San Francisco Examiner Oct. 23, 1969

[Seagull]

This article contains a little info I had never heard before. It says that Zodiac may have been picked up on Nob Hill at the Fairmont Hotel by Paul Stine.

And there is a bonus cipher courtesy of the Examiner!

[traveller1st]

Interesting Stuff, thanks for posting.

[Tahoe27]

Great photo of Officer Slaight and Bryan.

I know you cipher folks can solve this one quickly...

[traveller1st]

I dunno T,

It's not got a lot of characters and hardly any are repeated.

[glurk]

Exact 'solve' of the cipher using the 408 key (hehe...) is:

SODIACCALLL
IBRAFOURTHR
EETHREEONEO
HSEVENSEVEN

SODIAC CALL LIBRA FOUR THREE THREE ONE OH SEVEN SEVEN

(No Z was used in the 408 cipher, so I assume S was used here instead)

LIBRA, or L on the phone is 5, so I'll further assume it means area-code 415. So, we have 415-433-1077.
Which seems to be a law office at 50 Fremont St San Francisco, CA 94105

I'll let others do the detective work on that, but there is your solution

-glurk

[Seagull]

Hey great Glurk! Just one problem. I checked the 1969 Polk's Directory for that phone number and it isn't listed. Here's the link to the directory, the phone number indexing is at the back.

http://archive.org/details/polkssanfrancisc196970rlpo

Here's a screen capture of the part of the page the number where the number should be.

433-1077.PNG

[glurk]

Seagull-

I can only say that I stand by the 'solve' of that cipher. All that I did (and did by hand) was apply the 408 key to it and got the message:

SODIAC CALL LIBRA FOUR THREE THREE ONE OH SEVEN SEVEN

I'm probably wrong on the 415 area code part. I probably should not have even posted that, but I SAID it was an assumption. I do know that telephone exchanges used to be named in that way, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEnnsylvania_6-5000

I'm no detective, not even an amateur detective, that's not my forte. I don't really know what that phone number is or was. I'll let others do the work on that, as I said. But the solution using the 408 key is
as I said. Check it for yourself. Or let smithy, doranchak, or anyone else check it. I stand by that, it is correct.

-glurk

[smithy]

That solution's fine, glurk.

We've heard about this, right? That someone (one of the police? A cipher guy?) wrote to The Zodiac "in his own code", to challenge him to ring in?
I'm very sure I've heard this before.
It would seem this is the "challenge" itself - a good find I've not seen before - terrific.

[traveller1st]

Great stuff,

Deb for posting, Glurk for solving and Smithy for the info. Wonder what cipher cop looked like, I'm assuming 'entirle' different from the composite lol.

Here's the area with The Fairmont, Mason & Geary, Washington, Jackson and Nob Hill area highlighted for reference.

nobhillfairmont.jpg

[Seagull]

Seagull-

I can only say that I stand by the 'solve' of that cipher. All that I did (and did by hand) was apply the 408 key to it and got the message:

SODIAC CALL LIBRA FOUR THREE THREE ONE OH SEVEN SEVEN

I'm probably wrong on the 415 area code part. I probably should not have even posted that, but I SAID it was an assumption. I do know that telephone exchanges used to be named in that way, see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PEnnsylvania_6-5000

I'm no detective, not even an amateur detective, that's not my forte. I don't really know what that phone number is or was. I'll let others do the work on that, as I said. But the solution using the 408 key is
as I said. Check it for yourself. Or let smithy, doranchak, or anyone else check it. I stand by that, it is correct.

-glurk

Glurk, I did not mean to imply that I didn't think you solved the cipher correctly. I'm pretty sure you did do it correctly! I only meant to say that the phone number was not that of a law office in 1969 and that it seemed to be an unlisted number.

Yesterday was a strange day for me and my thoughts were kind of scattered.