by Mark Hewitt
The VPD received a telephone call from Arkansas regarding Tommy. On October 3, Sergeant Brown of Hot Springs reported that the now-divorced Sharon, who was going through a state of mental breakdown, was speaking to her father about her ex-husband. Brown had acquired his information from the father. Sharon was claiming that Tommy had killed a girl, called Olivia, as well as Olivia’s child, in June or July of 1968. They were shot with a .30-30 rifle and buried in a Vallejo backyard, according to Sharon. The details were not entirely clear as Sharon had many relapses into incoherent states of mind. She also related that her ex-husband, on several occasions, mentioned the Blue Rock Springs Park.
Sergeant Nilsson re-contacted the original informant and learned that Tommy had dated several women while married to Sharon, but that her friend did not know an Olivia. He received information from Officer Husted that Melodie, a young woman who had been living with Tommy, was in juvenile detention. Upon follow-up at the juvenile hall, Nilsson learned that 17-year-old Melodie had lived with Tommy the previous four months. She did not know an Olivia either, and had never seen guns in her boyfriend’s possession. She denied that he was abusive or violent in any way, affirming that he had a normal sex drive. She stated that he never studied astrology, nor wrote cryptograms, though he was interested in his own Zodiac sign. No connection between Tommy and the murderer’s cipher was ever established.
A Redding couple approached the VPD to alert it to a very distant relative, named Norman, who they thought was a mafia hit man and might have been responsible for the Zodiac killings. He had written them a letter in which he claimed to be a killer for the mafia, was in serious trouble, and needed their immediate help. Though they had never met the man, the couple brought in letters written by the suspect, as well as two pictures of him. John Markey of the FBI traveled to the station and took over this piece of the investigation. The SFPD compared Norman’s fingerprints against those they had on file with the FBI, without establishing a match. The letter the couple had received was forwarded to CII in Sacramento for a handwriting comparison with the Zodiac’s letters. But nothing they found could tie the man to the killings.
The public preoccupation with the Zodiac case was just beginning. Individuals and couples—sometimes even small groups—began to contact the VPD with all manner of advice and an assortment of suspects. Numerous perfectly innocent people became persons of interest simply because they appeared to have something, however remote, in common with the killer. The VPD received information about mental patients, homeless drifters, braggarts who made bold claims, people who wrote in codes, relatives who acted oddly, and acquaintances who engaged in gallows humor.
Law enforcement officials received numerous handwriting samples. Many armchair detectives tried to connect someone to the careless scrawl of the 3-Part letters; others attempted to tie an acquaintance’s suspicious activity, or interest in astrology, to the crimes. The detectives faithfully investigated all promising leads, but no one brought to their attention was found to be responsible for the gruesome spree that was unfolding before them. Several suspects had illegal firearms in their possession, however, and were promptly arrested.
On August 7, Lynch was pressed into service by Captain Bird to travel to Vacaville to investigate an 18-year-old former foster child, named David, who had emotional problems. When upset, belligerent, or angry, David was reported to just sit and stare, or draw cryptograms comprised of strange symbols. His former foster parents (whose duty had ended in February of 1969 when their charge was emancipated at 18 years of age) described him as someone in regression who couldn’t discuss his problems, and who ran with a crowd that dabbled in drugs. His probation officer added that he was wanted in Vacaville for bouncing a $20 check. Lynch learned that after his brother was killed in Vietnam, David had been in the Vallejo area for the funeral, shortly before Christmas of 1968. He had formerly lived in Benicia. He drove a Honda and owned a rifle—possibly a .22—which he received from his brother. His former foster parents reported that he had been going downhill since his brother’s funeral and the advent of the Zodiac murders. Lynch received samples of the man’s handwriting and some of his encryptions. Though he had bragged to others that he had met Betty Lou Jensen and found her pleasant to talk to, he was eventually cleared of any involvement in her murder.
This former foster child was only one of many individuals whose unusual actions tantalized investigators. Sergeant Conway received a telephone call from a lieutenant at the South Lake Tahoe Police Department about another potential suspect. Conway was informed of a restaurant cook who had a “hang-up” about knives. He had aroused suspicions when he left a jocular note in a milk truck, signing it “Zodiac.”
The VPD was called upon to inspect some gray, spray-paint graffiti on Scandia Road near Highway 12. The scrawl said simply “Zodiac sucks and kills.” Mulinax was detailed by Captain Bird to investigate. The writing was not similar to the script of the Zodiac’s, and was dismissed as useless to the case, probably produced by some mischievous kids. Nevertheless, photographs were taken and brought back to the station with a follow-up request that they be developed.
A toll-taker at the Carquinez Bridge, named James, claimed to know who the Zodiac was, but was waiting for a reward to be offered before turning him in to the police. His boasts were overheard by co-workers and reported to the police, who had two more suspects to investigate: the man accused by the toll-taker and James himself.
