I started looking at some of the SF Chronicle articles and this thought came to mind:
This 8/12/69 Chronicle article, just a few days after the Harden’s solution to the 408 cipher was published, indicates that "several puzzle solvers had come up with the name "Robert Emmet" and passed it on to him (Vallejo Police Sergeant, John Lynch). The article indicates that Sgt. Lynch is "checking on Robert Emmets, hippie and otherwise".
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/hh97 … d1c499.jpg
So why would multiple individuals apparently interpret EBEORIETEMETHHPITI as referring to Robert Emmet the Hippie, using imperfect anagramming??? I’m not suggesting that this "solution" to the unsolved portion of the 408 cipher is correct but I do find the response, which actually motivated Vallejo P.D. to check out local Robert Emmets, to be very interesting.
Turns out there is a statue of Robert Emmet, the late 1700s Irish patriot, in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and Robert Emmet became something of a role model to the Diggers and "hippies" that gathered in the panhandle of Golden Gate park.
http://www.robertemmet.org/ggpark/default.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Emmet
Rather than trying to explain it, I’ll plagiarize this post from Tom’s site on the topic:
http://www.zodiackiller.com/discus/mess … 1154638134
So… if this solution is correct, who is Robert Emmet the Hippie?
The name Robert Emmet rang a bell from my reading on the Diggers, an underground counterculture group known for their "free stores" in San Francisco during the mid to late 1960s. The Diggers took their name from a 17th century English movement, which supported English feudalism and opposed tyranny by the English government. Since the San Francisco Diggers viewed themselves as oppressed by San Francisco and American government/police etc., Robert Emmet would certainly have been an attractive role model for this group. Howard tells me that Bruce Davis was a regular customer at the Diggers’ free stores.
http://www.diggers.org/overview.htm
The mysterious leader of the San Francisco Diggers, Emmett Grogan, apparently took his name from the historical Robert Emmet. "Emmett Grogan" apparently used many pseudonyms and may, in fact, have been a fictional amalgamation of this group as a whole.
"Emmett’s personal relationship to these formulations of "anonymous" and "free" was always ambiguous and complex. His notion of anonymity was to give his name away and have others use it as their own nom de plume. So many people claimed it for so many purposes that eventually some reporters would assert that there was no Emmett Grogan and that the name was a fiction created by the Diggers to confound the straight world. While Emmett’s largesse was one way of demonstrating lack of attachment to his name, it also made the name ubiquitous, and incidentally made Emmett himself famous among cognoscenti."
http://www.diggers.org/freefall/forkeeps.html
Emmett Grogan, in his/its book entitled Ringolevio, talks about himself and how he (as the pseudonym Kenny Wisdom) chose his Digger name:
"…Wisdom… had decided to change his identity before hitting the streets of the counterculture. He thought about it for a while. The longhairs were all changing their names to more romantic-sounding, rough ‘n ready, American tags–like William Bonney, Mitzi Gaynor and John Wesley Harding. He wanted to reflect his Irishness and rebellious ancestry. He hit on the name of Robert Emmet but felt it was too corny. However, he liked the sound of Emmet. He played around with it for a time, linking it to various others, until he finally chose to translate his grandfather’s name from the Gaelic (~ Gruagain to Grogan. He added another t to Emmet and he had it. Emmett Grogan–double sixes, boxcars and a good, solid, Irish name for someone classified a schizophrenic by the Defense Department."
http://www.diggers.org/ring_compilation/ring_compi lation_209_263.htm
I’ve posted some ideas about the Diggers here in the past, which were liquified along with the thread I started on BC. Despite their harmless reputation as purveyors of the "free stores" (which gave away stolen merchandise to the less-fortunate), the Diggers appear to have a rather radical anarchist agenda. Aside from publishing "How to make a firebomb" and the obvious animosity against SFPD, they actually list George Metesky, the New York City "Mad Bomber", in their list of "brothers & sisters whose work is represented" in their 1968 free publication.
http://www.diggers.org/digpaps68/dp_memo.html
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminology/metesky/
…and check out that nifty Zynchronitous logo!
So why the heck would enough people come up with this solution and contact Vallejo P.D. about it to the point that the idea was actually published in the SF Chronice and stimulated Vallejo P.D. to investigate people with the name, Robert Emmet?
It could be just the context of the time. We can’t know for sure but I wonder if the people who suggested that were aware of the name, even with "the hippie" tag and as such were predetermined to hit on that solution.
I was not acquainted with the context of the name, not that I ever tried anagramming on those letters but from thinking back about looking at them there is something that sticks out.
EBEORIET EMET HHPITI
The word EMET exist right in the middle and if you are reading that then maybe looking for a word or a name then that’s gonna jump out at you and since it is already phonetically, a name, it’s not too surprising to me that someone would come to that solution. Afterall, once you start with EMET and take it out there’s less letters to work with and, I know there’s an R missing but the first ‘group’ of letters, if you are looking for a name, even at a glance, looks pretty god for being ROBERT. And it’s in order ROBE(R)T then EMET. Then you just play around with the remaining letters and even at that there’s almost an order again with most of the letters, for hippie at least contained in the end section. Even the HPI could be considered phonetic.
