Here are my thought on why I think Zodiac’s 340 text probably is a "Red Herring":

August 8th, 1969:
On the night of August 8–9, 1969 four members of the Manson Family invaded the rented home of actress Sharon Tate and film director Roman Polanski at 10050 Cielo Drive in Los Angeles. They murdered Tate, who was 8½ months pregnant, along with three friends and an 18-year-old visitor who was slain as he was leaving the home.

October 11, 1969:
Zodiac kill Paul Stine in SF and is seen by child witnesses AND police witnesses.
A sketch and a description of the Zodiac is published to the public.
Zodiac get scared and on Nov 8, 1969 the 3 moth anniversery of the Charles Manson murders
Zodiac send the 340 cipher.

November 8th, 1969:
Exact 3 months after the Charles Mansom murders Zodiac sent the 340 cipher
Because Zodiac got scared at the Paul Stine murder Oct. 11th, 1969.
So he make a cipher text that shall, when solved, make people think he is in some way
connected to the Charles Manson group, which he absolutely is not.
Zodiac’s intention is to try to throw off the police.
The cipher text is a "Red Herring"

Here is a Charles Manson quote from Nov 1970 compare it to the last lines in the now solved 340 cipher:
If the judge says death,
I am dead.
I’v always been dead
Death is life.

Charles Manson ’70

Now…some will think; Then Zodiac probably WAS connected to the Charles Manson group.
But I would say no…since it seems like that the 340 in fact is a pretty complicated cipher construction
and those who solved it therefore believe that Zodiac probably had pretty good cipher / math skills
I don’t believe a Charles Manson member would be a person with the kind of skills.

Doesn’t the timeline actually makes a better case for this being real evidence of an actual connection to the Manson Family?

Nowadays, it’s known that the phrase "Life is death. Death is life." was a common piece of cult-speak that Manson and the Manson Family members would say to break down the semantics of words so they could convince each other that Right is wrong, Bad is Good… or even "It’s OK to kill because the US is killing in Vietnam", etc.

For example, the exact phrase "Life is Death" is mentioned in a transcript of a parole hearing for one of the women convicted of murder in the Manson Family as a common example of something they would say to each other:
https://www.cielodrive.com/leslie-van-h … g-2010.php

But how could Zodiac know this in early November, 1969? The interview Manson gave from prison where he says "Death is life" came out months later in 1970

If it were a red herring, Zodiac would quote some more widely known phrase that connected him to the Manson Family. Instead, he quotes a commonly used phrase among the Manson Family that appears to have only become publicly known a year after Zodiac wrote his cipher.

Actually, it appears to be even more extreme. Sure, the Tate murders were known about 3 months before Zodiac mailed the z340. But no one knew it was Mason at this time or that the Manson Family used that phrase or even who they were back then. As far as I can tell, no one was discussing Charles Manson or the Manson Family publicly prior to Dec 4, 1969 when parts of grand jury testimony were published. Only a few days later in December did the Manson-mania begin in the media and people began to hear about and know their relation to the killings.

I can’t find precise dates, but even though they had arrested Manson and others on car theft charges, it wasn’t until one of them bragged for weeks to their cellmates that they killed Tate that the police finally interview one of them and they confessed. And the police didn’t announce they had broken the case for another two weeks after that according to what I can find online. Assuming the most generous timeline, if the interview took place Nov 1, two weeks later was Nov 14. So only the police knew Manson and his followers were involved in early November and their connection to the Tate murders wasn’t publicly known at all yet.

So why was the Zodiac adding a key phrase used by the Manson Family to z340 weeks before anyone in the public even knew who they were?

Here is my take on how the order of words in the last sentences in the solution will make best sense, highlighted in red:

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID
I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IN PARADICE
WILL BE AN EASY ONE
BECAUSE DEATH IS LIFE

Here is the original solution from the latest episode of “Let’s Crack Zodiac”, the same words in the last sentences in this solution is highlighted in blue :

"I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASN’T ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH"

Foreigner (or anybody else), have you been successful in writing the text above over the cipher without using two letters for one homophone? Such as in the webtoy? If so, please let me know, thank you.

