Customer Reviews

Times 17: The Amazing Story of the Zodiac Murders in California and Massachusetts, 1966-1981

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Between 1966 and 1969, six people were murdered in California by an unknown killer who called himself "The Zodiac." During this time and well into the 1970s, he sent dozens of letters, codes, and diagrams to area newspapers detailing his crimes, taunting the police, threatening mayhem, and claiming to identify himself. Despite these claims, no suspect has ever been formally charged.

Packaged more like a math textbook than a true crime thriller, Penn's TIMES 17 is sure to puzzle those readers more familiar with Robert Graysmith's account of the case in his well-known book Zodiac. While Graysmith tends towards glibness and sensationalism, Penn can be dry and almost tedious in his emphasis on the exact factual truth. Graysmith uses pseudonyms for the suspects described in his book; Penn not only names his suspect, but gives extensive personal information about him as well, down to his mother's maiden name and birthday. Graysmith indulges in astrology, pop psychology, and movie history; Penn relies on mathematics, Dante, and modern art. Zodiac, first published by St. Martin's Press in 1986, is in its 23rd printing; TIMES 17 was independently published a year later by a private citizen who has since issued updates on subsequent developments. The two books, in fact, are as different as works on the same subject can be.

A scholar in medieval literature and historical linguistics, a trained artillery surveyor and reference librarian, and a member of American Mensa, Penn was first interested in the Zodiac case in 1980, when his father, an employee of the California Attorney General's Office, mentioned that the killer had twice used the word "radian," an obscure geometric term, in reference to the San Francisco Bay Area landmark Mount Diablo. Intrigued by this unexpected nugget of math in a killer's correspondence, Penn drew a radian -- an angle of 57.29578...°, sometimes used by engineers and physicists -- on a piece of acetate and laid it over a map with the apex on the summit of Mount Diablo. What he found was the key to the case that had been overlooked for ten years: the legs of the radian matched up perfectly with the sites of the first and last murders in the Bay Area.

"I felt as if a ton of bricks had fallen on me," he writes. "Instantly ... I knew that everything he had done or written, no matter how mad it may appear, had to have a discoverable sense." TIMES 17 is the elucidation of that sense, discovered over six years of intense mathematical and linguistic scrutiny. Using a hybrid of binary math and Morse code, Penn not only cracks the ciphers that had baffled cryptographers since 1970, he also identifies a suspect -- an Ivy League lecturer and former state official who had been traveling to California on business during the Zodiac years. Further, Penn also names this suspect in the unsolved 1981 murder of a grad student in the Boston area.

Alongside his explanation of the Zodiac crimes and letters, Penn also recounts his travails with the local police, FBI, and news media. Briefly considered a suspect himself in light of his extensive knowledge about the case, Penn is subsequently rebuffed at every law enforcement level up to the Department of Justice. News items routinely misquote him, and his few published articles are often edited in fear of litigation. His solid links with the mass media are ultimately dissolved by greed and ambition. TIMES 17 is not just the unofficial solution to the Zodiac murders; it's an explanation for why they were never officially solved. The reluctance of the police to investigate such a man for such a crime, and the insistence of the press to oversimplify a complex story, made the book necessary. Penn is to be commended for his drive and determination to see the truth made public.

While highly recommended for those interested in the Zodiac murders, TIMES 17 is probably best appreciated with a preliminary knowledge of the case, whether from Zodiac or from the Unsolved Crimes volume of Time-Life's 1993 True Crime series, which both take a more chronological approach to their analyses. As with any literary criticism, the work itself -- in this case a murder spree -- must first be appreciated in its own right, even if through the flawed lens of Graysmith et al. The informed reader, however, will find the book at turns fascinating, shocking, and iconoclastic, if perhaps technical. Even those unconvinced by Penn's methods and unsure of his suspect are sure to be convinced that the case of the Zodiac and his gigantic multimedia art project is unique in the history of crime.

I have just reread "Times 17" for about the fifth time, and once again I am struck by both the intellect of the author and the lack of prosecution of the suspect.

The book is a hard read, due to its reliance on inter-related ciphers. The reader eventually becomes bogged down trying to keep up with Mr. Penn's translations, much less the meanings attached to them. Toward the end of the book, one begins skipping over sections of analysis to get to the climax of the action.

That leads to my other point: this book is in desperate need of an update. You end the book wondering how in the world O'Hare has never been investigated, so conclusive is Penn's analysis. We need to hear from Mr. Penn again to tell us what, if anything, has happened during the intervening years.

These two complaints notwithstanding, this is an excellent piece of work. As I noted above, I have read it again and again, and enjoyed it each time. If you enjoy puzzles, and ciphers, and mathematics, this book will be a welcome addition to your library.

