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The Wellesley News (12-10-1959) - Wellesley College Digital ...

This link shows the big ad for the Mikado play in the Wellesley College paper for the December 10, 1959 show.

I was unable to get the picture you to come over here but maybe somebody else knows if you go to this link:

https://repository.wellesley.edu/cgi/vi ... ext=wcnews

In 1959 Ted Kaczynski participated in extensive testing using LSD at Harvard University. Kaczynski holds a bachelors degree from Harvard University. He graduated with a bachelor of arts in mathematics. In the bachelor of arts curriculum classes involving the arts are included. The Mikado was performed by the Harvard Players. They had about six performances of this play in one week in December 1959 right at Harvard University.

Excellent find Holmes 201. I had never been able to find proof that Ted K was exposed to The Mikado. This is proof, for the first time, that Ted was exposed to it and had an opportunity to see it. I would venture he did likely see it. Not only because it might have fulfilled a credit for a mandatory arts class. Ted K was in fact a fan of opera. He writes about his love for Wagner's Ring Cycle opera, he even made allusions to it in some of his Unabomber crimes and letters. Ted K wrote that some of the reasons he liked the Ring Cycle were because it emphasized that there is virtue and strength in being chaste, and also involved a struggle against modernity, themes which the Mikado also suggests in its own way. Ted K also played the tuba in HS, which I think is an instrument associated with Ko-KO, the Lord High Executioner (who is quoted by Zodiac).

Thanks for the find and thanks to Traveller1st for posting the images and newsprint.


NOTE: We don't know for sure if Ted K was exposed to LSD or any drugs at Harvard. He did participate in a study done by Dr. Henry Murray, who formerly worked for the OSS, and it is believed by most all who looked into this study that it was part of the CIA MK-ULTRA program. That larger program did include all kinds of mind control and drug experiments, including dosing people with LSD without their consent. That may or may not have been part of the Harvard study. What we do know for sure about the study that Ted participated in was that it was very abusive towards the participants, including verbal assaults and attacks, and disorienting lights and mirrors. Exactly what the already mentally fragile Ted K did not need.

My pleasure.

The past week two members, Anderson110 and Holmes201, made some interesting and I think important discoveries, and I have some comments on them.

Anderson110: (I find compelling) the connection between Kaczynski's academic work and the Zodiac's signature symbol, and his treatment and contextual use of the symbol in some of his communications.

Kaczynski did not publish a lot of articles while he was an academic. In the handful of papers he did publish, the vast majority of his work focused on functions defined on the Cartesian plane in real or complex space, with a particular emphasis on functions defined over the unit disc. An illustration of the unit disc on a Cartesian plane is *precisely* the Zodiac's calling card symbol.

AK Wilks: These are good points. Here are two images I got when I searched for Unit Discs - Unit Circles on a Cartesian Plane.





You are right. The subjects of years of Ted's research, the subjects of his PHD dissertation, do look almost identical to the Zodiac symbol.

In fact Ted has a history, if not obsession, with crossed lines inside circles. He drew one as his signature in a school yearbook, he studied them at college. they were the subject of his PHD dissertation and he drew one at a crime scene.



There are strong overlaps between Ted's field of study and the Zodiac case, but because his field of study is so complex and not understood well by lay people, it hasn't been explored much. Doug Oswell noted the strange similarity between the My Name Is Code and a formula line that appeared in a Ted K paper.



Kaczynski wrote that his theorem was proved by a "rather messy" lemma in his paper that was published in July 1969 in a mathematical journal. In November 1969 the Zodiac declared that it could get "rather messy" if the police tried to bluff him.

And to me, what remains very compelling is that there were exactly two twentieth century serial killers who made bomb threats, demanded their words appear in newspapers or innocents would die, threatened mass transit, wrote about killing or wanting to kill couples, used guns with flashlights attached, created hand made black hoods with rectangular eye slits, used over 20 of the same words and phrases, handwriting showed 3 stroke K's, 5 stroke M's, checkmark r's and felt compelled to draw at crime scenes circles with crossed lines inside the circle extending outwards. The symbol Ted drew at the Unabomber crime scene, in addition to being very similar to the Zodiac symbol, translates to the letter Z, as you can see on the translation chart. Also shown is the handmade flat top black hood with rectangular eye slits, very similar to the Zodiac hood.





The other interesting and important discovery this week was by Holmes201. He found out that in 1959, when Ted K was attending Harvard, a production of the Mikado occurred.




AK Wilks: Excellent find Holmes 201. I had never been able to find proof that Ted K was exposed to The Mikado. This is proof, for the first time, that Ted was exposed to it and had an opportunity to see it. I would venture he did likely see it. Not only because it might have fulfilled a credit for a mandatory arts class. Ted K was in fact a fan of opera. He writes about his love for Wagner's Ring Cycle opera, he even made allusions to it in some of his Unabomber crimes and letters. Ted K wrote that some of the reasons he liked the Ring Cycle were because it emphasized that there is virtue and strength in being chaste, and it also involved a violent struggle against modernity, themes which the Mikado also suggests in its own way. Ted K also played the tuba in HS, which I think is an instrument associated with Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner (who is quoted by Zodiac).

