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Alan Sharp
Detective Sergeant
Username: Ash
Post Number: 97
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 5:04 am: | 
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Okay so it worked this time
Moving the Zodiac discussion here as a far more appropriate place.
Erin, it is not known which of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen was shot first. You are correct that the Zodiac fired his gun into the back of the car first in order to make them exit and it is assumed that David was shot first because he was shot in the head at close range and his body was right next to the back wheel of the car whereas Betty Lou was some distance away and shot in the back as if she had run some distance before being brought down.
With the Ferrin/Mageau case, as I said he shot Mike Mageau first through the window of the car. Mageau leaped over into the back seat and the Zodiac then fired six bullets into Darlene Ferrin. He then left and walked almost all the way back to his car which was parked behind theres when Mageau made a noise, whereupon he turned, walked back to the car and fired two more bullets into each of them.
As for the DNA evidence, it is inconclusive. This test was carried out last year and showed that DNA taken from the stamp on one of the letters did not match with Allen's DNA sample. The stamp was from a letter sent over 30 years ago and can have become contaminated by all sorts of outside sources in the meantime, and indeed the scientists carrying out the test could only find four out of nine DNA markers in the sample. |
Monty
Inspector
Username: Monty
Post Number: 328
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 11:07 am: |
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Alan,
Ive never heard an explantation regarding why Mageau had on so many layers of clothing.
Your views?
Monty
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Alan Sharp
Detective Sergeant
Username: Ash
Post Number: 103
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 2:32 pm: |
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Monty
On the basis that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one, I'd go with Mike's own reason for the clothing. He said it was because he was embarrassed by how skinny he was and wanted to look bulkier. Mike and his twin brother David were plainly both smitten with Darlene, so it makes sense that he should come up with a plan to make himself look the hunkier of the two.
However there was definitely something odd going on that night. I would love to know what he told her on the phone to make her rush out and pick him up like that. I certainly don't think that everything that Mike told the police was entirely true, especially as he changed certain details of his story several times. |
Erin Sigler
Police Constable
Username: Rapunzel676
Post Number: 6
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 3:31 pm: |
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Sorry, Alan, was just going by what I had read. It would have been more logical for Zodiac to eliminate the male threat first, but as we know, they don't always behave in a logical fashion!
Something about Lee Allen just doesn't jibe with my impression of the Zodiac. That's not to say that the case built against him hasn't been impressive; he just doesn't "feel right" to me. I realize that's an incredibly subjective reason for disliking him, and I'm fully willing to accept him as the Zodiac, if the evidence should point us in that direction.
I've always thought that the key to solving this case was either to be found in Riverside (site of the Bates murder, for anyone who isn't well-versed in the case) or with Darlene Ferrin. She clearly knew him, and he took a big chance killing her. I feel like the solution is there, with Darlene, or with Cheri Jo, but I just can't put my finger on it. |
Alan Sharp
Detective Sergeant
Username: Ash
Post Number: 108
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Friday, October 17, 2003 - 3:42 pm: |
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To be honest there are a few things about Arthur Leigh Allen which don't add up, not least of which is the fact that he was bald which none of the witnesses ever said that the Zodiac was, and also that he was 6 feet 2 inches tall, and yet most of the witnesses described the Zodiac as being of average height, although they also described him as stocky and heavy set which Allen most certainly was. I think he is the best of the suspects but I wouldn't like to say that it was definitely him.
I agree with you though that I have always felt that Darlene Ferrin knew him. I think this is why he apparently pulled his car up alongside them then went away and came back 5 minutes later. I think he was deciding whether to risk an attack on someone who could identify him, and I also believe that this is why he returned to make absolutely sure she was dead when he heard the noise from the car. |
Monty
Inspector
Username: Monty
Post Number: 331
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Monday, October 20, 2003 - 3:37 am: |
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Alan,
Odd man....odd.
I agree with the Ferrin connection.
Thanks anyway.
Monty
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Shannon Christopher
Inspector
Username: Shannon
Post Number: 151
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Tuesday, October 21, 2003 - 12:55 am: |
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Alan, while most were interested in the case for the murders, I was interested in the case from a military intelligence point of view. I don't believe he ever expected the police to break his code.
