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The "340": I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS

The "340": I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH The spelling errors a bit interesting. The video is also very interesting.

ausbah 6y ago
did the misspellings make it harder to crack the code? or was this known from previous cracked ciphers?
- mikeyouse 6y ago
  PARADICE was spelled the same across all of his previous messages, so it's a really good indication that this cipher was correct. This YouTube gets into the details of how they cracked it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1oQLPRE21o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1oQLPRE21o
  - sduenas 6y ago
    It's also interesting that PARADICE appears in this message twice. One time is spelled backwards (ECIDARAP). Probably he did this because how his first cipher was cracked withing hours/days. It was cracked by the wife of this high-school teacher. She thought the cipher would start with the word "I" and it would also contain words like "KILL". She found these words within the message so with the help of his husband, they guessed the key and the whole message. I think Zodiac learned from his mistakes and decide to make it more complicated spelling it backwards, so the same symbols won't appear twice. He probably thought code-breakers would also be looking for important words he included on his earlier messages, such as "paradice" or "slave/s". Having a long sequence of symbols that appears twice and transposing them to his most known words could have led to break the code really fast.
rozab 6y ago
The 'IS LIFE' was probably meant to go at the end. "BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH IS LIFE"
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  Bingo. Yes, the placement of "IS LIFE" was their guess and yours is so much better. They mention it at: https://youtu.be/-1oQLPRE21o?t=520 https://youtu.be/-1oQLPRE21o?t=520
- meowface 6y ago
  Which grammar do you consider more likely? "I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy one. In paradise, death is life." or "I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy one in paradise. Death is life." Former makes more grammatical sense, but he did seem to have an odd style.
  - xboxnolifes 6y ago
    To me, the second one makes far more sense. I see it as him first claiming that the afterlife will be a paradise for him, due to his aforementioned slaves. The final "Death is life" is a statement that life truly beings at death: the afterlife.
    - meowface 6y ago
      Yeah, I think you're probably right.
JxLS-cpgbe0 6y ago
"Zodiac regularly and almost certainly intentionally misspelled 'paradise'...he correctly spelled more complex words and paraphrased operas like 'The Mikado' with ease. The trope of 'slaves in paradise' is also a common one for Zodiac."
- IAmGraydon 6y ago
  This instantly stood out to me as well. He intentionally misspelled “paradise” because he wanted to call special attention to that word. I think there is further decoding to be done here.
  - hhjj 6y ago
    I'd say paradice is Las Vegas. And he wanted to move there ? Also maybe the sentences order is a lot more garbled than the "death is life" part.
    - edoceo 6y ago
      The "Las Vegas Strip" is in Paradise, NV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_Nevada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_Nevada
  - meowface 6y ago
    He does consistently misspell it as "paradice" across multiple letters, but why is it necessarily intentional? Two potential explanations for the consistency are that he intended to call attention to it, or that he simply thought or assumed the word was spelled that way. It's a reasonable phonetic spelling, using an existing English word ("dice"). He has a lot of other phonetic misspellings like "victoms", "darck", "epasode", "pencel", "paterned", "cruse", "coupples", "untill", "allready", "dissapeared", "rubed", "positivily", "ventalate", "silowets", "choaked", "extreamly", "posibly", "twich", "comitt", "descise", "saterical", "comidy", "butons", "considerbly", "promiced", "shure", "inthusiastic", "phraises", "nucenses", "truley", and mistakes like "to many" and "loose" for "lose". It's possible there's a meaning to it, but I suspect the most boring explanation is the most likely one, there. He may have spent a lot more time speaking than reading/writing and perhaps might not have finished high school, or maybe just happens to not have been very good at memorizing spellings. His misspellings sound a lot like phonetic misspellings I still regularly see online today, and like how people tended to write English more phonetically and less consistently a few centuries ago. We take it for granted, but English really is not at all an intuitive language when determining spelling from pronunciation or vice versa, compared to more consistent languages like German. He does seem to have an interesting affinity for using the letter "c" almost any time a soft "c" or hard "c" could be called for, and sometimes eliding other letters. Like "twich", "darck", "promiced", and "paradice". I wonder if an automated analysis of basically every piece of writing you can find from around that time and area, taking some of those patterns into account, could uncover something. Like every single physical letter written to every newspaper about anything. It'd probably require way too much manual digitization labor to be feasible, though.
ssambros 6y ago
Could this hint to the fact the Zodiac committed suicide in the end?
- lqet 6y ago
  I think his letters should always be taken with a grain of salt. He was probably just building his own myth, the article discusses that: > As with most Zodiac writings, it sounds more like myth-building than sincerely held beliefs. Zodiac plagiarized often from pop culture, stealing ideas and lines from movies, operas and short stories. His letters, even more than his actual murders, were carefully constructed to present himself as the ultimate supervillain.
ketamine__ 6y ago
It seems kind of pointless if it doesn't reveal the identity of the killer. It seems like the Zodiac was more interested in creating intrigue than taking the risk of being caught.

