Letters

Letters

The Letters section brings together the Zodiac communications as an evolving documentary corpus rather than a collection of isolated messages. It follows the development of the offender’s language, claims, threats, symbols, authentication methods and public persona across time, while distinguishing canonical, disputed and contested material. Through close reading and chronological comparison, the section examines how the letters preserved the crimes, manipulated institutions, extended ambiguity and carried recurring motifs across the wider architecture of the case.

The following articles concern Canonical Zodiac Communications (see clarification below). A section of Contested Communications will appear soon.

Zodiac Letters 1 (July 31, 1969): The first triptych of letters accompanying the Z408 three-part cipher. Three letters that form part of a singular communication event, in the same way that Z408 was a singular corpus of encoding. Mailed to the SF Chronicle, the SF Examiner and the Vallejo Times-Herald.

Coming soon

Zodiac Letters 2 (August 4, 1969): The "Debut Letter" hand-delivered to the SF Examiner where the killer christens himself "The Zodiac". No stamp/envelope is known to exist.



Canonical / Principal Zodiac Communications

Communications whose authorship forms part of the stable central corpus used by this project. Objects whose status remains materially debated are placed separately under Contested Letters and Cards, even when some archives include them in their authenticated collections. The list that follows is based on the LE-archive classification endorsed by Tom Voigt's ZodiacKiller.com website.

Canonical / Principal Zodiac Letters and Cards

1969

  1. July 31, 1969 — Vallejo Times-Herald Letter
    Accompanied by one-third of Z408.
  2. July 31, 1969 — San Francisco Chronicle Letter
    Accompanied by one-third of Z408.
  3. July 31, 1969 — San Francisco Examiner Letter
    Accompanied by one-third of Z408.
  4. August 1969 — Debut of “Zodiac” Letter
    Received August 4; first known use of “This is the Zodiac speaking.”
  5. October 13, 1969 — Stine Letter
    Included a portion of Paul Stine’s shirt.
  6. November 8, 1969 — Dripping Pen Card and Z340 Cipher
  7. November 9, 1969 — Bus Bomb Letter
  8. December 20, 1969 — Melvin Belli Letter
    Included another portion of Paul Stine’s shirt.

1970

  1. April 20, 1970 — “My Name Is” Letter and Z13 Cipher
  2. April 28, 1970 — Dragon Card
  3. June 26, 1970 — Button/Map Letter and Z32 Cipher
  4. July 24, 1970 — Kathleen Johns Letter
  5. July 26, 1970 — Little List Letter
  6. October 27, 1970 — Halloween Card

1971

  1. March 13, 1971 — Los Angeles Times Letter
  2. March 22, 1971 – Pines Card/Sierra Club

1974

  1. January 29, 1974 — Exorcist Letter
  2. February 3, 1974 — SLA Letter
    FBI documentation records the envelope as postmarked February 3; it was reportedly received February 14.
  3. May 8, 1974 — Citizen/Badlands Card
  4. July 8, 1974 — Red Phantom Letter

Note of importance: these are totally 20 Canonical Letters and Cards, representing 18 distinct correspondence events or dates.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Commentary vol. 1: The Joost Name and the Cartography of Power

Image
  Commentary_vol_1_The Joost Name and the Cartography of Power With this post I am opening a new section of the site — Commentary — a space for reflection and interpretation rather than primary analysis. Unlike the Crimes , Ciphers , or Letters pages, these essays will not aim to prove or disprove a specific event but to discuss the broader historical, linguistic, and infrastructural frameworks that surround the Zodiac material. The first commentary arises from Tom Voigt’s October 17, 2025, release of Paul Avery’s private communique to Sherwood Morrill, written on 17 November 1969, in which the Chronicle reporter referred to a “Joost suspect.” [1] The note, unpublished for more than half a century, has reignited debate on the message board of ZodiacKiller.com on Tapatalk [2]. Many commenters have tried to determine which individual Avery might have meant, often listing living members of the Joost family or their descendants. My own approach is different. I am less inte...
Read more

Canonical cipher 3: Z13 vol.1. Entropy based solution of Z13

Image
  An entropy-based solution of the Z13 based on a cascade consideration of ciphers Comment: Originally proposed in May 2024 on Tom Voigt’s Tapatalk Zodiac Killer forum and message board, this solve has undergone revision that does not take away from the step-1 solution (Table III) nor the end solution (Table IV). The solution wishes to explain the process of step-2 better and contextualize with the solution proposed by Dr. Ryan Garlick. Moreover, it offers a step-3 for the validation of symbols order. Z13 has been considered time and time again as per its short length which does not allow for an inclusion (and therefore discovery) of an internal key. Various suggestions have been provided and various solutions have been proposed, including some very plausible and interesting solutions by zodiac researchers and cipher scholars in this forum, such as cipher (comment: SolidSnake1990) and rando . My approach, based on my signal processing/information theory background, is based ...
Read more

Edward Wayne Edwards vol. 1: Introducing EWE

  Edward Wayne Edwards vol_1: Introducing EWE Preface — Method, Ethics, and Tone Every study begins with an absence. In this case, the absence is truth — not merely about one man’s crimes, but about the structures that enabled him to live behind a revolving sequence of names and stories for half a century. This project does not canonize a killer; it documents deception as a system —how institutions, media, and the subject’s own performance architecture reinforced one another. “Edward Wayne Edwards” was not only a criminal: he was a phenomenon of concealment. His apparent “reformation,” his autobiographical Metamorphosis , his televised and recorded performances — all functioned as rehearsed illusions of accountability. The purpose of these volumes is not to admire that design, but to unmask it, piece by piece, using verifiable data, careful sourcing, and a clear separation between evidence and speculation. On Method The approach throughout is forensic, not rhetorica...
Read more