Zodiac Expert Calls 'Bullshit' On Possible ID of Zodiac Killer (rollingstone.com) 30
"Tom Voigt, a Zodiac Killer expert and author who runs ZodiacKiller.com, pulls no punches when commenting on the story picked up by FoxNews that is now being posted at various news outlets including Slashdot," writes Slashdot reader ISayWeOnlyToBePolite. Rolling Stone spoke to Voigt on Wednesday about the bombshell report and why, in his opinion, it's "bullshit." From the article: By now obviously you've seen the news about the Zodiac Killer's identification. What's your take on it? Yeah, I've got about a million people on my website right now. It's all bullshit, by the way, just to get that out of the way. This is hot garbage. I don't know why it got any coverage at all. It was basically a press release.
Are you familiar with the Case Breakers? First of all, the funny thing is, I've never heard of any of these people that are these so-called experts. I have been doing this for 25 years and I've never heard of any of them. So that there are some red flags right off the bat. And then the funny thing is, they're matching up lines on foreheads. No witness ever described lines on Zodiac's forehead. Those lines were simply added by the sketch artist to fill in the sketch. The amended sketch, which is supposed to look more like Zodiac, according to witnesses, doesn't really even have any lines. So they got rid of them. So because the witnesses were like, "We're not really happy with that sketch that we gave you a few days ago," they got changed. The lines went away. No witness ever described that.
What about their claim that Poste's name unlocks one of the Zodiac's ciphers? A lot of what they're typing and talking about is nonsense. These people, what I've seen, they don't really have any kind of a command of the basics of the Zodiac case. From what I've read, they've gotten their Zodiac information from the comments section at Facebook. They'd skip the main article and they went right to the comments and they think they know everything about this. Maybe they've saw the Fincher movie, but probably not. Or, they turned it off after the two-hour mark or so.
If you had to put your money on one suspect, who would it be? Richard Gaikowski is my best bet. If I was if I was an employer looking to hire the Zodiac, he'd probably have the most impressive resume in my eyes. But the reality is that Allen is the suspect you just can't quit. I just can't quit that "Big Al," especially now I'm going over all these old emails and tips and leads going back 25 years. And some of the stuff that was that was said to me about about how it is just mind boggling. Yeah. If he wasn't, if he wasn't the Zodiac, he might be responsible for some other murders.
Are you familiar with the Case Breakers? First of all, the funny thing is, I've never heard of any of these people that are these so-called experts. I have been doing this for 25 years and I've never heard of any of them. So that there are some red flags right off the bat. And then the funny thing is, they're matching up lines on foreheads. No witness ever described lines on Zodiac's forehead. Those lines were simply added by the sketch artist to fill in the sketch. The amended sketch, which is supposed to look more like Zodiac, according to witnesses, doesn't really even have any lines. So they got rid of them. So because the witnesses were like, "We're not really happy with that sketch that we gave you a few days ago," they got changed. The lines went away. No witness ever described that.
What about their claim that Poste's name unlocks one of the Zodiac's ciphers? A lot of what they're typing and talking about is nonsense. These people, what I've seen, they don't really have any kind of a command of the basics of the Zodiac case. From what I've read, they've gotten their Zodiac information from the comments section at Facebook. They'd skip the main article and they went right to the comments and they think they know everything about this. Maybe they've saw the Fincher movie, but probably not. Or, they turned it off after the two-hour mark or so.
If you had to put your money on one suspect, who would it be? Richard Gaikowski is my best bet. If I was if I was an employer looking to hire the Zodiac, he'd probably have the most impressive resume in my eyes. But the reality is that Allen is the suspect you just can't quit. I just can't quit that "Big Al," especially now I'm going over all these old emails and tips and leads going back 25 years. And some of the stuff that was that was said to me about about how it is just mind boggling. Yeah. If he wasn't, if he wasn't the Zodiac, he might be responsible for some other murders.
Re: (Score:2)
It was clearly Colonel Mustard in the study with the candlestick.
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Colonel Mustard
Ted Cruz' dad!!!
The only we he can be sure (Score:1)
The only way Mr Voigt can be 100% sure that the proposed ID is BS, is if he himself is the Zodiac Killer.
Just sayin'
NIH (Score:1)
Voigt: No Way! I didn't think of it!
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If you want to know the reasons why it is obviously bullshit, just read the comments to the first slashdot story on the claims.
editorial discretion (Score:1, Offtopic)
I thought this was a techie site, and not some place to argue about theories of killers in unsolved cases. Why is this an issue for for this site?
Honestly, I have become increasing disenchanted with the editorial supervision of this website. I'd prefer the old-school BSD vs. Linux tirades, which were horrible, but at least on topic. Is Slashdot trying to make the leap to crass popular media, a.k.a. tabloids? (to be honest, not all tabloids are crap nor all broadsheets good, but the stigma remains) - please
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I seem to recall people selling low UID Slashdot accounts on ebay 15+ years ago.
Re:editorial discretion (Score:5, Funny)
I'd prefer the old-school BSD vs. Linux tirades, which were horrible, but at least on topic.
But that fight's over, and BSD won. Why dredge up the past?
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Well, as the summary points out, this guy's got a website!
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Let me guess, you complained about /. covering the theft of a million pounds of maple syrup from the Canadian Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve as well, didn't you?
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> increasing disenchanted with the editorial supervision of this website.
It is not just you. The editors have been a fucking joke for the past decade. How the fuck do you get THREE dupes posted on the front page on the same day???
> Slashdot trying to make the leap to crass popular media, a.k.a. tabloids?
