RedHanded - The Zodiac Killer: Part Three | #402

Episode Date: June 5, 2025

Who was The Zodiac? Did he kill Cheri Jo Bates? And how did three hobbyist cryptographers crack his ‘impossible’ code 50 years after it was written? These are just a few of the questions we answer in our final episode on The Zodiac Killer. Join us as we try to conclude the inconcludable, cold case that has haunted California for half a century.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Red Handed early and ad free. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple podcasts. Premium Blackjack Pro, where strategy meets top-tier gameplay. Drop in on the exciting Sugar Rush and Crazy Time slot games, or play the dazzling MGM Grand Emerald Nights, a slot experience that captures the magic of MGM. With so many games, it's time to make your move. Download the app and visit BedMGM Ontario today to experience the next level of gaming. Visit BedMGM.com for terms and conditions.

19 plus to wager, Ontario only. Please gamble responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact ConEx Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I'm John Robbins and joining me on How Do You Coke this week is the podcaster Hannah McGuire. Something might happen, like the other day I dropped a sandwich on the floor and I had to go and cry in the toilet for 10 minutes, but it wasn't really the mouth sandwich, it's all of the stuff that happens before. And because of the gap I now have, those things are easier than they were

before, but it's not fixed. But I get longer before the meltdown now. So that's How Do You Cope with me, John Robbins. Find us wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Lindsay Graham, the host of Wondries American History Tellers. In our latest series, at the turn of the 20th century, rapid industrialization, urbanization, and political corruption were ravaging America. But soon President Theodore Roosevelt and a diverse group of reformers known as progressives would fight back. Listen to American History Tellers on the Wondry app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Saruti.

I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red-Handed, where this week it is the concluding part of our series on the Zodiac. Yes, yes it is. Whether we will have any satisfying conclusions for you remains to be seen. But we will be getting into all of the various hoaxes from people pretending to be the masked killer, yet more ciphers, of course, more desperate narcissism, why we think the zodiac killed, why we think he stopped, and who the key suspects are in this decades old mystery.

So let's get on with it. At the end of last week's episode, we teased you with the arrival of a second cipher at the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle, one that would take over 50 years to solve. Arriving on the 8th of November, 1969, the cipher came with that confusing dripping pen postcard and another, even more, cringe message to print the cipher in the papers or else. Do you still not get the pen joke? Joke is a strong word.

If we're saying joke is a strong word, then yes, yes, I do get it. Okay, great. Just checking. All I was thinking when you said that was when we were at school there was that quote-unquote joke where everybody should be like oh have you been on penisland.com? Yeah do you want to be in the Pen15 club? That's the one we had. Desperate for approval and acceptance. Like yeah! And they just write penis on your hand. But we're not here to talk about our teenage trauma.

We're here to talk about a stupid masked killer. I was guested on a podcast the other day and I had to talk about school and I was amazed by how much I have just repressed. Give it that way. It's best, best, push it down. Just push it down. I mean, I had quite successfully, but now it's all come to the surface again, which is just the...

God damn you, Robbins! I know! Anyway, stay tuned for that episode. Yes, exactly. Anyway, cipher, new cipher, gets sent in. And at the time, it felt like the same old zodiac. It was another letter with taunting in it and another cipher that surely would be easily solved. After all, the last one had been cracked by a teacher

and his wife in their kitchen. And you just know that the zodiac, the like peak pinnacle of a narcissist that he is, absolutely would have detested the fact that his so-called uncrackable cipher was just cracked by these two Joe Schmoes. Not to put them down, but you know, that he will have seen them as far beneath him. Oh, 100%. Not exactly, you know, Moriarty to Sherlock Holmes. You are correct. And naturally, back when Donald and Betty Harden cracked

the Zodiac's first effort, the press had a field day. And as we mentioned last week, Donald himself made several statements to the papers saying that he didn't think the Zodiac was very smart. I love that. Love that. That's my favourite bit about this whole case. And he's a teacher, he knows smart. So that ridicule left the zodiac with a point to prove. His favourite thing. As such, the new 340 character cipher, which would become known as the Z340, was substantially more complex than his first attempt. So just in case anyone is confused as to why all of the ciphers we've talked about, Z, blah, blah, various numbers, it's because of the number of characters

that are in that particular cipher. Because I was like, why is there Z340, Z60, Z like 18? They're not the right ones, but you know what I mean? Like why is it so out of order? And I thought, has he literally sent 360 ciphers? No, no, no. I see. It's because of the number of characters in said cipher. It was so complicated that for a long, long time Z340 was considered uncrackable. Once again, it was a substitution cipher where all of the letters of the alphabet were substituted by a symbol but this time the zodiac had made an even

bigger effort to block the use of frequency analysis which was what had allowed Donald and Betty to crack his original cipher. In that one he'd used 54 symbols to represent the 26 letters of the alphabet, which is already too many. And this time, there's even more, he used 63 symbols. So when investigators tried out a little frequency analysis, the process that we described in the first episode in depth, where you basically link frequently used letters to frequently used symbols in the code, it just came back with a jumble of letters. And the reason this happened is because it turned out to make the cipher even harder

to crack. The zodiac had used another classic tool of codes and cryptography. Transposition. And this is basically where the order of the letters in the message are scrambled in a methodical way. And the wine becomes the blood of Christ. Sure. And basically, it must be read back in a very specific order for them to make sense. So you write your message out, you pick all your symbols to like match up to the letter, the various letters, and obviously, because there's 63 representing 26, there are multiple symbols representing the same letter to make things even more confusing. You write it all out and then you scramble it, but in a methodical way. So it would be like, maybe it would be a really simple example would be that

you just do it all backwards. So the whole message is backwards. That would be a really simple form of transposition. So when you figure out what the method has been to scramble it, you unscramble it. So the point is that it can't just be a random scrambling. There has to be a system to it. Because if it's just a random scrambling, it's just a fucking symbol anagram. That's not cryptography. It's got to be a method. So it could be say, take number one and shift it down three and move it across two columns. But you have to do that to every letter then. So that's how someone would crack it. But they'd have to know that that was your method in order to be able to crack it.

I want to go home. So yeah, let's stick with the idea that it's all written backwards, right? That would be a very, very simple transposition. I'm sure, and you're explaining it very clearly. I'm just thick. No, it's really complicated. And basically the whole point is that you still want to make it fit within that grid. You've got it all in symbols, but it would only make sense if the reader knew how the message had been encrypted. That's the key thing. Without that key, a transposed message is just unsolvable. Like it's, it's going to be impossible for you or not impossible

because somebody else do it. Definitely impossible for me. It's going to be very, very difficult for you to unscramble the letters. Got it. So yes, without any clue as to the method that he'd used, the cipher was proving very difficult to figure out. However, despite all the odds, the uncrackable cipher was eventually solved on the 5th of December 2020. Just took a pandemic and a year of being inside. And once again, the cipher was not cracked by law enforcement, but this time by a trio

of cryptographers working in their spare time. But we'll come back to that later. Before we get onto how the Magnificent Three did it, we've got 50 years to cover and 50 years of the evolution and obsession with the zodiac. So let's talk about his letters. Because the Z340 marked significant change in the zodiac's MO. If anything is clear in this incredibly murky case, it's what the zodiac wanted. He wanted to be noticed, he wanted to be feared, and he wanted to be revered.

And the Z340 cipher shows us that the Zodiac realized that he could have all three of those things without actually getting his hands dirty. Yeah. I wonder if he just sat home and be like, oh, I didn't actually have to do any of that. I could have just maybe done one killing and then made some puzzles. Yeah, that's basically the rest of this episode because it worked. And I think probably one of the most interesting things about the Zodiac Killer is how he loomed so large in the public consciousness back then, for so long.

