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Comment by Ansil849 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like at least twice a year, there is some story like "Zodiac Killer Finally Identified" or "DB Cooper Finally Found". And behind these stories is usually just one person or group of people who are presenting their pet theory (which highlighted all facts supporting it, and conveniently brushes aside all facts which don't) and have savy media contacts so are able to get media exposure to help promote what's frequently accompanied by a book they are trying to sell copies of.

I don't know if that's the case here, but this pattern of events has made me just tune out stories like this. I wish media outlets would be more critical.

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I find this quite convincing:

> In one note, the letters of Poste's full name were removed to reveal an alternate message, [Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent] told Fox News.

> "So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," Bucholtz said. "I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."

This would indeed be convincing, but I can't seem to find any further information on it.

Here is the Case Breaker's blog announcement[1]. And here is a press release from them with some details of their work[2].

I'd really like to see this in action, but it seems like they haven't published it yet. Am I missing it?

[1] https://thecasebreakers.org/2021/09/the-last-zodiac-victim/

[2] https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.114.250/g9q.07b.myftpuplo...

I'm missing something here. I could create a coded message that required apeace to decipher. That doesn't necessarily mean that I'm you.

But there's no reasonable motive for the Zodiac Killer to do so. If he wanted to frame Gary Poaste, he would plant evidence that was more obvious. If he wanted to toy with the detectives who were trying to discover his identity though--which is well within the pattern of behavior observed from the Zodiac Killer--this is exactly the sort of thing he would do.

If he knew one of their suspects names and decided to fuck with them and throw them off the trail, yes, he would use someone else's name. Your leap to judgement of "it must be Gary" is just as much of a leap as "it might not be" - both rely on "knowing" the Zodiac's motives, which no one does, because he's not been identified.

Such an important angle to consider this from. Until there’s a DNA match how do we know the zodiac killer just didn’t use the name of some guy he knew? Especially a seemingly uncommon name (maybe it was common at the time)

No but it requires you to know apeace. Could be random letters with usernames - ok. But it's a different story with full names in the 1960s. Could have still just browsed the telephone book, but together with other hints it adds weight to the argument.

> I find this quite convincing

I would find evidence of it actually convincing, which you would think would be foregrounded somewhere. And yet, mysteriously, it is not. This suggests that the claim is bullshit.

I want to see the details because there have been some dubious decipherments before that were a real stretch, so I want to see how plausible the ananagram is.

I don't understand, so they have a deciphered letter from zodiac, they removed the individual letters of Gary's name from the message and got a 2nd message? Is that right?

I think that one message could not be fully decoded, there seemed to be some cruft in it. My guess is this cruft was no longer in the decoded message once the letters of his name are removed.

Stats or it didn't happen. That kind of seemingly incredible coincidence can sometimes just be the mind playing tricks on people who are unaware of how many ways a similar result could have occurred by chance.

> anagrams

That strikes me as a major red flag. With anagrams you can place letters in any order you choose. A lot more cheatable than a consistent cipher solution.

Are anagrams typical of zodiac findings?

It's actually the same guy! The fox news video started auto-playing and they introduced their first guest as "Casebreakers head Tom Colbert, who IDed hijacker DB Cooper". So, yeah, I think based on that alone this is likely fake news.

> It's actually the same guy!

Holy shit! That made my day. I'm assuming he's saving the big reveal that he's bagged Bigfoot for Christmas.

He was as tenacious as a bull-dog when he once understood what he had to do, and indeed it was just this tenacity which has brought him to the top.

It seems like even the article contradicts what this group says...

> "Our Homicide Cold Case Unit has determined the murder of Cheri Jo Bates in 1966 is not related to the Zodiac killer," the Riverside Police Department's Homicide Cold Case Unit told Fox News.

It seems like the group asked the police department to test the DNA found in the Bates case to confirm it once and for all, but the police department has refused.

So there's probably some internal politics thing going on here.

