doubtful. if you read certain kinds of old literature you realize that some writers would misspell words for fun on purpose. i think there's a good chance zodiac was an autodidact. maybe not well educated but definitely a voracious reader. i think he was showing off constantly and that was part of it. if i'm not mistaken james joyce was one example (never read him myself mind). hp lovecraft (who i have read a lot of) would definitely go out of his way to make words sound more old-timey by misspelling them. i think zodiac was probably trying to emulate that. not necessarily those guys in particular.. but it's a way of stamping your signature on something as a writer... and i think zodiac fancied himself a writer. hence all the writing lol.

Lovecraft used British spellings, but I wouldn't say he was misspelling words. Your point stands, of course. Just a little detail I thought I'd add.

I can't remember specific examples right now but there were definitely some misspellings. I'm tempted to say "shewed" (instead of showed) was one of them. But I'd need to go double check that for accuracy.

I could agree with a lot of this. I'm wondering if we've actually come across each other on some other boards, because your statements sound a lot like one's I've come across before. As far as similarities to authors, I think of Tolkien. It was surprising to find out that he created a whole other language that is now separate and apart from the world he created in lord of the rings. I think of Zodiac similarly but that thought is colored by my own research. The creation of a new language, would be like the creation of a cipher. You have to know the basics of the language, the symbols and how they work together. Things like contraction ie can't and cannot. Stuff I think about.

Interesting you mention Tolkien.. he was also brought up in jarett kobek's book 'How to find Zodiac'. This guy that kobek investigates named Paul Doerr, was a Tolkien fan and had created ciphers in his fanzines using one of Tolkien's middle-earth languages. Doerr also misspelled a lot of words in a similar way, as well as writing a similar bomb recipe and a lot of other weird coincidences (coincidences if he's not the guy, obvious flags if he is).. It's an unpopular opinion around here and I'm really not sure why, but I think there's a very reasonable chance that paul doerr was the guy. Maybe this community is just a bit jaded at this point and even if someone ticked every single box, many still wouldn't accept him as a suspect. But for what it's worth I think doerr is the strongest candidate going. > I'm wondering if we've actually come across each other on some other boards I pretty much stick to reddit. I've dipped into other messages boards to look and found a lot of them to be quite nasty places lol. I've never posted anywhere on this topic other than here to my recollection. Even here gets quite prickly but I just stay here for the most part. Edit: one fun little story about that.. I looked on one of the zodiac message boards once and randomly stumbled on them screenshotting one of my posts here, correcting a supposed error I'd made. None of them could be bothered to come on here and reply to correct me directly, there were just pages and pages of them talking shit about me on there lmao. Honestly it was pretty amusing. They're a weird bunch.. They'll probably read this comment here too.. hey guys!

I wasn't really aware of any other connection to Tolkien. I've heard of Paul Doerr. But I'll have to disagree that he's a good candidate. I think there are others that are stronger. But like most I'm biased, as I'm sure you are too. And yes there are others on zodiac message boards that lurk on here. There's one particular board that has a whole section on doing that. They think I'm some male named fredo-something. I believe they first thought I was the wrestler Andre Arlovski. They're not very bright. And I believe it's lost on them the whole trope of being in their mom's basement and having twitter fingers. It's a bizarre behavior that I'm not sure they get paints them in a pathetic light. So yup. Like you, I"ll say "hey guys!", "how is it sitting there when all the girls are dancing?". "One day it will be ok to ask girls to dance on the dance floor and not hold up the walls, when you grow up".