Despite his definitive foreshore last kill being way, way back in 1969, his psychological reign of terror, particularly in San Francisco, continued well into the mid-70s. And for the remainder of that time, he basically enjoyed public fear status by swapping his diving knives and pistols for pen and paper. Mightier than the sword indeed. So very much less Zodiac killer and much more Zodiac cryptic pen pal. And we can hear the Zodiac obsessives amongst you screaming through the podcast airwaves, but what about Kathleen Johns? What about Sherry Jo Bates? What about the 37 victims

he claimed? We hear you and we've got an answer for you. Yes, there are several murders that came both before and after the Zodiac's official confirmed kills that have been linked to the mystery murderer. And in some cases, the Zodiac even took credit for those deaths himself. However, in news that will shock absolutely no one, the Zodiac loved taking credit for murders that he did not commit. Inspired by the hit, wonder podcast, Against the Odds, comes the gripping guidebook, How to Survive Against the Odds, Tales and Tips for Animal Attacks and Natural Disasters. This might just be the most important book you'll ever read. Go inside life or death situations where everyday people survived nature's most extreme scenarios.

And learn how you can too. In these tales, you'll hear about the grit, willpower, and know-how needed to endure shipwrecks, alligator attacks, earthquakes, and more. You'll learn from experts, including top doctors, about what happens to your body and mind in life-threatening situations. Plus, important tips on what to do, and equally important, what not to do when faced with a situation that is truly against the odds. Go to www.survivalguidebook.com to get your copy of How to Survive Against the Odds Today, or visit your favorite bookstore.

At the turn of the 20th century, rapid industrialization, urbanization, and political corruption were ravaging America. But soon President Theodore Roosevelt and a diverse group of reformers known as progressives would fight back. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondry's podcast, American History Tellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, we explore the progressive Era, which came to be defined by Teddy Roosevelt and others who believed in a strong, active government that worked on behalf of all Americans

rather than the privileged few. As the United States entered the 20th century, these progressives hoped to steer the nation in a bold new direction, to launch an era of reform to restore power to the people. Follow American history tellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple podcasts or Spotify. Start your free trial today. And a big reason that people question whether he really killed again after the murder of

taxi driver Paul Stein is that these cases lacked the drama that the Zodiac seemed to be enjoying. As we saw with the attack at Lake Berryessa, the Zodiac was becoming more and more theatrical as the murders went on. He upped the risk, he created outfits, left calling cards written on car doors, even cut off pieces of clothing as trophies to taunt the police with. Now of course, it is absolutely conceivable that the Zodiac did indeed kill again after Paul Stein. I'm not saying that he definitely didn't. But if he did, then he massively

dialed down the theatrics. And look, maybe he did. After all, he'd had a very, very close shave with the taxicab killing. Maybe he decided to play it safe. But it's hard to say for sure. Also, if you remember with the Paul Stein case, he does provide the police with evidence by giving them clippings of Paul's shirt to prove that he was the killer. He doesn't do that again, even with the murders that he claims. So I don't know, it's very very

difficult to say for certain but we will come back to this later. And in this episode we will also talk about Kathleen Johns and Cherry Jo Bates but for now let's get back to talking about what we know was definitely the work of the Zodiac. Between November 1969 and January 1974, the Zodiac sent a total of 11 letters. The majority of these were addressed to the San Francisco Chronicle, some just to editor, and some directly to long-serving investigative journalist Paul Avery. All but one of these letters were sent between 1969 and 71, a point that we will come back to, so keep it.

The first of these 11 letters turned up just one day after the dripping pen card, which contained the Z340 cipher and a piece of Paul Stein's shirt. This new letter also contained another piece of Paul Stein's shirt along with one of the longest and most substantial notes that the Zodiac ever penned. Known as the Bus Bomb Letter, the note contained a long and rambling explanation of how the Zodiac planned on blowing up a bus with what he referred to as a death machine along with a pretty crude drawing of some kind of makeshift bomb. The letter, like those before it, also contained a litany of trademark spelling mistakes and several jives at police, who the Zodiac referred

to as pigs. Like the majority of the Zodiac's communications, the letter was mostly self-indulgent ramblings, but there were a few choice pieces of information that make this letter particularly significant. First and foremost, the Zodiac claimed that the fingerprints the police had taken from Paul Stein's taxi were not his. According to the Zodiac he'd had the clever idea of pouring some modelling glue over his fingers before he murdered Paul Stein. Now if this was true it would have left a smooth coating over his fingers for a few days and therefore made it unable for him to leave any

prints behind. Though the question does need to be asked, why would you do that and why would you not just wear gloves? It's fun. You're right, it is fun. We've all done it. Oh, I wouldn't dream of pretending I didn't pour PVA glue all over my hands to peel it off. But it really does just seem like this guy is so desperate to be seen as some sort of super smart fucking innovator.

Yeah, innovative supervillain. That's what he wants. He wants everybody to think he's so fucking smart. He's thought of everything. But for us, this point that he makes in this letter is significant because him saying that they're not his prints in Paul Stein's car makes me think that they were probably definitely the Zodiac's Prince. Hear me out.

Because if he had legitimately hidden his Prince, then he wouldn't have bothered to wipe down the car after attacking Stein. And if you remember those teenagers that saw him kill Paul, or at least, you know, the aftermath of him killing Paul, all said that they saw the man wiping down the passenger side and the driver's side before he left. Why would you do that if you had modelling glue all over your hands? Hmm. And if the Zodiac was genuinely confident that the prints the police had found in that

taxi cab were not his, which you know they well could have not been because it's a fucking taxi. Yeah right. Then those prints would have been fantastically useful as a red herring for him to hide behind. As a killer what more could you ask for than fingerprints that are not yours that lead the police down a fucking wild goose chase. It would have been actively beneficial for the Zodiac if the police thought that his prints were the ones that they had found, but actually happened to be somebody else's.

So it seems weird that the moment the police found these prints in the car, the Zodiac was so keen to discredit them. Why would you discredit them if they're not yours? You would let the police believe that they were yours while they looked for somebody else or while they matched it to somebody else. Heather Yeah, that does seem... Emma Stupid. Heather Yes.

Emma Narcissistic. Another important detail from this letter is the Zodiac's flippant claim that he had actually spoken to the police on the night of Paul Stein's murder. If you can, cast your mind all the way back to last week when we told you to put a really big pin in the question, how was an officer able to make a detailed description of a man they briefly drove past in the dark, which is what happened? Well, after the incident, the San Francisco Police Department did admit that the description of Paul Stein's attacker

that went out on the radio was bungled. We know for a fact that the description the teenagers gave on the phone to the call handler was of a man dressed in black. However, by the time the call went out to the police radios in the area, somewhere in the chain of command there'd been a bit of a mix-up, actually a lot of a mix-up, and the description that had been rung in was not the one that was sent out. The description given to the police heading to the scene was for a black man, not a man wearing black. I was like, obviously listening to other people talking about this case.

And there were people who were like, Oh, a call went out for an African American man when it should have been a white man. I was like, how the fuck did that confusion happen? I was like, they just didn't want to say that if they had teenagers had called in and said it was a black shirt and the operator was like, it was a black man. And I was like, it's not offensive to say the word black and also the story doesn't make sense if you don't say that. Give me strength. Anyway, according to the Zodiac's letter, the police car didn't just drive past him,

as they had claimed. It actually stopped and asked him for help. Great. Fantastic. Now look, if the police, because of the bungled communication from the dispatcher, were indeed looking for a black man and not a man dressed in black, even though he wasn't, he was just wearing dark clothes, then it is pretty conceivable that the police could have stopped this man, asked him if he'd seen anything, and he know, he's not like standing out as a suspect for him. But in the letter, the Zodiac said that the two officers waved him over to their car and asked if he'd seen anything suspicious. The Zodiac told them that he'd seen a man waving a gun around a few blocks down the road. And so the police sped

off in that direction that the Zodiac had pointed out to them. With a raging bone in her doubt. Oh my god he would have loved this. Absolutely loved it. Now look this situation that he claims happened has never officially been confirmed. At least from what we've seen. So the idea that the officers on the night actually spoke to a barrel-chested man wearing a blue windbreaker as they later described. We don't know if they actually spoke to him or whether they just saw

this guy but it does make it kind of believable because like you said at the start how did they give such a detailed description of a man they just saw as they drove past him in the dark? It does make more sense that they had some sort of communication with him and that's how they were able to give such a good description of this man. And it's not just us who think so. Today it is pretty much taken for granted that the police did indeed speak to the Zodiac and that they came within a few centimetres of nabbing their guy. And this incredibly close call could explain the sudden stop in attacks following Paul

