Zodiackillersite.com

rand wrote:


rand, Subject: The Minu+emen in the last line of the 408 Sun Apr 04, 2010 11:31 am

Zodiac's first cipher was sent in three parts to three different Bay Area papers. Here are the three parts of the cipher:
part 1: http://www.zodiackiller.com/VTHCipher.html
part 2: http://www.zodiackiller.com/VTHCipher.html
part 3: http://www.zodiackiller.com/ExaminerCipher.html

Zodiac said his identity (not name) would be known once police cracked the cipher. It wasn't. For forty years people have believed that Z lied about this. IMO, he didn't lie.
Notice that the last line of the cipher is not part of the message (it isn't translated).
When translated it reads: EBEORIETEMETHHPITI with the E coming from the last character of the second to last line.

Gibberish, right? That's what everyone has thought. But I believe that what Z did has not been understood. When it is, the last line, IMO, reads: THE MINU+EMEN with 5 extra symbols leftover that are not letters. When I say the last line reads, I mean the last line in the code part of the cipher, not the translation, which remains EBEORIETEMETHHPITI. Thus, Z's identity is, as he said, in the code or cipher itself. But the code had to be cracked first, as he said, to see this. The trick is this:

What you do is take the translated letters -- EBEORIETEMETHHPITI -- and work backwards: that is, find the equivalents in the cipher for the letters. Of course, working backwards like this will give you exactly what the Zodiac orignally wrote on the last line. But it will also give you some other things as well.

Why? Because there are other characters that could have been used to yield the EBEORIETEMETHHPITI translation.

Why? Because some letters have two or more characters associated with them. When this is done, VOILA!, you get an anagram for +HE MINUTEMEN (a plus sign is used for one of the T's) with six characters left over: BRMPII. (see below) All of the six characters are not letters, but rather shapes, e.g., V/+ ^. Thus, they cannot be used in the translation -- a clever way for Z to say that only 12 of the 18 characters have meaning -- the other five are filler to yield the rest of the 17-character line.
Thus,

OTEHTEIEEHET BRMPII (TRANSLATED LINE)
THEMINU+EMEN +^Q/> (CODE LINE)

The top line (which is the translation) is precisely the same as EBEORIETEMETHHPITI -- just in a different order (because THE MINUTEMEN was anagrammed)
So Z's identity was, IMO, revealed once the cipher was cracked.

Marshall wrote:I don't want to discuss those potential suspects, I'm just hoping someone who really understands statistics can tell me if this potential solution is likely, or unlikely, random.