Look for a "tim" or "timothy" among the suspects! The "zodiac"’s first name was "timothy" and here’s why…

I’ve decided to share this, despite dropping out of my intense interest in the case a few months ago, maybe someone who’s actually working on this case will see it and it will open his/her eyes to things we missed over the years: the zodiac’s Halloween card to Paul Avery specifically mentions that he’ll "clue him" about his name and the only text there is in the card is the "by gun, by fire, by rope, by knife" text from the wheel of death that had appeared in the Tim Holt 1940s comics, if that’s not a dead give away look at how the only word he keeps intentionally spell incorrectly is "victim" to "victom" all over his letters (he clearly took inspiration from "jack the ripper" and wasn’t dyslexic). I hope it’ll help solve the "my name is (cipher)".

Here is how I see his "clue you in" remark. The "peek a boo, you are doomed!" comment that circles the "holes" in the tree/plank where the eyes are drawn is just for dramatic effect or a private joke of his.

To see the entire solution/image try to open the image in a new tab.

Remember: this is not a Dracula-esque figure with fangs or a demonic lurking Imperfect Cell-like figure as he opted to be viewed/imagined, just some barrel-chested fat and short guy who probably was the class’ outclass dweeb/dork who was a Bernice Kohn’s cipher books fan instead of playing outside while growing up, and was also into outdated plays and typography.

Going by the letters’ vibe that is the story/case of a person who was full-time loser all his years till he (whatever age he was back then) decided to storm on innocent unarmed civilians, kill them and brag about it to feel better with his sorry ass and lame life (or just so he’d "feel a man" after being a joke all his years prior) back at his parents’ house (or some poor neighborhood rented condo) with his comic books and 1940s playboy issues he bought at the convenient store.

Why target the SFPD while most of his crimes took place outside of that city? And a very basic psychological analysis

his issues with the San Francisco Police Department even IF (and it’s a big "if") he attacked people elsewhere and prior to December 20th, 1968, seem to be a result of a past(/juvenile?) criminal record of some sort or a false arrest that made him obsessed with proving himself to be smarter than them. If so, he is in their records somewhere. Just need to find a person who fits his description (WMA 5’8"-6’0" – most likely 5’10" – and around or over a 100 Kilograms by October 1969). At worst it can be that he had no motive for hating the SFPD and his crimes were just of a nerd who was too deep into "Detective Magazine" (& other such crimes centred magazines for weird people of all ages) and the awfuly bad (nowadays speaking) stories over there made a real impact on him and aspired him to become a 1929 "Z" of his own.

There’s over a 10% chance that he had been to a shrink or went to counceling before pressing the gun at Lake Herman Road in December 20th, 1968 – if you ask me. So his name must be written in some (at least one) therapist’s records. the "zodiac" persona seems to be his craving for publicity and fame in and around San Francisco that he can not achieve or even reach with his own abilities in his field of occupation so he chose to murder innocent random people for that fame (for example: the request he had in several communications to see people wearing his crosshairs buttons so he will halt his killing spree).

Maybe his quoting of "tit willow" in the 1974 Exorcist letter after almost 3 years of silence was because of the line of "billowy wave" = hinting that he was treated somewhere with Electro-Convulsive Therapy during that time he went under the radar to heal his damaged personality/mind in order to "be a part of normal society", maybe he fell in love and wanted to stop killing. Only a guess. But it fits with the fact that in his May 8th, 1974 "badlands card" to the San Francisco Chronicle he signed the letter as "a citizen".

Was he EVER in the Military? An Army Cryptographer?

I don’t believe he was ever in a combat position in the military or even had a millitary career while doing the killings (I believe he was working in a civilian company in San Francisco that had something to do with sailing due to his knowledge of radians and navigations and his "geographical" descriptions while directing the Vallejo PD after the Blue Rock Springs murder&/attack or describing the orientation of the bodies of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jenesen he left behind, and his directions to Napa PD about the location of Cecilia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell) but I guess anything is possible with such an annonymous person who might had been to Vietnam and lost it there. I honestly think he tried to enlist but wasn’t very good at the physical aspect of the elementary trainings due to his body structure and was moved to the clerk positions which allowed him to purchase the Wing Walkers he used in Lake Berryessa (if it’s the same guy and not a mentally illed local copy-cat or an accomplice of his who did some of the other killings we attribute to this one YET unidentified individual) in an army post BEFORE EVENTUALLY DROPPING OUT as he already had quite a long hair (that went down his forehead and sticked out the executioner mask’s eyes spot) by the Lake Berryessa murder which is forbidden by the military restrictions.