Stein. Despite the bragging for the Zodiac, it may have just been a bit too close for comfort. Following the bus bomb letter on the 9th November came one of the two letters that wasn't sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. Received on the 20th December 1969, a letter arrived at the home of lawyer Melvin Belli. Why him? We haven't met him yet. I'm gonna tell you. On the 22nd of October, so a couple of months before, Belli had appeared on television conducting an interview with an anonymous caller who claimed to be the

Zodiac. The caller had rung Oakland police demanding a TV interview with F. Lee Bailey, a superstar lawyer, one who a few decades later would go on to represent O.J. Simpson himself. Unfortunately, Bailey wasn't available. I love that. I'm like, what was Bailey? I'm not saying he should have like obviously bent over to this person's demands, but I'm like, what was Bailey? I'm not saying he should have like, obviously bent over to this person's demands, but I'm like, oh, the Zodiac wants to speak to you on TV, live on TV. And he's like, I'm actually unavailable. I would love to know what he was doing. Yeah. It's such a flex actually. It really is. So as so often happens in TV world happened to us last week. He was replaced with Melvin Belli, the second best option, who was famous for representing

the man who shot Lee Harvey Oswald. It's not a bad second best option. It's really not. Melvin Belli went on the air at 6.30 and over the next few hours, the mystery caller rang in multiple times. Each time he had a brief but inflammatory conversation with Belly and then hung up. The caller begged Belly for help and said that his name was Sam and that he was scared of the gas chamber. And then he arranged to meet up on live TV.

And look, if that sounds pretty thrilling, you can do a deeper dive into that if you so wish. You can find the whole thing on YouTube. But to be totally honest, it's just not worth it. Because the whole thing was clearly a hoax. This just wasn't the zodiac's style. Begging, giving information that could lead to his capture, and generally looking weak and putting himself in a vulnerable position, it just doesn't match up. It was a complete odds with every piece of communication before and after. A recording of the caller's voice was even played to Brian Hartnell,

the man who had survived the Lake Berryessa attack, and the two police dispatchers who'd received calls from the Zodiac. And none of them thought that the caller was their man. And the real Zodiac knew it too. Because of course, Mr. Zodiac, ever the narcissist, was of course at home watching all of this unravel. Probably with another big fat boner. And yeah, look, he couldn't let it go. He actually sent a mocking letter directly to Melvin Belly's door just before Christmas.

And in this message the real zodiac wished Belly a happy Christmas and facetiously asked for help. The Zodiac told Belly that he was worried that he would kill kids if Belly didn't step in. But unlike the fake Zodiac who'd called in to Channel 7, the real Zodiac didn't leave any way of getting in contact. It most certainly was not a serious plea for help from a man desperate to stop. It's just a taunt.

And the other interesting thing about that letter to the belly, and again, people are just trying to overanalyze this because there's so much communication, which you rarely get in cases like this. So I do understand. But in that letter to belly, the Zodiac says, happy Christmas. And so everyone became convinced that he must be British because he didn't say Merry Christmas. Is that a thing? No. I read that and I was trying to think do we Brits say happy Christmas? No I say Merry

Christmas. Yeah so I was confused about that but I thought Merry Christmas is like the traditional thing. But, ah, Americans say happy holidays. Yeah, they do. They do. That's what I did think. So it's the Christmas bit, not the okay. Maybe. But in the 70s? I don't think in the 70s that would have been a thing. Oh, sorry, 69, 69. Yeah, because it's like a PC thing, isn't it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I don't think then it would have been a thing. Have a great Kwanzaa. Which is just like no one in Africa celebrates Kwanzaa. So yeah, I do think it wouldn't have been the case then. So anyway, I just saw some people talking about it, but I don't know, I've never come across that. If a Brit said Merry Christmas to me, I wouldn't be surprised if I say Merry Christmas,

because then you don't say Happy Christmas, Happy New Year, you say Merry Christmas, Happy New Year. Yeah, I don't say Happy Christmas. It feels gross. It does. So there you go. From the horse's mouth.

So after this between that December 1969 and then March 1971 The zodiac wrote another eight letters, seven of which the San Francisco Chronicle and then one to the Los Angeles Times. These letters are all vague and rambling, mostly nonsense, but they do contain several key pieces of evidence and information that we do need to take you through. Firstly, throughout the letters the zodiac signs off his messages with a number that steadily rises from over 10 to 30, a suggestion that he is taking more victims. In these letters, the Zodiac also repeatedly mentions that he is killing in order to take slaves in the afterlife. The Zodiac maintains this as his motivation across all of his communication. To this day it's still

unclear whether that's what he actually believed or just something he came up with to sound creepy. Some of the letters also contained maps, clues, or codes that suggested locations in the California mountains, but they didn't lead to anything. And this is peak California serial killer season. On top of his self-reported climbing body count, the Zodiac claimed responsibility for the brief abduction of a woman called Kathleen Johns. Kathleen was stopped on the 22nd of March 1970 while driving

with her baby daughter near Modesto, California. A man flashed his headlight at her until she pulled over. It's the 70s, I'm like, I should pull over, over, like, don't fucking pull over. But she does. And the man gets out the car and tells her that her rear wheel has come loose and he offered to tighten it up. But in actual fact, the man loosened Kathleen's wheel because as she drove away, it fell off the car. The man then kindly offered Kathleen a lift to find help,

which given that she was stranded out in the middle of nowhere with her baby daughter she accepted. But it soon became clear that this man wasn't on his way to the closest payphone. Instead he drove around for over an hour threatening to kill Kathleen and her daughter. Kathleen, absolutely terrified and desperate, managed to open the car door and clutching her baby daughter, threw herself out of the moving car. She hit the ground and somehow managed to drag herself into a nearby ditch where she hid, praying that the man would just give up and drive on. When Kathleen eventually crawled back out onto the road, she found her car. It had been torched.

The Zodiac claimed responsibility for this after the press reported that Kathleen had identified her driver as resembling sketches of the Zodiac killer. But it's never been conclusively determined either way. But it's never been conclusively determined either way. The fact that I cannot, do not know how to change a tire haunts me. If that... It's happened to me twice in my life where I've got a flat and I've just had to wait for someone to stop and help me. Yeah.

Oh my god, it's absolutely terrifying. It's a skill I do not have. Can you go to some sort of like car school, car weekend? The thing is, I'm sure I could, however, it's, you know, the like trope of like, if you're a woman and you go into a garage, they're going to sell you like premium air. Sure, sure, sure. And just assume you don't know anything. Yeah.

And it's, you know, it's really intimidating. Yeah. Oh my God. That's one of the main reasons I don't want to learn to drive. And I am very lucky that the garage opposite my house, like they're all really nice blokes and because they see me every day, they can't rip me off that much because I see them every single day. But it has happened to me

a few times where I've gone to the garage and they've told me that I need loads of stuff and then very embarrassingly, Frank, my stepdad has insisted on ringing them and telling them that I don't need new brake pads. Oh my God. Look man, you've got to take the love where you can get it. I know. Sometimes someone's just gotta be looking out for you. But actually my current car doesn't have a spare tire, so. Oh. Some cars don't. Living on the edge.

