OK, I’m going to start this post by embedding S01E03 of the History Channel’s “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer”, because this is what started me on the road to the solution to the Donna Lass cipher:
video since removed from TagTele site
About half the episode is taken up with trying to make links between the Zodiac Killer and Donna Lass’s disappearance in 1970, a connection for which there seem to be two primary pieces of evidence – a poster (with a cryptogram) and a postcard. However, as we’ll see, it turns out that there are serious problems here which the series makers chose to fast-forward their audience past.
Who Was Donna Lass?
According to her FindAGrave website entry:
Donna was the daughter of James and Frances (Kukar) Lass. During high school, her activities included F.H.A. and singing in mixed chorus. During her senior interview, she stated that her plans were “to go college or be a nurse.” She was one the fifty-two members of the graduating class of 1962 at Beresford High School in Beresford, South Dakota.
Donna was listed as a survivor in the 1973 obituary of her father; but, she was listed as deceased in the 1982 obituary of her mother.
It’s hard not to conclude that hope for her survival died with her mother.
There are some reasonably good pictures of her on the Internet:
What happened to her? According to the official missing person’s page that discusses her:
Donna Lass was last seen in South Lake Tahoe, she left her residence without her vehicle or personal belongings. Lass worked as a nurse at the “Sahara Hotel-Casino”. Her last entry in the nurse’s log book was at 1:50 a.m., and although her car was found parked at her apartment complex in nearby Stateline, she wasn’t seen after leaving the Sahara.
The next day, an unknown male called her landlord and employer, stating Lass wouldn’t be returning due to a family emergency. The call was a hoax, and there has been no trace of Lass ever since
Of course, none of this sounds remotely like the Zodiac Killer’s modus operandi: so you’d have thought there really ought to be some good evidence out there linking the two, given the longevity of these claims.
The Donna Lass Cipher
The cipher first appeared on a reward-for-information poster, with each cipher shape underlined by hand. It’s unclear to me whether the underlining was originally designed in to the poster, or whether it was added by hand to the poster in the only genuine copy of the poster we have.
In episode S01E03 of “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer”, the editing makes it seems as though everyone spends some time following a – frankly somewhat pathetic – interpretative anagram of the above cipher, that magically turns the cryptogram into driving instructions to get to some woods that just happen to have a TV-friendly creepy historical backstory (the Donner Pass cannibalism story, yada yada yada). In my opinion, this is right up there with people who draw pencil lines between similar letters and then try to convince you that it is not the cryptogram itself but rather those pencil lines that are the ‘real’ treasure map. *sigh*
Moreover, it was immediately clear to me (as I’m sure it was to everyone in the codebreaking team) that this particular reading wasn’t even close to being close: and, moreover, that the patterns of shapes were more or less exactly as you would expect a simple substitution cipher to present (for instance, the presence of doubled letters pointed directly away from any thought of Zodiac Killer-style homophones).
So once I’d got to the end of the programme, I found a copy of the cipher online and wrote it down on a piece of paper. Within ten seconds, I realized that the last set of shapes could only sensibly be DONNALASS: and that gave me enough letters to get to STALKING, and within a few minutes I also figured out that the larger phrase was I AM STALKING.
The next morning, when I ran a test to find words that fitted the pattern of the first six letters, only two words fitted – BEHAVE and BEWARE. Eliminating BEHAVE gave a nearly-complete decryption:
BEWAREIAMSTALKING
OO?...DONNA LASS.
I then immediately felt a bit of a fool that I hadn’t immediately noticed that this was exactly the same as the start of the last sentence of the Riverside “Confession” letter: “BEWARE . . . I AM STALKING YOUR GIRLS NOW” (there’s a copy here):
After a little more thought, I became convinced that the first of the two outline triangle shapes at the start of the second line should probably have been an upside-down outline triangle, and that the original plaintext for the Donna Lass cipher was (without any real doubt):
BEWAREIAMSTALKING
YOU...DONNA LASS.
Put all this together, and you’d have to say this looks like a cryptographic slam-dunk to link the crime to the Zodiac Killer’s “The Confession” letter (even if – in my opinion – he probably only tried to take ‘credit’ for Cheri Jo Bates’ murder, i.e. he didn’t do it himself). You can even see how the cipher shapes were laid out in a 5 x 5 grid by the encipherer, because the triangle shapes are all five letters apart, as are all the backwards letters.