IMO it already did. Unfortunately /. has been crap for the past few years. The constant shilling of BitCoin articles EVERY FUCKING WEEK, fluff articles like this, editors who can't even do the ONE
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I thought this was a techie site
That's because you're aliterate. You know how to read, but you're constitutionally incapable of doing so to a useful degree.
News for Nerds: Stuff that matters
It doesn't say: techie stuff for gamers.
It doesn't say: techie stuff for people that are slightly technical.
You didn't know nerds find codes interesting? Well, now you know. You're not a nerd, but since you can't read to a functional level, regardless of what reading tests you can pass, you didn't even know this was a site for nerds. You probably still
Re: (Score:2)
Your highest bid for the UID would probably come from a spammer.
But seriously, folks, these days almost every aspect of our lives is computer-based and computer-driven. Considering the badness of Slashdot's financial model (insofar as I understand it), I think we're lucky the website is still functioning at all.
Or in other words, how much would you pay for "better" editorial supervision? If you were paying, then they certainly should consider your preferences carefully.
The investigators (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:The investigators (Score:5, Informative)
I have no knowledge or background with anything to do with the Zodiac case. But I have worked in the federal law enforcement field and know one of the people on the case breaker team personally.
Forensic, Cyber Inv. Jim Christy â" Former Director, AFOSI/DC3; Cyber Expert (Balt., MA)
Jim recently retired from a law career in federal law enforcement. He has also be very involved in the DEFCON security conference. Maybe these individuals aren't known to a guy that runs a conspiracy theory website for a career, but they may have long distinguished careers of their own.
I'm sure many of the participants in the Case Breakers have had long an distinguished careers and I wish your friend all the best but you don't have to trust Tom Voight on this, the FBI and local police for the claimed first case ain't buying it either https://www.sfchronicle.com/ba... [sfchronicle.com] If you want the details of the debunking you can follow https://www.tapatalk.com/group... [tapatalk.com] and note that the Case Breakers have already claimed to have solved the case of D.B Cooper and disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa while Tom Voight afaik hasn't made a claim to solved anything.
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I thought that name sounded familiar. Jim Christy was also part of the Chaos Club hacking investigations back in the mid-late '80s. See Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg [amazon.com]" for details.
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Cyber Expert
That's a person who spends a lot of time chatting at DALnet, right?
Is he the idiot who thought the Zodiac killer had scars on his forehead, because he didn't figure out which one of the sketches was the revised, more accurate sketch? Or was that one of the other cluesticks?
Poste's name unlocking a Zodiac cipher (Score:5, Insightful)
What an unfulfilling answer. Instead of refuting the central point of the claim he launches into an ad-hominem attack.
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I work for Rolling Stone.
So I am really getting a kick really .
Some of you Fa... - I mean Slashdotters - are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.
But trust me, you don't.
I think you just want to make yourself sound smart, when in reality you just don't know what you are talking about.
This is how bad information gets passed around.
If you don't know about the topic, don't make yourself sound like you do.
Because some Slashdotters believe anything they read.
Wow, maybe we should bow down and piss our pants since you work at the same business the article came from.
I too work for Rolling Stone. See how easy that was? I don't actually work for Rolling Stone. But since you gave such great advice in your post, I am choosing to go by your last sentence and not believe a damn thing you wrote. AC....sheesh...
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Some of you ... Slashdotters - are very good at making it sound like you know what you are talking about.
There goes all your credibility!
Even FBI said report false (Score:1)
Expert's business model goes up in flames. (Score:1)
Well, not anymore. Unless you can keep the conspiracy alive it will be time to find another way to make moneys.
Notably Missing From All Deciphering Claims (Score:4, Insightful)
Is an account showing how the deciphering actually works.
As far as I can tell, all claimants to this title (and there are several) either never "show their work" or if they show anything it allows people to tell it is bogus. I recall there was at least one such person, writing in California magazine in the 1980s, which did provide some explanation, which showed he was effectively just doing arbitrary substitutions with ad hoc explanations, which could be used to decipher anything into anything else.
Seriously - why don't they release their whole deciphering? If it has never been published before then by making it public they secure their right to credit for all time, and people can validate their work. That is, if it holds water.
The "we did it, but we won't show you how" claim is mighty weak tea,
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Typically with classical ciphers you'd use the absence of errors in the plaintext as evidence that it is the real message - unfortunately nothing in the message itself distinguishes between two "clean" plaintexts. Modern ciphers address this by including standardized padding modes in the plaintext.
Even worse since we don't know what particular cipher was used, you can easily end up with competing claims of solutions... and the only real way to sort them out is to judge which is more plausible given the con
This happens in other cases too (Score:3)
This sort of thing happens from time to time with just about anything "unsolved". Another example is the Voynich manuscript, which is something I've taken an interest to and been involved with for the last 15 years. Every month or so, someone claims to have decoded it, but their solutions never pass even a cursory examination. Yet, on occasion, one of these "solutions" gets picked up by mainstream news. Usually because it's something a reporter wasn't familiar with already, and they take an interest in it. Or because the person who "solved" it has just enough notoriety or knows the right person to get some press over it.
In a particular case in 2019, Dr. Gerard Cheshire of the University of Bristol claimed to have "cracked" the Voynich, and it made major news headlines. I guess because he had "Dr." in front of his name. However the paper was so blatantly incorrect, the University of Bristol pulled it the very next day and released a statement to address concerns: http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/... [bristol.ac.uk]
Anyway that's the annoying part about mainstream news. They wield so much power, whatever they decide to promote is what is heard about, whether or not it is true.