But your spare tire is only ever supposed to be enough to get you to a garage anyway. Oh really? It's not a total replacement. Why? I think because actual real tires, proper tires are really, really heavy. So like it's just like a spare one just to get you there and then they replace it all properly. But also what the fuck do I know? But it's not a proper tire. It's just enough to get you to a garage. So there you go. I didn't know that. But yeah, my current car doesn't have one. It just has this like little

spray kit that's like supposed to mend the puncture enough again to get you into a garage. So let's get back to these letters as well as new claims made in them. The zodiac's flurry of letters also contained more substitution ciphers made up of the symbols like before. The first known as the Z13 is a 13 character cipher that the zodiac claimed would reveal his name. But, even I know, there are more letters than 13 in the world. 13 characters is way too short to be solved with frequency analysis.

And without a key, it's basically useless. The second cipher is 32 characters long, and the zodiac claimed that that one would reveal the location of a bomb. Again, 32 is too short to be solved with frequency analysis, and yet again without a key is complete trash. A lot of cryptographers think that the Zodiac knew that these ciphers couldn't be solved. He might not have even used any kind of replicable technique to create them, which means there may have been no rhyme or reason to them at all, which does make them literally impossible

to crack because there's nothing to find. And if that is true, which well could be, then they're not really codes. They're not really ciphers. They may possibly reveal his name is 13 characters long and maybe the location of the bomb was 32 characters long. But even that could be a bit for a red herring. I don't see how it could be of any use to anybody at all. Now among all of this, one letter has caused more debate, more intrigue and more mystery than any other.

It was sent to the Los Angeles Times on the 13th March 1971. It came in response to an article by San Francisco Chronicle journalist Paul Avery, who suggested that the Zodiac may have been responsible for the 1966 murder of 18-year-old college student Cherry Jo Bates. Cherry Jo was a student at Riverside College, a university on the very edge of Greater Los Angeles, and about 400 miles away from Vallejo, the Zodiac's likely home city. On the 30th of October 1966, Cherry Jo Bates attended two church services with her dad. And two seems like a lot, but it's really not that unusual for Catholics.

And 30th of October, I was going to say, you've got to get them in. That's something, isn't it? Before the veil thins on the 31st. Exactly. So I'm not surprised. Get your pre-Halloween blessings in. Exactly. Cherry Jo and her dad Joseph lived together on their own. Her mum had moved out a year before and her brother was in the Navy. Oh, cardinal sin. Maybe that's why her dad's going to church so much. Won't be allowed to take the Eucharist, that's for sure. The divorce, right? Not the Navy. Well, yeah, of course. I was going to make some Navy gay joke, but it's beneath me. According to her friends and her family, Cherry Jo was a hardworking, relatively well behaved 18-year-old.

She wanted to work as an air stewardess and was studying on the weekends to make that happen and that's why on the 30th of October Cherry Jo didn't go with her dad to the beach she stayed at home to study. At around 3 p.m. after an afternoon by the water Cherry Jo's dad Joseph called the home phone to invite Cherry Jo to dinner with some family friends but the line was busy. Joseph tried again two hours later at around 5pm and the line was busy again, so he headed home to see what was going on. When he got there, Joseph found a note. It read, Dad went to RCC Library.

It seemed to explain almost everything, except for why the line had been busy. But Joseph didn't have long to ponder over this thought because as soon as he put the phone back down, it rang. It was Cherry Jo's friend, Stephanie. They had in fact made plans to meet at the library, like the note said, but Stephanie couldn't make it and she was ringing Cherry Jo's home phone to try and let her know. As remember, this is the 60s and bailing on plants is a little bit more complicated than it is now.

So Joseph let Stephanie know that Cherry Joe wasn't there. And then he decided to go ahead and leave for dinner. When he returned at about midnight, his daughter still wasn't home. Wasn't that unusual for Cherry Joe? So he waited until the morning to phone Stephanie to ask if Cherry Joe had stayed over at hers. When Stephanie said no, Joseph Bates called the police. Cherry Joe Bates' body was found at 6am the next day by Riverside

Community College groundskeepers. Looking at the scene and talking to witnesses at the college library, this is what the police think happened. At some point around 7 p.m. Cherry Jo left the library and walked out to her car, only to find that it wouldn't start. The police found that several wires had been pulled from her engine and it looked deliberate. There's no way to do that by accident. Even I know that. And it would have been a lot easier then, like cars then were a bit more like Lego engines.

Yeah. Can you hotwire a modern car? You can. It's a lot more difficult. But in terms of like, if you lift up the bonnet of a car in 1969, it's very obvious what everything does whereas now they're much more complicated. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And probably a lot more anti-theft. We were talking the other day about what we could do about all of the spate of like phone snatchings in the UK, in London predominantly.

And I was like, why hasn't anybody invented just like a phone case that you pick it up, you pick your phone up and you immediately have to put it to your face, facial recognition. All right. It's you. No, no problem. But if it's not your face, it zaps you. And you drop the phone.

Taser phone. Now obviously you can't ask other people to pick your phone up because they're going to get tasered. But, blah, blah, maybe you could just turn it on. Maybe you could enable it when you leave a building, when you go out into public. Enable taser mode. And then case on, pick it up, look at your face. Okay. You can use it. Someone else grabs it. They look at it, tasered. But then I guess like, they're not gonna look at it though. They're not gonna look at it straight away. I knew there was a hole in there somewhere.

From experience they just run off. All right, back to the drawing board. Back to the drawing board I go. According to footprints that police found, it looked as if after finding herself stranded, Cherry Jo walked back towards the college with a man wearing a size 8 to 10 shoe. Which is not actually that big. I'm a size 9 in the US. Oh really? Yeah. Oh okay. Do they also go up in, they also go up then singularly, so 8, 9, 10. So like, that's quite a big difference. Can't they tell between an 8 and a 10? I know but yeah not not like big giant man foot.

According to these footprints, Cherry Jo had accompanied him for a little bit and then suddenly Cherry Jo was dragged down a side alley where this mystery man attacked her and Cherry Jo fought back. She defended herself so violently that she ended up with bits of this man's skin and blood under her nails. The ground was so churned up that it looked as though it had been ploughed. And she even managed to rip off the man's Timex watch. And look, what happened to Cherry Jo is absolutely horrific, but like, good for her. She fucking fucked shit up.

She was not going to go down without a fight. And I think as horrifying and terrifying as all of this is, yeah, you're just like, good for you girl. Yeah. Yeah. I think we all hope that we would do that in that situation. Yeah. But sadly, Cherry Joe was eventually overpowered by the man, stabbed twice in the chest and left to die in the dirt. The ocean is vast, beautiful and lawless. I'm Ian Urbina back with an all new season of the Outlaw Ocean. The stories we bring you this season are literally life or death. We look into the shocking prevalence of forced labor.

Mine boggling over fishing. Migrants hunted and captured. The outlaw ocean takes you where others won't. Available on CBC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts. In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant starts firing at him. And the suspect, he has been identified as Luigi Niccolas Mangione, became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history. I was meant to sow terror. He's awoking the people to a true issue. Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple podcasts. Chary Jo's murder was never solved. The local police concluded that her car had been deliberately tampered with, and her attacker

almost certainly offered to help Chary Jo get home. Her murder made national headlines, but nobody had seen anything. Then, a month after Cherry Jo's murder, on the 29th of November, Riverside PD and a local newspaper received an identical, typewritten letter in the mail. It said, She was young and beautiful, but now she is battered and dead. She is not the first and she will not be the last. I lay awake thinking about my next victim. And I say that because it's spelled victim, not victim.

I think what makes me think that his misspellings are deliberate is that they're not common mistakes like it's not things that are actually hard. Yeah it's not a word that is pronounced like that and you're misspelling it. Nobody says victim. No. So how are you thinking it's spelled victim? I could understand if it was EM, victim, but victim. The letter after the misspelling, went on to describe how Cherry Jo hadn't put up a struggle, which we know is categorically not true. But it did seem to confirm the police's theory that Cherry Jo's attacker had tampered with her car and then offered her a lift home. Which does feel very similar to what happened to Kathleen Jobs.