More than one citizen dropped a tip on a suspicious distant relative. Many cranks called or visited with useless information, a trend that would continue for decades. Many who had no connection to the case found themselves turned in by ex-wives, ex-girlfriends, relatives, and neighbors. This penchant that all these helpful citizens had for offering up suspects cost many investigative man-hours. It brought to the attention of the authorities much of the dark underbelly of society at that time: those that joked inappropriately about the attacks, others who claimed to know something, people who had serious mental issues, many who were prone to violence (some of whom had recently returned from service in Vietnam), and more than a few citizens with an unwholesome interest in the macabre.
Even Darlene Ferrin’s mother proclaimed that she had once seen James Phillips, her daughter’s first husband, draw up some kind of code.
***
On August 11, an anonymous letter arrived at the Vallejo Police Station, addressed to VPD Detective Sergeant Lynch. Postmarked August 10 in San Francisco, it contained a three inch by five inch card from some “concerned citizen,” who wrote in part, “I hope the enclosed key will prove to be beneficial to you in connection with the cipher letter writer.” It provided the key for the ciphers, a correct list of which letter of the alphabet each symbol represented. Included, curiously, were several possible alternate solutions to some symbols, indicating that several of the symbols had more than one interpretation. On August 16, the Sacramento Field Office of the FBI, realizing that the note could have been generated by the killer, sent a letter to the FBI in Washington, D.C. with the request that the note be scoured for fingerprints.
The FBI letter was sent as an airtel—which is to say, not very urgently—the reply to which came on August 21. No watermarks or indentations were found on the strange mailing. The FBI laboratory did note that the typewritten card had distinctive features, including letters with errors, that would aid in the identification of the specific machine used if the typewriter were ever located and its striking heads examined. Regarding the enclosed cipher key, the lab declared that not only was the information useful, but it represented a “substantially accurate key,” providing a “generally valid decryption.” The three pieces, the envelope, the card, and the white sheet containing the key, were dutifully numbered and entered into the FBI files. One latent palm print was recovered from the envelope.
But the solution to the mysterious cryptograph was not new news.
The VPD was aware that the cipher had already been broken. Three days before the
anonymous letter, the VPD had received a 6:35 p.m. telephone call from George Murphy of The San Francisco Chronicle indicating that two private citizens, Don and Bettye Harden of Salinas, had contacted the paper with a solution to the cipher. The Hardens—he, a history and economics teacher at North Salinas High School, and she, a home-maker—were avid fans of puzzles and word games. They had decided to spend a few days wrestling with the encryption, eventually solving its mysterious riddle through brute force, imagination, and patience.
The Hardens suspected that a narcissist like the Zodiac would talk about himself, even beginning his message with some kind of boast. The avenue that provided them success was a search for four letter combinations that would represent the word “kill,” a crib which they expected would be present numerous times in the solution. One of the many combinations of words they experimented with was, “I like killing…” With these few symbols solved, and a great deal of trial and error applied to the rest of the pages, they were finally able to achieve the solution in an estimated 29 hours of work.
Harden noted several strategies that were employed to throw cryptographers off track, including multiple symbols used to represent the most common letter of the alphabet, “E,” possibly intentional misspellings, and a few coding errors.
Upon hearing news of the solution, Lynch drove to The Chronicle to retrieve from Murphy the work sheets the Hardens had sent. He also called the Hardens to inquire about their effort. He placed so much trust in the couple that when the August 11 key card arrived in the mail, he sent that information along to the Hardens to enable them to compare the new information to the solution they had generated.
The Sacramento FBI Field Office sent the Harden’s solution, contained within a newspaper clipping of The Vallejo Times-Herald’s August 9 article, to FBI Headquarters. The FBI in Washington, D.C. responded on August 19 with a letter that included a correct interpretation of the 408 cipher, all spelling and coding errors corrected. The CIA and the NSA, a secretive joint venture of the Defense and State Departments, had each separately verified the Harden’s solution. The report noted that one word was missing: after the word “the” and before the next words “I have killed,” at least one word (such as “people” or “kids”) had been omitted, making the wording somewhat awkward:
I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all. To kill something gives me the most thrilling experience. It is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl. The best part of it is that when I die, I will be reborn in paradise, and all the [ ] I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.
The complexity of the encryption was apparent. Many letters of the alphabet had more than one symbol attached to it. The more a letter was used in the English language, it seemed, the more symbols its creator used to represent that letter, suggesting that its creator had some familiarity with letter frequency within the English language, and the methods of decoding that are based on an analysis of letter frequency.
But there was more. Some of the letters in the final solution had more than one interpretation. While the Hardens provided a single solution for each symbol of the cipher, the mysterious three inch by five inch card indicated that some of the symbols had more than one solution. There was no difference in the message of the cryptograph, however. To achieve the Harden’s interpretation, a reader had to assume that the coder was a sometimes clumsy speller, misspelling at least one word per line, often more. The anonymous letter writer put the cipher’s author in a better light: his spelling and encoding was not quite as bad, if you provide additional letters for some of the symbols.