Still, it’s all very well me hypothesising that now. I might never have come up with it lol but that’s ,thought’s on how it could have transpired that a few people did come that sort of solution.
“I don’t know Chief, he’s very smart or very dumb.“
I think a lot of stuff was sent in.
TIMOTHIE E PHEIBERTE is what Graysmith says a "Chronicle reader" sent in.
Who is that? I don’t know.
But the very similar TEHIMIOH PERTTEEBEI is what you can arrange the Unsolved 18 into that Caesar shifts to THEODORE JKACZYNSKI
Also, consider the key names associated with a 6/25/68 Michigan murder of the Robison family, in which a person with inside knowledge of the crime, perhaps the killer, called himself ZODIUS. The murder took place in EMMET County and mysterious man sought for questioning used the name ROEBERT, and he put dots under the EBE sequence in his name.
So in that case we have messages to the newspaper from ZODIUS, a mysterious San Francisco man named ROEBERT who underlines the EBE in his name, and murders in EMMET County.
In the 12/20/68 murders of Faraday and Jensen, followed by the San Francisco area murders of Darlene Ferrin, Celia Shepard and Paul Stine, we have messages to the newspaper from ZODIAC, and the last line in a coded message that reads:
EBEORIETEMETHHPITI
Which contains EBE, and ROEBE, and EMET.
Is that a coincidence? Maybe. Could ZODIUS later change his name to ZODIAC? Or did Zodiac spend time in Michigan or the Midwest and read about the case?
You can read more about the Michigan and other possibly related cases here: viewtopic.php?f=102&t=993
MODERATOR
It could be just the context of the time. We can’t know for sure but I wonder if the people who suggested that were aware of the name, even with "the hippie" tag and as such were predetermined to hit on that solution.
I was not acquainted with the context of the name, not that I ever tried anagramming on those letters but from thinking back about looking at them there is something that sticks out.
EBEORIET EMET HHPITI
The word EMET exist right in the middle and if you are reading that then maybe looking for a word or a name then that’s gonna jump out at you and since it is already phonetically, a name, it’s not too surprising to me that someone would come to that solution. Afterall, once you start with EMET and take it out there’s less letters to work with and, I know there’s an R missing but the first ‘group’ of letters, if you are looking for a name, even at a glance, looks pretty god for being ROBERT. And it’s in order ROBE(R)T then EMET. Then you just play around with the remaining letters and even at that there’s almost an order again with most of the letters, for hippie at least contained in the end section. Even the HPI could be considered phonetic.
Still, it’s all very well me hypothesising that now. I might never have come up with it lol but that’s ,thought’s on how it could have transpired that a few people did come that sort of solution.
And after all these years I "see" this for the first time:
EBEORIET
E BE ORIET
If you sound it out phonetically, does it not sound like:
E BE ALLRIGHT meaning I BE ALLRIGHT ??
EMET HHPITI ?? E MET ? I MET?? HHPITI??
..
It could be NIN and I can see what your saying, I can even hear it lol.
Like most of the anagramming solutions however it doesn’t make sense. I doubt it’s supposed to be phonetic but I was just thinking that could be how people came to arrive at that name and because it’s not an anagram either so your brain tries to make sense of it somehow so if you think, as you read it, it sounds like something then you will tend to think that means something because you’re assuming there’s something there to be found.
I think we’re all the same in that we like things to be tidy. It bugs me that those leftovers are there but I honestly feel that the suggest that they are just that and are probably pull down’s from the rest of the cipher, is most probable.
Something that’s just occurred to me. It’s not an anagram. It’s a jumble of letters. An anagram is a puzzle. It (I believe) follows at least one simple rule. It’s supposed to be misleading by actually being other words to begin with, isn’t it? As such this doesn’t function as one. If it had actually been deciphered as Robert Emmet The Hippie then ironically, that would be a far better candidate for an anagram to then be solved. Properly so as it is also a name and those usually come at the end of things. That’s probably the other rule of anagrams. The anagram itself is supposed to have some meaning that connects it to the solution. To act as a clue. As far as can be managed.
Hell maybe the solved portion of the 408 is one big massive anagram with a real message in it. I’m not gonna test that idea though lol. 
I guess a good question to ask ourselves is why would we think it’s an anagram when it’s not actually an anagram?
“I don’t know Chief, he’s very smart or very dumb.“
I think that anagramming is resorted to when all else fails!
There is something called the Daily Jumble in the newspaper. It is anagramming. There are four words with scrambled letters, you need to unscramble the letters of each word. Some of the correct letters are circled and you take all the circled letters and unscramble a phrase that goes with a cartoon that is a clue to the phrase. MSN games has a Daily Jumble if you want to see what I mean.
