First Book (of 3) on the Zodiac Killer Hoax now avalable

Yes, I enjoyed it. I think the preamble re: culture, films, newspaper attitudes and insanity verdicts, etc. helps a lot. Want to know what I don't agree with?

"Because of the nature of the [340] cipher itself, its multianalagous substitutions (more than one symbol per letter ) allow for the equally "valid" reading, "I like kiSSing people…"
Uh, nope, it's homophonic. Varying the substitutions for the "L" arbitrarily would be to allow (because of "kissing") the interesting phrase "animas of ass".
It's silly, that bit. Still, ya didn't listen to me about it last time either!

I like the bit about the Zodiac alphabet = identity, though.

And my favourite [english spelling] bit? The fact that you highlight "The Zodiac's" seeming need to dismiss the fingerprint evidence from the car door at BRS, with which Mike (it seems) hurriedly concurs. Amazingly (doh!) I'd never really thought through the implications, there. I am now.

Yes, several different symbols are used to represent "real" letter of the alphabet Mr H., and yes, 'specially the high frequency ones. That's done to supress frequencies to conceal the underlying letters - and that's what a homophonic cipher is all about.
The characters used to represent the underlying real letters, though, do not vary in the way they're used. If it's an "L" in "Killing" then it's an "L" elsewhere too, yes? So if it's an "S" in kissing? See?
Well, I know you're probably aware of how this works, you just like saying "a priori". Fair enough - it's your book.
Is the cipher any use as evidence? No, of course not. Agreed.
Oh! But solving ciphers is done by making assumptions. So no, it's not such a good metaphor, although I see what
you're saying.

Thanks for the gold medal, I shall put it with my others! It was a matter of coincidence that I came and checked just as you'd released it. (You may need to fix your author name, at least on the UK Amazon site, I think. You're down as Thomas Henry Henry, which doesn't seem right.) I'll review it for you, sure! I suspect I know what's in that credit report already though....

Y'know, believers will continue to believe, you should be in no doubt. I'm not. In the face of overwhelming and obvious evidence to the contrary people who I am quite sure have a brain keep trying to average out the descriptions of the "one" guy, decide on what the "average" car used (!) might look like, and hold to the idea that the shirt was stored in a space inviolate and the slight(!) variations in MO make perfect sense. Target fixation - or something like it. There's a psyche paper in it somewhere I think. Just "solve" the crime, capture the bad guy, restore order, yadda yadda, you'll feel better. Maybe more of the psychology of the whole deal's explored in book 2 or 3? We'll see.

Oooops! Fixed! Sure, you can post on the old blog.

Mr Wescott:

Thanks for joining! If there are typos, I can fix those, since its self published. It will also probably need to be updated at some point.

The "first" book was kind of a placeholder. But a few hundred people have bought it already, so when the final, revised edition of that book (much, much longer) comes out, they will get a chance to buy the revised edition at a discount. That's technically the third book.

The "second" book is the one thoroughly debunking Graysmith's book, to be titled "The Great Zodiac Killer Hoax of 1986." It's VERY long.

This website will eventually be the "footnotes" to those books. In the mean time, there will be more videos, and a few people have already contacted me about possibly doing a documentary or documentary series. We'll see how that goes.

I am fascinated by your own work as well, and will catch up on it as soon as possible.

Thanks again for joining and commenting!

Tom

Mr Westcott:

It's an excellent book. And I will be stealing your first person, "How I figured this out" technique for my next book.

I am finishing up my notes on certain points in your book. I will email them to you when they're done.

Thanks!

Tom Horan