Hi Cragle.
It’s been a while since I’ve been on this site as I gave up on looking at Zod for a few years. I see it as one of those puzzles that will never be solved unless Zod himself makes a deathbed confession that can be backed up with evidences. However, the fun is in the looking, as we know only too well and I’ve been drawn back to the land of the Zodites when I came across my cipher work and previous Zodiac notes recently.
I think that what you’ve pointed out is quite interesting, as Zod’s communications concerning his ‘gathering slaves for paradice’ led me to think of several things as to why I would create that train of thought if I was him (or they, as I have a feeling the ‘MK ULTRA/Team Zodiac’ theory is also very viable).

The following is written in the imaginative context that I’m Zodiac and working alone:

1- I love hunting people, as my 408 cipher so easily revealed. We hunters ‘own’ the body and ‘spirit’ of the ‘beasts’ we kill. We earn the right to own and take the carcass and use it for food/clothing/trophy or whatever the hell we want, as its our spoils and I don’t care if it’s animal or human. But remember this- I want you to see my kills, so I can relish in the fear and terror I’m spreading. When I’m at work or walking the streets, or when people are talking about me in the bars…I relish their concerns and the ignorance that it’s me they’re talking about, when I’m safe in the knowledge that I am the only one Zodiac isn’t going to kill. When I’m amongst you I feel like Clarke Kent, only you wouldn’t want my superhuman alter-ego to reveal himself. Therefore, although I’m not taking away the carcass of my kills because I want to leave them as trophies on display for you, so I’m claiming the hunter’s right to state that I removed their spirits and have owned their fate.
*This falls in line with using the theme of the post to a degree, in that Zodiac has again pointed to something that had already existed and manipulated it to his own needs in creating his fantasy. This is also visible in his other influences, such as Zodiac itself meaning ‘a gathering of animals’, which could hint at team Zodiac or his self-proclamation that he is a hunter gathering victims.*

2- You wouldn’t know I was capable of being a killer if you look at insignificant me. That’s my secret- my ability to maintain my camouflage and mask up like any hunter who wants to keep killing. If I stand out then my camouflage will be useless. Why do you think Paul the taxi driver was so at ease with me when a killer roams the streets? Maybe it’s because I put him at ease with my military ID that allowed me to get into the Presidio that night? But what about those kids at the lake and their terror when they saw my executioners hood? They were God-fearing Christians and they prayed to God to save them, so I challenged this attitude. I realised that if God couldn’t save them then He has no right to them in the afterlife, especially if I can kill them so easily. I needed to keep one alive though, or else why bother wearing the hood to fuel my terror? That inspired me to declare I’m taking souls so they won’t get to Heaven with the Halloween card which I sent later. And to be honest, I didn’t really care if they lived or died on that one. They were meant as a means to reveal myself in a shock and awe fashion, and it worked as a mere scribbling on the side of their car wouldn’t have made quite the same impression.
*In fitting with the slaves in the afterlife theme, Zodiac is basically attacking Christian America, the church or organised religion, if not the establishment, by saying if he kills you, then he owns you and not God. You are denied Heaven and instead will be in his ‘paradice’*.

3- I remember comics and history lessons as a kid, about hunters taking souls, so I’m going to create misinformation and divert my real intentions by appearing insane- I mean, you can’t really own slaves in the afterlife as there isn’t a heaven or hell, so the pigs might think I’m insane if I ramble on about that. My actions tell you that I’m not insane or a God-fearing soul but I have so much to lose if I’m ever caught, like my freedom. I will play my games to keep them off me, making false promises and entice them just like Jack the Ripper. He inspires my secrecy and my communications, but that’s about it. I won’t go after prostitutes as they’re too easy to take. They just get in the truck and there’s no fun in that. The thrill is the planning and the stalking of my prey. Did you know that? That I watch and observe, plan and execute just like I do with my communications? I mean, a bomb on the roadside or up in the mountains that I love? It kept them busy though and it was good for jolly.
*Zodiac did have a macabre sense of humour, so this is my take about some of his actions and influences. It would be interesting to try and track if there was one person (or group of persons) that could be linked to all of the cardinal victims, as these all seem to be highly publicised kills that carry messages that might logically mask other secretive killings/kidnappings.*

