The Unsolved Ciphers of the Zodiac Killer

[admin tim]

http://www.environmentalgraffiti.com/news-will-zodiac-killer-be-coming-back-halloween-0

[Anna Morris]

Z. 340: A Name

Looks like the link in the first post no longer works. It's from 2010 so not surprise. I decided to tack on here rather than start a new thread. I recently made several posts on my VM page about the still unsolved 'Zodiac 340'. My basic point was, the 340--named for number of characters--acts like there is language present. I have deleted those posts as my results refined.

I have found something extraordinary. I could be wrong but a lot of confirmations appear in the text. I have no interest in ciphers but felt the 340 was to be worked like a combination crossword/word search and I have done so. I have also been active on Reddit, posting things in a Zodiac group. I do not want to post my latest results there because Zodiac suspect enthusiasts are worse than Ripperologists. Not to mention, Zodiac could still be alive and therefore caught.

Like I have said in other places, I have not been well this year and I needed to play with something mind numbing. I found David Oranchak's web toy at, https://zodiackillerciphers.com . I will clip a basic picture of this. It is very interactive. (Looks like my files are new and improved or something so I hope this works.)

[Anna Morris]

Author Kevin Robert Brooks developed information on a man who matched a lot of information about the Zodiac serial killer who committed his crimes in 1969 and supposedly sent a number of letters and ciphers to press and police over the next few years.

In late September 1969, the Zodiac donned a peculiar costume and attacked a couple on the shores of Lake Berryessa, near San Francisco. The attacker claimed to be an escaped prisoner from Deer Lodge prison which is located in Montana. He told the couple, Cecelia Shepherd and Bryan Hartnell, that he only wanted to rob them but first they had to be tied up. Then the killer savagely attacked both young people. Cecelia died and Bryan survived. As a final act, the killer wrote his score in felt tip marker on the door of Hartnell's car. The killer claimed three attacks on couples at that time.

Brooks' book which looks like it is called "Zodiac,The Montana Connection", develops a character named Donald Lee Buyok. (I think the book has been published but I am unclear on that.)

Hopefully I can attach a couple clips or links or whatever. (Well, one is better than none. I distrust systems that reorganize themselves, as my files are doing.)

[Anna Morris]

I don't know what's going on. My last post repeated something I already attached. I don't have the edit/delete option here on the Forum right now. Anywhere I try to go online says no service, unavailable, etc. I actually have good wi-fi so maybe it's the internet in general. I'll catch up later.

The name 'Bujok' or 'Buyok' appeared as I worked on the 340. It appears to be a base for solving the thing. I plan to share several findings for what it's worth. Later.

[Anna Morris]

I was finally able to delete the duplicate. The internet just isn't working right. We have all the California smoke up here. I have 30 acres of fields and two big windbreaks in view except I can only see 15 acres and part of a windbreak. Maybe something burned down in California and messed up the internet?

I'll add to this as I can. Like I said in the post below, the name Bujok/Buyok filled itself in. There are lots of confirmations in the text that this is correct. As I mentioned in Post 2, author Kevin Robert Brooks developed Donald Lee Buyok as a possible for the Zodiac killer.

A sideline to this is that serial killer Edward Wayne Edwards wrote a paragraph in his book--circa 1970's--describing Buyok but without a name, and his fantasies about killing people to make slaves for the afterlife. As I understand it, Author Brooks worked from this paragraph, finding Buyok was in Deer Lodge prison in Montana at the same time as Edwards.

So there is an obvious problem right there. Some have tried to say Edwards was the Zodiak killer. Edwards wrote in his book about redemption, of a fellow inmate who, according to Edwards, had fantasies we later see played out in the Zodiac crimes and letters. Could Edwards have written the letters and ciphers and used the fantasies of another for the dramatic twist? Maybe.

On the other hand, I was surprised my Voynich Manuscript work helped. I was real careful just to work the 'clews' and not interject anything esoteric. However, it soon became apparent that I, Y and to an extent J, could be used interchangeably. Bujok was listed on his prison intake as of Polish descent. Some sources say his father was Austrian but the mother's maiden name seems like Czech or Polish.

Without doing anything to the 340, the plain text seems to favor some small words like BO, SOY and TOY. There are others but these two are especially interesting to me because of the I, Y, J interchanges. There is a way to check for correct letter choices in the instructions that first appear. Without a long explanation, SOJ and TOJ = SOY and TOY at one point and that they fill in that way is a proof of correct choices. A correct choice can be proved by a "triad", that it makes small words in three directions.

So I'll share what I have found and the difficult sequencing that makes solving the 340 almost impossible. I will just present stuff without a lot of explanation because a work by an insane person really defies explanation. The crazy letter placement is something I find very hard to deal with. I think lots of our members can sort it out better than I can.