ausbah 6y ago

did the misspellings make it harder to crack the code? or was this known from previous cracked ciphers?

mikeyouse 6y ago
PARADICE was spelled the same across all of his previous messages, so it's a really good indication that this cipher was correct. This YouTube gets into the details of how they cracked it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1oQLPRE21o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-1oQLPRE21o
- sduenas 6y ago
  It's also interesting that PARADICE appears in this message twice. One time is spelled backwards (ECIDARAP). Probably he did this because how his first cipher was cracked withing hours/days. It was cracked by the wife of this high-school teacher. She thought the cipher would start with the word "I" and it would also contain words like "KILL". She found these words within the message so with the help of his husband, they guessed the key and the whole message. I think Zodiac learned from his mistakes and decide to make it more complicated spelling it backwards, so the same symbols won't appear twice. He probably thought code-breakers would also be looking for important words he included on his earlier messages, such as "paradice" or "slave/s". Having a long sequence of symbols that appears twice and transposing them to his most known words could have led to break the code really fast.

rozab 6y ago

The 'IS LIFE' was probably meant to go at the end. "BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH IS LIFE"

kubanczyk 6y ago
Bingo. Yes, the placement of "IS LIFE" was their guess and yours is so much better. They mention it at: https://youtu.be/-1oQLPRE21o?t=520 https://youtu.be/-1oQLPRE21o?t=520
meowface 6y ago
Which grammar do you consider more likely? "I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy one. In paradise, death is life." or "I am not afraid because I know that my new life will be an easy one in paradise. Death is life." Former makes more grammatical sense, but he did seem to have an odd style.
- xboxnolifes 6y ago
  To me, the second one makes far more sense. I see it as him first claiming that the afterlife will be a paradise for him, due to his aforementioned slaves. The final "Death is life" is a statement that life truly beings at death: the afterlife.
  - meowface 6y ago
    Yeah, I think you're probably right.

JxLS-cpgbe0 6y ago

"Zodiac regularly and almost certainly intentionally misspelled 'paradise'...he correctly spelled more complex words and paraphrased operas like 'The Mikado' with ease. The trope of 'slaves in paradise' is also a common one for Zodiac."

IAmGraydon 6y ago
This instantly stood out to me as well. He intentionally misspelled “paradise” because he wanted to call special attention to that word. I think there is further decoding to be done here.
- hhjj 6y ago
  I'd say paradice is Las Vegas. And he wanted to move there ? Also maybe the sentences order is a lot more garbled than the "death is life" part.
  - edoceo 6y ago
    The "Las Vegas Strip" is in Paradise, NV https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_Nevada https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_Nevada
- meowface 6y ago
  He does consistently misspell it as "paradice" across multiple letters, but why is it necessarily intentional? Two potential explanations for the consistency are that he intended to call attention to it, or that he simply thought or assumed the word was spelled that way. It's a reasonable phonetic spelling, using an existing English word ("dice"). He has a lot of other phonetic misspellings like "victoms", "darck", "epasode", "pencel", "paterned", "cruse", "coupples", "untill", "allready", "dissapeared", "rubed", "positivily", "ventalate", "silowets", "choaked", "extreamly", "posibly", "twich", "comitt", "descise", "saterical", "comidy", "butons", "considerbly", "promiced", "shure", "inthusiastic", "phraises", "nucenses", "truley", and mistakes like "to many" and "loose" for "lose". It's possible there's a meaning to it, but I suspect the most boring explanation is the most likely one, there. He may have spent a lot more time speaking than reading/writing and perhaps might not have finished high school, or maybe just happens to not have been very good at memorizing spellings. His misspellings sound a lot like phonetic misspellings I still regularly see online today, and like how people tended to write English more phonetically and less consistently a few centuries ago. We take it for granted, but English really is not at all an intuitive language when determining spelling from pronunciation or vice versa, compared to more consistent languages like German. He does seem to have an interesting affinity for using the letter "c" almost any time a soft "c" or hard "c" could be called for, and sometimes eliding other letters. Like "twich", "darck", "promiced", and "paradice". I wonder if an automated analysis of basically every piece of writing you can find from around that time and area, taking some of those patterns into account, could uncover something. Like every single physical letter written to every newspaper about anything. It'd probably require way too much manual digitization labor to be feasible, though.

ssambros 6y ago

Could this hint to the fact the Zodiac committed suicide in the end?

lqet 6y ago
I think his letters should always be taken with a grain of salt. He was probably just building his own myth, the article discusses that: > As with most Zodiac writings, it sounds more like myth-building than sincerely held beliefs. Zodiac plagiarized often from pop culture, stealing ideas and lines from movies, operas and short stories. His letters, even more than his actual murders, were carefully constructed to present himself as the ultimate supervillain.

ketamine__ 6y ago

It seems kind of pointless if it doesn't reveal the identity of the killer. It seems like the Zodiac was more interested in creating intrigue than taking the risk of being caught.