Another old post, but I will give my two cents.
I believe the alphabet he used, was his own made up alphabet. It was an alphabet he, himself used to hide things he didn’t want anyone to know about. He used the alphabet in more things than just the mailed letters. Many people seem to think one has to be very intelligent or in the military to know how to code. It’s not true! Anyone can make up their own alphabet or codes. Children even do it for the sake of getting into the treehouse, or a secret club. You don’t have to be a John Nash or a genius to know how to write and disguise in codes. It’s pretty simple stuff. Zodiac had his own system of coding, unlike many other codes. Anyone can do it! Another reality looked over in the case. Lol, I recall watching an old 80s documentary on the zodiac. They made it sound like he was a mastermind, because he wrote in codes. I don’t think he was a mastermind. A streak of luck? Yes. Underestimated? Yes! A genius? No!

I believed he had a mental illness, such as schizophrenia. Some schizophrenics are pretty sharp pistols. They’re not all laying around, drugged up and incoherent. Some go on to become mathematicians and artists, etc. Something ppl seem to forget.
So, is someone with schizophrenia capable of doing what the zodiac pulled off? Absolutely!

Levi- I agree with you completely and have stated that before. I believe he may have written a real message, but he then assigned random symbols to each letter so that only he could crack the code and that’s the only reason it hasn’t been cracked yet. He was not a genius. At least I do not believe he was. I just came up with a good plan to in his mind release his message knowing that it could not be solved.

Or… He thought he was being clever with the 408, and was humiliated (the only time LE ever got the best of him) when it was solved so fast. So, from then on his codes were simply random symbols that meant nothing to him or anyone else, and were therefore 100% unsolvable. He wouldn’t have to be at all clever to do this, and he would be quite amused at the thought of a bunch of frustrated people trying to solve it.

LE got the first laugh with the 408; Z gets the last laugh, and with no solution, his lasts forever. It is, literally, crackproof.

Marshall-

You know that the 408 was not solved by LE, right? It was solved by a teacher and his wife.

(Not that it would not have been solved anyway, but they were the first.)

-glurk

hello All

Although there is a possibility that the Z 340 is a big lie, a scam, rather. I think that both the Z408 and Z340, may have been produced, even before the Zodiac’s activities, finally the Z408, not mistaken, there is no mention in particular to any of the crimes themselves (do not know if I’m being clear) and this, perhaps, was encoded to be decoded fairly easily, so people looked the Z340, for sure the "ease" in decoding, therefore, believe that the Z340 has a solution, but with a level of higher difficulty, which is obvious in these 45 years.

Otherwise together here the "alphabet" theory, which put on the topic of early (which makes no sense), but anyway, I share.

happiness to all

Marcelo

Marshall-

You know that the 408 was not solved by LE, right? It was solved by a teacher and his wife.

(Not that it would not have been solved anyway, but they were the first.)

-glurk

Yes, I’m well aware of the Hardens and the whole story of how it was solved. I suppose I should’ve said LE/Sane People, or Sane People helping LE. I assumed we all know how the 408 was solved and that I didn’t need to make the distinction, but point taken.

Perhaps this made it even more humiliating for Z. In any case, IF Z first wrote a simple code and then wrote a code that to this day is still unsolved, he is/was a genius, which I doubt. Far more likely IMO is that the 408 was his best, and when it turned into an embarrassment for him, he started writing codes that, literally, were unsolvable. Looking at the solution to the 408, his codes, when solved, didn’t have much to say, anyways.

My conclusion, after reading this thread and other recent posts, is that Z didn’t have to be all that smart to do this.

My conclusion, after reading this thread and other recent posts, is that Z didn’t have to be all that smart to do this.

The 408 is a neat (literally speaking) little puzzle. What does it take to produce it? Not much. Examples of such ciphers are plentiful. Anyone who had read any number of detective stories would have been familiar with the concept of substitution ciphers of the kind Z used.

So, what have we? A guy familiar with basic enough ciphers takes the time and effort to produce this neat, little puzzle – which is then solved easily enough, as you’d expect, because it’s not a very complex cipher.

It then turns out that this same guy is actually capable of creating far more complex ciphers – of a kind an average comic book reader could not simply produce by following a readily available blueprint.

Sounds likely? Not really.

But then again the fact that nobody has solved the 340 doesn’t necessarily mean it’s genuinely super complex. I could produce a near insolvable cipher, using fairly basic methods, but doing it in a highly idiosyncratic fashion. The latter could easily be enough to make it unsolvable in practice: I’ve proposed before that the 340 could be a core (a short plain-text message) of signal in a sea of noise: Unless you stumble on the part where the signal happens to be, you’ll never solve it. It isn’t complicated at all – it’s just practically unsolvable because you need to read the author’s mind in order to determine where to look for the signal in that sea of noise.

And the above becomes even more troublesome if the signal, the actual message, is too generic. If it’s “I am the Zodiac, Berryessa rocks!” you could probably class it as unique. But what if it’s “You will never catch me”? Could be coincidental. The actual message could just as easily be the “look for a man in a brown car” which you can extrapolate from somewhere else, presupposing a slightly different key.