Yeah. Which does feel very similar to what happened to Kathleen Jobs. Yeah. According to the author, he walked away from the library towards his car. And then the writer went on to describe exactly how he allegedly killed Cherry Jo. And how warm and firm her breasts felt under his hand. According to this anonymous letter writer, his motivation for Cherry Joe's murder had been all of the quote, brush-offs she'd given him over the years. I don't know. I just don't necessarily buy that it's the Zodiac. I don't think so. It's so not like anything he's done. No, but let's take a little more of a look because five months later, three more letters arrived.

The first, which went to the home of Cherry Jo's father, Joseph, said the following, She had to die. There will be more. The other letters arrived at the same local newspaper as before, and also the Riverside PD. They both read similarly. Bates had to die. There will be more. And interestingly at the bottom of both letters was a small squiggle that looked either like the number 2 or maybe a Z. Now obviously that got people very excited because if it's a Z, Z for Zodiac. That's not how he signs off though. Yeah.

Now when this potential link was sent to Paul Avery at the San Francisco Chronicle, this Z and the obvious similarities between the typed up letter and the letter from the Zodiac were considered a breakthrough moment. And by similarities, I guess they just mean taunting the police and the fact that there is a letter. Now let's talk a little bit about Paul Avery himself. And by similarities, I guess they just mean taunting the police and the fact that there is a letter. Now let's talk a little bit about Paul Avery himself. He was an established name in the Zodiac case. He'd written countless articles by this time on the Zodiac, his crimes and his letters.

In fact, Paul Avery became so inextricably linked to the case that the Zodiac actually sent a Halloween card to Paul personally. In October 1970, I would just die if a serial killer sent me a fucking Halloween card. Bye bye. I'm done. We're not doing this anymore. Wow. Who sends Halloween cards? It's just a dripping pen card again with a pumpkin drawn on it. I don't think I've ever had a Halloween card in my life. Oh, I bet your fucking ass that in America they sell Halloween cards. But the Halloween card did not take credit for Cherry Jo's brutal murder. That didn't come until the letter to the Los Angeles Times in March 1971.

In that one the zodiac taunted the police calling himself crackproof and saying that the police needed to get off their fat arses if they wanted to catch him. Before signing off with, I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones. There are a hell of a lot more down there. So for most people, this is considered a direct reference to Cherry Jo's murder. And for many, it confirmed that the Zodiac had actually killed her.

I write. I understand that the police have a duty to try and catch him, but nothing is going to piss him off more than not doing that. Honestly, if I'm sitting in San Francisco PD, I'm just going to be like, maybe we just leave it. Yeah, look, and he's very cryptic there. He says, stumbling across my riverside activity. Right. They didn't stumble across anything. A letter, multiple letters were sent to Cherry Joe's father, the police and a local newspaper.

So no stumbling fucking happened. So let's talk about this because I know a lot of people, they are convinced that he didn't kill Cherry Joe Bates. But the short answer to that question of did he do it is no, he did not. And it's not a maybe he did maybe he didn't we can't prove it. It is no he did not. Why are we so sure? Well the only thing that links the Zodiac to Cherry Joe's murder is the type print and handwritten letters sent to her father, the local newspaper and the police.

There was no physical evidence at the scene. There was no like you know insignia scrawled on Cherry Joe's car like we've seen in previous ones, there's nothing, there's nothing there, there's no sighting of a man who resembles him, nothing. The letters are the only thing linking it to the Zodiac. And these handwritten letters were categorically not sent by the Zodiac because through an anonymous confession and also DNA analysis, the Riverside police were able to conclusively prove that these letters were in fact sent as a hoax by a troubled teenager. So once you remove the letters, him just saying my Riverside activity after it had been in the news is not particularly convincing. No. And that leaves us with a typewritten letter sent a month after Cherry Joe's murder. And in our opinion, there is a strong probability that this one was written by the actual Zodiac.

The writing style has a very distinct Zodiac whiff about it, like the misspelling of the word Victom, which is used repeatedly by Zodiac in other letters. The initial misspelling can be explained by the fact that I and O are right next to each other on a QWERTY keyboard, but it doesn't explain why the zodiac made the same misspelling in his handwritten letters several years later. Many people suspect that this was some sort of callback. On top of that, the letter was written using a copying technique that made it impossible to trace, and that's quite zodiac as well. But it doesn't prove he killed Cherry Jo Bates. In fact, it means he almost certainly did

not. Let me explain. The typewritten letter contained several serious inaccuracies. The first being that Cherry Jo didn't put up a fight, which she absolutely fucking did. And the second, that Cherry Jo and her attacker walked away from the library before the attack. Cherry Jo and her attacker were in the process of walking back towards the library when he pulled her into an alleyway. In our opinion, these inaccuracies make it very unlikely that whoever wrote the typewritten letter actually murdered Cherry Jo Bates. It's much more likely that they created the letter using information they'd

gathered from the many news reports on the case and just got it wrong. Following this letter taking credit for Cherry Jo's murder, communication with the Zodiac gets a bit hazy. And it's actually the last one that uses the moniker, The Zodiac. The last letter featuring a Zodiac symbol came a few weeks later on March 22, 1971, and that was on a postcard sent to the Chronicle. The postcard itself featured Lake Tahoe, which is in northwest California, and the card appeared to suggest that Lake Tahoe was the resting place of the zodiac's supposed 12th victim. But the card didn't contain a message from the zodiac, only cutouts from newspapers to form sentences, followed by the crosshair zodiac symbol. The last letter that appears to be genuinely from the zodiac arrived after a three-year

hiatus on the 29th of January 1974. It was addressed, please rush to editor, at the San Francisco Chronicle, and opened with the line, I saw plus think the exorcist was the best satirical comedy that I have ever seen. Signed yours truly. Following this was a bizarre and mildly threatening poem and a threat that once again if the letter was not posted in the chronicle the author would kill again. And it was followed by a few bizarre looking symbols. And then the sentence, me 37 SFPD zero. That one, that letter is widely considered to be the last communication

from the Zodiac or at the very least the last communication that could be legitimate. Certainly sounds like him and has several hallmarks of a zodiac letter including weird spelling and police taunting. Having said that, it isn't signed from the zodiac nor does it feature the crosshair symbol. So to be totally frank, the whole thing is a bit of a wet fart. It's lost a lot of its threatened flair that came with the very early Zodiac communications. And the only reason we're talking about it at all is because if it was written by the Zodiac it brings into question what happened between the 22nd of March 1971 and the 29th

of January 1974. Why was there such a big gap? Before we get into that I could absolutely believe that the 1974 letter was not him and he actually did stop in 1971. And you know, some people might wonder why would he stop? Like serial killers, the idea is often that serial killers don't stop until they are stopped. That's not true. Look at the original Nightstalker.

They caught him like a few years ago and he was just like a fucking old dude cooking a roast chicken or some shit, mowing his lawn when they caught him. Serial killers do stop. They age out, particularly if they're motivated by sex as we discussed in the Gilgo Beach killings. We'll go on to talk about what I think motivated the Zodiac, but it is absolutely believable that he could have stopped in 1971 because I think the letters as part of his MO are there to feed his narcissism, right?

That's what they're there for, they're there for his ego, they're there for his narcissism. And if he had just found another source to feed his narcissism, the letters may have stopped serving their purpose. So I could believe that he stopped and that 1974 was somebody else. But I could also believe that there is a big gap for a different reason as we can go on to talk about. It's entirely possible that the Zodiac, whoever he may be, had a major life-changing event after 1971 that distracted him. Maybe he got ill or went to prison for something else. We've seen it before with other killers.

Yes we have. Take BTK. After his wife had a baby, stop killing. Stop killing for years because he was distracted. Now look, there is so much more content in all of the various long, long letters that the zodiac sent over the years, but mostly they are just the ramblings of a malignant narcissist. But here are just a few key points that we pulled out from these various letters that are worth mentioning. He said in the letters that he'd keep on killing. But in one of them in particular he said that he would start to do it in ways that made the deaths look like accidents.