However, it turns out that even though this is definitely the correct plaintext for this cryptogram, there are a number of issues…
The Donna Lass Poster
The full poster looks like this:
For a start, it turns out that I was reinventing the wheel here (as far as solving this cipher goes). A number of other people had worked out the exact same plaintext a decade or more earlier than me – the earliest mention I found was May 2007: but given that it was so straightforward, it would be unsurprising if yet others had solved it long before then.
Problematically, commenter Seagull pointed out that:
The reward poster for Donna Lass, that Tahoe27 linked, can’t be from the ’70’s because the Area Code for the phone number did not come into being until 1997. […] Maybe this reward poster is from the time of Harvey Hines investigation.
Even Wikipedia lists this fact: “Created in 1997 by split from 916.” From that alone, there seems no chance at all that this poster was really from 1970 or 1971.
Moreover, commenter Slug then quickly pointed out (a) that the typesetting seemed inconsistent with the 1970s, and (b) that it seemed to have been laid out in close-to-exactly the same way that MS Word 97 would have done it. Others have also pointed out that it used Times New Roman, further compounding the period inaccuracy of the thing.
Finally, commenter Jupiter noted “a newspaper article about the Lass murder, written in 1971, that details a $500 reward put up by the family and people with information were to contact a private eye hired by the Lass family. There is no mention of having people contact the police with the info and the reward is considerably smaller”.
So where did the poster come from? Tom Voigt got it from Howard Davis, who in turn said:
Donna’s sister Mary sent that poster to me.It was done by the Lass family.
When asked about it, he then went on:
Mary mentioned to me a few times they had a family member(or in law) that is into computers,graphics,etc. He may have done the poster. She told me the reward was no longer in effect as I recall.Note at the bottom of the poster the family is mentioned.I do hope this doesn’t go into a all out contraversy as it was just an attempt at the time by the family to seek more information.I have enough to do as it is.Remember that Hines had pretty much convinced them Kane was the perp,hence,the ‘positive’poster wordage about having information,etc.
Put all this together, and the picture that finally emerges seems to be of the Zodiac theory industry collectively manufacturing a connection between Donna Lass and the Zodiac Killer – that is, Zodiac theorists convincing Hines so strongly that Laurence Kane (who Donna Lass personally knew) was the Zodiac Killer that he incited the Lass family to include a fake Zodiac-style cryptogram on a later faked-up poster.
The awful (and stupid) thing about this is that it encourages people to view the causality backwards: that while there is no doubt that Laurence Kane was connected to Donna Lass (and so could genuinely have been a person of interest), her sad death had absolutely nothing in common with any of the Zodiac Killer’s confirmed murders – the connection implied by the poster would seem to be totally bogus, in every sense of the phrase.
The Donna Lass Postcard
All of which process of elimination leaves us with the Donna Lass postcard, which the History Channel episode also trawled over for some time:
Well… after all the above discussion, it perhaps won’t come as any great surprise that there is a high chance that this postcard (which, let’s face it, contains nothing new about her death, nor proof of her murder, etc) is also fake:
A postcard, supposedly from Zodiac, was received by the San Francisco Chronicle on March 22, 1971, with the implication that Lass was a murder victim. However, the postcard contained no proof, as Zodiac was known for including. In 1999 a retired detective revealed to me that a former Zodiac investigator had admitted to forging the Lass postcard.
I’m sorry, but I have to say that I find this whole thing unbelievably sad. A vivacious young woman gets abducted (and, in all probability, killed) and all people want to do is to use her death to manufacture elaborate links falsely entangling it with a serial killer. What kind of vacuous, cynical theatre is that? This isn’t a cipher mystery, this is a cipher tragedy: shame on those who do such things.
Up to now this series is a mere rehash of old stuff (now revealed by the ‘supercomputer’), the moon calender/dali days story included.
Thomas: I hate to say it, but almost all the stuff the History Channel’s Zodiac presentation has taught me so far has been about how to do history badly, e.g. never acknowledge your sources, accept any old nonsense as fact, pretend that your Delphic supercomputer told you, don’t use any kind of critical thinking, etc.