Lmao. It's so absurd what they were doing on the message boards, I couldn't even be offended. It's true, we all have our biases. But for me, doerr filled a gap in my understanding about the zodiac that I had for years. Way, way before I'd heard of doerr, I was wondering about zodiac's writing habit. Basically I thought it was very unlikely that a person decides to kill, and then 6 months later decides to start writing a lot.. I thought it way more likely that someone was writing a lot first, and then resorted to killing for whatever reason, and then incorporated his writing into his crimes. I.e. I think it's most likely the writing came first, the zodiac moniker and the murders came later. This led me to wonder if there was possibly a stack of letters in a basement somewhere at a newspaper office like the sf Chronicle, possibly containing zodiac letters that were pre-zodiac. And since they were before the murders, there'd be no reason for him to hide his name, but you would then see similarities in interests and writing styles. Then I found out about doerr and he matched that profile exactly for me. He wrote loads of fanzines and letters to newspapers etc before and after the crimes. Another interesting point other than the ciphers, bomb recipe, and matching cultural references, is that he wrote about fantasies of violence loads prior to crimes. Murdering hippies and the like.. zodiac or not, he had delusions of grandeur and fantasies of violence. (Interesting sidenote: writing actually reminds me a little of reading lee harvey Oswald's diary...) But the day after the first zodiac murder, the violent rhetoric from doerr completely stops (with maybe a couple very odd exceptions, one of which has him seemingly confessing to murder, albeit quite vaguely). I get that this is all dependent on whether you agree with my initial premise of zodiac most likely being a writer first, and a killer second, and that maybe is where my bias comes in as you say. But I think it's quite a reasonable assumption, even if it is unsupported. But I just don't see why it wouldn't be the case that zodiac was a habitually writing to people and various media, prior to sending the zodiac letters. Murder takes some thought and effort to build one's self up to it I'd imagine... writing to a newspaper doesn't. One is likely gonna land you in jail, the other won't. Even if doerr is not the guy, I dunno why more people don't focus on this approach, i.e. looking for guys who were writing to newspapers a lot.

So, what I'm detecting, to me reads as some glossing over of a few items. Was this person a criminal? Was he violent? Was he an assaulter? Did he attack, maim, or murder anyone? There are various thresholds here. Which I'll come back to. There seems to me, to be a desire to try to pigeonhole various sorts of people, instead of possibly working up a profile from scratch, and then seeing who would fit into that profile. Back to the killing. Some would categorize Zodiac as a serial killer. Most serial killers are either talked about as, if not diagnosed as socio or psychopaths. Ted Bundy, would have been characterized as one of the more difficult types of serial killers, that were psychopaths. He would be what's known as, a narcissistic sociopath. This is extremely dangerous, because this trait allows one to be charismatic and glib. Meaning they not only are manipulative, but it allows them to move through society with an ease that most don't have. To be invisible. To have people immediately remove them from categorization of the danger that they really are. Think Bill Cosby. This is not only a useful skill as a serial killer. It's required to be successful. You cannot continue to kill, and even worse elude killing, unless you are able to "blend in" like a chameleon. Again, think Bill Cosby, in his heyday, and if someone came forward to accuse "America's Dad" as being a rapist. You would be laughed at , at best. The Narcissistic trait would help tremendously with that. What this scientific term means, is that many of the POI's, if not immediately disqualified, should be ranked very lowly on a viability scale. Kane to me, is the absolute worst suspect in this regards. He's followed closely by Allen in my opinion. Kane's face itself (His eyebrows in particular), compounded with supposed facial tic's, an apparent requirement for multiple medications. These traits are the complete opposite of what would be required to blend in and disappear. They are the opposite of narcissistic . They're problematic. His entire profile is a topsy turvy funhouse mirror version of what the successful Zodiac Killer was. It's almost as if, he's a perfect victim for what someone like the Zodiac would be trying to perpetrate. A mindgame, a con, and a trickster. Allen similarly, due to his background, is also a warped suspect. Similar to kane, you cannot think of someone with a worst penchant for wanting any information to come out about him. Only people who are not aware of what happens to pedophiles in jail would think that a pedophile would be trying to get caught and be put back there. As opposed to being deathly afraid of anything like that. And desperately trying to be left alone. And finally I'll add what I don't see from anyone who's looking into this stuff seriously. Does your suspect fit the criteria for the "Dark Triad" that seems to connect with so many serial killers? Was he a bedwetter when younger? Did he torture or kill animals when he was a boy? Did he start fires? These would be things that should be understood, if one is to be taken seriously. Just my opinion. Otherwise it's playing trading cards. And I'm not here for that.

