Crime POTWR 2019 Vol 14: Was The Unabomber Also The Zodiac And Tylenol Killers?

Which Zodiac suspect would you put your money on?

  • Ross Sullivan

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Richard Gaikowski "GYKE" or "GAIK"

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Rick Marshall

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Lawrence Kane

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • MR. X

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Bruce Davis

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    9
  • Poll closed .
nice work, Cubo

Blue Rock Springs has an awesome golf course btw.


Thanks. Although I can't take any credit for piecing stuff together. Since the first Graysmith book came out on Zodiac I've always had an interest. I cite that as one of the two most frightening books I've ever read. Never gave a shit about the Unabomber story. Thanks to this site Unazod, which is now defunct, I got turned on to the possibility it was Ted. At first I thought it sounded like typical internet stupidity, made even more obvious by the Tylenol stuff being lumped in. But the more one digs the more one sees far more connections than exculpatory evidence. So even if neither case is ever solved, this all makes for some fun sleuthing!

There's one theory I've hatched that I haven't seen elsewhere. One of the oddest things about Zodiac, if not the oddest, is his hood/costume worn at Lake Berryessa.


Lake_Berryessa_Suspect_Police_Sketch.jpg



Who would do that? Why? If you're murdering people you don't need a disguise. If anything it would be highly conspicuous so you wouldn't just be walking around in it. And if you did want to cover your face then why not just a ski mask?

In Ted's cabin a homemade hood was found. I've never known anyone to have or make such a thing. And would one's natural incliination be to make the eye-slits rectangular? Maybe it's just easier to sew that way. Still though, who makes a hood to begin with?


kaczyn40.jpg



My theory is that Ted knew he was moving to a cold-weather climate and made the hood for that purpose, not as a disguise for killing. So maybe he just wants to test out fit and function and decides to wear it for the attack. Then when they survive long enough to provide that sketch, Ted ditches the hood and later makes another one for his new life in Montana.

PS. In case it wasn't spelled out clearly in the previous post on the Tylenol murders, Ted makes more sense when you look at it as his intended target being the corporation Johnson & Johnson. The deaths were simply a means to that end. Like Unabomber targeting people for their professions was also an attack on "the system". That's why it wasn't important to actually witness the deaths.
 
Well, the symbolism of wearing a hood while performing executions goes back many centuries to a time when the Executioner,
a man of extreme talent, like an actual physician who wanted to hide his identity while making some side cash, to a convict who
was able to reduce his sentence by performing the State's dirty work desired to remain anonymous.

If these modern killers, self absorbed as they were, saw themselves as justified 'executioners', the hood or mask makes sense as an adornment or affectation to enhance the experience and on some level to justify it.
 
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Well, the symbolism of wearing a hood while performing executions goes back many centuries to a time when the Executioner,
a man of extreme talent, like an actual physician who wanted to hide his identity while making some side cash, to a convict who
was able to reduce his sentence by performing the State's dirty work desired to remain anonymous.

If these modern killers, self absorbed as they were, saw themselves as justified 'executioners', the hood or mask makes sense as an adornment or affectation to enhance the experience and on some level to justify it.

You're good at this. Must be why you homicide detectives are portrayed much differently on screen compared to beat cops. :)

Yeah, there could be some ritual aspect. It goes along perfectly with "collecting slaves for the afterlife". But then why only wear it once and not the other two times he was seen? So maybe two of the four he wears a hood. Let's say it's not an option for the cabbie murder, since I'd think even in SF back then it would invite attention (police sketch or no). So at least once he didn't bother. That's a strike against it being part of his signature. At least it wasn't from the get-go.

What's immediately unique about the crime with the hood though was it being the only one to occur in daylight. That would indicate he was motivated to mask or disguise. But again, in that context it would be more likely to attract attention (from potential witnesses) than anything else. And if he was that concerned about showing his face to the intended victims, it'd be easier to buy a ski mask or just make sure the victims die.

So if it was some ritual fetish object, he seemed to still be trying to figure out how to incorporate it. But then why, after introducing it, totally switch MO to the cab driver? A change that took the crimes from out in the boonies to smackdab in SF proper. Unless that location was important, why not stick with places the hood could be worn during the crimes?
 
all good questions.
I'm thinking he may have been a fan, devotee, follower of someone or something that embodied his belief system
and it's myriad sadistic tendencies but at some point he fell out with it's doctrines and defined his own priorities.
who knows.
 
all good questions.
I'm thinking he may have been a fan, devotee, follower of someone or something that embodied his belief system
and it's myriad sadistic tendencies but at some point he fell out with it's doctrines and defined his own priorities.
who knows.

At the very least you'd agree that it's a pretty weird thing in the annals of serial murder to involve a homemade hood like that? Hell, I bet even the S&M world goes store-bought.

