One final question for this afternoon, as I’m needing to get off to work soon…
Have you ever given consideration to the thought that The Zodiac’s “My name is ______” might, in fact, be complete in itself, as in:
“My name is [I’m not going to give you my name].”
and that the cipher below this starts a completely new idea and doesn’t have anything to do with names?
After the cipher, the letter itself just goes on to talk about bombs.
At the very least, I have always wanted to make sure that I never ruled this out as a possibility. (Indeed, it has always been my preference to view it in this way.)
Personally, I’m more inclined to think that Zodiac did actually include his name somewhere within one of his ciphers. Beyond my own Z13 solution, I have this impression that serial killers often live on a kind of razor’s edge: on one side, the urge to “shout” their name to the world and claim their actions, and on the other, the need to avoid being caught.
That said, of course anything is possible. For example, some time ago I saw an interesting interpretation of the Z32 online: with a bit of imagination, by rotating the cipher you could read “WANT MY NAME.” It was quite a fun idea, even if clearly more suggestive than provable.