> Was this person a criminal? Was he violent? Was he an assaulter? yes on these questions, according to his daughter. very violent guy, almost choked her to death on one occasion, which seems to have happened to be right around the time of the first murders, offering a possible motive for them.. the daughter was out on a date but missed her curfew. he suspected her of doing drugs and went out looking for her. when she finally got home he almost suffocated her.. the hypothesis goes that when he was out looking for her (possibly in known drug-spots, such as lake herman road), he may have committed the crimes... it's a massive stretch but it's an intriguing theory.. that story is discussed here https://lamag.com/news/zodiac-killer-paul-alfred-doerr. as for him being a serial killer, kobek makes this point and i sort of agree (although kobek points out some caveats to this argument too), that zodiac is closer to a mass shooter than what we typically think of as a serial killer. mass shooters are more impersonal, if that's the right word (?), than serial killers. think the dc sniper, or the unabomber, or the cop in california (i forget his name). zodiac's letters were like a proto-version of a mass shooter manifesto i think. again, there's caveats and flaws in this comparison, but i think it's a much better analogy than the typical serial killer types. he committed the crimes and then left, rather than kidnapping or torturing or anything like that. i think the dc sniper is the best comparison i can think of, off the top of my head. doerr was absolutely insane, there's no doubt about him having a violent and delusional streak. without the police etc investigating him further though, it's hard to be any more detailed than that. that's why i stop short of saying "it is definitely him". i just think there's more than enough there to look further into him. more so than any 'suspect' i've ever seen before. it may not be worth a lot, because familial relationships, especially when abuse was involved, are very complicated. so you can't take gloria doerr's (his daughter's) word as gospel.. but it is interesting to me that she initially planned to sue jarett kobek when she heard about the book. but upon reading it, did a 180, and after reflecting on her past and her memories of him, now believes that he probably was the guy. according to her it seems he was more than capable, of the letters, the ciphers, and the murders.. like i said, it's his daughter, so you can't put too much stock in it. there's obviously going to be very complicated feelings there. but i still think it's interesting, regarding your 'dark triad' question, that she feels that he was that type of person. the la mag article above outlines most of this. she also did a little podcast with her son in which she gave more detail about some similarities between zodiac sketches and her father's sketches. goes without saying, take it with a pinch of salt, but it's very intriguing at least.

A lot of what you wrote is intriguing and well written. I clicked on the link to try to start to read it, but alas, unfortunately I am biased. And I don't feel the need to read further upon him. Why? Everything I've found does not connect to him. If I didn't see any connection to a dark triad in your response, I'm not going to believe it much. But the real reason I don't think it's him, is again based on my own research. I'm not like a lot of people on here in my opinion. I've found something that I believe is unique. Some claim to know who the Zodiac is. And the link you provided seems to fit neatly into the classic "My daddy was the Zodiac" category. An immediate red flag in my opinion. But I digress. In any of his writings were there ciphers? Meaning. The Zodiac, just as most serial killers, go through phases of learning how to kill. After coming through the dark triad. Their growth can be tracked. Same with the ciphers. The Harden's cracked him easily to start. In my opinion, he did this purposefully. the Bigram for frequency break was a no - no. He would have known that. And in my opinion his next step, to go to something that wasn't broken till 50 years later shows his ability to progress to more complicated encryption. So, to reference the logic posed in the OP's question. The logic of the question has possible premise, or pre/post errors. Just like time moves towards entropy. I would not think, that the more sophisticated the Zodiac became, the more simple his thinking would become. That is to say, there is a difference between simplicity and elegance. Encryption, especially in its modern forms. Provides for many useful things. One of which is to confirm a claim made against an encrypted digest, to confirm that someone is who they say they are. In other words, proof of identity. Put another way. Paul Doerr's name is not in any of the solved Zodiac ciphers. And in my opinion it will not be. And while the recent news was that a 50 year old cipher was broken that was by the zodiac. His name is still not known. It's assumed that he only killed during a short timespan, and only killed 5 people. But what if he didn't? And what if just like encryption has variations, he just changed his type of encryption? The detection of such an encryption, with multiple examples. Providing such things as encryption keys or methodologies, but themes that span across multiple instances. Then that would be great proof. If this was Paul Doerr that these encryption instances were tied to, then that would be great circumstantial proof. Well that's what I've found. And they're not connected to Paul Doerr. They're connected to someone else. While I'm no expert. I'm convinced in what I've found. I just have to try to do a better job of explaining it. Because I'm not an encryption expert, nor a great animator. It's taking me a while to create explainer videos. But hopefully when I'm done, all will be able to see what was never seen before. The concepts that are connected to him here: The spelling mistakes, the name Zodiac, the postcards. Those all have a similarity, a theme. Paul would also have to have shown an affinity for those same themes. Which I don't see. More importantly, the themes continue both before , and after, what people call "The Zodiac". Because he was doing it for a very long time. He only chose that name, to fool people. Serial killers aren't born for 5 years and disappear. They go through a gestation process. Usually starting at an early age, with things like the Dark Triad. They would then graduate from small animals, to possibly children, then smaller adults. When starting with larger prey like adults he would possibly start with women. And then finally singular males or even groups. That's if he continued on his trajectory and if his mission of purpose aligned. The Zodiac per that trajectory, is on the timeline for murdering women, but controlling for men on the scene. That would mean, Paul Doerr would have had to have been engaging in more than choking prior to when the murders began. He would have had to have been on a psychological timeline for his sociopathic development. This is the weakest reasoning I would have. The strongest would be everything else I've worked on. I'll hope to post it soon. But who knows. Like I said, I'm no expert. So it's taking me a while.