One of these sequences seems to work like a Star of David pattern in places. Variations of JEW, JOO, etc. seem to appear so I am wondering if Buyok's family consisted of Austrian or Polish Jews who immigrated around 1904? Kind of sounds like Israel Schwartz.....

I'm sorry I started this thing and have had to halt posting. It is just too hard to keep losing my place online. Thanks for your patience.

[Anna Morris]

Like I said below, working on parts of the 340 via David Oranchak's zodiackillerciphers.com web toy cause other parts of the thing to fill in. If I can attach a couple clips, one will be a section in plain text on the right hand side toward the top. The other will be how it filled in from other parts of the text. The only 'selection'--or maybe you would feel the word guess is more appropriate--by me is the Z.

My reasoning on Z is there is only ONE such character. The web toy predicts that in 340 characters, presumably representing the English language, there would be no Z's. But this is the 'Zodiac speaking' so I think there could be a Z or two. There are Z's in the plain text which seem to have the hard S sound as in 'bees' at least for a while. Eventually these Z's become E's if my work is correct.

Many have suspected the text has some sort of adjustable pattern. Some have written their solutions on strips of paper and moved the paper strips back and forth to see if a coherent text appears. Apparently these efforts have not worked. What I have found are messages that are separated on different lines. I have not quite found a predictable pattern. This kind of thing drives me crazy as I am not very good at puzzles like this. This is part of the reason I am making these posts. I know we have a number of Forum members who are very good at puzzles.

One other thing, the 'A' before 'OD' in the second example works out as J at the bottom, as in 'Bujok'. If we apply J in the example below and read horizontally we have JO[D]K. Dropping the D we have JOK. This is a good reason not to change the K to C right away. One of the first clues shows that is a dangerous thing to do. Some of the plain text needs to be left intact and mental score kept of what it is or might be. Speaking of J as in Bujok, there is also interplay between J, I, Y. I was surprised but Don Buyok was of Polish heritage and Catholic faith. Between the Polish language and church Latin, that makes a lot of sense.

I figured the 340 must have a starting point of two. There must be an example of the pattern(s) or whatever. Perhaps that is shown in the clip I present here. I believe the text can be read horizontally and vertically at least. Perhaps also horizontally though the horizontal may only be to give the clues to correct letter choice.

The Zodiac 408 was deciphered by a couple school teachers over a weekend. The solution turned out to be about grade school level expression, 'I like killing people....it is so much fun...it is more fun than hunting game in the forrest* [sic]... The 340 does not seem to have a message like that. It seems to have short burst of ideas but the main thing I have found is the Montana person of interest, Don Lee Bujok.

It is obvious that the K left in plain text in my example should be a C to properly spell Zodiac. There are many examples in the text that indicate that first and foremost the writer used phonetics rather than spelling.

*"forrest"=> Zodiac was known for 'spelling mistakes'. I am not sure all of those things are mistakes. "Forrest" can also = FOR REST. That is the sort of thing that seems to be present in the 340. Also, Don Bujok was in Deer Lodge prison for killing a sheriff deputy, perhaps in the forest. Is there a play on words about having 'rest' after a killing in the forest? I am also curious to see if the victim was a game warden. Some very interesting things show up in the 340 and this makes me wonder, if my work is reasonably correct, if Buyok was describing his life and crimes in a 'cioher' no one has been able to crack?

Does anyone see a workable pattern in these examples? Is there a specific point where reading should change direction?


'

[Anna Morris]

During one particularly bad stretch of migraine I listened to a lot of videos on the Zodiac killer and the ciphers. I have no interest in ciphers, I suppose because I am too creative by nature. Anyway, great people have worked on the unsolvable 340 cipher, as well as the FBI, super computers, etc. For whatever reason I could not resist investigating David Oranchak's web toy and staying to play with it.

Most attempts to decipher this mess lead to gibberish or mostly gibberish, things which I think are officially called 'background noise' in official circles.

In first eyeballing this thing, probably with one eyeball at a time due to migraine, it looked like the creator of the 'cipher' WANTED to communicate something. The first clue--actually 'CLEW' can be made near this spot--was this bit that seems to say 'LOOC' with a K on top. It seemed natural to swap K for C. This did not work for me though it appears K is meant to be C at some times so maybe we should just say K = C as in cat for the phonetics.

Note what look like O's in the LOOC. They look like eyeballs, directing the gaze. In the post below I discussed the various directions in the solved text. I am quite certain the 340 does not read strictly left to right, nor strictly in one direction at all. IMO the text is not something so simple as shifting lines till words line up. There are odd patterns about pulling letters or syllables from above. No doubt I will end up finishing this thing with pencil and paper.

In my post below, please note the complex 'eyeball' arrangement around the spot that fills in to spell 'ZODIAK[C]' from a couple directions. That is the most extensive O looks like eyeballs arrangement in the whole thing.