QT

Good morning to all.
Well, here is the reconstructed cipher and its solution by azd:

H+M8|CV@KEB+*5k.L
dR(UVFFz9<>#Z3P>L
(MpOGp+2|G+l%WO&D
#2b^D(+4(5J+VW)+k
p+fZPYLR/8KjRk.#K
_Rq#2|<z29^%OF1*H
SMF;+BLKJp+l2_cTf
BpzOUNyG)y7t-cYA2
N:^j*Xz6dpclddG+4
-RR+4Ef|pz/JNb>M)
+l5||.VqL+Ut*5cUG
R)VE5FVZ2cW+|TB45
|TC^D4ct-c+zJYM(+
y.LW+B.;+B31cOp+8
lXz6Ppb&RG+BCOTBz
F1K<SMF6N*(+HK29^
:OFTO<Sf4pl/Ucy59
^W(+l#2C.B)7<FBy-
dkF|W<7t_BOYB*-CM
>cHD8OZzSkpNA|K;+

IHOPEYOUAREHAVING
LOTSOFFANINTRYING
TOCATCHMETHATWASN
TMKONTHETVSHOWWHI
CHBRINGOUPAPOINTA
BOUTMEIAMNOTAFRAI
DOFTHEGASCHAMBERB
ECAASEITWILLSENDM
ETOPARALLCEALLTHE
SOOHERBECAUSEKNOW
HAVEENOUGHSLAVEST
OWORVFORMEWHEREEV
ERYONEELSEHASNOTH
INGWHENTHEYREACHP
ARALICKSOTHEYAREA
FRAIDOFLEATHIAMNO
TAFRAIDBECAUSEIVN
OWTHATMYNEWLIFEIS
LIFEWILLBEANEASYO
NEINPARADICEDEATH

Congratulations to David Orachank and his team for breaking the "Z340". I always knew one day you would solve it, due to your huge dedication to it.

But I have 2 questions for David: do you intend to make more videos about it, like a series simillar to the "Z408" cipher? Also, is there any way in your site to change the letters and symbols of the Z340 cipher from his original state into something that people will be able to crack with the cipher key for themselves and read the message left-to-right instead of a diagonal direction?

A final thought: the line "I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS" makes more sense if it reads as "I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW WHAT MY NEW LIFE IS". I wonder if Zodiac made a mistake there, by puting the incorrect symbol – which is simmilar to the Alchemical Symbol of Niter, and which decodes to the letter T – instead of the correct one, which is simmilar to the Alchemical Symbol of Salt, and which decodes to the letter W.

Cheers.

The last two lines of the 340 is the 3rd part. Oranchak already mentioned finding Paradice written backwards on the last line Melvin Belli last name is written backwards just above Paradice on the 2nd to last line. I do not know if anyone mentioned this yet.

Maybe the last two vertical lines were a vague clue to the contents of the first 2 parts of the cipher. Zodiac mention "Gas Chamber" which Belli mentions on the Dunbar show. He also talks about Paradice and Death in the first 2 parts.

BELLI spelled ILLEB

BELLI spelled ILLEB

Hi Mr Shawn
If you mirror the whole text, many things, at least interesting (within the context of the cipher and the zodiac itself). On the cipher edit page you can work more freely http://zodiackillerciphers.com/cipher-explorer/
Marcelo

[quote="beijinghouse"
Doesn’t the timeline actually makes a better case for this being real evidence of an actual connection to the Manson Family?

For as long as humans have pondered mortality and established believes in an afterlife, humans have often blurred the distinction between life and death and often seen an eternal, continual existence of a soul or a spirit or a whatever. So, while Manson certainly spewed at length along these lines, there is nothing unique about them to Manson or the Family.

It’s also worth noting that Manson had very few, if any, truly original thoughts. He was famous for collecting bits of philosophy from others and using them as he needed.

Reference the solution, if we assume that the standout words
"life is" that are located at the end of the first line in the
second section, are meant to be matched up with the word
"death" that is located at the end of the last line in the third
section, and we treat the resultant phrase ‘life is death‘ as a
separate rider to the main text, then the main text is more
grammatically correct and understandable.