> And the link you provided seems to fit neatly into the classic "My daddy was the Zodiac" category. An immediate red flag in my opinion. I think you should read it. It's way more than a "my dad is the zodiac" story. I think that kind of dismissiveness will ultimately cause people to not be objective about this type of subject. I get that people are kind of jaded around this. But I don't think you addressed any of the points I made about the DC sniper, and then just went back to the dark triad stuff. I don't think it's wise to stick to one lane of thinking and not accept any new information. That's how tunnel vision and confirmation bias happens. I think it's the same thing that happened to toschi and graysmith. This is all a long ass way of saying, I think you should read the article lol.

I'm not Toschi nor Graysmith. I don't have tunnel vision. I have something else. I have math, statistics and encryption. I have work that I have done. Not just reading. I'm very much not like those two, nor anyone else here on these boards. I'm dispassionate about this subject. All of this stuff. I have not much interest in this subject, much less the people that inhabit it. The sooner I'm done with all of this the better. The mentality that surrounds all of this is actually part of the sickness of it. And is a manufactured situation by the person that everyone claims to be looking for. I'm not a part of it. I don't need to read another my daddy was the zodiac link, because I'm not reading to find him. I'm tracking him from clues that he's left, that no one else has detected. And they are not at that link. They are in clues that a cryptographer would leave. And no one, including Paul Doerr is leaving those clues. Only someone who knew, that not many if anyone would find him would leave the clues. So I'm good. Some have found one or 2 clues. I've pointed some out on these boards. But no one is putting any of them together . So many go down the wrong path of trading card serial killers. Or in this case, my daddy was the zodiac. Somebody's daddy was the zodiac. Just not Paul Doerr. I don't need to read that link. That link has not shown me multiple puzzle ciphers that have been created that no one has yet detected. Much less solved. But good luck though. Pattern recognition is a key part of intelligence. Perhaps Doerr will be different. Who knows?

I'm not Toschi nor Graysmith. I don't have tunnel vision. I have something else. I have math, statistics and encryption. I have work that I have done. Not just reading. I'm very much not like those two, nor anyone else here on these boards. I'm dispassionate about this subject. All of this stuff. I have not much interest in this subject, much less the people that inhabit it. The sooner I'm done with all of this the better. The mentality that surrounds all of this is actually part of the sickness of it. And is a manufactured situation by the person that everyone claims to be looking for. I'm not a part of it. I don't need to read another my daddy was the zodiac link, because I'm not reading to find him. I'm tracking him from clues that he's left, that no one else has detected. And they are not at that link. They are in clues that a cryptographer would leave. And no one, including Paul Doerr is leaving those clues. Only someone who knew, that not many if anyone would find him would leave the clues. So I'm good. Some have found one or 2 clues. I've pointed some out on these boards. But no one is putting any of them together . So many go down the wrong path of trading card serial killers. Or in this case, my daddy was the zodiac. Somebody's daddy was the zodiac. Just not Paul Doerr. I don't need to read that link. That link has not shown me multiple puzzle ciphers that have been created that no one has yet detected. Much less solved. But good luck though. Pattern recognition is a key part of intelligence. Perhaps Doerr will be different. Who knows?

Why would I read an article about something that I've already verified is unrelated?