The two lines of cipher on the Reward Poster decipher to ; FIRST LINE – ” CIOEUIEEWGSEIAEED “, or ” SEE I OWE YOU I(ONE) GEW(JEW) I SEE DEAD “. SECOND LINE, ” IIFNNNNLIEEIEYYN “, or ” II(TWO) FNNNN(FOREIGN) EYEEYE(EYES)LIE WITHIN “. The message is – ” SEE I OWE YOU ONE JEW IS DEAD “. ” TWO FOREIGN EYES LIE WITHIN “. Donna’s Parents were Russian/Jewish Immigrants and the Zodiac Killer was very prejudiced.
Sandy Betts messaged to me that the drop of blood from CJB’s Pants should provide a DNA Clue to the Killer’s identity. I agree with her if it is an ample size sample, and it has not been contaminated in any way.
I too am tiring of this series rather quickly, especially the pretense that the investigators are coming up with NEW things, which, in fact, are quite well-known OLD things. (“Look at this postcard! Wow! That’s crazy!” Dude, we’ve all seen the postcard.)
I am hoping that their DNA evidence they collected way back in the first episode will prove that Zodiac didn’t commit the murder in Riverside. The show might be doing a decent job of proving that (a) Kane may have committed the Lass murder and perpetrated the Johns kidnapping and (b) that Sullivan may have committed the Bates murder. But proving who the Zodiac was? or coming up with something new with the cryptography? No, they haven’t done anything on that.
A supercomputer named Carmel ?
Carmel by the sea is the only town were it is illegal to wear high heels.
What are the chances that any solution to the Zodiac will involve cribs ?
Is this just software ? How about a real supercomputer like Deep Crack ?
@nick: Is this the first time you’ve watched the History Channel? I’d say that for the last decade (if not longer) their new programming has been pretty bad.
The older stuff was better, and they still show it sometimes, but how many times do you need to watch a D-Day documentary?
Ken: a multi-part series on the Zodiac Killer could have been a big deal, because there is a lot to cover and plenty of opportunity for new stuff to be found. But perhaps the genre has become so televisually stale that this is just not possible any more. 🙁
Cheer up this is only season one.
It is in the History Channel’s intrest to milk this as long as possible.
Who is the Zodiac Killer sending the messages to, no one. Therefor there is no key.
He is using security through obscurity. He knows what he wants to say and what
he doesn’t want you to know.
The Donner Pass/Donna Lass was the only interesting item – but the small hole dug to determine if remains were there was not convincing – I wonder if the whole thing was a set up for filler.
The reward is mine when this map finds her then the money will be used to find all zodiac victims .
See the real ZODIAC KILLER KILL MAP https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1fcirUVke4&t=230s
Hi. I’m trying to figure out how to subscribe or if there is need to do so. I did see where it mentioned “subscribers.” I’d really like to show you some things.
Jennifer: there’s no need to subscribe to Cipher Mysteries, though it costs nothing and everything posted here is interesting. 😉 I’ll email you directly, hope that’s OK.
MY NAME IS … ” TEEDOSOHORETH “, ” THEODORE OSETH ” ? or ” THEODORE ETOSH ” ? Who had a License Plate Number, ” 3 888 ” CALIFORNIA ? Each of the three circles with an eight in the center in the ” MY NAME IS … “, reads ” O “, I think that the number ” 8 ” in each circle refers to the number ” 3 888 ” or three number eights on the license plate of the person in question.
What! No-one else spotted the Donna Lass article appearing in the Netflix series, “Stranger Things”?
Season 1, Chapter 6; “The Monster” (4:45 min. mark.)
Scene opens with camera panning the top of a coffee table at Joyce Byers’ home. Subject article: “Missing Tahoe Nurse’s Family Offers Reward.”
Nick, do I win anything? One free psychonaut’s float in a Samadhi isolation tank? A trip to the Upside Down world after a dose of MKUltra-grade LSD-25? A couple boxes of Eggo? — that is if you can get them in the U.K. :-p
I swear; it pays to watch that show with one finger between ‘pause’ and ‘rewind.’ 😉
Great acting, of course, from Brits and Americans. Being half-English and attending British school during my formative years, it never fails to amaze me how (young) English performers like Charlie Heaton can master the U.S. dialects – certainly enough to fool me. (Nick, please do make sure that it is indeed powdered sugar sprinkled atop my Eggo!)
