The Z408 solves in a logical sequential order until the last 18 letters. With these 18 letters, I believe, Zodiacwas offering us a foreshadowing of some of the higher complexity in store for his future cipher/codes–jumbled order and additional letter shifting.
If you shift the second E to F(+1), and the last 5 letters to E M L A L(shifts of -3, -3, +3, +7, +3 respectively), you get
EBEORIETEMETHHPITI
EBFORIETEMETHEMLAL
Unjumbled, it reads "Before I meet them all."
Add this to the last sentence of the Z408, you get "I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my after life…BEFORE I MEET THEM ALL." The last 18 letters now become the logical conclusion to the full sentence. Zodiac is frankly saying "I won’t let you stop my collecting of slaves because I’m not done collecting them." And he wasn’t–he had more to come.
Zodiac added this twist to the Z408 and the deciphering done by the Hardens–and it wasn’t picked up at the time. That is why, I believe, the Z340 is so hard to crack.
There are, most likely, unciphered letters, ciphers letters, ciphers letters of close shifts(+/- 1 to 9), ciphered symbols, plus letters and symbols in code (i.e. the Zodiac symbol= I, me, mine, my, I’ll, I’m, I’ve, etc.). The possible permutations become enormous.
It also becomes something else than a cipher. It is completely idiosyncratic, whereas a cipher is systematic. If that is what is in the 340, then it is essentially unsolvable, and was meant to be. With the right combination of transformations, with no need for them to make sense, you could make it mean absolutely anything you want.
Add this to the last sentence of the Z408, you get "I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my after life…BEFORE I MEET THEM ALL."
Why not shift some more until it reads “kill them all?”
I thought about that, but Zodiac does mention "killing" 4 times in the z408. When unscrambled the word "MEET" is there naturally, and, if it had been discovered at the time of the deciphering, would have had greater implications for the public at large, and it did.
Between the Dec. and July attacks, Zodiac changed his MO. In those two, he basically walked up and began shooting at his victims. There’s the possibility he asked the couple at LHR to step out. In the Sept. and Oct. killings, he spent time with his victims before attacking them.
At Lake Berryessa he talked with them and helped tie them up for 10-15 minutes, talking about Deer Lodge and Mexico. He also spent some time after the attack writing on the door of the victim’s car. With Paul Stine, in October, we don’t know if he was in the front seat or back seat, but he did have to give him his destination of "Washington and Maple Streets." He was with Stine for the 10-15 minutes it took to drive the 37 blocks to the killing site, during a Saturday night in SF. Therefore, "meeting" his slaves became the reality.
On the move to scramble the last 18 letters of the message, perhaps it was triggered by Zodiac’s memories. The word puzzle, "Scramble," now known as "Jumble," was created by Martin Naydel in 1954, and first published in the Chicago Tribune. A certain Zodiac suspect, TJK, at the time was a 12 year old boy living in Chicago.
EBEORIETEMETHHPITI
EBFORIETEMETHEMLALUnjumbled, it reads "Before I meet them all."
Before anagramming, you have decided to change 1/3 of the letters (your letter shifting is just not systematic enough to consider it anything else but your random selection). With this flexibility, you can unfortunately make up almost anything.