I tend to believe the Hardens’ assumption that due to the low level of sophistication and bad grammer and register of the z-408 cipher that "zodiac" was not a military trained cryptographer but an amature who learnt/picked this hobby from children or teenage sleuth magazine or book/s. Due to no possible system of decipgering for 48 years now the only logical conclusion is that the 340 cipher was probably just a nicely penned down FAKE cipher with no real key or meaning that was "given authenticity" with the erasure of the letter "K" and writting it to it’s flipped side above the blanked spot TO KEEP THE AUTHORITIES BUSY and stressed of him (he wanted to play a comic books’ arch-villain who’s a very intelligent criminal mastermind even though all points to the fact he wasn’t vastly smarter than the common Joe considering how sloppy were his crimes and that he was only saved from getting caught due to being an individual with a car as his mean of escape who attacked randomly in secluded areas in various of juristrictions while the different PDs had no mathematical/statistical method of knowing where and when will he’ll attack next time).

Was he a from Southern California originally and the Riverside murderer?

Despite it being 3 letters communication sent with double stamps on each envelope and having some mispelling in the "confession letter" (which SOME of them corresponds with the zodiac’s), I don’t buy his "sudden confession" bogus claim from the March 13th, 1971 letter to the Los Angels Times that he was the killer of Cheri Jo Bates of Riverside back in October 30th, 1966 and "many others in South California" (even if some believe that this connection scared him and is why he kept on silence for six months before referring to that) – if he was that person (FTR this case was widely covered in the American newspapers and various crime magazines in the years to follow, so he could’ve learnt of it from any of these), he wouldn’t be claiming in his communications for almost two years by then that he only began killing in Lake Herman Road. It’s clear as the sky that he was trying to fool the police and send them off his trail by masking his identity (a local to the San Francisco Bay Area as suggested by Robert Tarbox who believes he met him in 1972?) and claiming other crimes attributed to him in the media (which he followed closely and dearly to see what and if they’ve posted articles about him) as he did with Kathleen Jones.

Besides, an handwriting patterns analysis I had conducted (I’m no expert, just amature who uses his logic) not too long ago between the two authors shows that the possibility the zodiac was the self-proclaimed Riverside City College murderer of Cheri Jo Bates is very small. Here it is for your opinion:

Cracking down this case

So what we have to do from now onwards to catch the "zodiac" killer is to use the knowledge of him being a white male adult named "tim"/"timothy" alongside with what we have from behavioral and geographical profiling of the zodiac which places him as a Vallejo (also his lingo of the July 31, 1969 letter to the Vallejo Times Hearld as if he was sitting in his home in Vallejo while penning this letter down) or Benicia resident in late 1968 and around August 1969, who owned multiple weapons (of some we are aware of from the crimes themselves) he bought in arms stores under his name, and who was a working person with a steady job (who was employed during the week days and was free to "hunt" in the weekends and holidays). There you go, if we will pin all these together with NRA &/ census records we had got that son of a bitch.

It seems that he DID looked like the SFPD composites, that’s why he seemed to lost his cool after murdering Paul Stine and began to communicate more (about this particular case) than his previous letters which were only sent (as it is available to the public) in July and August of 1969, yet not in September and October following Cecilia Shepard’s death. he must’ve freaked out that the public now have an idea of how he looks like and it very much bugged him. he wouldn’t be lying like a 3 years old and denying that he looks like the composites if he really didn’t, he’d be just leaving the SFPD and public to look for that mistaken appearance without referring to it. Besides, we know he’s a liar – he claimed he left no fingerprints in his crimes and we know that a bloody print of his right hand index finger was found on the cab and some other bloody prints where taken from that murder scene (the cab) as well and from his letters too (where is the "airplane cement double coating coverage" he claimed to be using on his fingers while writing the letters, huh? and his palm prints were lifted from his letters and the sweaty phone he/one of them left in Napa). So we have a general idea of his face: white, large forehead, widow’s peak, most likely reddish-brown hair. That’s the guy we’re looking for.

That’s how he looked to the Teenagers (left) and to Donald Fouke (right) at the night of Paul Stine’s murder; Below: my coloring of the sketch made upon Fouke’s description which I believe to be more accurate as it was seen from a closer range

If the guy who Robert Tarbox met in 1972 was indeed the zodiac, then we know he seems to be 40 years old as of then and of Southern French descent (Fouke felt like he was of Welsh ancestry while stopping his police car to let him cross the street) whose name doesn’t fit his look and is "Northern European" ("timothy"?) and who’s about 5’10" and heavy built but not so bold in his character (he was a scardy person, not courageous), and who seemingly (if it was indeed an authentic "Z card") a merchant mariner, despite being "articulate and seemingly educated" yet causally dressed. So that’s another path of research we need to go through to verify or dismiss that option.

The fact that ALMOST all of the letters that were postmarked were sent from San Francisco – excluding the LA Times letter that was sent in March 13th, 1971 from Pleasanton and the "Red Phantom" card that was sent from San Rafael in July 8th, 1974 – it means that this guy either work in SF and lived very close to it OR live and work in SF and that’s why he’s always communicating from there and targeting the local PD there in his countings. It could be that the two letters he sent from elsewhere were during one of his job assaingments or vacations as he never sent another that was postmarked from there (even his letter to the Vallejo Times Hearld was sent from SF despite sounding as penned in Vallejo itself: http://www.zodiackiller.com/VTHEnvelope.html ).