And also pretty weird that the fetish only popped up one time and was discontinued? It's not like the crimes spanned a great deal of time. It's all the letters and possible Riverside connection that stretch it out. From wiki, of course. :)

  • David Arthur Faraday, 17, and Betty Lou Jensen, 16: shot and killed on December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, within the city limits of Benicia. Coordinates:
    17px-WMA_button2b.png
    38°5′41.61″N 122°8′38.24″W
  • Michael Renault Mageau, 19, and Darlene Elizabeth Ferrin, 22: shot on July 4, 1969, in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo. While Mageau survived the attack, Ferrin was pronounced dead on arrival at Kaiser Foundation Hospital. Coordinates:
    17px-WMA_button2b.png
    38°7′33.56″N 122°11′27.94″W
  • Bryan Calvin Hartnell, 20, and Cecelia Ann Shepard, 22: stabbed on September 27, 1969, at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. Hartnell survived eight stab wounds to the back, but Shepard died as a result of her injuries on September 29, 1969. Coordinates:
    17px-WMA_button2b.png
    38°33′48.29″N 122°13′54.43″W
  • Paul Lee Stine, 29: shot and killed on October 11, 1969, in the Presidio Heights neighborhood in San Francisco.

That's less than 10 months total. Three crimes and nine months in he's all the sudden wearing a costume for his own benefit, then two weeks later for the forth crime he doesn't? Like I said, to me it's the oddest thing about the case. Even the ciphers seem normal by comparison. Just fuckin' bizarre in any context.

Oh yeah, the LB attack was also the only stabbing. And the only time the killer left a note.


door.jpg



You're from the area. He writes "Vallejo" only. Of course there's no reason to write the current location, but why not the second? Is that area considered to be Vallejo?

What else is curious is how for the murder he'd just committed he breaks pattern by writing "Sept" and "6:30". Short attention span or a clue to something bigger? Hmmmmm.


Sidenote: The final crime was not only at Cherry (and supposed to be Maple), it was also in Presidio Heights. The one thing with Unabomber the FBI clued in quickly to was that names involving nature were key to his signature. These are either coincidences or separate killers with that same quirk in their signature. :cool:
 
At the very least you'd agree that it's a pretty weird thing in the annals of serial murder to involve a homemade hood like that? Hell, I bet even the S&M world goes store-bought.
I don't think it's that rare or outlandish as you think. Serial killers have very strong narcissistic symptoms, and they like to distinguish themselves from the pack. In this case, the pack is other serial killers. Going store bought might also be a clue, if in some way the hood or mask is identifiable and they know which stores sell these items. In a paranoid and narcissistic mind, it makes a lot of sense to make everything yourself. Especially for a guy who was as anti-technological as the Unabomber.
 
remember the registered nurse who was arrested and convicted of tampering with eye drops on the store shelves many years ago?
she put acid in them or something, out of malice or self-oathing, who knows.
she single handedly ushered in the 'tamper proof' packaging that is the standard today among personal hygiene products.
A lot of security and safety measures are put in place after things have gone terribly wrong.
 
I don't think it's that rare or outlandish as you think. Serial killers have very strong narcissistic symptoms, and they like to distinguish themselves from the pack. In this case, the pack is other serial killers. Going store bought might also be a clue, if in some way the hood or mask is identifiable and they know which stores sell these items. In a paranoid and narcissistic mind, it makes a lot of sense to make everything yourself. Especially for a guy who was as anti-technological as the Unabomber.

Not saying it's totally unique to Zodiac. But I've read a lot of true crime and a homemade hood is pretty damn unusual, compared to something like posing bodies or covering them up. So it's odd enough that it should add insight.

Yeah, store-bought might have been deemed a risk by Zodiac. Ted was found with a homemade hood when arrested. There's nothing to suggest he made it for the purpose of crime. So either it was somehow special in a way that he couldn't find at a store, or as you suggest, his anti-tech views inspired him to try his hand at sewing. Don't know he had any other handmade items of clothing. No matter what, it's still a box that Ted checks off in this case. Add it to him actually being a killer who wrote letters to newspapers, had knowledge of and interest in bombs, familiar with guns and hunting, expressed the desire to kill couples, created his own ciphers, spread his crimes across various jurisdictions, and used a symbol of a circle containing straight lines as part of his criminal identity.
 
The unabomber was a brilliant mathematician who wanted to see all technology along with the institutions that promote it destroyed.

Sucks, but the guy hadda point.


What point?
 
Here's an article on the Unabomber ciphers. He encrypted details of his bombings in personal journals.

Conclusion

Kaczyinski’s approach of combining a nomenclator with a stream cipher is nothing outstanding from a cryptographer’s point of view. Modern encryption methods, like AES or RSA, are by magnitudes more secure. However, Kaczyinski’s methods are among the most complex and most secure manual encryption systems (i.e., they were applied without a computer). Encrypting a whole journal in such a complex code is certainly unusual.

Quite different from Zodiac's. Ted's using numbers instead of symbols.

