B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 1 This PDF is made free in the hope that if you like it and want others to keep reading it for free, then consider sponsoring the site, which is ad- free and tracker free, by getting the Kindle or Paperback for your shrine true-crime bookshelf. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 2 Zodiachalloweencard.com First published on Amazon KDP by Zodiachalloweencard.com 2019 Copyright © B.D. Holland 2019 The right of B.D. Holland to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him per Copyright Acts. All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be copied, lent, re- sold, hired out, or otherwise distributed in any other form and only distributed in a similar condition including this exact condition for the subsequent purchaser. Holland, B.D. The Skeletons Are Dancing: Cracking the Zodiac Halloween Card Code to reveal the Zodiac Killer’s identity. Zodiachalloweencard.com. Kindle Edition. Disclaimer: In this book, no identification with actual persons (living or deceased) is intended or should be inferred. No person or entity associated with this book is offering the real name of a real person as a suspect in a crime. This book is speculative and provided solely for entertainment purposes. No warranty whatsoever is made that any of the content of this book is accurate. There is categorically no declaration that any account in this book is real, correct, or precise. Any likeness to actual persons, either living or dead, is strictly coincidental. While best efforts have been used in preparing this book, the author and publisher make no representations or warranties of any kind and assume no liabilities or be held responsible to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damages caused, or alleged to have been caused, directly or indirectly, by the information in this book. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 3 THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING (Cracking the Zodiac Halloween Card Code to reveal the Zodiac Killer’s identity.) By B.D. HOLLAND B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 4 In the memory of Cheri Jo Bates David Arthur Faraday Betty Lou Jensen Cecelia Ann Shepard Paul Lee Stine B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 5 Acknowledgments Special thanks to the last minute anonymous editor who took up the gauntlet to try and make this manuscript readable for Halloween 2019 under such short notice. My family and friends' encouragement made this possible. Big thanks to Tahoe27 for revealing the Tim Holt comic book connection to the Zodiac. A shout out to everyone who believed the Zodiac codes could still be solved. Thanks to everyone who contributed to the first run of the book so we can get this out to more people. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 6 NOTICE As of the date of the first ebook Kindle publication (Halloween 2019), all the relevant decoding information has been sent to the appropriate au- thorities. No evidence is being withheld. The following entities have the material submitted in emails from May-Oct 2019. • SFPD Cold Case department through SFPD Media Relations. • San Francisco FBI. • Sheriff of Napa County. • Sonoma-County Sheriff Department. • Mayor of Vallejo. • Sheriff of the city of Vallejo. • A retired ex-LAPD detective supervisor. I have done my public duty in handing over these findings to official chan- nels. I make no claims as to them having read this material or the status of the content with them. The status of the material is something only they, not I, can answer. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 7 “It may be roundly asserted that human ingenuity cannot concoct a cipher which human ingenuity cannot resolve.” Edgar Allan Poe (1809 – 1849) B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 8 Contents PREFACE 10 CHAPTER 1 - “I CAN’T STOP COPYING.” 20 CHAPTER 2 - “SERIAL MISTAKES.” 29 CHAPTER 3 - “WHO LET THE DOGS OUT?” 40 CHAPTER 4 - “A MUG’S GAME.” 76 CHAPTER 5 - “SLAIN ON LOVER’S LANE.” 84 CHAPTER 6 - “THE WHITE SUSPECT WHO BECAME BLACK.” 110 CHAPTER 7 - “WHY THE WORLD’S FIRST COSPLAY?” 128 CHAPTER 8 - “SERIAL STOPPING.” 157 CHAPTER 9 - “HALLOWEEN EVE.” 184 CHAPTER 10 - “THE GEOGRAPHICAL ZODIAC.” 218 CHAPTER 11 - “CHICKEN OR THE EGG?” 232 CHAPTER 12 - “THE ZODIAC HALLOWEEN CARD SOLUTION.” 241 CHAPTER 13 - “APPLIED Z SOLUTIONS” 286 CHAPTER 14 - “POSSIBLE 340 CIPHER MECHANISM SOLUTION.”309 CHAPTER 15 - “POSSIBLE LAKE TAHOE CARD MECHANISM.” 