Rob PA: rest assured that I am not the kind of person who would narcotify another man’s Eggo. But thanks for the Stranger Things reference, much appreciated! (I’ve been meaning to watch the series for a while, and now I have a reason). 🙂
So is “Stranger things” trying to tell us that Joyce Byers killed Donna Lass..? Or is Joyce the Zodiac killer ..lol..? Seriously though has anyone looked at Merchant Marine as a possible occupation..? Ciphers/Codes all the way back to WW2 era… Also US Navy signal flags…?
There is absolutely ZERO evidence to indicate Donna Lass was a victim of the Zodiac. NONE. By the same token, there’s no real evidence that Cheri Jo Bates was on of his victims either. Again: ZERO real evidence. I truly believe that, in that time, the Zodiac was happy to take credit for killings he did not commit. Bates was EXCEEDINGLY violent, nearly decapitating her–very personal crime. The hand writing for the Bates murder doesn’t match Z and he wouldn’t likely switch from typing his letters to hand-writing them. But as far as Donna Lass goes, there’s never been a body or any kind of EV-I-DENCE! I think the misconceptions and assumptions have been perpetuated so long that everyone just assumes the assumptions are fact. ZERO EVIDENCE.
I cracked this code. It says
DL Table At SCA Leen Toos…. Donna lass.
Wgiever made this info, got some from the zodiackiller.com website on the case of Donna lass, I could use it in my speech.
According to the ’90s examiner article ‘On the trail of the zodiac killer,’ that poster was made by the family as an attempt to communicate with the killer.
The Peek through the pines card is NOT about Donna Lass. It’s about the Zodiac and, yes, it’s a genuine Zodiac card. Donna Lass is in no way connected to the Zodiac. Oh, and btw, Kane was not the Zodiac either.
It came to me with a curious Exhibition at Guggenheim, the Metropolitian or some Auditory for modern expression, that it in a parlously way put the frase of the name of the modern Artist Walasse Ting into the Picture…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1fcirUVke4 TV is full of crap if you folk want the latest on the zodiac based on fact for 2019 then this video is a must see folks this guy may have found the real killer.
Join the hunt here. https://www.facebook.com/groups/176114263162622/
You made the claim that Donna Lass and Lawrence Kane knew each other. What is that based on?
Hi Tom, thanks for dropping by. I’m away from my main PC at the moment, but I’ll try to dig up my notes on Donna Lass etc later on. Cheers, Nick
Thanks, Can you e-mail it to me?
Tom Voigt: I’ve gone through my notes, and even though the claim that Donna Lass and Lawrence Kane knew each other gets repeated in numerous places, I can’t find any original source for it. If this is not true, I can only apologize for having been one of many that have repeated it.
From my perspective, I really don’t know what was going through the family’s collective mind when they put out that Zodiac-cipher-inspired poster. Even if “Hines had pretty much convinced them Kane was the perp” (and, one can only conclude, that Kane was the Zodiac Killer as well), I’ve long thought that the family must surely have had some reason to believe that Donna Lass and Kane were connected, even if only fleetingly.
But if you are saying that the alternative scenario – i.e. that Hines persuaded them (a) that Kane was the perp, (b) that Kane was the Zodiac, and also (c) that Donna Lass knew Kane somehow – is true, then goodness knows what kind of voodoo mind-trickery job Hines must have done on them. Good job he didn’t include “(d) that black is white” on that list, or they’d never play the piano again.
The cipher poster was sent to me by Donna Lass’ older sister Mary. I remember getting the Manila envelope and saw it for the first time. I sent a copy to Tom Voigt before l was to post it.
Mary told me by phone her relative generated it.He knew computers so he created it. The cipher was his clever idea to generate interest. Mary has done all a sister could do over the years since 1970. I affirm this is a factual account of how l received the poster.
Howard Davis: thanks very much for leaving such a helpful comment here, I really appreciate it. 🙂
As far as the poster goes, I guess the piece of the overall historical puzzle I could ask you for help with is whether the family at that time genuinely believed that it was the Zodiac Killer himself who had killed Donna Lass, or whether the Zodiac-style cipher on the poster was, say, just to stimulate broader interest in the case. And if the former, did the family have any specific reason for thinking that?
Hi y’all. I’ve been looking around and interesting in the zodiac killer for awhile. If there is any into you could share maybe a new set of eyes could help? I actually live on Donner Pass and have done just a little research about this through out the 3 years I’ve lived here.