Now that I think is quite telling at the level of like notoriety and infamy that he wants because there's points where basically he's making claims that he's killed people, the police catch the killer of the actual crime that he's referencing and then he looks stupid because he's got a gun on his face if the police are to be believed that they caught the right person. Or there's cases where he says that he killed somebody, but there are no noted like murders at that particular time. So I think a way in which he covers that to make himself seem even more omnipotent, even more everywhere, even more mysterious is just to be like.

Some of them, you won't even realize a murder because I will make them look like accidents, I'll make them look like natural causes, I'll make them look like suicide. So he's just trying everything he can to have as many fingers in as many pies as possible. Which again, I think is very telling as to his psychopathology. Then in another letter, the Zodiac said that he wanted to shoot a cop next because, quote, they shoot back. And I think that is a very desperate attempt on the part of the Zodiac to seem really dangerous, seem like this, like guy who's living life on the edge, who has no

fear, who's like a thrill seeker, who's like adventurous, who's brave and strong. And like, he's like, yeah, these, these killings, these kids I've been killing, they're so easy. I'm going to go after a police officer next. Like it's all part of the like narcissism here of like saying that he's going after a bigger more dangerous target. But as far as we can tell, he never actually does that. He also demanded in one letter, and this is just so fucking tragic, I don't even know where to start, where he demands that the people of San Francisco sure get zodiac badges and wear them. But they didn't.

And he said in his next letter that he was upset that the people of San Francisco had not adopted this badge system. And he said that he had shot a man in a car as punishment. But the police caught the killer of that particular crime. Again, if we go with the idea that the police caught the right person, it probably wasn't him. And that brings us quite nicely on to the question you've all been waiting for. Who is the Zodiac? The letter in 1974 almost definitively marks the end of the Zodiac's reign. And of course, as

you know, the Zodiac has never been caught. At least up until now, when we're recording this, in May 2025. Still, several police forces across California and the FBI have ongoing open investigations into who he was slash is. Now, if you look across the internet, a whole host of names are gonna pop up, from other convicted murderers, to people whose names just so happen to fit a jumble of letters at the end of the Zodiac's first cipher.

Amongst all of those names, none crop up more than Arthur Lee Allen. If you want a comprehensive rundown of Allen's story and his potential connection to the Zodiac, go off and watch This is the Zodiac Speaking on Netflix, which if you do, you will become quite convinced that Arthur Lee Allen was the Zodiac. That's what happened to us. It's a three-part documentary and it covers Alan and his relationship with the Seawater family. Seawater children who are Connie, David and Don all met Arthur Lee Allen in Santa Rosa in California while he was

working at their elementary school as a teacher. The Seawater kids are now in their 50s and 60s and their testimony about the time they spent with Alan certainly paints him as a pretty suspicious guy. Not to mention the heaps of supposed circumstantial evidence that appears to link Alan to the Zodiac. So let's take you through it. Evidence, I think, is slightly an overblown term for what's going on here, but let's have a chat. Because firstly, this is what people say links him to the Zodiac, is that he owned a Zodiac Sea Wolf diving watch.

And as we discussed last week, Zodiac watches have a symbol remarkably similar to the one used by the Zodiac killer. Tick. Kinda. Secondly, Arthur also was definitely in the vicinity of Lake Berryessa on the day that Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard were attacked. In fact, he was pulled over for speeding and told the officer that he had been diving in the lake. According to rumours, he also apparently had a bloody diving knife next to him in the car. However, this has never been confirmed.

Thirdly, he also does loosely match the zodiac's description. He was big, barrel-chested and in his late 30s during the Zodiac's reign of terror. And he was also allegedly identified by Mike Magoo as the man who shot him in the car park. And lastly, Arthur Lee Allen is also a convicted paedophile. And this is quite interesting because he was arrested in 1974 for child molestation, pleaded guilty and was given a five-year suspended sentence which could provide an excellent reason as to why there was no more communication from the zodiac after this point. All of that sounds a bit convincing. You'd be forgiven for watching that documentary and filling out all of the squares on Arthur Lee Allen's Zodiac bingo card,

however. While it's easy to say that the police just missed what was right in front of them, it's not quite the whole truth. Arthur Lee Allen was considered as a suspect in the Zodiac case, both when he was alive and after he died in 1992. He gave a TV interview about being a suspect, because he was, in fact, the only official suspect ever named by the police. In that time, the police did countless investigations, searches and interviews with Alan himself along with his friends and family. Despite some of his friends coming up with hearsay that could link Alan to the case, and the investigators allegedly finding some supposed bomb-making equipment in his

house, police never found anything conclusive to link him to the case at all. And what they don't tell you in the Netflix documentary, which Netflix are very good at doing, by the way, is that DNA, fingerprint and palm print testing was carried out and it never turned up any link between Alan and the zodiac at all because look he was a suspect at the time like you said the only official suspect named by the police he wasn't just like a kook that the internet went after he was on the police's radar and they had fucking fingerprints and DNA and he wasn't a match so I just don't think he's the zodiac. And while internet sleuths are desperate to close the book on Alan, the reality is that

several police forces and the FBI have written him off as a suspect. That doesn't mean he's a good person, of course it doesn't. He was, by all accounts, a very creepy pedo, but they're everywhere. There are a lot of very creepy pedos and most of them aren't the Zodiac. And look, there are loads of suspects that we could talk about, but we just don't have time. And also there's just not really that much interesting information, really in my opinion, linking those people to this series of murders. I'm also sure that there's some sort of link between paedophiles having super low IQs.

I think I've seen that. I've seen that because I think it's associated with that kind of desire to spend time with children feeling more comfortable in their presence. But look, there is one other man who I would like to talk about today. And it's a man who made headlines after his death in 2018 as a potential zodiac suspect. His name was Gary Francis Post and he was an Air Force veteran from California. In 2021, a civilian volunteer group called the Case Breakers announced that they had identified Gary Francis Post as the elusive Zodiac killer through quote a combination of

evidence involving shell cartridges, photos, fingerprints, cryptic writings and DNA harvested from his old clothing and a blood relative. Other clues that they said linked Gary to the Zodiac were the following. Forehead scars The casebreakers' team claimed that Post's forehead scars are a match to the scars on a police sketch of the Zodiac. 2. Anagrams in Zodiac's letters The casebreakers allege that the Zodiac's cryptic letters contain anagrams of Post's name.

The casebreakers claim to have gathered eyewitness accounts and caught affidavits supporting their theory. Next up, shoe size match. They say that the Zodiac and Post shared the same shoe size. Next up, as we said, DNA. They said that they got DNA from the Cherry Joe Bates murder that they claim is a match to Gary Post's. Next up and possibly was maybe the most interesting, they say they have an FBI whistleblower who approached the casebreakers team and claimed that the Bureau had considered Post a suspect since 2016, but that they were covering it up. And casebreakers really go hard on this, they really go hard on the idea that this is a cover-up.

But my question is, why? Why would the FBI cover up Gary Post being involved? If he's the Zodiac, they'd just be like, sick, we're caught the fucking Zodiac. Even if he's dead, especially if he's dead, pin it on the fucking dead guy. Why have they still got open investigations into the Zodiac if it's Gary Post? If they know it's Gary Post? I don't know. And like all of these DNA matches, like they say they got it off like a hiking mat that Gary Post had owned, they verified it against a blood relative and it's a match to the Cherry Joe Bates murder, which like already doesn't really necessarily fit among the zodiac killings. It's not like canon quote unquote as part of the zodiac killings. So like, does that

really prove anything? Maybe he killed Cherry Joe, but doesn't mean he's a zodiac killer. Like, Cherry Joe was killed in California, he lived in California. I don't know. And just to be clear, while this independent team claims to have all sorts of strong evidence against Post, it has not been validated by law enforcement and the case is still officially open. And for a very long time, that was basically it in Zodiac Town. The Z340, the Z32 and the Z13 all remained unsolved. Potential suspects came and went theories upon theories developed, but no new evidence materialised.