319 B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 9 B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 10 PREFACE “Since the Count can write anonymously, so can I” - the Red Phantom (red with rage) [Zodiac Killer Letter, July 8th, 1974] I, too, will write semi-anonymously, but for reasons altogether different for why the Zodiac killer did. The Zodiac killer wrote anonymously because the consequence of not doing so would likely be the Californian death penalty for crimes, which include multiple homicides, terrorist threats, and theft. Anonymously this attention-seeking psychopath aggressively murdered couples and then taunted Californian society by mailing mocking letters to the media informing them to publish codes and ciphers or else he would murder more people. Even though his letters were published, the Zodiac continued to commit murders and send more threatening messages leaving citizens of Northern California in a state of fear that a psychopath was on the loose. Despite claims that some persons of interest are the Zodiac, this psychopath was never officially captured. The current status at the time of this writing is that the Zodiac is an UNSUB (unidentified/unknown subject of an investigation) and that this serial homicide case remains unsolved. B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 11 Even today, half a century later, the Zodiac killer mystery still garners our attention. The Zodiac killer did not carry out a lot of murders compared to many other serial killers (officially there were five homicides, although conceivably many more). What does stand out is the Zodiac changed quite considerably how he committed some of his crimes and then bragged about them in letters. The Zodiac was a communicator who changed his modus operandi (M.O) and was doing this back in 1969 during an era when very little was known about serial killers. The Zodiac phoned in his murders to local dispatches from public phonebooths in towns. Then later send letters and cards to the newspapers with ‘Rush to Editor’ on the envelope and inside a document claiming responsibility and threatening more mayhem if his codes were not published. Modus operandi changing and a communicator like this are both rare traits of serial murderers. This is a dominant feature that links the Zodiac crimes despite the changing M.O. In 1969 at the height of the sixties peace movement, that after-summer party wave of love was broken by a series of frightening and violent mur- ders. They were carried out by what the media dubbed a psychopath who wanted people to read about his crimes while challenging them to break his codes. Behavior so diametrically opposed to the times that it gripped the entire city of San Francisco, striking fear into the lives of parents for B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 12 their schoolchildren, taxi drivers, and couples out enjoying their evenings. There seemed no limits on whom or where this killer would strike next and then boast about it with taunting letters to several high profile Cali- fornian newspapers. The key to his emotional need was the terror he in- stilled upon people living in California, and they felt it, which he also knew because he watched and read everything about this villain persona he had created and forced onto society. All we need to understand the general fantasy of this killer is to add the image of Batman chasing after him in a game of cat and mouse. The Zodiac would have seen himself as this kind of ‘Riddler’ type nemesis. This is the closest we can come to some sort of “logical” reason for his crimes, which can’t be fully understood by sane people who aren’t also psychopaths themselves. In the following chapters, we will provide you with more general infor- mation about the Zodiac killer, as well as sharing evidence we’ve discov- ered that reveals the intended name the Zodiac hid in his Halloween Card code. This book will assume the reader has some familiarity with the Zodiac case. We will not be preprinting all the Zodiac letters, for example, nor photographs of crime scenes and those involved. There are more than enough websites and books out there dedicated to these elements, and B.D. HOLLAND – THE SKELETONS ARE DANCING - 13 they are easily found. This book will generally cover salient points, but the vast majority of it will be spent on an advanced working through the ma- terial and discussing aspects of it. We shall provide you with resources at the end of this book should you need them. To my knowledge, only two other people have solved a Zodiac hidden message. In 1969, a schoolteacher, Donald Harden, and his wife Bettye learned that a serial killer had ciphers published by three newspapers. They used a homophonic substitute to solve the 408 cipher in less than a day. The Hardens simply guessed that the Zodiac would use the word kill. Us- ing the double Ls at the end of kill, they searched through the cipher for two of the same symbols next to each other.