Unabomber-Nomenclator-2.png



The following image shows a decryption process (this means that addition instead of substraction is used). The ciphertext is “72 24 74 …”. It was encrypted with the key stream “47 74 64 …”. Adding the two sequences modulo 90 results in “29 8 48 60 …”, which is translated by the nomenclator to “I WILL HAVE …”.


Unabomber-Journal-Sample.png



If Ted is Zodiac then maybe there's something to be learned from his methods. If he's not, then I wonder what it would take to get him to try to crack the other killer's ciphers. Maybe an appeal to his vanity by pointing out how it'll draw attention to his manifesto. Or the shame of some psycho being crack-proof while everyone's reading Ted's personal thoughts. Hell, he's got the time on his hands. And if all else fails, insist that if he doesn't try then that means he did it! :D
 
For anyone wanting to see how the first code was cracked and the effort that's gone into attempts at cracking the subsequent ciphers...





Here's a tool if you wanna try to decipher the 340 yourself. :cool:
 
I had quite forgotten the Tylenol poisonings, crazy that they never caught the person.

Crazy that they never caught the zodiac or that he stopped
 
Is it even certain the cipher is legit and not just nonsense?

The video goes over two different ones he sent. One they decoded so he changed it the next time around. At the end of that video Cubo posted, the guy says it’s a possibility the one they never could decode possibly was just random characters to waste peoples time and distract. That video is pretty insane. I can’t image having a job to decode something like that.
 
The video goes over two different ones he sent. One they decoded so he changed it the next time around. At the end of that video Cubo posted, the guy says it’s a possibility the one they never could decode possibly was just random characters to waste peoples time and distract. That video is pretty insane. I can’t image having a job to decode something like that.
Cryptologists love that shit, they live to solve codes and such
 
Is it even certain the cipher is legit and not just nonsense?

Not certain at all. What does seem to be a fact is that if it's a substitution cipher like the first one, then he put another layer of encryption on it. So first you'd need to do something like shift columns or rows, rotate the text, rearrange all the text based on a certain number or numerical sequence, etc.

The deciphering tool I linked prior is pretty good, but probably not as capable as necessary. Some dude just designed his own for download. Haven't tried it. Sounds like it's kick-ass.

http://www.zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=81&t=4427

https://github.com/beldenge/Zenith

A curious poster's review:

Your solver is really amazing and the source code is very clean. Even unit tests are included, that's great! One can see how much work and care you put into the project. Thank you for publishing your project as open source.



Lots of people think the clues to read it are in this mailing. Some folks aren't even sure this card is legit.


Zodiac-my-name-card.jpg


Here's the previously sent 340 cipher.


340cipher.gif



The thinking is that in the cipher you can find "paradice" down the center vertically and "slaves" horizontally. And that the cipher should be divided into quadrants. In separate quadrants one should find "by fire", "by gun", "by rope", and "by knife". And from there you maybe rotate some of the text because when you look at the card, in one instance he writes "by" vertically and other three are horizontal. Also, that "sorry no cipher" written twice and crossed (peculiarly, written on the inside of the envelope) could also indicate quadrants and off-axis reading.

Independent of that, the two horizontal lines midway down on the outside edges have people thinking it should be separated by top/bottom half. Pretty sure I've speculation that it should be right/left, based on how you can kinda read "zodiac speaking" at the bottom. Bottom center there's his symbol. Immediately reading left to right you can see what looks like an anagram of "zodiac". Reading from that same spot right to left the "skpn" could be an abbreviated anagram of "speaking". Could be nothing, but it's awful coincidental placement. So maybe that shows how to divide it and which way to read it. Or maybe you combine both and the quadrant theory is correct.

If it's a matter of dividing into quadrants and then rotating text then no wonder it hasn't been solved. Same with having to guess a correct number or sequence for rewriting the entire message in a different order.
 
Hey @Graves. Mind if I tap your expertise?

Hartnell, the guy who survived Lake Berryessa, reported that Zodiac's hands were shaking. We all know that's a sign of nervousness. So I wonder why he'd still be nervous, this being his third attack. Or fourth, if you believe in Riverside.

He didn't sound shy when shooting people. Although the BRS survivor reported that the killer pulled up in his car, then left, then shortly came back and did the crime. Other than doing a quick run of the area to see if anyone else was around, the only other motive for that behavior that makes sense to me is that the killer was about to chicken-out.
 
@Job Interview

Here's some good reasoning why the Halloween card was legit Zodiac. The crux of it is that the card contains "by knife". The Lake Berryessa killer wrote "by knife" on the car door. That info was withheld to the press by the police, and not revealed publicly by the time the Halloween card was sent. At that point you either have to believe some impostor had amazing luck with wording or you believe the card came from the murderer at Berryessa. There's more, but to me the "by knife" is no coincidence.

https://www.zodiacciphers.com/zodiac-news/the-impostor-running-amok#comments
 
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