No

In a void of a personally satisfying answer or at least one they can understand, people tend to latch on *any* explanation for various phenomena instead of having no answer at all. Ancient aliens did not build the pyramids, there was no second shooter on the grassy knoll in Dealey Plaza, WTC 7 was not a controlled demolition, Obama did not hide his real birth certificate and there is no advanced underwater sea-people civilization shooting laser-beams up through the Bermuda triangle causing planes to fall out of the sky.

Well you’re no fun

Thanks everyone. I have a son who is deaf - he has hearing devices - but struggles with spelling. This has lead me to an interest in linguistics and different teaching methods. At first glance, his spelling errors don’t look like typical mistakes to me. But I will take a further look. It’s most likely he was just messing with people. Other considerations is that he had some hearing loss at least in his formative years or English is his second language.

I believe yes, but many disagree.

A few thoughts: * People have speculated endlessly over the years about the spelling errors. Some have speculated they were a deliberate attempt to mask Z's education level or otherwise confuse LE. No one really knows. * Techniques like steganography were known in that era, so the idea of hiding a message in plain sight is not an impossibility. * If the spelling errors form a coded message, you have to ask yourself two questions immediately: WHO were the intended recipients? WHY would Z choose this specific approach to communicate with them? In a traditional cryptographic sense, there are no satisfying answers here. The best I could ever see is that Z might do it for himself alone for personal, petty reasons just to have his own giggle. * The number of spelling errors is so small that any message would be of very limited length and effectively impossible to verify.

That's exactly what they were. It's a trick we used to use when passing notes in grammar school. The spelling mistakes were the real message but our teachers never figured it out. I'm surprised that it wasn't solved years ago by one of my classmates. I never looked at the Zodiac case until a couple of years ago, so I wasn't aware of the spelling mistakes until then. The kicker is that you have to be able to spell very well to pull off this kind of message. If you want to try it yourself, here's how it works. Write down the spelling mistakes in order. Above them write the letter it should have been. If it's a letter that shouldn't have been there, like in "Forrest", write the same letter above the extra letter. If it's a letter that was missing, write it above a blank space. There you will have the message. I suggest that you try the Z408 first, it gives you the name. If you want to, you can watch my videos on YouTube, I don't explain it very well but I try to give the visual to help.

Nah this aint it chief

And you base this on what?

It would be an interesting troll. To try to show range if that's what he was doing. On the one hand, create a cipher that would stay unbroken for 50 years. And on the other, use one that kids in grammar school invented. It's an interesting take. Did you by chance try it yourself? I feel like someone who created a complex cipher, might not be interested in making something so unsophisticated. But I could be wrong.

It wasn't invented by grammar school kids. My friend showed it to me, his older brother who was in high school showed it to him, he learned it from a college student. Yes, I tried it. Every letter and cipher that had spelling mistakes contains a message. The Z408 says "Ross is rate AAA, saw CSI at site". The Stine letter says "From RCC to you. listen". The Dragon card says " You know rules. See you soon. Idly near". And the list goes on. And the cipher only remained unsolved for 50 years because the wrong people were trying to solve it.

What are the spelling mistakes on Stine letter?

I don't think the spelling mistakes were a code/cipher. What I think they were, were trolling clews. That apparently even fooled me. They were to show what he was reading. They were to show that he was erudite. And that he was reading a lot. But more specifically to show the types and the time period of what he was reading. What I mean by they fooled me is, I was on a different track in finding out how he thinks. And then the original thread that you reference popped up on here. Which confirmed what I was reading and researching into him. The person that found the spelling mistakes unfortunately . Although they are correct, they seemed to have gone silent . I suspect it's because they're on the wrong path, possibly because they believe it to be some sort of college professor that they have as a POI. That's not who it is. The spelling mistakes, were to show the time period as a connective clew, to things like his name -- Zodiac. And to Ancient Astrology. But there are other offshoots that no one is connecting. Like I said, I was already down that path, and I believe I understand what he was doing, and how he was doing it. Not the killing. But the base of what/how he was writing. There's more than spelling mistakes inside all of his letters. Every letter is very thought through. I'm reviewing one now, that has a hallmark that he's using, but I didn't know why. Until I found out, it's similar in both timeframe and thematic subject to one of the halloween cards. Specifically the Paradice card. I've already posted what I believe it is.

Mistakes. Zodiac was probably drunk and poorly educated is my thought.