Some interesting theories and speculation here. The (as you called it) ‘Donna Lass’ postcard, aka the “Peek through the pines” card is not a fake. It has NOTHING to do with Donna Lass! If you pay close attention, there’s ZERO mention or even allusion to Donna Lass in the card. However, this IS a genuine Zodiac card. This card is replete with clues from the Zodiac as to his origins, whereabouts, intentions and he even references other cards he sent and would send. You just have to know enough about the Zodiac and his dealings. Donna Lass was not a Zodiac victim. It’s unlikely Cheri Jo Bates was as well. The Zodiac was happy to take credit for other crimes, but snatching someone and then burying a body somewhere was completely out of his character and MO! He never hid his crimes. He LIKED them to be SEEN, to be FOUND! Check out Kevin Robert Brooks’s Fb page, Zodiac the Montana Connection if you would like to get to the CORRECT solution of the Zodiac’s ID.
Most LE believe kane is the Zodiac
Heck he is since about 1990 the main suspect over at the FBI agency.
But there is a difference in knowing and having enough evidence in court
I am sure the authorities have already looked very closely at Joseph Holt as a possible suspect? I realize he did not move to the lake until a few years later, but it is possible he had visited that area prior to moving there. A young, vivacious woman would certainly correspond with Holt’s M.O., given what is now known about him.
Thank you Nick, for all the information you have been able to gather on the Donna Lass poster. I had not given the (superimposed ?) cipher much thought before. But now, note with interest the traditionally accepted solution :
”BEWARE I AM STALKING OO?….DONNA LASS.”
It was ”OO” that tweaked my interest, since I had previously found it as part of the solution to Z38 – the cipher that appears in the 1st Fairfield letter of December 7th 1969.
I had taken ”OO” to mean ”Double-zero”, as appearing on a roulette wheel. Why had I made that assumption ? Because I believe the solution to Z38 represents a diatribe of abuse thrown in the direction of William Joseph Grant, by the Zodiac. At the time, Grant was being treated for alcoholism and addiction to gambling, by his psychiatrist Edward Adams. (Lyndon Lafferty himself told me).
Here is the solution to the Z38 cipher (with interpretations in brackets) :
”NICE U CEKST (libidinous) S (sh*t), U ASOL (assh*le), AS U ENAKT (play out) OO (Double-zero), FOETEL (immature), TR (Tuesday to Thursday) LIFE”
Indeed – not for the faint-hearted perhaps ?
How did I come by this solution ?
By simple substitution, employing the cipher keys from the solution to the Z340 cipher. The REAL solution, and not to be confused with the one that Dan Olson and his ”private citizens” unleashed on to the world, December 11th 2020.
The REAL Z340 solution that I submitted to The Crown Office in June of 2017, and subsequently submitted to a parliamentary justice committee in January 2020, when a Chief Constable was hounded out of office, having been subjected to a very public witch hunt.
People understandably don’t like to be fooled – so if they wish to continue believing in the private citizens ”cipher solve”, then it is up to them.
But, I did find it interesting that you had mentioned the generally accepted solution to the Donna Lass poster cipher.
Donna Lass was working as a nurse at a hotel casino, at the time of her disappearance. William Joseph Grant was addicted to gambling.
Was ”OO” to be interpreted as ”Double-zero”, in both the poster’s cipher and the Z38 cipher ? And both by the Zodiac ?
@rubislaw oooh.. nice try dude. so now that theyve (LE/FBI) authenticated a z340 solution does it change ur opinion?
im really torn over this case. i want to believe the classic ALA theory so badly! He fits the profile and has multiple people “snitch” on him to LE about him being zodiac. pretty unlucky guy if he wasn’t involved. also im very interested in Dave Seawater & connie henley’s statements about ALA.. but then again the DNA supposedly doesnt match so.. (?)
I broke part of it, and what stands out to me is the word “jersey” The last sentence in Z340 is Kiss case ( more, you can figure it out. DL lived very near Z as did Cheri. No wonder he stalked her.
Its a zodiac card. His cards usually have a Mikado connection, Marianne Moore did too on the stamp. There is no Connie Henley – that was made up by stupid Carmel and David. . And they wouldnt get it anyway because it is a strange name. That was her in the tree and he had stalked her because she was so close. Vikings do the same and he thinks he is a viking, the wire and insulator – well he had an electrical license and extended ladder truck. He planned it in the Halloween card. dont know why yet. The sunbather card – solar physics, tells gamma rays and wind speed
To Rubinslaw- The double 00 if in small case means YES.
