Hunted: The Zodiac Murders (The Zodiac Serial Killer Book 1)
Page 35
The police now had in their possession three unsolved Zodiac ciphers. The evidence was mounting that they were being played by a killer who was more interested in controlling the police than in providing them with sincere clues. Despite the success in deciphering the first, the “408,” cipher, a consensus began to build that the remaining three likely contained no useful information and possibly no real solutions, especially the final two ciphers that were short and embedded within the text of letters.
Though longer than the previous cryptograph, the 32-character cipher was even less useful. Because only three symbols were used more than once, and each of these being found only two times in the cryptograph, the mathematical probabilities became apparent: nearly any 32-character solution could fit the cipher. And any solution was no better than any other solution, especially in light of the Zodiac’s history of spelling mistakes and coding errors. Even if it could be determined to be a homophonic, single substitution cipher with variations, as was the 408 cipher, the number of unique symbols ensured that almost any conceivable 32 letter combination making a sentence or a phrase would be equally likely—or unlikely—to be a correct solution. If the assumption was not correct, and the cipher was not homophonic, all bets were off, and the solution could be absolutely anything.
What the Zodiac had provided was more than likely not a cipher but gibberish. The mathematically inclined were savvy enough to refuse more than a cursory glance, and wonder whether there was some other direction to tackle its enigma, one that would provide success. No satisfactory solution was ever proffered.
Johns letter
The end of July saw two new Zodiac mailings. Postmarked on July 24 and 26 and addressed to The San Francisco Chronicle, the two letters, the Johns letter and the Torture letter, were forwarded to the FBI Crime lab in Washington, D.C., first by a request for an examination in an airtel on July 29, then through photocopies of the letters themselves sent two days later.
The identification label, Qc52, was assigned to the July 26 envelope, and Qc53 to the July 24 envelope. The Johns letter, the first received and shorter of the two, was labeled Qc54; the Torture letter, Qc55. The material was combined in a single mailing to the FBI in Washington, D.C.
The SFPD supplied the two newly arrived Zodiac letters to the FBI in San Francisco, after lifting from them some latent fingerprints. Elimination prints had been taken from any employees of The Chronicle who may have handled them. The FBI in Washington, D.C. examined the documents to compare handwriting, and was easily able to match them to the previously received Zodiac letters, noting that some of the letters contained some distortion and were not written as freely as other threating letters, and that most of its samples were photos so they were not as clear as originals. The lab concluded that all appeared to be from the same hand and declared them authentic on August 4, “All threatening letters, including [the two new ones], were probably prepared by one person.”
The Johns letter was one of the shortest of the Zodiac letters. After the initial “This is the Zodiac speaking,” the body of the hand-printed missive comprised a mere two sentences, the whole text not even filling the single sheet of paper on which it was written. In it, the killer finally claimed credit for the attack on Kathleen Johns, but never attempted to provide convincing proof. All of the information in the letter had already been reported through numerous media sources.
The text of the Johns letter was as follows:
This is the Zodiac speaking
I am rather unhappy because
you people will not wear some
nice [crosshair symbol] buttons. So I now
have a little list, starting with
the woeman & her baby that I
gave a rather intersting ride
for a coupple howers one
evening a few months back that
ended in my burning her
car where I found them.
[crosshair symbol, centered on page]
The note contained the killer’s first reference to The Mikado, a light, comedic opera by Gilbert and Sullivan. By claiming, “I now have a little list,” the Zodiac was alluding to the song “I Have a Little List” from that opera, first performed in London in 1885. This reference, along with several future Mikado quotes, led investigators to question why the opera drew his attention.
Subsequent investigation included the interrogation of people who acted in, worked for, or habitually attended performances of The Mikado. It also led to speculation that the hood worn by the perpetrator on September 27 of the previous year was a physical representation of one of the characters: Ko-Ko, the Lord High Executioner who sang the referenced song. Perhaps the Zodiac was dressing in the costume of Ko-Ko, and identified himself as some sort of executioner.
Why the Zodiac referenced the opera has never been fully explained. All investigation into the Lamplighters and other drama troupes who were performing it during or around the period of time that the attacks occurred led to nothing. Another clue floating in the dark: intriguing, perplexing, but ultimately offering no clear direction.
The letter made references to the enigmatic attack on Kathleen Johns four months after the actual event, leading some to consider this a false claim. Had the Zodiac read about the incident attributed to him and only now claimed it? Or did the killer attempt to remain true to his word in not announcing his attacks, waiting with this information until he found he had little else to offer the public?
The next letter left no doubt about the murderer’s interest in The Mikado.
