Hi,

I’m one of the people who thinks that the last line is a filler. There are some arguments for this, especially the QEHM sequence and the repeated symbols ( http://zodiackillerciphers.com/images/l … filler.png).

However, yesterday I thought of something that speaks for a pure filler: At the beginning of part three, as you know, either a word or even a whole sentence is missing. Quote from the encyclopedia of observations:

Some plaintext appears to be missing directly in the boundary between Parts 2 and 3 of the cipher ("ALL THE ???? I HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES")

Source: http://zodiackillerciphers.com/wiki/ind … servations

If Zodiac had planned an additional signature or a part to be decrypted separately when writing the plaintext, it would be shorter than the known remaining 18 characters. If the missing text between part 2 and part 3 is the word "PEOPLE", only 12 characters would originally have been available for the signature. If there is indeed still an undeciphered text at the end of z408, it should definitely be shorter than 18 characters.
So isn’t it very likely that he has ironed out the missing plaintext with a filler? This is faster than redrawing the entire third part.

Translated with http://www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)

This is what I have been always saying. His original intended left-over character count was 12, so if the 18 still has meaning (whether the ciphertext correlates in some fashion to the plaintext or not), his original meaning was likely malleable enough to be extended. So if he combined his three opening words in each letter of "I am the" with Zodiac, his original message would have been "I am the Zodiac". When he made a booboo, the original message had to be adapted to 18. It is an easy transition to "I am the Zodiac Killer". This satisfies the claim of "in this cipher is my identity". If the original message was Robert Jonson, not only is that a name and not an identity, it is also difficult to upgrade to 18, unless you have a middle name of six letters. Any decoding attempt using some form of cryptographic technique is negated by the filler technique he used, likely indicating the hidden message (if any) is not reliant on the characters themselves, just the length.

If we take Zodiac on face value of "in this cipher is my identity", then Zodiac being his identity will constitute half the original 12 characters he meant to leave. Therefore it is either "I am the Zodiac" or "Zodiac Killer". But because he didn’t use "Zodiac Killer", it is more likely to be the other option. The Zodiac stated in the rest of the cipher that he wouldn’t give us his name, yet people still try and fit a name in. With an identity, he gives nothing away.

I’ve always wondered if he didn’t just leave out an entire line, which would have left only one unused spot.

VESMETHEMOSTTHRIL
LINGEXPERENCEITIS
EVENBETTERTHANGET
TINGYOURROCKSOFFW
ITHAGIRLTHEBESTPA
RTOFITISTHATWHENI
DIEIWILLBEREBORNI
NPARADICEANDALLTH

EIHAVEKILLEDWILLB
ECOMEMYSLAVESIWIL
LNOTGIVEYOUMYNAME
BECAUSEYOUWILLTRY
TOSLOWDOWNORSTOPM
YCOLLECTINGOFSLAV
ESFORMYAFTERLIFEE
BEORIETEMETHHPITI

Between those parts, it says "…paradice and all the I have killed will…"

We suppose he intended to say "…paradice and all the people I have killed will…"

But what if he made the simple mistake of leaving out an entire line of his original message?
For example:

ILIKEKILLINGPEOPL
EBECAUSEITISSOMUC
HFUNITISMOREFUNTH
ANKILLINGWILDGAME
INTHEFORRESTBECAU
SEMANISTHEMOSTDAN
GEROUSANIMALOFALL
TOKILLSOMETHINGGI

VESMETHEMOSTTHRIL
LINGEXPERENCEITIS
EVENBETTERTHANGET
TINGYOURROCKSOFFW
ITHAGIRLTHEBESTPA
RTOFITISTHATWHENI
DIEIWILLBEREBORNI
NPARADICEANDALLTH

EVERYSPECIALPEOPL
EIHAVEKILLEDWILLB
ECOMEMYSLAVESIWIL
LNOTGIVEYOUMYNAME
BECAUSEYOUWILLTRY
TOSLOWDOWNORSTOPM
YCOLLECTINGOFSLAV
ESFORMYAFTERLIFEE

So now it says: "…paradice and all the very special people I have killed will…"
If he hadn’t forgotten that line, then no filler was needed for the last line, except for that extra E at the end.

That is a very intriguing idea Dave. I shall have a good gander at that. The one question I ask though, is in the San Francisco Chronicle offering in which was contained the unsolved characters, he stated specifically "in this cipher is my identity". With the example you have suggested, no room for any identity would therefore exist. Therefore you would have to suppose that the statement by Zodiac was effectively meaningless.