My conclusion, after reading this thread and other recent posts, is that Z didn’t have to be all that smart to do this.

The 408 is a neat (literally speaking) little puzzle. What does it take to produce it? Not much. Examples of such ciphers are plentiful. Anyone who had read any number of detective stories would have been familiar with the concept of substitution ciphers of the kind Z used.

So, what have we? A guy familiar with basic enough ciphers takes the time and effort to produce this neat, little puzzle – which is then solved easily enough, as you’d expect, because it’s not a very complex cipher.

It then turns out that this same guy is actually capable of creating far more complex ciphers – of a kind an average comic book reader could not simply produce by following a readily available blueprint.

Sounds likely? Not really.

But then again the fact that nobody has solved the 340 doesn’t necessarily mean it’s genuinely super complex. I could produce a near insolvable cipher, using fairly basic methods, but doing it in a highly idiosyncratic fashion. The latter could easily be enough to make it unsolvable in practice: I’ve proposed before that the 340 could be a core (a short plain-text message) of signal in a sea of noise: Unless you stumble on the part where the signal happens to be, you’ll never solve it. It isn’t complicated at all – it’s just practically unsolvable because you need to read the author’s mind in order to determine where to look for the signal in that sea of noise.

And the above becomes even more troublesome if the signal, the actual message, is too generic. If it’s “I am the Zodiac, Berryessa rocks!” you could probably class it as unique. But what if it’s “You will never catch me”? Could be coincidental. The actual message could just as easily be the “look for a man in a brown car” which you can extrapolate from somewhere else, presupposing a slightly different key.

Agree completely with all you’ve said, and I’d summarize it this way: It brings us back to the same thing.

1. If the codes after the 408 are gibberish, or if they actually have some inane solve that provides no useful clue, what’s the difference? If they did contain a solution like "look for a man in a brown car" or something, the debate would then be whether it was Z mis-direction, and, taking that possibility into consideration our conclusion would be: "Z was driving a brown car… or not." Regardless, would that info be all that useful, 45 years later, anyway, especially when Z may have used more than one car?

There is no way, IMO, that Z was going to give himself away, and after the 408 was solved so quickly, I don’t believe he even wanted LE/Sane People to have the satisfaction of solving his puzzle.

2. If the codes after the 408 are in fact legitimate, highly complex puzzles that would require a well above average intellect, and extensive knowledge of ciphers, then we actually have something useful, and the field of known suspects narrows considerably.

So, I would say, the only value in working on the codes is to determine that single thing: Are they legit and therefore produced by a near genius with code-writing skills, or not. And, I’m betting, not. The content, if there is any, will, again IMO, be worthless.

So, I would say, the only value in working on the codes is to determine that single thing: Are they legit and therefore produced by a near genius with code-writing skills, or not. And, I’m betting, not. The content, if there is any, will, again IMO, be worthless.

Agreed on all counts.

As for the bit in bold, in particular, I would propose that what we actually know about Z indicates that your bet is on the money: The 408 isn’t complex. People have treated it as such over the years – using the "fact" that the FBI couldn’t solve it as evidence of it being so, while at the same time either ignoring the fact (an actual fact) that it was solved by amateurs, or using this fact as a starting point for conspiracy theories ("how could they possibly solve it, unless they were involved somehow?").

I think Z was a reader of pulp fiction, comic books, detective stories, true crime – that sort of thing. That’s where we should look for his sources of inspiration – including his cipher sources. He wasn’t a specialist, or even necessarily someone with rudimentary training in the art of constructing ciphers. The nature of the 408 tends to support this view. It does not tend to support the view that Z had any special skills in this department.

To me, then, we’re looking at this: If the 340 is a highly complex cipher, it was made by a person who began his cipher campaign with something virtually anyone could have produced. That’s not a contradiction in terms, but it begs an awful lot of questions.

And I fully agree with your basic stance: He had no intention of revealing anything of importance in his coded messages. If the ciphers contain "clews" to his identity, these weren’t left there intentionally: The premise would be the same for the ciphers and the letters themselves: He may have slipped up somewhere, given away the game in ways he wasn’t aware of, but the idea of him willingly offering details that would lead to his capture strikes me as unlikely.

If the ciphers contain "clews" to his identity, these weren’t left there intentionally: The premise would be the same for the ciphers and the letters themselves: He may have slipped up somewhere, given away the game in ways he wasn’t aware of, but the idea of him willingly offering details that would lead to his capture strikes me as unlikely.

There actually is one thing the ciphers tell us about Z. Despite his at times sloppy handwriting and poor spelling, the ciphers are evidence he could sit down and carefully draw neat, precise symbols across an entire page, in perfect rows and columns. Even with a grid behind the paper to help with alignment, the 340 would be boring and tedious for most of us to write. But as I look at it, I don’t see evidence that the author started to get lazy, or his hand started cramping, or anything like that – it’s neat and precise from beginning to end. He put a lot of care into every symbol.

This kind of careful attention to detail, I think, shows us that Z’s sloppy handwriting and misspelled words are misdirection (or, some might say, indicate Z was in a different state of mind at the time.)

It also reminds me of Ross, carefully lettering those library books, one after another…..