Absolutely fascinating, coder1987! Quite an effort!
I will confess that the use of the word “exact” in the quote you cite was injudicious. It is “exact” only to within the tolerances associated with the methodology of using a ruler and a protractor on a gas station map. Which was the methodology that was probably used by the Zodiac at the time, and was most definitely used by me when I did this analysis. I cannot truthfully assert that Arthur Leigh Allen’s house in Vallejo was the “exact” location that was being indicated – only that the house is within a reasonable tolerance of the spot indicated by the cypher.
Was he pointing to the house? Or to the triangle that you found? Or to something else in the vicinity? We will likely never know.
(Assuming, of course, that our shared solution is correct. I’m not 100% convinced that the whole cypher isn’t simply gibberish.)
Thanks DMW, I was glad to see that you came back to respond. There is a way to know if he was pointing to this triangle, that is falsifiable. That would be the ground penetrating radar test, which is fast, cheap, and non-invasive. Given that this triangle happens to be found near his first crime scene in Vallejo, it is worth a quick check by authorities to see if he buried anything here.
If there is nothing there, it can be quickly ruled out in minutes, with minimal effort.
If there is something there, that is physical evidence in one of the most infamous cold cases of all time, and must be retrieved by authorities for proper analysis. It would also validate this proposed solution at the same time.
As over 2 million alternatives were tested, this is the mathematical needle in the haystack.
I shared the work with the authorities, and so if they do find evidence there, we can safely say the cipher is solved.
Also, did you write any software to arrive at this solution? You followed all of the Zodiac clues as I did, but when I tested all plausible candidates programmatically, my lat/lon’s land by LHR, not on a house. I used the Haversine formula for my projection from Mt. Diablo.
It is worth noting that Oliv92 also arrived at the same plaintext, and also tested millions of candidates, but did not share their code, and was missing the ranking method (proximity to crime scene), and subjectively selected IN THREE AND THREE EIGHTHS RADIANS TEN as their second favorite candidate solution. It seems they presented it two years after you did, but with a more well defined methodology.
I was surprised to see that neither of you received many comments from others, because I believe you were both on the right track, but not quite there for different reasons, as neither one found this triangle by LHR. Oliv92 could have, but they didn’t check the satellite imagery it seems. They had the right lat/lon’s, but needed a ranking algorithm to identify a unique solution from their candidates.
It’s true that the radar finding something in the triangle would prove your case, but if it didn’t find anything, that wouldn’t disprove it. Zodiac may have been pointing at the triangle, without actually physically placing anything there.
I used no computer programs. If you look at my write-up, I’m pretty step-by-step about what I did. Remember, I worked backwards – I wasn’t trying to find “the” solution, just a possible solution. So I chose a location – Arthur Leigh Allen’s house – placed it on the map, calculated the appropriate distance and angle, and then checked to see if there was a way to encode that in the cypher. When you measure three and three eights inches and 10 “radians” directly, and then look to see if those numbers could be encoded, the solution is pretty obvious.
I have to confess that I don’t find the triangle to be as compelling a piece of evidence as you do. But that’s an entirely subjective opinion and I could be totally wrong.
