburban Cincinnati on 9/27/66. Based on information I gave them, police consider Ted Kaczynski a POI in the Percy murder, which happened less than 30 minutes away from the Kaczynski family home in suburban Chicago, and police consider the Zodiac a suspect in the Bricca murder.

The police in the Bricca case (Hamilton County Sheriff Homicide Squad) were particularly struck by the similarities I showed them in the possible Zodiac crime of Santa Barbara 1963 and the Bricca case: Male – female couple killed, female body stacked atop the male body. Bodies were also stacked in the Robison murders. In Bricca 9/27/66 the bodies were bound, as they were in Zodiac attack 9/27/69 Shepard & Hartnell, and both attacks involved a long knife, as did Percy. In possible Zodiac attack of SB 1963, Edwards had her breasts exposed, as did Valerie Percy. Mrs. Robison had her vagina exposed. In SB 1963 bodies were covered with a towel, in Robison bodies were covered with a blanket.

Mr. Bricca was a chemical engineer for the Monsanto Corporation. TJK hated the Monsanto Corporation, because of their experiments and developments in genetic engineering, and later wrote an article in a radical environmental magazine that the Monsanto Corporation should be "hit" and "hit hard" because of the danger he felt they posed to the environment, human freedom and the world.

Mr. Robison published a business magazine and just introduced a plan to change wildlife areas into airports and computerized warehouses. TJK put a bomb on board an airplane and sent a bomb to the head of United Airlines. He hated airports and airplanes because of their noise, pollution and being instrumental in advancing the business and technological Society.

Mr. Percy ran a successful company that made business machines, cameras and other technological devices, and had just won the Republican nomination for the US Senate seat in Illinois.

Make of all that what you will.

Progress in the case stalled out in 2013 because there was no Zodiac DNA to compare to the possible Bricca Suspect DNA. I am cautiously optimistic about the new ongoing efforts to obtain Zodiac DNA from Zodiac letters and the blanket at Lake Berryessa. I am now going to start efforts to try to get any Bricca suspect DNA compared to Zodiac DNA, and to get them both compared to Kaczynski DNA.

I was also very excited to hear, as alerted to me by Shawn, Tommy T, Curious Cat, and then I saw it previously noted by Zam and Sandy Betts, the police have a full nuclear DNA profile from the killer of Nancy Bennallack, a possible Zodiac crime, from when the killer cut himself and left blood at the scene.

Zodiac sent the Halloween card to Avery, claiming a 14th victim, on October 27, 1970, after she was murdered but before the Bennallack murder hit the newspapers. Nancy Bennallack, like Valerie Percy, was a home invasion knife murder of a young woman. (Also in Bennallack her engagement had just been announced in the paper, while Valerie’s sister’s engagement to a Rockefeller had just been announced in the paper – and in the dark the killer may have thought he was killing the sister). Police think the killer of Donna Lass and Judith Hakari may have also killed Bennallack. The suspect in the Hakari murder owned a 1950’s American pick up truck, as did Ted K., and the suspect sketch of the Hakari killer looks amazingly like Ted K.

The ZODIAC killed a man in San Francisco, and sent many letters to the San Francisco Examiner. In the ZODIUS murders, a person of interest was the mysterious MR. ROEBERT, who claimed to be from San Francisco, and in fact made telephone calls from the SF, California area code, and spoke in a monotone robotic voice, like ZODIAC.

The letters ROEBERT appear in the unsolved 18, as does EMETT, the county where the ZODIUS murders occurred, and the unsolved 18 starts with the sequence EBE. In letters, the mysterious Mr. ROEBERT always put asterisks under the letters EBE in his name.

Woaw, this is all mind-boggling! I always liked TK as a suspect in this case but I still have a hard time accepting the Zodiac could have been a sexual offender (even if none of the victims you cited seem to have been raped). In the LHR, BSR and LB attacks, there is no trace of a sexual aspect to the assaults. How could we explain that?

Thanks. As you noted there was no sexual assault in any of these Midwest murder cases. In the possible Zodiac crime of Santa Barbara 1963, the Killer cut Edwards bathing suit top off to expose her breasts. In the Valerie Percy case, her nightgown was lifted up to expose her breasts, and Mrs. Robison had her dress lifted to expose her panties.

