My solution attempt at the Z340 – I think it is a cipher within the cipher. But with this solution he used the original cipher key that he used on the 408 solved by the Hardens. You just have to know where to look.
The first thing you will notice is he signed the letter off differently to all the others. Namely the encircled word DO , and thing with 2 of the exclamation marks are underlined 6 times. See below
Now if you look at the cipher he sent as well you will noticed a small encircled section on the left that is exactly 6 lines down and two accross. see pic
Now if we remove the letters he crossed the lines through we get the below. So when we use the Hardens cipher key those letters are translated to ETA<DI as below
If you read that from right to left it says I Date. So what is a date its number for the day, a month and then a year. If we refer back to the letter we know he signed it off with months. And we know only one month was spelled wrong. So now take that month and use the harden cipher key
It gives you NEA
You can take that one step further and say that s should be a c or even just use the left over symbol that there is no letter to assign to- so read from right to left again, you have CAEN
I needed to add on the letter the next day and post only allows 3 pics. So sorry to split this up. Ok so the next day a letter was sent. If you look closely at this letter you will see that he said to be sure to print the marked out section. Now look carefully he encircled more letters. see attached
It say + Cain. Now what does that mean. Well if you add the two letters together, the first word he encircled is DO, then the next day he encircle + Cain.
Well my theory is he is refering to the word ZODIAC, read from right to left and flip the Z – you get the word CAIN and the left over word is DO.
Next what i did was extract all the mispelled words from the letter in the exact order, so if there is two on one line – leave it as so. But you cant use the words he left letters out of for example he said SOM instead of SOME. The format he uses is in the added letters. So for example COMMITT – take out the extra T, and then ENTIRLE, take out the E. When you are done doing this excercise you are left with the following – note line two I highlighted in red.
So its the same name and he gives you 3 ways to get to it.
Let me know if you guys think this is something or not.
I think those pencil marks were added by LE to indicate location of possible fingerprints. Going off memory, so there’s that.
I think everything is worth a try and it’s good to explore all the possibilities. I agree with up2 though regarding the encircling. I think they were made by LE to highlight areas of finger or palm prints.
“I don’t know Chief, he’s very smart or very dumb.“
Sorry we are having load shedding here so i can only pop in and out – load shedding is were they cut our electricity for 2 to 4 hours a day…. hectic I know.
Anyways, thank you so much for the feedback I always get so nervous to post my ideas – I also thought that in the beginning and I did mail Det Terry to ask and he wasnt able to answer questions on the letters itself he said its best to mail the SFPD to confirm this which I did and am awaiting a response. I just posted for now as an option and thought maybe someone would find it useful and had something similar and it might help fill in the blanks.
I personally think though that for them to have circled 2 letters and a cipher in 3 places and all of those places point to the exact same name is a huge coincidence. They encircled on the cipher itself exactly 6 lines down perfectly and 2 accross on specific letters, circled the word DO and then the next letter exactly circled the letters + cain – I think it is so odd that it would work out perfectly to that, if that is the case it would be quite funny though. And then also if you remove the mispelled letters like I showed in the exact order as the zodiac did per line it spells out the same name. That is something that the police department did not do.
I will let you guys know though as soon as i hear feedback from SFPD, maybe i will email them again and just double check if they had any news as yet.
