Let’s hear it

A bit of interesting trivia.

The author of the article, John Francis Putnam, has an interesting pedigree. He was the art director and designer for Mad magazine. His mother was a famous writer and had written, among other things, the story that was to become the movie, "The Mummy", with Boris Karloff.

His uncle, George Palmer Putnam, was also a well known publisher, author and explorer. He worked with Lindbergh, publishing his autobiography. Because of his association with Lindbergh, he was asked to help find a candidate to be the first woman to cross the Atlantic solo. The result was that he met Amelia Earhart and she became that woman. The two apparently had many interests in common and ended up getting married.

Not implying any connection to the Zodiac murders, but the Putnams are a very interesting family. Does anybody happen to know if there is a connection between these Putnams and William Lowell Putnam, mountaineer, broadcaster, author and sole trustee of the Lowell Observatory?

(My apologies for going off-topic.)

G

Interesting Putnam actually has the last three letters in his name as the exact last three letters in the My name cipher.

This is beyond my pay grade I would like to hear what everybody’s overall consenus is, anybody want to chime in, AK, Dave??? etc

As far as the last name SEWELL, there are ZERO people with that last name listed in the 1970 directory in Vallejo or Benicia

Hmmm. Curiously, I am almost certain I remember an old detective story–maybe in an Ellery Queen book, or maybe the EQ Mystery Magazine–where the name Sewell came up and it turned out to be Llewes backwards. Or maybe it was the other way around.

I doubt this will work, but perhaps you could look for Llewes.

G

Very inventive, but I have to say you lost me on this one.

Where does Zodiac say "Write out Hard to Hit Hartnell"? "Write out James Stephen and Jack the Ripper backwards"? You are speculating that Z wants us to do these things to solve the code, but where are the solid orders, clues or even hints?

Also where does the "W S E" come from after the vertical "HARTNELL"?

I don’t know, you lost me, maybe I just don’t get it. When we stray too far from the codes and start adding in other names and words, we can come up with thousands of possible solutions, none more wrong or right than the other.

The middle name of Gareth Penn is SEWELL. Gareth Penn was not the Zodiac IMO. And he was in another state on an Army base when Bates was killed. He is an eccentric and obsessive researcher who was not the Zodiac.

Sewell can also anagram to Welles and other names.

This loses me along the way too. You have to make all kinds of assumptions, etc to follow along and come to the same conclusion.

In zodiac’s solved cipher, he has a straight forward clear, and legitimate message. When it was solved, it was not jibberish, but instead was a clear and easy to understand message. There’s no jumping thru hoops trying to figure out what Z wanted people to do in order to solve it. Why would he step away from that process for this cipher? Sorry, while I applaud your effort, I can’t see this being right.

Actually, MENSA MEANS TABLE in Latin.

And according to the Urban Dictionary, the Spanish word mensa (female) or menso (male) generally denotes somebody who is crazy or stupid.

"No seas menso"…Don’t be crazy. Or, "mensa, yo te dije que no lo hicieras"…stupid, I told you not to do it.

Now I am glad they revoked my membership.

G