I said before that in my opinion Zodiac manipulated those that bough the papers as much as he did those that wrote and published them. Very often never saying or offering something to a reader directly by saying it straight out, but in a subtle inconspicuous manner. The image that always flashes up in my mind when I think of his deliberate subtle suggestions and misdirection is that of the stage magician who throws his left hand up asking everyone to see for themselves and acknowledge its empty and as he directs their attention to this left hand with what seems like good intentions on his part to show he isn’t cheating, will then covertly conceal the object within his right hand while your looking at his left confirming he’s not misleading you and that the left hand is indeed void of any content.
I often think that the Zodiac ciphers were not the only cryptically written messages to the audience, I think that at least some of his seemingly unencrypted letters have within them a cryptically hidden clue or message. You know those pictures that are deliberately designed to show how the Brain is fallible and very often sees what it wants to see? Someone will ask you to look at it and tell them what the image depicted in the picture is and you’ll look at and see it for what it appears on the surface to be, and everyone is fooled by the same image and will all give the same answer saying that it’s (just as an example) a girl walking a dog. Every person will see the same thing, the girl with a dog. Then when the questioner tells everyone they are incorrect and many confused faces later they are told that actually, it’s a tree with a branch hanging loose. It’s then, and only then, after someone suggests to us that this is what is in the picture do we see the tree with hanging branch come to life in what we at first thought was something totally different. These pictures need someone first to tell us what we need to look for before we are able to see and find it. Once they do give us the suggestion of what the picture shows, we all instantly go "Ohhhh yeah, I can see it now. How did I not see that the first time?" Of course the answer is obvious, the picture is deliberately designed to look like picture on the surface while being a totally different picture that is hidden behind it that only becomes visible when someone tells us what that hidden picture looks like.
Psychologists use that type of experiment to show that the human brain can be fooled extremely easy and to show the brain will see what it wants to see, not necessarily what it is actually being shown.
That’s similar to what I think Z did. He was an illusionist in some ways because he got many to simply see what he wanted them to see. All he need to do in order to misdirect many is quote The Mikado’s KoKo and that will ensure many associate him with theatre and stage plays, for example. After that why not go for something a bit more obscure and throw the word Radian into one of the letters. Once it gets published many will no doubt believe that due to the word being specific and unique to mathematics then the writer obviously has an extremely advanced understanding of Mathematical Angles.
Even opting to use one word over and instead of another can get a lot of people suspecting that you are possibly from another Continent! If I said "I will make them look like accidents" Nobody will question that I the author am American. But should I say "I shall make them look like accidents" then this simple one word switch will send many into a swirl of suspicion and there will now be a serious suspicion that I am of European decent. That just emphasizes how words and language also can be easily used and manipulated when you want the person reading it to conclude something that you yourself have merely laid the suggestion for.
Zodiac’s Cryptograms are probably not what we should be looking to crack in order to discover a hidden and meaningful message within them. The Ciphers may simply be a way of his telling us he is fond of hiding messages within a message. Its also likely that the ciphers are simply a diversion tactic he used because he knew that if you send them a cipher, a clear encrypted and hidden message, then everyone will focus on these and try and decode them to unveil the message it is hiding and in doing so, will completely miss the message or messages hidden within the un-ciphered letters. That is misdirection with a bonus attached for him, he can sit back and amuse himself watching everyone running off with their inspector Gadget magnifying glass to poor over the mysterious cipher wanting to crack it and reveal the message when he himself knows that what they are looking for needs no decryption as its hidden in the non encrypted letters.
"So it’s sorta social. Demented and sad, but social, right?" Judd Nelson.
And even if the remaining ciphers are one day broken and a clear message can be seen, I wouldn’t be holding my breath for the message to be ‘The Big Reveal’ or anything close to it. I mean he told three Bay Area Newspaper Editors that if they don’t print his most urgent of cryptic message he’d go on a killing spree telling one of the three also that his identity was within! And what did we learn from the Hardens persistence?
"I like killing people because it is so much fun" We’d never have guess that Z had you not revealed it here tbh. Then he tells us about man being the most dangerous animal of all which I again object to and not for it’s relevance, but because that is a matter of personal opinion because if you give me a choice of two 10 by 6ft cages, one containing a Roaring Snarling mount of muscle with teeth also know as a Grizzly bear, the other cage occupying Mike Tyson in his prime and I was told i had to choose which one of the two to fight, then I am going to Pick Mr Tyson every day of the week and twice on a Sunday.
And while there isn’t really any serious point to that comical comment, the same can be said for the message hidden within the 408. He does tell us that unfortunately, he will be unable to give us his name on this occasion as there is a concern on his part that we the society in general, but specifically the Blue Meanies, may make it their business to interfere with his slave collecting activities and that this he would not take kindly to.
Again, that’s obviously what Law Enforcement’s No.1 priority and concern is going to be and their reason to want to stop him so badly. Every day the DA’s office prosecutes people for conspiracy to commit crimes of slavery in the afterlife. Oh yes, capital offence that for which many have been dispatched on the gurney!
But to give a good example of Zodiac saying something, immediately it gets interpreted as he knows and expects it to be, then after there is a huge effort to take measures to counteract what he threatened, he almost laughingly tells them that if they really thought that that was what he meant then they really are idiots and that is his threat after the Stine murder. He said "School Children make nice targets, I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tyre and pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out .."
That was it! Helicopters in the air, patrol vehicles on the ground all tasked with following school busses everywhere they went with drivers of each given specific instructions on what to do should they hear a pop and feel a sudden deflation. Shortly after this Zodiac wrote and told them that If they really thought he was going to take on a bus full of kids the way he stated he would then they deserve to have holes in their heads. The emphasis of that sentence is his words "The way I stated I would." He seems to be saying, at least in my opinion, that the way I said it is why you missed the meaning of it’s true intent and who the true target of it really was.
I have always believed that this threat is not mean to be taken literally, but rather symbolically because the threat against a school bus is not literal, but symbolic of a child of school age and the ‘kiddies’ is actually the singular ‘Kid’ who saw him and, in my opinion, is the one who identified him in which the FBI Document makes reference to. Zodiac himself can’t really make it any clearer than he does telling them that ‘School Bus’ was never even considered by him as a target and that if they couldn’t work that out then he cant help that and if they can’t work out what he was doing here when, in his eyes it’s blatantly obvious, then they all deserve to have holes in their heads (A reference to Stine I believe where he is suggesting that Stine was stupid enough to pick him up and then follow directions to the location where he’d be found with a hole in his head and, like him, if they are also too stupid to see what is in front of them and can’t work out the true meaning of his threat then they also deserve the same as Stine got.)
"So it’s sorta social. Demented and sad, but social, right?" Judd Nelson.