The Harden’s work was checked by Dr. D. C. B. Marsh, a mathematician at the Colorado School of Mines, and head of American Cryptogram Association. He was impressed not only by the effort that the Hardens had put into the decryption, but also by the coder. He noted that the cipher had been “drawn by somebody who knows his business.” The arrangement of the ciphers was also confirmed, the pieces being ordered as follows: The Vallejo Times-Herald cipher was first, The San Francisco Chronicle was next, followed finally by the piece sent to The San Francisco Examiner.
The final 18 symbols, possibly containing no useful translation and merely inserted to fill out the last line, became the following:
EBEORIETEMETHHPITI
Helpful citizens attempted to understand or translate these spare letters. The following re-arrangements of the 18 characters were supplied to the police. Whether any of these was the intent of the coder could not be determined:
THE TIP I’M ROBERT E EEEE
ROBERT EMET THE HIPPIE
BEFORE I MEET THEM I PITY THEM
Lynch reported that the police were checking into all Robert Emmets, hippy or otherwise. It was noted that Robert Emmet was the name of an Irish revolutionary patriot who was executed in Ireland in 1803 for his part in leading a rebellion.
An anonymous letter from Palo Alto suggested that the final 18 letters represented a telephone number with a digit missing, but no such listing was ever located.
A tip came in to the VPD from the Stanford Research Center in Menlo Park at 1:55 p.m. on August 10. The idea of “slaves for the afterlife” may have originated in South East Asia, particularly among the Mindanao of the southern Philippines, the caller suggested.
***
The More Material letter
In response to the 3-Part letters with their encrypted sheets, the Vallejo police came up with a deviously clever tactic, and took action in the early days of August. It would not be until many years later, and much research by the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) into the minds of serial killers, that researchers would be able to appreciate the ingeniousness of the VPD, and the panacea upon which it had stumbled. Seeing that the writer had demonstrated a need to prove his involvement in the case, the officials decided to measure just how far the killer would go to prove himself. Besides, as long as he was writing, he was not killing, and as long as he was communicating, he was apt to make a mistake and share something revealing. At a press conference held to discuss the letters, Vallejo Police Chief Jack E. Stiltz raised suspicions that the writer was in fact not the killer, and demanded more proof. He pointed out that someone could have picked up the stray details of the attack by visiting the crime scenes, or by eavesdropping on an officer. He asked the perpetrator for more information and questioned his claims, indirectly also challenging him to demonstrate his knowledge and superiority. He invited the killer to “write more facts to prove it.” All three papers that had received a piece of the cipher—The San Francisco Examiner, The San Francisco Chronicle, and the Vallejo Times Herald—published articles mentioning the police chief’s comments. Like the press conference, the articles requested another letter with more details. The chief’s comments waved a red cape in front of an angry bull.
The VPD had stumbled upon a brilliant strategy to draw the Zodiac out of hiding. Whether they were conscious of their cleverness or not, they were engaging in activity that would become standard practice for the BSU in the 1980s. Commenting on the case years later, former FBI profiler John Douglas believed that the Zodiac could have been enticed to gravesites on anniversaries of the attacks, or to official meetings convened around the subject of the killings. The Vallejo officials had responded as if they had been coached by the BSU and attempted to elicit more prose from their quarry.
It was deceitful for the authorities to claim that they did not believe the author of the 3-Part letters. In truth, they did—or they should have. He had provided so much information that could be known only to the killer (or to someone with intimate, inter-police-department information) that they could be certain of his boasts. He didn’t just declare himself responsible, as would seem sufficient for most threatening authors, but went into great detail about what he knew and what he saw.
&nb
sp; The effort put forth in the creation of the complex cipher revealed someone emotionally invested in the multiple mailings. He had diligently worked to convince authorities that he was the one and only, the bona fide, killer. Perhaps he was trying just a little too hard.
Stiltz’s brazen gambit—if that is what it was—worked. Many criminals could be expected to pass on the bait. They would simply notice the trap, or they would decide that they had already provided enough proof. If the police could not understand what he had shared, they would never accept any amount of verification. But the Vallejo-area murderer bit. A couple of days later, another letter addressed to The San Francisco Examiner revealed that the author felt compelled to write again.
In a three-page letter, the More Material letter, his longest to date, the killer provided additional information about the two Northern California attacks. In excruciating detail, he added further proof of his involvement. He labeled one section “Last Christma[s],” and another “July 4:”. Unfortunately, nothing that was provided led to any one individual; however, more data on how the perpetrator thought and how he organized his ideas was now available for scrutiny. The police had finagled from him three more pages of information that could someday expose the brutal murderer: his handwriting could be recognized by a co-worker, his vocabulary could be familiar to someone in the public, or his phraseology could trigger a memory.
The killer opened the new letter with the creative and menacing tagline that would become his iconic phrase, “This is the Zodiac speaking.” Along with the additional details of the Vallejo-area murders, he provided braggadocio regarding a penlight gun sight that he claimed to have used on December 20, and corrected information he had read from the Vallejo Times Herald. (He claimed that he left the Blue Rock Springs Park in a quiet manner so as not to “draw attention” to himself.) He also queried whether his cipher had been “cracked.”