Until the 5th of December 2020, when a man called David Oranczak was sitting at his desk watching a code breaking program test potential solutions for the Z340. David is a software developer and cryptographer who on the 12th of April 2020 began a YouTube series called Let's Crack Zodiac. Top tier. Love it. Even rhymes. He planned to make the series indefinitely hoping that the impenetrable cipher might turn up interesting observations as he tried helplessly to crack it. But then,

only five episodes in. He only went and fucking did it. I love that. So, episode five of what was supposed to be an infinite YouTube series. David published the cracked Z340, the code that no one had managed to solve for 50 years. I love that. Love that for them. And before we get to how David did it, we're going to pause quickly. Because some of you may be thinking, I've watched the film Zodiac and I'm pretty sure that Jake Gyllenhaal solved the cipher and they found their man. Well, in that film, which I tried to watch and turned off.

Oh see, I really liked it. Did you? I enjoyed it. Maybe I was in the wrong mood. I could see why people don't like it. It's a very slow burn. It's very like nothing happens for a really long time. But if you're in the mood for just like a slow, gritty procedural, it's fun.

Okay, well, I'm glad you gave me that summary because I don't know. But apparently in Zodiac, the film, Jake Gyllenhaal plays Robert Graysmith, a man who has dedicated his life to the Zodiac. In 1986, Robert Graysmith published his book, Zodiac, in which he wrote out what he claimed to be a solution for the Z340 and named a man who he believed was the Zodiac. The man he picked was Arthur Lee Allen,

who is referred to in the book by Sudenam. Yeah, I kind of can't help the feeling that he wrote the book and then his publishers were like, it needs more of an angle. Can you solve Z340? Can you have a go at it? Can you just say can you also just like point the finger at somebody and he's like I sure can. You're never gonna get caught out. No one's gonna be able to fix it. I know. Now look as we've already discussed we don't think that Alan is the zodiac and unfortunately we're about to tell you why Robert Graysmith's solution to the Z340 was also sadly nonsense. To this day Graysmith has never revealed his method for solving the unsolvable

cipher, which if you had cracked it you'd probably be screaming about your method from the top of every rooftop. But if you watch David Orangehack's YouTube series, he does make a pretty good educated guess as to what Graysmith did. Now as we told you before, the Z340 was long enough that frequency analysis could be conducted to guess which symbols represented which letters. But as we also said, no frequency analysis brought back any results because the letters themselves had been scrambled. So it's not like you're looking at words. It's not as clear as that. David Oranczak believes that in order to make his solution for the Z340 solution in inverted

commas, Robert Graysmith essentially played a 340 letter game of Scrabble, taking all of the letters and rearranging them in any order that made sense. Which isn't cryptography. Simply arranging all of the letters until they say words is just making it up. And with 340 characters, there is an almost limitless number of different paragraphs that can be created if you're willing to put them in any order that sounds interesting. Now it's up to you whether you believe Robert Gray Smith actually thought he'd solved the Z340 or not. For what it's worth, though he worked for the San Francisco Chronicle, it

was as a cartoonist and not as an investigative journalist. Though saying that, look, you know, history teacher and his wife, crap, the first code is not impossible that he could have, but he hasn't shown his working, which makes him very questionable. Hmm. Still, while Zodiac might be flawed as a book, it did undoubtedly contribute to the Zodiac case staying in the public consciousness and is a relatively decent resource for documenting the Zodiac's attacks and correspondence. And that's what I'm saying. I think, you know, he really cared about this case.

He was really stuck into it. I think a lot of the book is correct, but I feel like he was kind of forced to add that extra cherry on top, which is where he's not quite, he's not quite there. which is where he's not quite there. However, let's finally, after all of the teasing, talk about the big guns. The guys who actually cracked the Z340. They are not just David Oranczak, but his friends Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eyck. First and foremost, we have to give credit to them for even bothering. By 2020, people had been calling the Z340 impossible for decades, and loads of people had concluded that it was probably a nonsense hoax. But all three men were convinced that the Z340 did say something. Because some symbols were used substantially more than others, and the symbols seemed to repeat themselves in some kind of an order. And on top of this rock-hard belief that the

Z340 could be solved, each of these men contributed something important to cracking the seemingly impossible cipher. Jarvan Eyck, a warehouse manager by day, provided the software. He created a program called AZ Decrypt, which could run multiple variations of the cipher, each one with the symbols representing a different letter to see if any combination created a readable message. Sam Blake cracked the transposition, the idea that the symbols had been rearranged using a replicable method. And even more importantly, he theorized that the cipher had also been flip-reversed. Sam sent David Oranczak thousands of files containing different variations of the cipher that had been transposed in different ways and then flipped in different ways.

David sat there for hour upon hour, running every single one through Yarl's program to see if it spat anything out. And that took months. But then, on the 5th of December 2020, David cast his eye over what he assumed would be yet another incorrect solution spat out by the program. He was actually about to cast it aside when a few words sprung out at him. Hope you are trying to catch me. Gas chamber and a word that looked a bit like paradise. Now the program regularly responded with potential solutions that contained a few random words,

but nothing that made sense or sounded like zodiac. But the hope you are trying to catch me were definitely full phrases. Gas chamber and paradise were also very on brand. This was something. So David took a look at the specific process that Sam had used on this try. He split the cipher into three chunks and then wrote out the first letters, gone down one row and across two columns and written out that letter and then down another row and along another two columns and so on and so forth. He did that for

each section of the cipher until it was entirely rewritten and then he flipped each section as though it were in a mirror. That is what had brought forward the phrases that caught David's eye. David then spent another few hours refining this method and plugging slightly different variations into Giles' program. Until suddenly a clear message came forward from the first section and it read, I hope you are having lots of fun trying to catch me.

That wasn't me on the TV show. At this point, David shouted, holy shit and fell off his chair. From this point on, David, Yarl and Sam all worked tirelessly via video chat, trying different ideas and different variations of this solution until they finally had it. It was what they believed was the solution to Z340. Now we're not going to go into all the details. If you're really enjoying this case, then you must go and watch David's Let's Crack Zodiac Episode 5.

It only has 2 million views on YouTube and in our opinion deserves millions more. This guy fucking cracked a code that was uncrackable for 50 fucking years. Go watch it. So yeah, once they thought they'd solved it, the trio sent their findings to the FBI and on the 11th of December, it was confirmed they were correct. So what did it say? I'm afraid this is where things get a bit bittersweet because while David, Yarl and Sam had revealed brand new evidence, didn't

actually give anyone any new information about the zodiac's identity. It read, I hope you are having lots of fun trying to catch me. That wasn't me on the TV show which brings up a point about me. I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise, all the sooner Paradise with a C. Because I now have enough slaves to work for me, where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradise. So they are afraid of death and I'm not afraid because I know that my new life is, life will be an easy one in paradise. Death. Yeah. Okay. So kind of anticlimactic in terms of what's revealed, but pretty fucking sick

that they cracked it. so good job them. Before we wrap up this episode, let's have a conversation about the Zodiac himself, even though I hate doing it because if he is still alive, you know that he fucking loves it. But I do think it is worth talking about what we think motivated the Zodiac to kill, because he is slightly different from your typical serial killer. Yeah. I think if you look at his crimes one by one, it feels very obvious to me that the true

target of the murders are the women because in the first few attacks, like with Darlene and with Cecilia, he kills them, but he fails to kill the men that he's with. Michael and Brian. So it does feel to me like the women are the true target, but the rage is always aimed at couples. He doesn't seem to, if we believe that he didn't go after Kathleen Johns or kill Sherry Jo, he doesn't kill women on their own.