3- Besides, slaves are for the living. If I manage to convince those pigs hunting me that I’m claiming the dead as my slaves, then it’s dead bodies they’ll be looking for. To make an enemy think he knows you, you have to create a certain style they will be following like a paper-trail. So, when you change tactics like I’m going to do (kidnapping- I’ll have a practise run soon) the attention to that will be less focused, especially in other parts of California. I’ll then be able to keep my slaves locked up in my hunting cabin up on Gold Lake when I’m doing my ‘weekend hunting’, sending them to ‘paradice’ when I’m done. Well, the pigs won’t be thinking that I’m keeping people alive now will they? I’m the Zodiac Killer, not the Zodiac weekend kidnapper, rapist and then murderer. After all, it’s sometimes fun to play with your prey and the fun is what makes it worthwhile.
*This gives the idea that Zodiac was using the slaves line as a diversion before he moved onto kidnapping, which he experimented with. The Gold Lake reference is something I’ve picked up on in my 340 cipher work and is located in mountainous regions north of Donner Pass, where communications link to Donna Lass disappearance from Stateside, Lake Tahoe.*

4- That thing about killing to gain slaves in the afterlife worked out to be a sweet-deal. It brought publicity that Zodiac is a killer hunting around the SF Bay area. The thing is, I’ve marked my territory out already, from San Diego to Riverside to the coast, then north to SF Bay and east to the Sierra Nevada. Basically, the whole state of California is my hunting ground.
*If you plot the cardinal victims of Zodiac with all of his suspected previous victims in their kill-order on Google Earth, it makes for some interesting geo-mapping, which Zodiac hints interest at in his Mt. Diablo communications. They plot out a trapezoid shape from San Diego to Riverside to north regions of the Sierra Nevada Mt’s to SF Bay area. All of his known activities take place in this hunting ground, which also marks off the territories where most of the Californian State serial killers from the 1960’s to the present have been active. My take on this is that Zodiac was stamping MINE all over the region as he moved in, from 1963 to 1971, which hints that he was a traveller in his work or had the freedom/time to be active as Zodiac at weekends, whilst being the alter-ego kidnapper/murderer or family guy during the weekdays.*

I think that Zodiac is a manifestation of manipulation with a very high degree of intelligence. His 340 cipher is a form of codec that is military or intelligence community related, and the way by which I read it presents problems in itself as it still requires the key like all ciphers do. It can be read as a form of communication between groups of people in one context (the team Zodiac theory) and also as a backstory for an individual hidden amongst the made-up symbols of the 63 presented. The communications side is easy to make out, hence the pointer to gold lake which I mentioned, but it’s Zodiac’s story (if say he was a group leader and organiser of a group of ex-military hunter/killers and its communications officer, as so to speak) that would prove to be the revelation.
Interestingly, there are several names that do appear- Tom Hanks being one of them!

Hope this was interesting. Any more thoughts?
Sean.

Great post Sean, Im truly in the “team zodiac” theory, the coded messages in the papers as well as the cyphers, I do think these people were military personnel

It follows with some of the evidences.
I know time has diluted the events, but when one looks at the whole map of CA and its murder history on https://murderpedia.org/

CA displays a wide spectrum of killers, and the relationship with some of these and the military/Vietnam War cannot be dismissed to the casual observer, never mind us amateur investigators. Nor can the MKULTRA and the LSD experiments be ignored that ran in the state around that time, which hints at secretive organisations working in the shadows on unofficially state-sponsored agendas. (The British Army ran their drug-induced experiments on soldiers- try finding the footage of the squad under LSD influence from the 1950’s and how they behaved. Were such experiments done on serving personnel as well as the public in the USA that could have induced long-term psychosis/behavioural changes? Most likely.)