Torture letter
Arriving with the Johns letter, and posted immediately on its tail, the Torture letter was one of the most unusual of all of the Zodiac’s communications. Almost nothing could be gleaned from a face value reading of the text, despite its length of five pages. The theories on the meaning of the letter proved as diverse as its myriad subject matter. Readers have noted that it could be further evidence of its author’s psychological unraveling, clever hints at some kind of veiled message, a diversionary tactic to trick investigators into believing he was legally insane, or evidence that the killer was sadistic at his core. Or maybe none of these theories described the letter’s true intent.
The writer first described tortures that he would commit on his “slaves,” a euphemism first introduced in the solution to the 408 cipher to describe the people that he had killed. On the surface, the threat itself made no sense. To the sane individual, it was crazy to contemplate performing a torturous act on an already deceased person, which amounted to no more than a threat to desecrate corpses (to which he had no access). By this time, he had claimed 13 “slaves” or victims, though investigators had only been able to tie him conclusively to 5 deaths (later adjusted by some to 6 when information linked him to Bates’s murder). What he meant by the additional numbers was open to speculation: people he had killed who had yet to be identified, a false level of murders to mislead investigators and instill additional fear and uncertainty in the general public, or something else.
Detailing 5 tortures that he would enact on his “slaves” if the people of the Bay Area would not wear his “buttons,” the Zodiac wrote the following on the first two pages of the Torture letter:
This is the Zodiac speaking
Being that you will not wear
some nice [crosshair symbol] buttons, how about
wearing some nasty [crosshair symbol] buttons.
Or any type of [crosshair symbol] buttons that
you can think up. If you do
not wear any type of [crosshair symbol]
buttons I shall (on top of every
thing else) torture all 13
of my slaves that I have
wateing for me in Paradice.
Some I shall tie over ant hills
and watch them scream & twich
and squirm. Other shall have
pine splinters driven under their
nails & then burned. Others shall
be placed in cage
s & fed salt
beef untill they are gorged then
I shall listen to their pleass
for water and I shall laugh at
them. Others will hang by
their thumbs & burn in the
sun then I will rub them down
with deep heat to warm
—
them up. Other I shall
skin them alive & let them
run around screaming. And
all billiard players I shall
have them play in a dark
ened dungon cell with crooked
cues & Twisted Shoes.
Yes I shall have great
fun inflicting the most
delicious of pain to my
Slaves
[half-page-sized crosshair symbol] = 13
SFPD = 0
Far from instilling fear, the threat of torturing dead bodies—his previous victims—made little sense to investigators. His verbiage increasingly began to fall on deaf ears, becoming mere words, especially since he never carried through on his promises to snipe a school bus or to bomb school children. His ideas staged a theater of the absurd when more and more outrageous boasts were communicated but never enacted. The killer was raising into a large pot at the poker table, but the public was now calling his bluff.
The prose degenerated into near nonsense on the second page, in which he summed up his plans, “Yes I shall have fun inflicting the most delicious of pain to my slaves.”
The final three pages of the torture letter presented an almost exact quote of part of The Mikado, with liberty taken on much of the spelling and some wording:
As some day it may hapen
that a victom must be found.
I’ve got a little list. I’ve
got a little list, of society
offenders who might well be
underground who would never
be missed who would never be
missed. There is the pest-
ulentual nucences who whrite
for autographs, all people who
have flabby hands and irritat-
ing laughs. All children who
are up in dates and implore
you with implatt. All people
who are shakeing hands shake
hands like that. And all third
persons who with unspoiling
take thoes who insist. They’d
none of them be missed. They’d
none of them be missed. There’s
the banjo seranader and
the others of his race and
the piano orginast I got him
on the list. All people who
eat pepermint and phomphit
—
in your face, they would
never be missed They would
never be missed And the
Idiout who phraises with in-
thusastic tone of centuries
but this and every country but
his own. And the lady from
the provences who dress like
a guy who doesn’t cry and
the singurly abnomily the
girl who never kissed. I don’t
think she would be missed
Im shure she wouldn’t be
missed. And that nice impriest
that is rather rife the judici-
ial hummerest I’ve to him on
the list All funny fellows, com-
mic men and clowns of private
life. They’d none of them be
missed. They’d none of them be
missed. And uncompromiseing
kind such as wachamacallit ,
thingmebob , and like wise , well-
-nevermind , and tut tut tut tut ,
and whatshisname , and you know
—
who, but the task of filling
up the blanks I rather leave
up to you. But it really does-
n’t matter whom you place
upon the list , for none of
them be missed, none of
them be missed.
[two-thirds-of-a-page-sized crosshair symbol]
PS. The Mt. Diablo Code concerns
Radians & # inches along the radians
The FBI located the origin of the three-page quote that closed the Torture letter, and on August 10 sent a printed copy of the song sung by Ko-Ko in Act 1 of The Mikado and a portion of the song sung by The Mikado in Act 2. The Johns letter and the end of the Torture letter appeared to quote The Mikado Act 1; the second page of the Torture letter could be an allusion to Act 2 because of the presence of five similar words, including “billiard.”