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW life is
LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE death

I came to the same conclusion after watching the youtube video last night, came here, and created an account to post this theory.

It may also fit with how the last part of the cipher that contained the word zodiac was the same place that death was.

This is what I posted on yt:

Perhaps it is "Life is death." it’s at the beginning and the end and contains the zodiac name in that last part as you mentioned in the video. Also, if you remove those three words the last part makes sense.

I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy one in paradice

This is 100% new to me and I’ve been reading as much as I could over the past day particularly about the cypher work. Absolutely fascinating. I’d only post if I had something useful to contribute, so the possible interpretations and re-ordering of the last lines and integration of "life is" didn’t seem right to me. It seems like a more natural ordering and line-break position would be:

"I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME
THAT WASN’T ME ON THE TV SHOW
WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME
I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER
BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER
BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME
WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE
SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH
I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE
DEATH IS LIFE"

Very exciting developments and brilliant work.

I was just looking at the letter to the San Fran chronicle on November 9, 1969.
Specifically the strange passage marked "Must print in paper"
Is it my imagination or is this passage…340 characters?
Is this another coded message?

http://www.zodiackillerfacts.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=9&pid=175#top_display_media

Very exciting developments and brilliant work.

I was just looking at the letter to the San Fran chronicle on November 9, 1969.
Specifically the strange passage marked "Must print in paper"
Is it my imagination or is this passage…340 characters?
Is this another coded message?

http://www.zodiackillerfacts.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=9&pid=175#top_display_media

Not your imagination. If you remove the punctuation, it is 340 characters long. This has been discussed before in Voigt’s site. I emailed Dave about it a couple months ago and at the time was somewhat intrigued by it. Not sure it means much now other than a coincidence.

Now that we have the full key it’s interesting to look at the distributions of the symbols of the code.

We now Z used hard symbols for letters with low usage and multiple symbols for letters with more usage to obfuscate breakdown by pattern matching and by distribution. Z had more than a little fun with it as well.The coded symbol that corresponds to F is just that. F. W only has two symbols coded for it, one of which was W. That would have amused him greatly. To what level of knowledge does this coding correspond the experts say?

It may well be that the angled writing on different letters may have been a veiled hint in how to solve the code. The odd symbol in the Halloween code may well be some pictogram hint also. There’s much to unravel in the days and weeks to come.

To my untrained eye, this seems like a complex code. Does this indicate Zodiac was much more proficient at code making than the 408 seemed to indicate? This one seems far more sophisticated.

I am a little skeptical of this solution. The complexity and the rules are much more liberal for this solution than the 408. The solution is only as good as rules applied. Ted K. developed a diagonal code but the solution was much more clean. The solution would never have been decoded without the key found in his cabin.

This is what I ask Doranchak….

Hi Dave,

Good work with the of the bulk power of modern computer software power and human intervention.

My question is how could the FBI confirm the solution so quickly when your solution takes several leap
Of faiths, much more than one can with the 408 solution.

Another thing. Can such massive brute force computer power we have today along with your powerful AZD
Computer program create….. a false positive solution?

Creating a (false positive) solution for the 408 would be much more difficult because of its simplicity as you
have tried in the past.

I admit I am also perplexed by a lot of things because Oranchak set the bar quite high for others, including myself. For example, I have been told by Oranchak I need to show ‘statistical significance’ for my Halloween Card solution. http://zodiachalloweencard.com/

Yet I am having trouble finding the working out for the statistical significance of this Z340 solution.

I would also like to read the FBI’s validation for this solution. To see their working out.

This solution appears to use many of things that were brought up as criticisms of Bauer’s solution.

https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/12/14/ … pher-crack

David Oranchak
on March 16, 2018 at 12:12 pm said:
The main issue with Craig’s solution is that the his procedure, because it is much less restrictive about symbol to plaintext assignments, can generate alternative plaintexts. Therefore, more evidence is needed to determine which of the pile of plaintexts is the one that Zodiac wrote. If Craig’s is correct, then why are the alternative plaintexts incorrect? If you are persistent enough, you could generate alternative solutions using his method and then cherry pick favorable qualities about the key after the fact as he does for his key.