Fortunately if one pays close attention, there are several instructions given as the plain text is decoded. These directions work perfectly. One is to prove letter substitution choices by 'triad'. If the chosen letter makes words in three directions, horizontal, vertical, diagonal, it is a good choice. This really helped me along. Before finding this instruction I had noticed that some choices instantly made small words in several directions.

Take a look at this clew from the bottom of the 340, just left of center. IMO a lot of the plain text needs to be left in place so every possible meaning can be wrung from the work. This particular sequence seems to be=> LOOC[K], COOL read backwards. Just to the left of that and diagonally, CLEWS fits nicely. This will change as work progresses but it is a nice start. So the whole sequence lets us know this mess is to be read in different directions and some letters will be brought down from above. I believe this segment means: CLEWS LOOC[K] COOL.

The clip below is not particularly instructive. Damn files that keep 'organizing' themselves. I'll post a better clip above. Acrually this one does not show what I want to show. I'll try to delete it without losing what I just wrote. Doesn't look like I can delete it. I'll try in the post above.

[Anna Morris]

Hopefully this graphic will go with what I wrote in the post below. Suddenly my files seem to shuffle themselves at will. Stuff from today is lost under stuff from weeks ago. Must be one of those 'updates' or improvements by Google.

Miracle! My system found the right graphic but I see the whole thing shuffled itself again. It all used to be chronological. Last entered was top of the list. The files are not arranging alphabetically because the search function can't find anything based on spelling. Maybe my files are worse than the unsolvable Z-340.....

[Anna Morris]

I mentioned in the clip and posts below that I found the word "CLEWS" to the left of LOOK/COOL. I don't want to go into that right now but have another short observation.

It seems imperative to keep some of the plain text letters in place for a long time. Perfect order leads to solution. Jumping ahead leads to disaster. It is possible to figure out some substitutions and you can think ___ = ___. If you reset the web toy and plug in those letters, you might very quickly become muddled as you work. The reason is because some things need to be tweaked along the way and if those plain text characters are not visible, many mistakes can follow.

That said, plain text W, X, Z, O, Q need to remain as long as possible. W seems to eventually = A but it needs to function as W until almost the end. (O works kind of like a wild card in a couple ways. I think I discovered the second way today. 'ANN AY ATOP O' reads the directions. I think I know the second meaning for that. At this time I am not sure that the regular looking O, or zero-type thing, has any value other than the semi-wild card function.)

The end of what, you may ask? Actually my system fills in the whole thing and it does not make gibberish. It also has a lot of quirks and is not elegant. I love languages and etymology, and I do not so much enjoy puzzles that use tricky spellings to make a point. Lots of times I fail to see all that is going on. I think I have some solutions to Z-340 based on alphabet and language. There is probably a lot that is sailing over my head.

[Anna Morris]

In my first posts I said I had found the name Bujok in the Z-340 and that Donald Lee Bujok was a POI developed by author Kevin Robert Brooks in his book "Zodiac: The Montana Connection". I was aware of the name but doubted any names appeared in the 340. I have also learned from years of Ripperology not to too seriously seek suspects.

I could not post these clips a couple days ago and hope I can now. I am not playing games, I just could not make the system work when I started.

At the bottom right hand corner it looks like the name Zodiac[K] should fill in. It does not work out and is too obvious. The cipher creator will not give anything easily. As I have mentioned in other posts, there are some areas of the 340 that beg to be investigated, like maybe those are starting points.

One of those is just above what looks like it should be ZODIAC[K]. It looks like BOYOB, or BOY to be read one direction and then the other. Or could it mean 'BOY OH BOY', a formerly common U.S. expression to express delighted surprise? For instance, "Boy Oh Boy, that is a powerful sports car! Boy Oh Boy does not work out.

One of the instructions explains the regular looking O's are meant to be replaced with a letter from above. This works 100% of the time. The second part of 'ANN AY ATOP O" I believe has to do with replacing A with O. For instance, apparently the correct spelling for the name is Bujok. What filled in repeatedly is Bujak. There are also examples of DAN LEE in the 340 and Donald Lee Bujok would be DON LEE.

The B has to be where I have put it, replacing the O below. The result with the B there is to make a bi-directional BOB and I wonder if Bujok was ever called Bob? Don't know.

On the other hand, I researched the name Bujok to see if there was any hidden meaning that could help me. It is considered a Polish name but looks like it may have come from Bulgaria, meaning farmer. A pronunciation sounds like 'BOYK'. A Polish pronunciation is similar. So is the BOY/BOY thing a guide to correct pronunciation? That is not the only place where the basic BOY configuration is found. OY is a big component in the plain text before anything is done.

As I have said before, J, I, Y seem to be interchangeable. If I am correct in what I have found, this would make sense if a first generation person of Polish descent wanted to emphasize correct pronunciation or spelling of a name like Bujok.