The FBI says it is related, the local PD says it is not, and to ask the FBI. The local PD is also refusing to do DNA tests which would resolve the issue.

> The local PD is also refusing to do DNA tests which would resolve the issue.

Yeah, mean ol' law enforcement, refusing to do DNA tests for any crank mystery squad solving team that demands them.

If the group wants to incurr the costs what does it matter?

Because if they start doing it, they'll get more requests to do it in the future. And then they'd have to make more process around it and pay people to execute that process, and then they're in the business of selling small bits of criminal evidence to random cranks.

There is probably not an infinite supply of dna evidence, and testing it is destructive. So I can imagine they don’t want to testany plausible theory but save it for when they are really convinced.

From the article

> In one note, the letters of Poste's full name were removed to reveal an alternate message, she told Fox News. "So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," Bucholtz said. "I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."

To me it's pretty coincidental if the letters for this person's full name just happen to be this person who also has other characteristics matching the description including facial scars from one of the police sketches.

#1 This is a pretty big claim. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And yet there is no evidence.

-or-

#2 It also sounds like they're saying if you remove various letters of the alphabet from a cipher, you can get a readable message. This is not notable.

#2 seems very notable

The facial scars in the sketch vs the photo seem like a huge stretch to me personally. It looks like they were just sketching normal forehead lines. And sketches are not exactly reliable in the first place. It really seems like someone desperately looking for a pattern where there isn't one.

It sounds like there's a little bit of presumed Zodiac-Killer DNA on his letters, and there's been some preliminary analysis of it. Hopefully this evidence is suggestive enough to justify a full comparison.

https://medium.com/@charlierusso23/why-has-dna-evidence-not-...

Don't forget Jack The Ripper!

At least the Zodiac killer is recent enough for uncovering their identity to feel sort of feasible. That said, I personally find the idea of it being Ted Cruz so amusing that I see little reason to amend my head-canon, regardless of evidence presented.

> my head cannon

The phrase you're thinking of is "headcanon" (cf. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/canon), although "head cannon" evokes a much funnier mental image.

Despite knowing it was the same base as canonical, it somehow never occurred to me to spell it that way. Thanks for the heads up, but since google hasn't decided it approves of "headcanon" I was forced to compromise in my correction.

https://xkcd.com/1401/

I believe that would require time travel.

"Asked how a teenage boy could've committed a crime more than two decades ago, a police spokesman explained 'He's very clever.'"

I’m honestly so tired of hearing this lame conspiracy theory/in-joke. It’s so dumb and trollish and barely funny, all it does is give ammo to repubs who think dems are wackadoos. Fellow dems, this ain’t it.

That's cool and all, but I personally enjoy it because of Ted's personality specifically, not his specific political affiliation. And also who cares? It's clearly a joke, one that happens to appeal to my particular sense of humor.

There are oodles of topics that provide plenty of political ammunition, but anybody who takes this one seriously is an idiot.

It really is all in good fun. Even Ted Cruz takes part.

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1337480518074503170?s=20

https://twitter.com/tedcruz/status/1408133090397114375?s=20

Sorry, but I just recently watched a crowd of angry trolls sell memes and Internet in-jokes as facts to droves of angry Facebook users, and then they combined forces to elect a fascist. I no longer believe this kind of crap is inconsequential.

I don't think you're helping your case with this comment.

>Don't forget Jack The Ripper!

That's a mystery long solved, friend[0].

[0] https://babylon5.fandom.com/wiki/Sebastian#History

Emmy award nominated Babylon 5 episode! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comes_the_Inquisitor

One of the best, among many, of the series.

check out the press release from "The Case Busters"

https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.114.250/g9q.07b.myftpuplo...

I honestly found it borderline impossible to read or follow. It's a bunch of disjointed speculation and 'did you know you can get any barcode to equal 666'-levels of rambling.

I agree.

They haven't actually solved anything.

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