“Paradice”, the keyword that reveals Zodiac’s 408-cipher last mystery

Original post from 2022 (link)

Small introduction. Until 2018 I thought the solution was “Giuseppe Bevilacqua”, Italian name of Joseph aka Joe Bevilacqua.

"I like killing people because it is so much fun / it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangertue anamal of all / to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence / it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl / the best part of it is thae when I die i will be reborn in paradice and all thei (sic) have killed will become my slaves / I will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or atop my collectiog of slaves for my afterlife / ebeorietemethhpiti"

This is the plaintext of Zodiac Killer’s 408-cipher decrypted by Donald and Bettye Harden in the summer of 1969.
Below, highlighted, the symbols corresponding to the last incomprehensible part of the text.

“Ebeorietemethhpiti.” What does it mean?
Could it be an anagram? If so, how can I know how to move each character to the right place?
One of the most important word for Zodiac is “paradice”, an archaic and obsolete term that he prefers to “paradise”.
Could it be a wordplay? Like “para-dice”?
Maybe “parad-ice”?
At the end of the following cipher of 340 symbols that was decrypted in 2020, the word paradice, along with others, appears backwards (“ecidarap”).

"...I am not afraid because I know that my new [efil] life will [eb] be [na] an easy [eno] one [ni] in [cidarap] paradice death."

Z340 decryption by Oranchak-Van Eycke-Blake

Following a simplified version of the method of columnar transposition (here referred to as step 1 of double transposition), with a rearranging of the letters using “paradice” as the keyword, I think I found the solution of the anagram at the end of Zodiac’s 408-cipher.

Method
The encryption of the text was obtained through a keyed columnar transposition, with the difference that the author of the anagram stopped at the first step of this method, i.e. the rearrangment of the letters generated only on the numerical sequence derived from the key word, without the subsequent transposition via column.
In addition, applying the same method, he simply transposed the first part of the anagram twice, strengthening rather than complicating the solution.

The keyword is “PARADICE”.
The sequence based on the alphabetical order is 71824635. The letters of the anagram must be moved following this order to arrive at the solution.
The lines into which the anagram is divided (in purple, in the image below) of the same length as the keyword are three.

In the two columns below, the method leading to the solution is reported.
The left column contains the result of the first transposition.
The right column is the final result obtained with the subsequent transposition of the first part of the solution (“eetboier”) as indicated by the arrow in the center.

The parts of the “ebeorietemethhpiti” anagram to be solved are highlighted in purple.
The words that make sense which are obtained from the first and, subsequently, from the second rearrangment are highlighted in yellow and green (“e ereb I” is backwards – I explain further below).

The first time you come across a coherent sentence in the second and third rows of the solution, but not in the first.

"Eetboier / pe I'm the h / it"

When I saw the first result of the transposition, “eetboier”, I thought I was wrong. But then I moved forward and the phrase “I’m the hit” became visible in the second and third rows.
Then I retransposed the solution of the first row by applying the same method (right column in the previous image).
The result was “eerebito…”.
At this point, “…pe” in the second row made sense by becoming the verb “tope” preceded by “I”.
I realized that the first letters were two words in Italian backwards.

"E ereb I tope I'm the hit"

Solution
“Eereb” backwards is “bere e”.
They are two Italian words, with one verb in the infinitive form.
“Bere” is “to drink“;
“E” means “and“.

Zodiac possibly used the infinitive form “bere” instead of the correct “bevo” for precaution, not to give a strong tip on his ancestry/knowledge of the Italian language.

The anagram with the first part of the sentence reversed is:

"I bere e tope I'm the hit"

After the translation of the two italian words, with the verb “bere” in the indicative mood, the anagram reads:

"I drink and tope I'm the hit"

What does it mean?
It sure is a riddle. Maybe it hides a mocking allusion to Zodiac’s identity?
Here “hit”, which is also a peculiar word in baseball terminology, could indicate that the solution is correct.

It may have other meaning, though.

Perhaps Zodiac refers to a “hit”, like the song “Aquarius/Let the sunshine in”, which arrived #2 in the Billboard Hot 100 of 1969.

In April and May 1969, the song spent four weeks at the top of Billboard magazine’s popularity chart, only to be displaced from the annual top spot by the success of “Sugar, Sugar.”

According to the solution of the “Zodiac’s name” cipher I proposed here, the serial killer seems to have been inspired by “Aquarius/Let the sunshine in” to encrypt part of his name (next video).

At the same time, “hit” could also be an allusion to a verb “dear” to Zodiac, “to kill”, in American slang.

“To hit” is also the actual translation of the Norse term “slà” mentioned in the letter from “a friend” (perhaps by Zodiac) postmarked February 3, 1974, which the anonymous author translates exactly with “kill” (without “to”).

The anagram solution is strengthened by six main points:

• “Paradice” is perhaps the most emblematic word in Zodiac’s correspondence. It is possible he used it as a keyword.
• A meaningful phrase emerges, “…pe I’m the hit”, with the first transposition.
• The result of the second transposition of the previous part, obtained following the same method, is linked in a sensible way to the next one, giving meaning to that “…pe” which becomes “tope”.
• The separation of only the first line of the diagram, and not of other letters in the following line, is compatible with the subdivision of the sentence by the length of the identified keyword.
• In the solution there are words backwards as in the following cipher.
• In the letter by “a friend” (perhaps from Zodiac) a word in Norse is mentioned which the anonymous writer cites in a figurative sense, “[to] kill”, but which literally means “to hit”.