I am leaving the K in place at this time. K and C seem interchangeable. Zodiac was not known for correct spelling and IMO he preferred phonetics. I believe the character after the K is a ligature = ILL. Remember, the first Zodiac cipher, the 408, was broken in a weekend by two school teachers who figured Zodiac would use the word KILL, thus the double L's were ferreted out. I believe this ligature serves as 'I'll' as in 'I will' as well as ILL as in [K]ILL. I believe the + at the very end is serving as R. Therefore, 'Buja[k] [K]ILLR. That is about the quality of the spelling. I also think before 'Bujak' there is, 'Dan Lee', with the Z eventually becoming E. I will present this in the future. A problem is I think part of the bottom line is dependent upon pulling some stuff from the top line and that is still rather confusing. (It is also a reason why I am making these posts. I have an idea many here at the Forum could see puzzle patterns better than I can.

However it works out, every bit has to be proved and patterns have to be recognized so my work can be checked by anyone. There is another popular 'solution to the 340 that places in the middle, something Zodiac wrote in a letter. It is the mantra about 'By rope, By fire...Slaves for Paradice...' I can see why someone thought it fit where they found it but there is NO way to prove the idea. I'd think Zodiac, probably ticked off that a couple school teachers made short work of his 408, would have added something for proof. Like when the 'By rope..., etc.' filled in, there should be at least a part of a line that fills in to say ****-U or GOTCHA or something. Otherwise the whole thing is a good guess because it looks like it fits in a certain spot. In my opinion.

I have found a lot more in support of Bujok but will add in other posts.

Arrows in left hand clip point to how this appears in the plain text without additions. Right hand clip shows how the 'UJA[K]' filled in along with the B that completes the name but must be placed above the wild card O. For whatever reason, BOB fills in or mostly fills in when B is put in the place I have chosen. Is this a confirmation of something? Not sure. Hope so.

[Anna Morris]

Here are two graphics showing what I call an instruction to solve the 340 mess. Note only some letters and characters have been replaced.

For a long time I thought this line invited the solution, "DO TO ME', since I had determined the plain dot worked well as E. When I was experimenting I thought it was 'DID TO ME'.

As I refined my work and made more and more sense, it kept filling in as, 'J ADS TO ME.' That especially makes sense in context of Bujak/Bujok, etc. It appears to me the creator of this thing deliberately played with J, I, Y.

Sources claim Don Bujok had a speech pathology for which he was teased and bullied in school. It is said his speech patterns were odd. Other sources indicate both his parents were immigrants from Austria or thereabouts. Bujok's prison intake papers list his ethnicity as Polish.

In English we would most likely pronounce Bujok as BOO-JAWK, second syllable rhyming with hawk. In Zodiac letters to various entities he liked to use the word 'BOO'. Maybe that was just because some of his missives were sent around Halloween. On the other hand, BOO can turn up in the 340 although that is not remarkable.

Could it be that Bujok's speech difficulties were in part to English being a second language in the family home? Could the 340 be an exercise to say something like, "My name is pronounced 'BOYiK', get it right for once!"?

I'm just using small clips at this time because the web toy fills in other stuff and looking at the whole page will fry your brains and cause your eyes to cross permanently. That said, DO visit the web toy and try what I am sharing. It is amazing overall. (As always, many thanks to David Oranchak for inventing and providing his web toy. I am deeply indebted.)

DAMMIT! The clipping extension which is incompatible with my system showed that the letters I added in the second clip were right over the plain text letters. Now they are practically a line below. The relevant phrase appears between the red arrows in the left hand clip. It starts with J and ends with .

[Anna Morris]

Just when everyone probably hoped I had given up this project... Uh, no...I have been quietly working because my system produces fantastic results.

I am not feeling well, so no long explanations. Look at it yourselves and make your own conclusions. Note the word NAM at the bottom left, completed with E, next column top. NAME. I was never looking for names because i assumed there were none. I think this crazy thing is to be worked in as a crossword puzzle but the completed text reads top to bottom, top to bottom, etc.

Some aberrant letters will looks like huge mistakes. I have a couple things in there marking spots to watch and a couple other things I am letting stand on this work sheet because I am pretty sure of the decoded value.

In general it looks like the "NAME"(S) have to do with DON, BOB, BOY, RAY, maybe ED. I don't think this means much in general. There are a couple Donald Lee persons of interest, Cheney (Beeson's suspect) and Buyok (Brook's suspect).

The Bujok suspect is tied up with the Ed Edwards mess. Edwards of course in someone else's suspect but he did serve time in Deer Lodge prison in Montana when Bujok was there.

Overall, it looks like my system is homing in on naming Bujok but if so, I have a feeling it is not the creation of Don Lee Bujok.....for what it's worth.