Perhaps it would be wise to look at the mathematics he used in relation to the unsolvable cryptography attributed to the Zodiac killer. If he used his math to craft the symbol for the zodiac it makes sense that he could've used the math to craft his puzzles.

On the bottom of the 304 Cypher he puts his mark. What if his mark is also the key to solving the 340 Cypher. Because of all the odd symbols could the whole key to it be that everything must be plotted on a Cartesian plane (named after French mathematician Rene Descartes, who formalized its use in mathematics) is defined by two perpendicular number lines: the x-axis, which is horizontal, and the y-axis, which is vertical. Using these axes, we can describe any point in the plane using an ordered pair of numbers. I think the Zodiac was boasting. He gave the clue right on the paper.

I have also noticed that both TK and Zodiac seem to have a fetish for dates. Can AK help me compile a list of Zodiac's obsessions for dates? For example. Chris Waits writes in his biography of TK:
"Yet, knowing Ted, he probably plotted some type of retaliation.
While studying the dates of the bombings and related letters compiled
by the FBI, I discovered an intriguing coincidence. Or was it
Ted's revenge.^ Starting in June 1993, a particular date appeared once,
then again and again.
The date was June 24.
My mind flashed back to a conversation Ted and I had about my
birthday back on June 24, 1980. I had given him a ride that day as I
drove home to clean up for a birthday supper.
June 24 didn't appear in his chronology until 1993, the same period
I began work in my gulch on a larger scale. After 1993, the date
appeared as follows...."

Yes I think Zodiac did have a thing for anniversaries and remembering specific dates. Almost every single point in the Zodiac case can and has been debated. But I think a majority of Zodiac researchers would agree that he seemed to recognize anniversaries of significant events.

Maybe others can chime in here and give more examples of other incidents of anniversaries recognized and/or weigh-in in favor of or against that theory. Just off the top of my head I can think of the following instances of Zodiac seeming to commemorate an anniversary:

1. Bates confession letter received on roughly one month anniversary of Bates murder.

2. The "Bates had to die" letters sent on the six-month anniversary of the Bates murder.

3. Letter to Belli sent on 12/20/69, the one-year anniversary of the murder of Faraday and Jensen on 12/20/68.

4. The "Peek through the Pines" card, generally thought to give clues about Donna Lass, sent on the one year anniversary of the Kathleen Johns attack and roughly six months after the disappearance of Donna Lass.

In regards to the Midwest family murders and college girl murders that I have looked at Zodiac and/or Kaczynski as possibly being a suspect in, there are a number of intriguing anniversaries that seem to be noted, MO matches, fathers connected to high tech businesses and/or politics. Or could they all just be coincidences?

9/19/66: Valerie Percy killed by hammer and long knife in suburban Chicago. Father ran high tech business Bell & Howell and is Republican candidate for US Senate.

9/27/66: Bricca family bound and killed by long knife. Father works for high tech business Monsanto as a chemical engineer.

11/28/66: Bates confession letter mailed. Murder took place by short knife, within one day of a fall holiday, Halloween, and just outside a college library. A morbid poem about stabbing a girl in a red dress is written on a wood surface and signed by the initials RH. Taunting letter sent.

6/25/68: Robison family killed by gun and hammer. ZODIUS writes to newspaper, gives inside details, demands name appear. Father works for business with a high tech plan plan to expand and computerize airport services and warehouses.

9/27/69: Hartnell and Shepard bound and attacked by long knife, Shepard killed. ZODIAC writes to newspaper, gives inside details, demands name appear.

11/28/69: Betsy Aardsma, wearing a red dress, is killed by a short knife inside the college library at Penn State University. Murder takes place within one day of a fall holiday, Thanksgiving. A morbid phrase about death is written onto a wood surface and signed by the initials RSK. Taunting letter sent. In November, Zodiac claims seven victims, but in December letter said next victims would be ninth and tenth. Was Aardsma number eight?

11/28/81: Joan Webster, Harvard University student, abducted and killed in Massachusetts. Father is former high ranking CIA official who at the time was a leading executive of high tech company IT&T.

9/27/82: Seven people killed in suburban Chicago by cyanide placed in Tylenol bottles. Caused huge losses to Johnson & Johnson, some newspapers dubbed the culprit the Tylenol Terrorist and speculated that the motive could be a hatred for a high tech company involved in the prescription and over-the-counter drug business.

So, setting aside what I see are the potential similarities and matches in victims, MO, weapons, settings, etc., do the repeating dates also suggest links between these crimes and an offender like Zodiac who recognizes anniversaries?

I don't know for sure. But there 365 days in a year. So is it pure chance that four crimes occurred the day or week of September 27? Three on September 27? Two involving binding and killing couples with a long knife and two involving suburban Chicago. Or that three murders involve November 28, all involving victims who are female college students, two at or in a college library?