And the real fantasy belongs those who accuse an innocent man, Richard Gaikowski, of committing these crimes. You should be ashamed and you are not.

What do coffee mugs and Richard Gaikowski have to do with the fact there’s no evidence Cheri Bates beat someone up? 

If you can’t handle being corrected, perhaps you should do a better job of not posting false claims.

Just finished this episode. Great job especially in differentiating between your own personal opinions on the case and the documented facts. 

One thing I feel necessary to add:

I have heard that Foulke’s odd description of the suspect looking “Welsh in appearance” came from the fact that his father-in-law had Welsh ancestry and Foulke believed the suspect he saw bore a strong resemblance to him. 

Perhaps a picture of Foulke’s wife’s father might provide a reasonable analog for the Zodiac?

Yes, because the memorandum used the wording “Welsh ancestry” to classify the Zodiac Killer, it appears Donald Fouke is drawing upon generalities in appearance. In essence, it is a meaningless statement, because if he saw the Presidio Heights sketch a month after the crime in Richmond station and believed it was a correct depiction of the man he saw (just a bit older and heavier), then that sketch could be a German, American, Englishman or Frenchman in looks alone. Where he dragged that observation from is confusing to say the least.

Yes, but my point is that Foulke’s father-in-law looked enough like the suspect for Foulke to include that detail. 

Id love to see a picture of Foulke’s father-in-law.

I really enjoy hearing you two discuss this case!

Follow-up: In podcast, Morf indicated that the most likely reason for Stine’s vehicle parking a block West of the logbook destination is that the killer observed some human activity at the destination and simply asked to go a block further.

I had not much considered that, so silly on me.

As Satan’s Lawyer I ask, would it make any sense for the killer to continue his murder plan when witnesses are only a block away?

The killer committing the murder at the intended destination and negotiating the unexpectedly-rolling vehicle down the street explains his witnessed behavior of wiping down the passenger side and dash. If he were in the back seat behind Stine when firing his gun, he very well would have touched those areas getting out and handling the wheel of the cab. He would need to wipe off any prints he spread.

Thanks from Mike and I to everyone who asked some questions. In advance of Saturday’s Q & A Part 2, I must apologize for saying “blooded” repeatedly, instead of “bloody”. C’est la vie. Thanks again. 

@russ-thompson ….I am intrigued by this also……if there was some sort of activity, maybe it was moving away from the original drop off point on Maple…..if so, to me, the movement of a dog walker or whomever would be to the south or east away from the area……this is based on Z not wanting to possibly confront the person(s) if one believes he had a pre-planned escape route to the north and east…..could have been something as simple as a light come on in a window…….

My hypothesis is that it was KQ walking his dog. 

@quicksilver …this is based on Z not wanting to possibly confront the person(s) if one believes he had a pre-planned escape route to the north and east…..could have been something as simple as a light come on in a window…….

Prompts another thought: Z pre-planned, rather orchestrated, this crime and wanted the event to go off as he envisioned.

So would Z not have considered the possibility of dog walkers, busy nearby residents in their windows… and at least have plan B? The results – a rather sloppy crime scene that he seems to be cleaning up with a hanky only one block West – does not sound like a thought out ‘plan B’ at all. It just seems like something went off plan right away and Z was improvising at that point.

If there will be another Q & A episode, I have a question.  Depending on one’s view of the authenticity of the various communications, there are significant gaps of time between them–especially as the communications waned.  What are your thoughts about the reasons for these gaps? Was Zodiac becoming increasingly disinterested in the criminal persona? Did he move away? Go to prison? Placed in a mental hospital?

There are many very interesting unanswered questions, but I think an answer to this one is the one that would provide most insight into Zodiac. It’s also probably the one that is most difficult to obtain answers for, so I understand your responses would mostly be speculation.

Thank you for the work on the podcast and on your sites.

I have two questions for any future Q&A episodes:

1. Based on what we know, what would be the most likely job/occupation of the Zodiac. He seemed to work 9 to 5. He seemed to be rather blue collar. What else might hint at what he did for a living?

2. Based on the evidence, what car did Zodiac most likely drive? Most people suggest the white Impala parked at the turnout at Lake Herman, but the tire track evidence at Lake Berryessa suggested a Chevy Nova, but one with mismatched tires. The 3 co-eds at Lake Berryessa described a light blue car with distinctive tail lights. So what vehicle do we think Zodiac drove? 

@richard-grinell

I finally got around to the Q&A pt. 1.  Thanks for reading off my question about Urik’s Z13 solution.  While I agree that nobody can really know for sure, I’m quite surprised you expressed such confidence in your “fk I’m crackproof” solution.  Unlike Urik’s “slaevseslayer” solve, yours has the cipher characters representing multiple letters.  While his relies on the obvious misspelling of “slaves”, poor spelling is something we see over and over again with Zodiac.  But in the 408 and 340 I don’t believe he does anything like what your solution relies upon.  

I’ll add that “slaves slayers” sounds like a moniker of some sort, whereas “fk I’m crackproof” does not.

But no worries.  We’ve all got our opinions.  Just thought I’d follow it up here since in the podcast the viability of this solution wasn’t addressed specifically and I think it requires far less imagination than the standard anagramming theories.  

Thanks again and keep up the great work!

@cz85 Yes, sorry about the vague answer, but two topics I don’t particularly like covering are suspects and cipher theories, because the threads often end in name calling and insults. People get very attached to suspects and cipher theories, so I tend to avoid them nowadays. I am not saying this would have occurred in this case, but it does happen. The 408 and 340 cipher designs should have taught us one thing – that the Zodiac knew full well that the Z13 was too short to solve using standard cryptographic methods. He was also intelligent enough to know that 29 unique symbols in a 32 character code could not be solved in the same fashion as the 408 and 340, because you can literally place any plaintext character beneath his 29 unique ciphertext characters. The Zodiac was no fool. So one has to assume his approach was different for these two codes. While it would be nice to marry up the three 8’s in the Z13 with one plaintext character (along with the A, E and M), why do we assume we have to – because even if we do, we still can’t prove the solution because of its length. Zodiac must have known this – and as such provided a code that he must of known could not reach a satisfactory resolution. I don’t believe, based on the 340 and 408, that Zodiac was that stupid. Hence why the Z13 and Z32 didn’t solely rely on standard cryptographic techniques. Personally, I believe the answer to the Z13 lies in Poe’s essay “A Few Words on Secret Writing”, because the Scytale cipher technique does actually provide the solution to the 340 cipher (for the most part), in the essay Poe also featured splitting the alphabet into two sections of 13 (just like the Z13), and Poe’s poem “To One in Paradise” was for the large part, featured in the solution to the 340. I think the answer to the Z13 has to rely on other text (such as the essay), otherwise no matter the answer somebody supplies, it is unprovable without a reference point. My Z13 idea could be wrong, but I don’t subscribe to the Z13 and Z32 having to follow standard cryptographic techniques, because the Zodiac Killer knew they couldn’t be proved in such a manner. The repeating characters in the Z13 may have the same plaintext character assigned, but is unprovable without the Zodiac Killer having subsequently provided a key, or hinted at the source of his solution (such as the essay or a later communication that pointed us in the right direction).         

Hopefully Dave Oranchak can shed some light on this? If anybody can break this code, Dave & Co can.

https://www.zodiacciphers.com/zodiac-news/can-the-2020-codebreakers-crack-this