It is a two-step solution. The things have been around for ages.
I think that anagramming is resorted to when all else fails!
There is something called the Daily Jumble in the newspaper. It is anagramming. There are four words with scrambled letters, you need to unscramble the letters of each word. Some of the correct letters are circled and you take all the circled letters and unscramble a phrase that goes with a cartoon that is a clue to the phrase. MSN games has a Daily Jumble if you want to see what I mean.
It is a two-step solution. The things have been around for ages.
It has structure and a ‘visual’ clue. Same kinda principle that I was attempting to think through lol. Not just a bunch of jumbled letters on their own.
“I don’t know Chief, he’s very smart or very dumb.“
I think that anagramming is resorted to when all else fails!
And the problem with anagrams is you can make many words out of single words, therefore, having way too many possibilities (especially the 340)..and on top of that, making one’s own determination as to what those symbols are….there are infinite possibilities!
“…they may be dealing with one or more ersatz Zodiacs–other psychotics eager to get into the act, or perhaps even other murderers eager to lay their crimes at the real Zodiac’s doorstep.“ L.A. Times, 1969
I HATE the approach of anagramming in looking at these ciphers. Anagramming is the refuge of scoundrels who are insistent in finding a "correct" solution. There is simply no correct (verifiable) solution to be had for this portion of the 408 or the shorter ciphers. The 340 cipher is the only option if you want your want your name attached to an eventual, incontrovertible solution.
Short ciphers like what’s left over here serve as a Rorschach test for those looking at them. If you have a POI, you will usually find something which points in his direction here. As I stated, I DO NOT think Robert Emmet the Hippie is a real solution. The right letters are there but it requires reusing letters since it’s an imperfect anagram (somebody give it a try to see how close it is)…
The point of the thread though is why so many people saw this random jumble of letters and apparently independently came up with Robert Emmet the Hippie. They didn’t contact police because they knew a creepy guy named Robert Emmet (I actually think police missed the point there). They called police because it referred to a group which was represented by the Robert Emmet statue in Golden Gate park (and coined the phrase "do your thing"…). It would be interesting for me to know why they felt that this group of folks could have had anything to do with Zodiac’s activities
I HATE the approach of anagramming in looking at these ciphers. Anagramming is the refuge of scoundrels who are insistent in finding a "correct" solution. There is simply no correct (verifiable) solution to be had for this portion of the 408 or the shorter ciphers. The 340 cipher is the only option if you want your want your name attached to an eventual, incontrovertible solution.
Short ciphers like what’s left over here serve as a Rorschach test for those looking at them. If you have a POI, you will usually find something which points in his direction here. As I stated, I DO NOT think Robert Emmet the Hippie is a real solution. The right letters are there but it requires reusing letters since it’s an imperfect anagram (somebody give it a try to see how close it is)…
The point of the thread though is why so many people saw this random jumble of letters and apparently independently came up with Robert Emmet the Hippie. They didn’t contact police because they knew a creepy guy named Robert Emmet (I actually think police missed the point there). They called police because it referred to a group which was represented by the Robert Emmet statue in Golden Gate park (and coined the phrase "do your thing"…). It would be interesting for me to know why they felt that this group of folks could have had anything to do with Zodiac’s activities
Absolutely. I think we were getting the physical perception aspect and approach of it out of the way. Then I guess it’s cultural or time relevant perception that’s left.
So was it just a general mistrust of these ‘activist’ type groups that led to this making sense at the time to some people as a possible solution, if there was even anything to solve. Or is there more to it? If we think there might be or suggest things that point that way are we just adding or reading things into it that were never intended?
Despite myself and what I think and post, regarding ‘anagramming’, I do find it interesting that of all the combinations and order of jumbled letters there could have been in that 18 character selection we end up with something that, to me at least (hence the previous posts) was almost slightly bias in appearance as to lead a person toward that solution. Then to have sed solution be relevant to the time and location and also have a possible crossing of lexicon use in regards the dripping pen card.
My personal feeling is that’s it’s mostly all perception based but even that is interesting because that can’t exclude Zodiac. He was alive and perceiving things at the time just like everyone else, despite his own activities. It can help put us back there, in our own perceptions as well. So to look at why the public or LE for that matter might have guessed at certain things at the time is a great idea and this is certainly one of the better starting places. IMHO.
Nice thinking Ents. (Is that kinda the point? did I get that right, or close? lol)
“I don’t know Chief, he’s very smart or very dumb.“
Yup, Trav. If multiple people had found the name "John Doe" in this and felt compelled to call police about it, I would wonder why so many people were suspicious of John Doe in the first place. It may simply be an indication that people were suspicious of the damn "hippies" hanging around in the Golden Gate panhandle but the association with Robert Emmet the Irish revolutionary seems to indicate that those calling probably knew more about this group than the average citizen, IMO.