The FBI did not find a new cipher in either of the letters, “No code or cipher material was found in specimens Qc52 to Qc56.” The FBI noted that the mention of the “Mt. Diablo code” within the text of the Torture letter was probably a reference to the Map letter, Qc51, previously submitted.
The FBI did an extensive search of the documents for fingerprints, collecting eight latents from two of its pages. In a subsequently filed report, it noted that a pattern could be determined from the arrangement of fingers that had touched the pages. Not only did law enforcement have individual prints, they knew which prints came from which of his fingers—but only if the lifted prints were actually his, a fact that could not be confirmed.
The Torture letter may have been evidence that Zodiac needed to clarify his allusions in the Johns letter. Arriving with the previous missive on July 27, though postmarked two days after the Johns letter, it was a clear recitation of Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. Fearing that his veiled reference—communicated in just a few short words—would fall on uncreative ears, he may have felt the need to spell it out for people who had no understanding of the light opera. Accordingly, he quoted, in parts word for word, a large section of the opera, the song, “I Have a Little List.”
The Torture letter provided the only indication that the killer might be interested in torturing other people. He did not mention or even suggest as much in other letters. Furthermore, all his actual attacks were sudden and quick. There was no hint given in the manner of his murders that he was even remotely interested in, or inspired by, the suffering of his victims, many being dispatched quickly and with an absence of the prolonged agony that would accompany the work of a sadist who reveled in the effects of his violence. His rapid departure from the scenes of his attacks further evidenced a lack of interest in his victims’ pain.
While his letter celebrated torture, he himself had ceased killing, it appeared. His messages had degenerated into a veritable word salad. They appeared to many to be nothing short of nonsense. The Chronicle decided not to publish these last two letters, in their words, “just to see what the Zodiac would do.” By this time they suspected that they were actually encouraging him to write by publishing his material, a vicious cycle they meant to interrupt. The Zodiac’s interest in The Mikado would not be made public until the first anniversary of the killing of Paul Stine, a date nearly three months away.
***
By the summer of 1970, the investigation was no closer to capturing the Zodiac than it had been at any time in 1969. But neither was the Zodiac capturing the public imagination as he once had. The citizens of the Bay Area were becoming weary of his bizarre threats, and began to believe that he may have ceased killing. A stalemate had been reached as cat and mouse toyed with each other, even as they played a deadly game with citizens’ lives and a perpetrator’s freedom.
The next move forward would be made by the killer, not in the form of another violent attack but through a successful effort at regaining control of the media, with the hope of a return to a once familiar place on the daily newspaper: the front page.
To remain relevant, the killer would have to look beyond Northern California. To open new markets for his threats, and locate newspapers who would publish his words, his campaign of crime would in time move south. But first, it may have
moved west to the California-Nevada border.
10 | LAKE TAHOE
“pass LAKE TAHOE areas”
The next Zodiac attack may not have been a Zodiac attack. It may not have even been an attack.
On September 6, 1970, 25-year-old Donna Lass went missing. She was employed at the time as a nurse at the Sahara Tahoe Casino in Nevada, and assigned to aid any guest or employee with a health concern. Last seen at 2:00 a.m. caring for a patient at the casino’s first aid station, the pretty, blonde-haired, blue-eyed nurse simply disappeared following her shift and was never heard from again. She made her last entry into her logbook at 1:50 a.m. in the early hours of Sunday. No one witnessed the departure of the petite young woman—she was five feet three inches and 135 pounds—and no hint of her whereabouts has ever surfaced. Today, little more is known about her fate than was known the week she vanished.
The following day, a telephone call was placed to the bustling casino, and another one to Lass’s landlord. An unknown male stated in both calls that Donna would not be returning due to a family emergency.
There was no family emergency, however. It was a cruel hoax, likely designed to give someone a few extra hours to cover up for a crime or escape the area. There was no male who had a close relationship with Lass to justify a legitimate call on her behalf. That caller alone may know what happened to the young nurse.
Lass’s vehicle, a new 1968 convertible, was later discovered at her apartment complex at 3893 Monte Verdi in nearby Stateline, California. Lass had rented her new home, but had not yet fully moved into it. The circumstances of her disappearance baffled police and confounded her family. She may have been sighted on September 7, according to a newspaper account. A witness believed that Lass, born November 3, 1944, was accompanied by a blond-haired man. The two were seen walking near the unit recently rented by Lass.
The young nurse left behind her cherished vehicle, a bank account with $500 in savings, and her entire wardrobe. A careful inventory of her possessions revealed that the only items missing were her purse and the clothes she was wearing. Her credit cards remained unused, and there was no sign of any struggle in the apartment.