Maybe Zodiac is literally a gathering of killers, like the name means, but there is only one person working the codec within the organisation? That is what I’m hunting for when I’m trying to understand the 340. (I believe the cipher presents at least three elements- Zodiac’s story up to when he posted it, to verify it is him/a limited amount of commands that can be followed- such as gathering together for a hunt/a taunt to the police and those of us who are trying to solve this ‘crackproof’ cipher. This taunt is what detracts the eye, as it’s something to be expected because this is what Zodiac is hiding behind, but it can lead to a resolution of the technique he created in order to read the cipher.)

The scale that the people of CA have had to endure compared to the rest of the country, never mind the rest of the world for that matter, when it comes to murdering f!"&!ers who are Lone Wolf’s/killer couples/groups is unjustified. People ought to have the right to freedom and exploration, to live life and not have to suffer, but sadly there are those amongst us who think otherwise. And sadly, I also have a gut feeling that the 340 cipher is still in use as a communications tool to those who can read it. At least, that is the potential I see in it when I apply my techniques. (I just have to try and locate the source of the letter frequencies which he used in masking the alphabet, and I’m presently applying the technique of Alfred Mosher Butts for what became Scrabble as mentioned on another post in these forums- I just need to find relevant archived newspapers that Zodiac might have used to in order to do this.)

The whole Zodiac thing made me wonder a black humoured scenario many years ago if I was a Lone Wolf killer in CA at the time:

Ho hum…just burying my latest in my favourite burial site near the cabin where I love hunting…oh shit! Who’s that? He’s got a shovel and corpse as well? Oh, for Gods-sake! We need some co-ordination here, or else we’re gonna be encroaching on each other’s hunting grounds and be dropping each other in the shit! Hey fellow killer matey…wanna join my club?

Or, a more feasible one:

Damn military taught me how to kill in the war…I miss that! I really enjoyed hunting those gooks though…the thrill of the chase! These folk who never went to war don’t know shit! They’re hippies protesting about us and the crap we went through! How dare they! They wouldn’t be saying that if I had them by the throat… Hmmm, where’s the number of that dude in the unit who kept saying he was gonna make a hunting group when we’re done with ‘Nam to make these hippy pussies pay?

You get the picture.

Just writing that has suddenly put another thought into my head- the 340 may also mask an oath of some kind- like a soldier’s oath when they sign up.

The crazy thing is, since I rejoined the site a couple of days ago after taking time away from looking at the Zodiac case, I’ve learned a few things that have supported my own suspicions about who Zodiac is- the most striking is Sandy mentioning the piano player and his style of music. It ties nicely to a theory about someone who might have inspired one of the Zodiac’s, if not Zod himself, sense of humour.

Not quite ready to join those dots yet, but I’m working on it.

Any thoughts to add? Shared ideas often inspire the right ones.

Cragle posted about some coded messages in the daily nexus newspaper ( it’s on this site somewhere) can anyone put up a link please?

Cragle posted about some coded messages in the daily nexus newspaper ( it’s on this site somewhere) can anyone put up a link please?

viewtopic.php?f=69&t=4100

Thanks mateys- very much appreciated. Keep them coming.

A very interesting rabbit-hole to jump down. Things like this are what I’m after- any dodgy adverts or articles of the era hinting of Zodiac or hunting trips that draws the eye, even if they’ve already been discussed and seem irrelevant or have been dismissed by other Zodites, but they hold a feeling for you that an air of Zodiac lies about. If they seemingly pay reference to his crimes, known or unknown, they are especially welcoming as I feel this is the kind of long-term game he or they would play.

(Does he not promise that he would mask his murders and crimes with accidents and other means so we wouldn’t know it was him/they? That indicates going stealth to me, but this declaration has been interpreted in the past that he retired before he got caught, or he died. I for one don’t believe that b/s as I would’ve carried on, or made sure my legacy was able to continue, if I was him, and I see such a contingency in the 340. He/they have already tested themselves and broken many taboos (murder/rape/hunting humans/terrorism) so why stop until caught or dead? I see this as Zodiac’s creation, he sees himself in the centre of it, so I think he was just too damn stubborn to resist having this power in his secret life relinquished, unless there was no other option such as getting caught, but remaining silent about what he had made. Otherwise, I’m willing to go with the presumption that the club is still going as the cipher is still intact.)