I took it in raw form, decoded it, found the cipher to be non existent as far as a primer goes; meaning he randomly inserted letters and his own characters in place of the actual text with no logic to the puzzle. I also think he added the extra letters at the end of the 3rd letter for the first set of three only to make it appear symmetrical to confuse the police code breakers.
I think the second message which the police were unable to decode was a red herring meant to irritate them, and for the killer to enjoy watching the police try to solve a puzzle that has no answer.
Curious fact still remains: the killer was smart enough to devise the code, but not smart enough to know how to kill, or check a pulse once he had stabbed or shot his victims. With all the time in the world to kill them, he had to have one of the lowest kill ratios of any serial killer. But, he came back to make sure the one you mentioned was dead. Since he didn't use a similar tactic with the others, or confirm their deaths, it would lead one to believe that he did know this one and couldn’t risk her surviving.
Still a very strange case...
Shannon |
Thomas C. Wescott
Sergeant
Username: Tom_wescott
Post Number: 15
Registered: 4-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, October 22, 2003 - 3:15 pm: |
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Hello all,
In the case of Faraday/Jensen, Faraday appears to have been shot first. As for Allen being the best suspect, it should be remembered that the bloody fingerprint left in Stine's cab did not match Allen; Allen's handwriting (left or right) didn't match the letters; a palm print made on one of the Zodiac letters by its author was determined not to have been Allen's; and the DNA extracted from stamps of authenticated Zodiac letters was not Allen's. Therefore, forensics has exonerated. All that's left is a bunch of very interesting circumstancial evidence.
Yours truly,
Tom Wescott |
Dustin Gould
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Tuesday, November 11, 2003 - 11:17 pm: |
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It is interesting to note, that when an interview was conducted with Arthur Leigh Allen a few years before his death, his home had quite a collection of Zodiac-related objects in it. One of which, was a Zodiac watch he was wearing when photographed. Obviously not conclusive evidence of him being the Zodiac killer, but interesting nonetheless. |
Erin Sigler
Detective Sergeant
Username: Rapunzel676
Post Number: 121
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 2:20 am: |
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Shannon, I've always been interested in the ciphers myself. Do you think the letters following the "My name is" message actually mean anything? And what do you make of those that suggest that, based on his knowledge of codes, Zodiac had a military background? There are so many other clues pointing to a military background, but if his coding techniques were as rudimentary as you suggest, I'm not sure they can be used in support of such a conjecture. |
Shannon Christopher
Inspector
Username: Shannon
Post Number: 318
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 8:27 am: |
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Erin, if you are refering to the letters AEN and then the Zodiac's created lettering ending in the letters NAM I do believe they mean something only you need more of the same text to break the code which the Zodiac never provided.
You notice he asked first if the police have broken the second code, knowing full well the answer was no because there is no answer for the second code. I think he did that because the first code was broken in only a couple of days and he now wanted to "rub their nose in it" by not being able to break the second code as quickly.
Also, I think it was a mistake for the police to release the fact that they had broke the code so quickly. When the Allies broke the German code during WWII they kept it secret and even allowed one of their own cities to be bombed to fake out the Germans. In the end it paid off. I think the same would have happened with the Zodiac. If the police would have let him believe he was winning, they would have gathered much more information on him in the form of coded letters.
I dont think he had to be military. There were plenty of books available in the late 60's on code breaking that was done in WWII (thanks to the "Big Purple Machine" and Enigma code breakers publishing their stories) - (no this isn't classified so I dont have to kill you after telling you; thank you Maverick...)
When you are breaking a code the first thing you look for is the most repeated letters in the code which are usually substitutes for the letter "E" since it is the most common letter in the English language.
The second thing you look for in the letter is physical structure. You want to see if all the words/lines/paragraphs/pages are the same size (do all the words have the same number of letters, do the sentances have the same number of words, do the paragraphs have the same number of lines, do the pages have the same number of paragraphs.
The Zodiac killer had a basic knowledge of writing code in that he used more than one letter/symbol to represent the letter "E" and he made each of the pages the same size using "garbage" to fill in the last letters of the last line of the 3rd letter.
I don't think the Zodiac expected the law enforcement staff to have the same level of expertise that he (thought he) had in breaking the code since he had made it difficult by adding in a few tricks. I'm not sure if any of the police code breakers were ex military, but it might explain the ease with with they broke the code...
