Amateur claims to have solved both Black Dahlia and Zodiac - identifying a single culprit, or it all could be AI-assisted BS
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Quote: The LA Times ran a pretty good piece today detailing an amateur sleuth, Alex Baber, who claims to have solved both the Black Dahlia murder and the Zodiac cases, identifying a single person as being responsible for both.
The crux of the claim relates to the Zodiac's so-called Z13 cipher, which reads "My name is..." followed by 13 encrypted letters (hence the cipher's name). Rather than cracking the code itself, Baber claims to have effectively brute-forced it. He used AI (and a lot of time) to list out millions of possible substitution names which he then meticulously checked by hand, comparing to known details about the Zodiac and public records, military records, etc. Eventually he was able to whittle this down to just a single name: "Marvin Merrill."
Marvin Merrill, it turns out, was an alias used by one Marvin Margolis, an alias which he adopted shortly after the Dahlia murders when he left LA for Chicago. In fact, Margolis was identified by law enforcement as a Black Dahlia suspect early on. He even lied to investigators about having lived with the victim, Elizabeth Short. He was eventually cleared due to an alibi, although the article notes that this was predicated on a theory of timeline that was likely incorrect.
Baber eventually brought some of this analysis to NSA cryptographers. Not only did they agree with his findings, they provided him with an additional, important detail. Remember - Baber did not actually "crack" the code - he just found a result name that fit the number of letters in the cipher and which matched up on other key details. But the cryptography experts were able to identify the "key" that the Zodiac had used to encrypt Z13: "ELIZABETH" - the Black Dahlia's first name.
Baber eventually tracked down Margolis's son Roark Merrill, who agreed to meet with him (Marty Merrill was another alias of Margolis). Upon their meeting, Merrill mentioned to Baber a painting his father had gifted him upon his death bed which he still had hanging in his own office. That sketch, titled "Elizabeth," depicts a woman, naked from the waist up, with uncanny similarities to the Black Dahlia murder. Hidden in some dark shading appears the phrase "Zodiac."
In another incredible twist linking the two cases, Baber claims to have identified where the Dahlia murder itself took place. Contemporary newspaper accounts say that a man had been seen driving between motels in the area the night before the Dahlia murder looking for a rental with a bathtub. Baber used AI to scan old newspaper articles and found an ad for just such a hotel, one of the only in the area that had a bathtub in 1947 at the time of the murders. The name of that hotel? The Zodiac Motel.
I don't know enough about the details of either case to opine myself, but the article seems pretty detailed and paints enough links between Margolis and both cases that it seems difficult for this to all just be coincidence. But, what do I know, decide for yourself here:
His mind was not for rent to any god or government
Always hopeful yet discontent, knows changes aren't permanent
But change is
Professor Neil Ellwood Peart
![[Image: PEART-2744335652.gif]](https://denyignorance.com/uploader/images/PEART-2744335652.gif)
Always hopeful yet discontent, knows changes aren't permanent
But change is
Professor Neil Ellwood Peart