How about this Dave, using the exact words from his three July 31st communications. of "I will cruse around all weekend killing lone people in the night" and "I will cruse around and pick of all stray people".

VESMETHEMOSTTHRIL
LINGEXPERENCEITIS
EVENBETTERTHANGET
TINGYOURROCKSOFFW
ITHAGIRLTHEBESTPA
RTOFITISTHATWHENI
DIEIWILLBEREBORNI
NPARADICEANDALLTH

ELONEORSTRAYPEOPL
EIHAVEKILLEDWILLB
ECOMEMYSLAVESIWIL
LNOTGIVEYOUMYNAME
BECAUSEYOUWILLTRY
TOSLOWDOWNORSTOPM
YCOLLECTINGOFSLAV
ESFORMYAFTERLIFEE

The Zodiac could have used "the" instead of "my" on the final line and thus completed the entire cipher.

ELONEORSTRAYPEOPL
EIHAVEKILLEDWILLB
ECOMEMYSLAVESIWIL
LNOTGIVEYOUMYNAME
BECAUSEYOUWILLTRY
TOSLOWDOWNORSTOPM
YCOLLECTINGOFSLAV
ESFORTHEAFTERLIFE

That is a very intriguing idea Dave. I shall have a good gander at that. The one question I ask though, is in the San Francisco Chronicle offering in which was contained the unsolved characters, he stated specifically "in this cipher is my identity". With the example you have suggested, no room for any identity would therefore exist. Therefore you would have to suppose that the statement by Zodiac was effectively meaningless.

Not necessarily. One interpretation of Z408’s plaintext is it’s a monolog of his motivations. That could be part of his identity. Doesn’t have to be a name.

See above Dave, I’ve used Zodiac’s own words in your template.

See above Dave, I’ve used Zodiac’s own words in your template.

That’s a good example!

One thing I thought was that if that line is missing, it could explain why the highly regular cycles of symbol assignments (see http://zodiackillerciphers.com/408/key.html#4 ) are often broken up in the 2nd and 3rd parts. But I looked at it and it doesn’t seem like restoring a line would improve them all that much. Still, it’d be interesting to speculate on missing lines that maximize the improvement in the regularity of the cycles.

The Zodiac clearly cocked up Dave, either by accidentally omitting "people" or omitting one line. We can see that he used filler based on 7 consecutive drop down characters and QEHM. But if this is what he employed to fill up the empty 18 spaces, why did he only employ the drop down technique for 12 of the 18 characters. Why not all 18?

The Zodiac clearly cocked up Dave, either by accidentally omitting "people" or omitting one line. We can see that he used filler based on 7 consecutive drop down characters and QEHM. But if this is what he employed to fill up the empty 18 spaces, why did he only employ the drop down technique for 12 of the 18 characters. Why not all 18?

Good question. Maybe he didn’t want it to be too obvious.

This is what I have been always saying. His original intended left-over character count was 12, so if the 18 still has meaning (whether the ciphertext correlates in some fashion to the plaintext or not), his original meaning was likely malleable enough to be extended.

We know that the original identity hidden at the foot of part three was meant to be 12 characters not 18, because he accidentally missed out the word "people" when moving from cipher section 2 to cipher section 3. Therefore his original identity was 12 characters that contained the word Zodiac.

Oh, now I’m embarrassed. I didn’t actually read this, although it’s right on the previous page. Sorry, I didn’t mean to pass off your idea as mine.

No need to apologize, I’m just glad were all singing from a similar hymn sheet. Dave’s idea is intriguing and would certainly fill the majority of the cipher, but of course we have to weigh the likelihood of Zodiac missing one word as opposed to a whole line – and as Dave touched on – wrangling with the author’s meaning of identity. If the murderer was leaving his identity of "Zodiac" in the final line, then the omission of a whole line drops by the wayside. If identity was meant to be more generic, then it’s back in the game again. It seems to me that the error Zodiac made at the beginning of "cipher 3" would have taken very little time to rewrite – and bearing in mind this was his opening gambit to the world – very surprising he couldn’t spend just a few minutes correcting his mistake. Unless of course, the switch from 12 to 18 characters didn’t change the context of his identity, such as "I am the Zodiac" to "I am the Zodiac Killer". This however, would rely on no association between ciphertext and plaintext, evidenced by his haphazard and inconsistent filler method. What is intriguing (in my mind) is the potential shift from 12 to 18 characters is mirrored by 12 drop down characters and 6 seemingly random characters.