Shannon |
Alan Sharp
Inspector
Username: Ash
Post Number: 255
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 8:43 am: |
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Shannon
It wasn't the police who broke the code. It was a high-school history teacher called Donald Harden and his wife Betty who both had an amateur interest in code-breaking. They sent their solution to the police, who passed it on to Naval Intelligence, who confirmed that the solution was correct. |
Shannon Christopher
Inspector
Username: Shannon
Post Number: 319
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 1:56 pm: |
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Alan, WOW! Had no idea it was a high school teacher that broke the code. Only knew that it was broken within a few days. Did the papers say that it was a couple of amateurs that broke his code? If they did, can only imagine the fuel that added to the fire.
Shannon |
Shannon Christopher
Inspector
Username: Shannon
Post Number: 320
Registered: 9-2003
| | Posted on Wednesday, December 10, 2003 - 2:03 pm: |
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Erin, here is a link to a computer simulated copy of the 3 wheel "Enigma" machine used by the German intelligence community. It may help you to understand a bit about how cyphers work.
http://homepages.tesco.net/~andycarlson/enigma/enigma_j.html
Shannon |
Monty
Inspector
Username: Monty
Post Number: 499
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 8:06 am: |
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Posted before completion...sorry
(Message edited by monty on December 11, 2003)
Monty
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Monty
Inspector
Username: Monty
Post Number: 500
Registered: 3-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 8:10 am: |
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Shannon,
Yes, it was published. I dont think it would have pi$$ed him off. Only proved to him that the police hadnt a clue.
Just for interest, Harden had been a cryptographist(??) since boyhood. Amateur yes but almost a lifetime in cryptography would indicate some decent knowledge and experience.
Monty
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Erin Sigler
Detective Sergeant
Username: Rapunzel676
Post Number: 127
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Thursday, December 11, 2003 - 11:03 pm: |
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Fascinating stuff, Shannon, although I must confess I'm a bit out of my depth here. I don't think my spatial skills have ever been developed enough for ciphers to make much sense to me, although I still find them very interesting. The "AEN" clue is tantalizing, but some have wondered if it is just a plant, designed to throw the police. I'm not so sure. Of course, you'd think that by now someone would have been able to crack this code, as well as the other unsolved cipher. I can understand the difficulty with the "My name is" cipher, since as you indicated, it's very short and so there is no base of comparison for it, but the other is some 300 words long. Since it was accompanied by the "Dripping Pen" card, I have to wonder if something in that note contains the key to the solution.
It's not just the codes that could indicate a military background, although I'm not sure if a guy like Zodiac would have lasted long in such an arena. The "Wing Walker" boots, his disappearance into the Presidio following the Stine murder, his excellent marksmanship, even the way he dates his letters (day, month, year format)--all of these appear to point to at least some affiliation with the armed forces. Of course, like in the Ripper case, the leads point in every direction, and it's hard to know which ones matter and which ones don't.  |
M.Mc.
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 1:10 pm: |
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I believe that "the Zodiac" and the "Unabomber" were one in the same. Ted Kaczynski when he was younger looked much like the composite of the Zodiac. They both knew about making bombs, if you recall the Zodiac drew a bomb set up to take out a school bus full of kids. He never did make good on that threat because he later claimed the bomb was too huge to make. Then when the Unabomber started is terror his bombs were compact.
Note: Primetime on ABC showed an old talk show clip from the Zodiac era. The Zodiac had called in. He was enraged screaming over the phone how he was going to kill the kids. His voice though angry sounded much like Ted Kaczynski's voice to me. Most people forget the taxi driver that the Zodiac killed since most of his targets were couples. The Unabomber's targets seem to be in a more erratic pattern. However if you think about how erratic is it to go from couples to a taxi driver? It's just my point of view but I think it should be looked into more by other people. |
Eric Smith
Unregistered guest
| | Posted on Wednesday, February 18, 2004 - 3:37 am: |
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I found a website once (wish I could find it again), where a man claimed his dad was the Zodiac Killer. On the site, the man posts pictures of his dad next to the artist's sketches and confirmed Zodiac letters next to examples of his dad's handwriting. It was very compelling evidence. If I find it, I'll post a link. |
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