He kills couples. He goes after couples and he wants to kill the woman. Why is he doing that? It could be some feeling of like emasculating the men. Like watch me kill the woman that you're with and you could do nothing to protect her on you pathetic on I amazing on either most, you know, powerful of all men that I have done this and you did nothing. That could be a reason that's playing into it. It could also be jealousy. It could be rage. It could be this reason that's playing into it. It could also be

jealousy, it could be rage, it could be this feeling of impotence that he has that he doesn't have that kind of relationship and he feels anger, you know, Elliot Roger vibes, possibly. And I think that it does fit. I mean, if you look at other serial killers, particularly Sam Berkowitz, son of Sam, he also did this. He mainly went after young couples and we know that his motive was sexual. We have more information with the son of Sam purely because they caught Berkowitz and so there's interviews with him, all of that kind of stuff. And I think it's not a huge reach to say that the zodiac's motivations were most likely also sexual. I know he uses various different methods for doing it and there isn't any clear evidence that I've seen of actually sexual assault

on the scene, but we all know this. We've been around the serial killer block enough that we know that that doesn't have to be there for it to have been sexually motivated, for him to have been getting off on it sexually. Now, I did wonder last week, we did talk about this, about why he left Brian alive, because at first I was like, maybe he was leaving Brian and Michael alive because he wanted a witness. He wanted somebody to, you know, survive in order to tell the world about this mystery killer would have emerged out of the woods with a mask on and all of that. And also this idea of like a living trophy being something he got off on. But I wonder if it was actually

the fact that it wasn't a planned thing. He didn't mean to not kill these men. He just didn't manage to kill these men. And I wonder if the fact that two men survived his attacks actually made him feel emasculated because both Brian and Michael survived. And maybe that's why his next target was a solo man in Paul Stein. Was he trying to prove a point that he could kill men too? I don't know, but I would say, yeah, the women are the target. It's highly likely it's sexually motivated. He's a malignant narcissist. And that's why the Cherry Joe Bates letter doesn't fit for me.

The idea of like multiple brush-offs. He would never admit to that. A narcissist would never admit that a woman had brushed him off. No. So I think that is where the deep-seated rage, the insecurity, the need for desperate validation from the public, from everybody to seem powerful comes from because he feels so weak and pathetic and inadequate, particularly in the face of couples, particularly in the face of young couples, particularly in the face of young women.

I totally agree. I think it's large Elliot Roger vibes and something very, very humiliating at the hands of a woman happened to him at an impressionable age, I would argue. CK Probably his mother. MS Yeah, usually his. CK Sadly, yes. And again, people will be like, oh, is blame the mother? I'm like, no, that's not the point I'm making. The point I'm making is that's how important mothers are. It's not to say, oh, it's always the mother and we should blame them and it's because of,

you know, whatever the patriarchy. No, it's because that's how important women are, so important mothers are in your fundamental formation. So alright let's talk about why we think he stopped. Now obviously there's the various reasons that you explained. It could have been literally he just got put in prison for something else, he was killed, something else happened in his life that made him stop or perhaps like I said you know something else came along to feed his narcissistic needs. But I do think the whole of a city being scared of you publishing your letters in a newspaper, it's going to be hard for something else to come along and talk about.

But it is possible. But I do wonder if you recall that letter you just read us where he says, basically, he's basically saying, I've got what I need. I've got all the slaves I need. I still question whether he actually is in this, I'm collecting slaves for the afterlife mentality. He doesn't really still fit for me. This idea of like a delusional killer.

I think the subtext of that is I've got what I need. And by that, he means maybe just the infamy, the infamy of it all. Like the notoriety when he says, I got what I needed. It is the fact that he knew that he was going to live forever in infamy of it all, like the notoriety when he says, I got what I needed. It is the fact that he knew that he was going to live forever in infamy. And I think maybe for the Zodiac, that wasn't originally perhaps his plan. I don't think he killed the first people he did with the idea of, I'm going to become this infamous mystery, notorious killer. But I think he eventually realized that that's what was getting him off, maybe more than

the kills themselves. Because we've talked about this with other serial killers, the idea, the fantasy of the killer is so much greater in their minds than the actuality of carrying it out. Often it's a bit like, oh, and the first one, you can never really top that. These serial killers say that, the next one, the next one, the next one. It kind of starts to not be ever as exciting as that first kill. So I wonder if the letters were just serving the purpose that he wanted. Now you could say, why not keep killing anyway to keep the fear up? Well, like you said, he didn't really need to.

He was getting the fear of notoriety anyway. And maybe you could say, why not rack up the body count? Because if what he wants is notoriety infamy, why don't you just chuck some more bodies in there anyway? But I wonder if it's because he wanted to actually remain a mystery. I think if you look at the Zodiac's letters, he's very concerned with like the greater context of his killings, right? He's more concerned about the letters, about people talking about him on TV, about these big hotshot lawyers being sucked into it. He's more concerned about his public profile than the killings is what I think.

And perhaps after the Paul Stein murder, where he obviously ramped it up to such an extent because he went into inner city San Francisco, he committed the crime, he was seen by teenagers, the police were there, the police fucking spoke to him by all accounts. And I wonder if it was all just a bit too close for comfort. And maybe he decided it's time for me to step away because it's better to stay a mystery, leave it as my legacy as a legend rather than get caught and just be a loser in a fucking orange jumpsuit that gets paraded around because some killers want that they want to get caught so they can tell their story.

I think for the Zodiac, he was like, the idea that nobody knows who I am. And I know is enough. Yeah, always leaving one and more. Which again, some could argue that that doesn't really fit the narcissistic trope because he would have wanted everybody to know that he was so smart. I know, I think I'm with you. By the way, when he's got his costume on, that doesn't scream of someone who's like, loves the actual art of killing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like he's very hesitant and like almost bumbling.

Yes, absolutely. And I think he just figured out he could work from home. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. That letter that Hannah just read to us is probably the last and final piece of the zodiac puzzle that we're ever going to receive. As of 2025, there have been no further breakthroughs in the zodiac case. Internet slews are still of course pouring over Z13 and Z32, and there have been a few somewhat credible looking solutions but none of them have been confirmed by any kind of law enforcement.

Serious codebreakers like David Oranjak believe that without some kind of key or clue, both ciphers are just too short to break and are functionally uncrackable. The same goes for potential suspects. Hundreds have been suggested by the public, but none of them have ever been confirmed. Realistically, at this point, the best chance of confirming the zodiac's identity would be the way in which they caught the original Nightstalker a few years ago, through a familial DNA match to the partial DNA profile taken from the first Paul Stein letter. However, to date, nothing has been found. So alas, the identity of the zodiac remains a mystery. And that is where our story today

ends. And Ted Cruz lives to fight another day. Ha ha ha ha! If you want more Zodiac in your life, there's a lot out there that we couldn't cover. If you're interested in the ciphers, we would thoroughly recommend watching David Oranchak's full series on the YouTubes. And if you want more Zodiac in general, then take yourself off

and read Motor Spirit by Jarrett Kovec, which is by far and away the most in-depth zodiac book that we found and you deserve it. You do indeed for sitting through three whopping episodes of the zodiac to celebrate 400 episodes of Right-Handed. Thank you, thank us and we will see you next week where we won't be talking about the Zodiac. Bye! Bye! You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories

are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, and each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Bolland's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.

You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple podcasts. Last year, law and crime brought you the trial that captivated the nation. She's accused of hitting her boyfriend, Boston police officer John O'Keefe with her car. Karen Reed is arrested and charged with second degree murder. The six week trial resulted in anything but resolution. We continue to find ourselves at an impasse. I'm declaring a mistrial in this case. But now the case is back in the spotlight and one question still

lingers. Did Karen Reed kill John O'Keefe? The evidence is overwhelming that Karen Reed is innocent. How does it feel to be a cop killer, Karen? I'm Kristen Thorn, investigative reporter with Law and Crime and host of the podcast Karen the Retrial. This isn't just a retrial. It's a second chance at the truth. I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be. I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this.

It's not her. Listen to episodes of Karen the Retrial, exclusively and ad free on Wondery Plus.