As for there being no sexual element in any of the confirm Zodiac cases, in a strict sense of speaking, you are correct. But I would note that three of the confirmed Zodiac attacks happened in lovers lanes or isolated places where couples were known to go, and in fact the victims were couples.

I would argue that somewha raises a sexual element in the sense that the attacker seems to be drawn to places where couples were known to make out or have sex, leaving me to think there is a motivation of jealousy or anger towards couples in romantic or sexual situations.

This would absolutely fit Ted Kaczynski. He wrote in his journal that at the University of Michigan in 1966, he was driven "mad" by the sound of young couples having sex in the dorm rooms next to him. He stated that he was suffering from "acute sexual starvation", and on the list of people he said that he could now really kill, people he hated, yes there were "big shots" in business or science, but it also includied couples, "college students", promiscuous men and especially promiscuous women, who he called "animals" and "pigs".

Woaw, this is all mind-boggling! I always liked TK as a suspect in this case but I still have a hard time accepting the Zodiac could have been a sexual offender (even if none of the victimes you cited seem to have been raped). In the LHR, BSR and LB attacks, there is no trace of a sexual aspect to the assaults. How could we explain that?

Kim Wendy Allen may have been a Zodiac victim in Santa Rosa. Her murder was brutal and sexual. I could buy Zodiac as an offender who escalated to rape, much like how the GSK escalated from burglary to rape and murder.

Yes, such cases exist. Here in France, for instance, a guy known as Pierre Bodein went from bank robber to being in a catatonic state for years in a mental institution (eating his own feces, being completely silent and unable to walk) until he escaped by jumping from his wheelchair and out the window and ran to freedom, then shooting and injuring policemen who tried to catch him. After being sentenced to 30 years in prison but spending only 10 behind bars, he was set free again and just four months later (and within the span of less than 2 weeks), he kidnapped, raped and killed a woman and 2 teenage girls. Shrinks still try to determine if he’s crazy or not to this day.
If TK was Zodiac and committed these Michigan murders, that means he went from Zodius to Zodiac to becoming the founder and only member of the Freedom Club. What a insane ride…

Interesting points. But to be clear, there was no sexual assault or even sexual molestation present in any of these Midwest murders. The only thing that was even slightly sexual in any of these Midwest murders was that Valerie Percy had her nightgown lifted to expose her breasts and Mrs. Robison had a dress lifted to expose her panties.

It’s possible that both of these things could have happened by accident in the course of the assaults and murders, but police tended to think that the actions of lifting the nightgown and dress were probably deliberate. But even if deliberate, those actions are really no different than the actions of the killer in the probable Zodiac crime of Santa Barbara 1963, when the killer cut off Edwards bathing suit top to expose her breasts.

It is from the word "Zodiacus" that both the words Zodius and Zodiac are derived. So to me it was quite stunning to learn that a killer dubbed himself Zodius and wanted his name printed in the paper one year before the Zodiac wanted his name printed in the paper.

I highly doubt that there were two separate killers who adopted essentially the same name, both demanded to see their name in the paper, both sent letters detailing their knowledge of the crimes, both killed a male-female couple, both stacked bodies, used the same type of weapon, etc.

I’m sort of amazed, but not really surprised, if that makes sense, that the existence of a Zodius killer, who used a .22 caliber gun with six right hand twist and grooves, and Super X .22 caliber ammo, just like the Zodiac, did not attract more attention or interest from the Zodiac research community at large. Or that it did not generate much interest that the police in the Bricca murder case officially announced in a press release that they considered the Zodiac Killer a suspect in their case. But so be it.

Forums like this one serve certain purposes, and they’ve been useful and helpful for certain things, but ultimately the case is only going to be decided by a DNA match. So this point I’m focusing most of my efforts in relation to Zodiac, Bennallack , Bricca and Kaczynski, on trying to get DNA comparisons done.

And yes, if proven to be true, the ride from Percy to Bricca to Zodius to Zodiac to the Tylenol Murders to the Unabomber is an insane ride.

AK Wilks said;
…"the killer cut off Edwards bathing suit top to expose her breasts."

Wouldn’t you agree this is conjecture? What makes you rule out that
her clothing was simply ripped when Zodiac dragged her body to the
shack? – Certainly the ground appears to have many embedded small
rocks both where it is dry and within the bed of the small stream.