There is one reason that Times 17 is an important book. That reason is that Gareth S Penn is Zodiac. In the book Gareth says the Wizard is dying, what he is really saying is that Zodiac is dying. The Wizard he is making reference to is Guy Ward Hendrickson, the original Zodiac killer who died of cancer in 1983.

Penn was partnered with Hendrickson in committing the well-known Zodiac murders.
Though Guy Ward Hendrickson did all the actual Zodiac attacks, Penn was very essential in the writing of letters and cards to newspapers. Penn however, did kill Donna Lass in 1970, she was the nurse who was abducted from Lake Tahoe, never to be seen again. Penn buried her on land owned by Guy Ward Hendrickson.

Written reports on all the above have been sent to FBI, police departments, and District Attorneys. Also, Zodiac/Penn killed in 2004, 2006, 2010, 2011.

It is really too bad that shocking crimes have to be sensationalized, and that some parties have to so muddy the waters with their own interests that a crime eventually becomes unsolvable. Mr. Penn, a librarian, took the establishment to task with his own theory as to whom the Zodiac killer was, and his motivation. Some would say that Mr. Penn's writing is dry and clinical, but the killer was even more so, regarding human beings as disposable objects. The book is a fascinating read even if you don't agree with Mr. Penn's conclusions, because he lays out that the killer used math, Morse code, and even EBCIDIC (internal code used in IBM/IBM clone machines), in his writings to the police and media. Mr. Penn also discusses his own problems with the police (who considered Mr. Penn a suspect), the FBI (working as guard dogs for the killer, who was closely allied with the late Senator Kennedy), and the media (whose greed for "a story" and a Pulitzer) thoroughly botched the case.

It was in Mr. Penn's work that I first encountered the word "psychobabble:" a phrase that the author explains that, just because one is an American citizen, one can make psychological pronouncements on others. He also describes the FBI psychological profile tool as next to useless in describing a suspect.

All in all, a very good read.

I've been reading true crime books for about 20 years and no case is more fascinating than the Zodiac case.

This was a fascinating book but not the part about the Zodiac. If you truly want to read a book by apparently a writer obsessed with proving some ridiculous notion about who the Zodiac is--then read this book.

I don't know legally how this author got away with writing this book except that he probably doesn't have 2 nickels to rub together and the man he accused just blew him off. I wonder if the people he named are made-up and this book is just fiction posing as true crime.

If you read this book you will see that the author tries in every way possible to speak to every newspaperman, cop, magazine editor etc., and very quickly everyone writes him off as a nut and distances themselves from him. He doesn't even see this and continues to contact them. He did get most of them to give him 15 minutes of their time. Then they distanced themselves. Why?

Ask yourself, if with all this research, if the author is correct about who he accuses of being the Zodiac(arguably the biggest unsolved true crime case in recent history)then why hasn't this man been arrested after 19 years?

I am enjoying the book because it is a book unlike any I ever read before. He is an author publically and in writing accusing a citizen of Boston of being a mass murderer-serial killer and not one of the dozens of people he tries to convince pays him any mind. The FBI listened, smiled, and showed him the door. Don't you think the FBI would love to solve the Zodiac crime?

If you believe in the "bible code" or if you have ever played that college word game called the 6 levels of Kevin Bacon(or something like that)you will see that what this author does is single one person out and then performs mathmetical tricks to make that person come out as the one who is the Zodiac.

He measures the distance between "periods" in the Zodiac's writing sentences and "proves" that this man in Boston is the Zodiac. He takes all the words "the" in the Zodiac's writings and measures their angle from each other in the Zodiac's writings and determines that this Boston man is the Zodiac. He goes into the most minute detail inside of detail inside of detail.

This book is really fascinating but it is not fascinating about the Zodiac-it is a fascinating study of the personality of the author of the book. To put it another way, the way this book is written, the author could make anyone reading this review the Zodiac killer if he wanted. I'm not a psychologist but people I've known who are obsessed in this way have been called obsessive compulsive.

This book is so bluntly honest it is refreshing and I am enjoying this book! The book purports to name the Zodiac killer. It gets a 1 star for that. 5 stars for an entertaining book.

I just hope he doesn't start stalking me.

And that is an honest book review. I wonder if the author is pulling our leg and has been laughing for 19 years.

The book was insanely interesting, and a truly fascinating read. A must for math fans!!!

I can't beleve that people would pay big money for this book its only worth about 2 cents beleve me i read it and then sold it to a fool if you paid over a dollar for this book you got ripped off the book is rare because it did so poorley at book stores and no publisher in his right mind would waste money printing it again