He was stalking DL. At minimum he knew her parents, and he had seen her several times. He had it planned in advance, thus the Halloween card. Cant say how I know but I am right on this. Jersey means something to this case.
Anonymous – where did you get the idea that OO = YES ?
Sincerely baffled, and would be genuinely interested.
From researching OO, I have found two official interpretations :
i) ”Double-zero”
ii) ”Blank-staring”
In the presumed Zodiac’s San Jose cryptogram of November 21st 1969, the ”telling ” solution appears to be :
O I F B I O
Implication : O – I, FBI – O
Implication : Egg man – one, Egg men – nil
The Zodiac is claiming , as narrator in the lyrics to ”I am the Walrus”, to be The Walrus, in answer to Dr Ward’s challenge that the Zodiac might reveal his identity.
The cipher on DL pic and also the Marianne Moore card are both written by the zodiac. Ciphers arent ciphers, they are translations. The address information is not an address, One line says “change Foriegn (he spelled it wrong) to mother language” So he is saying change to arabic. The translation on Donnas pic is also arabic. Every cipher is branch of the Turk language. As a translation. You cant solve correctly without translation. Z340 had 4 errors , 4 lines and they werent homophonic as stated. Again everything is a translation, Z cant cipher but he knew middle eastern languages well. He lived in Azberjani for awhile. Lines 6-20 of Z340 which were not broken, contains some important information. All of that are branches as well of the mother language arabic or turk, its called. He lived so close to Donna and she bears a resemblance to Cheri. When you see dots and dashes, they are not Morse code as thought by the general public.
To This isnt zodiac speaking: So how can anyone say Z340 is solved? Only 4 lines were deciphered when they should have been translated and it has 4 errors as well. I translated 6-20, it doesnt have crap in it. It has some interesting and very valuable information, so if you say that you are way way wrong. Its kind of a snapshot in time and how he felt about so many things. Its not crap like lines 1-4. They also missed his identity and said it wasnt there. It is. They said Z13 and Z32 are unsolveable, yes as ciphers they are, but not as translations. These two take a total of 15 min and was the easiest of all them
Hi Nick – am not sure you said it, but on on that new page of ciphers you do not to copywrite. Because it is a translation. Thats like if I took a Book on Moby Dick in French, and changed it to English, See there is nothing original to protect. If anyone could create a copy wright – its Zodiac, he created something original. Ftom my understanding. And the law says short phrases is not copywritable. So both rules apply to Z13 and Z32. This is the way it was explained to me. Thanks.
Hi Nick: Do you want to know what is most of the ciphers. They are all solved the same way except slight variantion. I explained how to break them, didnt I. Thanks
Rubislaw32 – you do not have a key to anyone of these ciphers in any way. Theres a simple reason why. They arent ciphers. Every one is a letter to us. Z340 – they only got 4 lines almost right, but the best information is 6-20. You can break them all very easily. Crypto show is wrong. And those translate to very small changes. Takes less than one day for all.
I just saw this cypher and decided to try my code key that solved the 340 in Nov , 15 it seems to.say something like Z would but doesn’t read complete
My code key ( the 408 + the name I know to use other my name is cipher ) is here zodiacciphersdecoded.blogspot.com it free &demonitized
I don’t believe Donna was a Z victim.
BREAKING NEWS in this case:
“The California Department of Justice Bureau of Forensic Services was able to match the DNA of the skull with the DNA from a member of Donna Lass’s family, allowing them to identify the skull as the remains of Donna Lass.”
https://mynews4.com/news/local/remains-found-in-south-lake-tahoe-in-1986-identified-as-woman-missing-since-1971
Rob PA: thanks for the tip! I’ll track the story and post a update on Cipher Mysteries as soon as any more substantial information becomes available.
The skull was mentioned here in 2011: https://goldcountrymedia.com/news/41535/duo-keeping-areas-cold-cases-alive/
“Aug. 4, 1986 – PG&E workers found a human skull in a drainage ditch near Highway 20 and I-80. The skull is believed to be that of a Caucasian female in her mid-teens to early 20s.”
You’re welcome… I’ll be checking back for your update and others’ comments. I know from my own Zodiac case research over the years, that this Donna Lass blog entry (and some of your other Z-related) rank fairly high in Google search results.