David Oranchak
on March 16, 2018 at 12:15 pm said:
Also, none of what I’ve stated is meant to suggest that you shouldn’t try to bend the cryptographic rules to try to solve Z340. But you still have to prove that the way you’re bending them is the same way Zodiac bent them. That’s much harder to do when the rules can generate multiple plaintexts with the same level of readability as the proposed solution.

http://www.zodiackillerciphers.com/?p=7 … on-to-z340

Bauer’s solution.

Appealed to coincidences.
Appealed to multiple methodologies.
Appealed to mistakes and the need to fudge the data
Appealed to evidence outside of the solution.[/list:u:1w9pkp66]

Granted Oranchak hasn’t said explicitly that he rejects fudging things but he adds the stipulation that one should prove how the Zodiac fudged them which is a different matter.

Basically why isn’t this just cherry picking words from ‘random noise’? This is pretty much a critic that Oranchak has used himself when presented with other ‘solutions’.

In short has the Z340 been run through the gauntlet of the high bar Oranchak set for everybody else? It seems to have been validated in such a short period of time and yet something tells me that when contrasting it to Bauer’s solution we are going to find it contains many of the same criticisms and fudging.

I’d like it to be a solve. However ‘liking something’ and ‘mathematically validating’ it’s a solve is another matter and Oranchak did set the bar high so this is just his criteria I am restating here. If he asked it of everyone else then I am sure he can understand why people will be asking for that validation.

Anyway looking forward to reading the validation and why the criticisms of Bauer’s solution don’t work here also or if they do, they why should we select this solution over all the others out there if it doesn’t show statistical significance?

Oh and obviously if we accept this solution it points to the Zodiac being an amateur cryptologist because he made mistakes and isn’t using any particular advanced method. He is just shoving the original cipher shape around and getting it wrong in the process.

What this solution would also mean is that the Zodiac is using CUSTOMIZED PUZZLES that aren’t advanced cipher methods.

Anyway here is Bauer’s presentation -> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WFLrQTrOt0

Looking forward to reading replies to people’s questions.

www.zodiachalloweencard.com has a 400 paged book for free containing the super solution with an overarching explanation of the cards and more.

 

Well, that link https://ciphermysteries.com/2017/12/14/ … pher-crack is a pretty powerful critique of of Bauer’s solution. Specifically:
It should be immediately obvious that a very high degree of selectivity is going on here: furthermore, seven letters are left out (on lines 2, 3, 5, 6 and 7), while three extra letters are inserted (lines 5 and 8).

Adding letters that don’t have a symbol and adding padding space with dashes – just doesn’t produce a clean solution. I watched some of that Bauer video and he also seems to say stuff like a Half circle is equal to letter E for example – except sometimes it’s and M too – which is a full circle, and his reasoning is "zodiac made a mistake when he didn’t make it a full circle". That kind of stuff doesn’t seem clean to me. Do you know if Bauer’s key is available somewhere?

Dave’s key is attached.
The methods used for this new solve are:
Seperate cipher into 3 sections 9 lines, 9 lines and 2 lines.
Transpose cipher with 1 down 2 over rule.

2nd section of cipher needs:
Shift line 6 over 1 space – this looks to be a zodiac error
exclude "Life is" from transposition

Last 2 lines have complete words – some reversed

The decrypted message is so much more readable – and has the known zodiac references to "paradice", "slaves", and has the reference of "not being afraid of the gas chamber". You don’t see anywhere in their methods where they try to say symbols can resolve to multiple letters or adding letters where there are no symbols.

We all have our opinions but what Dave and the gang have here is a fantastic solution. You may think the above methods are alot of "fudging". I am of the opinion it is an official solve.

The envelope the 340 came in appears to contain a clue. His trademark "rush to editor" was written in his usual sloppy style previously. Here’s the Stine letter for example.

Then this on the back of the envelope with the 340.

Then the next letter (bus bomb).

Then the next (Belli).

Then with the "My name is" letter he abandons it.