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There are Zodiac researchers who are of the opinion that the last 18 letters "EBEORIETEMETHHPITI" of the 408 symbol character Z 408 are just fillers. Their theory is that the Zodiac used just random symbols to fill up the remainder of the cryptogram at the actual end of its plain text, in order to produce three equally sized cryptogram pieces.
When we recapitulated and analyzed the 408 symbol cryptogram, we considered the filler theory carefully, but came up with other conclusions. The reason why we believe that the last 18 characters are not fillers are outlined below:
In the first place, we asked ourselves how difficult it would be to produce a piece of plain text of exactly 408 characters. Consequently, we tried to experimentally produce an own sample text of that length, and we found this to be quite an easy task. With minimal effort, we could match the text to its desired length by just making some simple word adjustments to the last two sentences. If you would like to give it a try, just type down some text until you arrive in the area of 408 characters and make some minor changes. If you would even omit single letters in some words, as the Zodiac did, it will go even faster. You will be surprised how easy it actually is.
Another point is the text length of 18 characters itself. We were wondering how plausible it is that a comparably large number of 18 characters have been used merely as fillers, representing more than a full line of cryptogram text. If there would be just 2-3 characters in the cipher text left, we would agree that these could be fillers or initials, but that this would apply for 18 of 408 characters would look extreme to us.
Furthermore, if we deduct the last 18 characters from the total number of 408 characters, it leaves us with 390 characters that could be easily divided by three, leaving no fillers at all, and making any use of fillers needless and pointless.
At this point one might say that the 18 characters might have been added to make the cipher more difficult. Firstly, adding the last 18 characters only increased the difficulty level of the cipher insignificantly, if at all. As we know, the cryptogram had been cracked just within a few days. Secondly, there would have been better ways to enhance the cryptogram's difficulty level, for instance using polyalphabetic substitution. The Zodiac clearly demonstrated with his infamous 340 character cipher Z 340 that he had this capability.
Already for these above reasons, we would very much doubt that the last 18 characters of the cryptogram were just fillers that the Zodiac Killer added for convenience reasons to produce three equal cryptogram parts.
Furthermore, the fact remains that the decoded cryptogram produces the letters "EBEORIETEMETTHHPITI", and these can be broken down in words of different languages with similar properties. Together they produce what looks like consecutive and coherent words of text that is consistent with other aspects of the case. Hereby, it can be argued if "ORIETEM" should actually read "ORIENTEM", with the letter "N" having been omitted. We tried about all kind of possible word length variations other than those that we suggested, with zero result. Furthermore, the Zodiac Killer's possible religious motivation and the use of ancient words are evident throughout the Zodiac Killer case.
The above points are not intended as a defense of our theory but just an explanation how we arrived at our conclusions.
If you have more compelling reasons in support of the filler theory than those mentioned above in support of ours, we would be happy if you could share them with us.
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