I’m going to try running a few experiments and the more material I can test against each other the better, as I am looking for some kind of key or hidden instruction in material that was available to the public, most likely through one of several means- newspapers/adverts or magazines that are local would be the safest and most logical bet- something that was a weekly publication with letters and viewpoints being quickly printed when submitted by subscribers or readers.

Were there any local hunting or outdoor magazines available only in CA region? The Sierra Nevada Club magazine is especially relevant to me, because Zodiac draws attention to it in the Donna Lass postcard, and Larry Kane is known to have links from SF city when Paul Stine was murdered and Donna was working at the Presidio. Isn’t it strange how Zod goes in there- like he’s leaving a paper-trail? Was he setting Kane up like he possibly tried setting Sandy’s husband up after LB? Or was it Zodiac Kane being brazen? If it was a team, had Kane been a pain in the ass so Zodiac the leader was pointing the finger at him?
Donna Lass moved work premises to State-line, Lake Tahoe months later, where she disappears from and where Larry Kane worked in the same building. This whole Larry Kane link and Zodiac going to the Presidio, as he declared, just seems too coincidental. So did Donna moving closer to Donner Pass. This seems pre-planned with Zodiac’s influence- maybe he couldn’t resist ending with a pun of ‘Donner Pass/Donna Lass’ to mark the northern reach of his hunting ground- Lake Tahoe and the Gold Lake road beyond?
Did he use S/N/C to run adverts and co-ordinate? I also believe that Gold Lake or its road to the northern Lake region of Tahoe is relevant. Did the S/N/C magazine offer trail guides and the like? How many hikers/runners/hunters disappeared in that region back then and continue to do so, even today?

Fast forward a few years and, if I was Zodiac with the IQ that I’m guessing at, I would have been drawn to The Ecphorizer. This magazine drew my attention a few years ago because of its links to Mensa as its creators were part of the SF branch. It wasn’t printed through a publisher’s, and I think it was printed from home, meaning it was able to go out unedited to its members (as far as my research revealed). Was it a close-knit type of community or was it full of a lot of ego’s with high IQ’s that challenged and question everything and each other (a bit like me)? Did it have any suspected Zodiac POI’s in its members/subscribers? Was there a member or members who would fit Zodiac’s profile as a writer/artist/piano-player/
I ask this because I have identified a challenge to Mensa in the 340 by Zodiac. Was Zodiac a disgruntled Mensa member that is somehow linked to the Ecphorizer? This might not be accurate of course, but all avenues are definitely worth investigating. I have the time to do it- I just need a bit of guidance and help from you guys and gals who probably know a lot more than I do about the case as I try to think like Zodiac and deconstruct the game he set out.

Does anyone know if there’s a screenshot or link to the front pages of any of the newspapers that Zodiac targeted for the 1st August 1969? I’m interested in this particular date because he requested front page time by this date. Not on, but by. This has drawn my curiosity as it tells me Aug 1st issue was important to him. (I’m looking at the smaller and seemingly insignificant stuff here as well. And on a side note, that date is exactly 3 years before I was born and my gut instincts are drawing me towards it.)

And I’ve just realised that I’ve kind of hi-jacked your post sorry mate. I think I got lost in the moment like we all do, before we forget things. The above is probably about 10% of the ‘investigation’ as so to speak. It will be a longer term thing whilst exploring other evidences, so it’s like a pet project. For relevance to the slaves in the afterlife influence as you originally posted, I now consider that a metaphor- the ritual you referred to I think also took place in Native American cultures in the Sierra Nevada/CA areas and surrounding areas I believe? This is something I can see Zodiac also drawing attention to in order to place an element of insanity in his fear (challenging Christian convention and intercepting Heaven perhaps?) but also pointing to something much more metaphorical with a hidden meaning- possible territorial areas where these rituals took place? Are there any ancient burial grounds somewhere that could mask a serial-killer’s favourite dumping ground?

If I lived in the area, I know what I’d be doing with a metal detector this weekend…