- Leave it to private citizens to pick up the slack when the cops hit a dead end.
With everybody stuck at home, shows about murder and serial killers have exploded in popularity. Who knows why, but people seem to love a good murder mystery.
Maybe those shows give the watcher a feeling that they’re part in solving the murder. If you don’t like solving puzzles from scratch, it’s a good alternative.
But not everybody is content to watch other crack the case when it comes to gruesome murders. An international group of cryptographers have gone above and beyond in solving a vital clue to one of the most cryptic serial killer cases ever.
The trio of amateur sleuths consists of Australian software engineer Sam Blake, American cryptographer David Oranchak, and Belgian warehouse operator Jarl Van. Together, they’ve unraveled a cipher left by one of the most infamous murderers in history – The Zodiac Killer.
Known as the 340 Cipher – named after the number of incomprehensible characters on it – the coded message sat unsolved for more than 50 years. World’s leading cryptographers have puzzled over its content, but were unable to decipher it.
That was until now.
The Story of a Killer
If you’ve never heard of the Zodiac Killer, we’d love to see the lovely rock you’ve been living under. But just in case you do like a good sub-stone dwelling, here’s a quick crash course.
Zodiac Killer is – or was, we don’t know – a serial murderer who spread terror through Northern California between 1968 and 1969. We know that he killed at least five people, but that number could actually be as high as 37.
We can speculate the number murders to be that large because that’s what the killer himself – or herself – wrote. The Zodiac Killer reaped infamy with a series of taunting letters he sent to the press, police, and other people.
Among these letter were four encrypted messages, consisting of a nonsensical mess of letters, numbers, and symbols.
The Zodiac Killer’s identity remains a mystery to this day. No one has been convicted, and investigations remain open even today.
One Sinister Message
With the basics of the Zodiac Killer out of the way, let’s get to the message. The decrypting trio managed to break through the incoherent bunch of symbols and piece together a bone-chilling message.
They’ve released the decoded letter to the public domain. Here it is, with all its authentic grammar errors, misspellings, and lack of punctuation.
“I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME THAT WASNT ME ON THE TV SHOW WHICH BRINGS UP A POINT ABOUT ME,” the letter reads.
“I AM NOT AFRAID OF THE GAS CHAMBER BECAUSE IT WILL SEND ME TO PARADICE ALL THE SOONER BECAUSE I NOW HAVE ENOUGH SLAVES TO WORK FOR ME WHERE EVERYONE ELSE HAS NOTHING WHEN THEY REACH PARADICE SO THEY ARE AFRAID OF DEATH”
“I AM NOT AFRAID BECAUSE I KNOW THAT MY NEW LIFE IS LIFE WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH,” the murderer concluded.
That’s some creepy stuff.
Team Effort
Oranchak, a member of the riddle-solving team, said that the message would have remained incomprehensible if not for the help from his two partners.
“I could not have done this without them. All of us in the crypto community on the Zodiac figured the cipher had another step beyond just figuring out what letters belonged to the symbols, and that’s just what we found here,” Oranchak told San Francisco Chronicle.
The complicated cipher used by the Zodiac Killer was based – at least in part – on a U.S. Army code manual from the 1950s. By running the code through a series of computer programs, the team was able to apply appropriate letters to the numbers and symbols the killer used.
Additionally, they were able to figure out the directions for how the grid of symbols is supposed to be read. In the 340 Cipher, the alignment runs diagonally down the page, and at points the alignment shifts over one column.
On the Right Track
But how can the team of sleuths be sure they got the right answer? Well, they can’t for sure, but the message is coherent enough that they probably got it right.
Additionally, the TV show that the Zodiac Killer mentions helps validate the results. According to the team, the mentioned TV show is an episode of Jim Dunbar’s AM San Francisco, which aired in October 1969.
In the show, Dunbar received a phone call from a person who claimed to be the Zodiac Killer. “I don’t want to go to the gas chamber,” the caller said.
Based on the letter, the caller was a fake, and the real Zodiac had no fear of the gas.
“We knew we had something because of the Dunbar show,” said Oranchak.
“One of the interesting things about this is that it forces the minimum date of the cipher’s construction. Maybe he had one and adjusted it, but it couldn’t have been in that form prior to October 22 [1969] when the Dunbar show aired.”
Official Confirmation
Additional confirmation that the team has the right answer to the riddle comes from the FBI. In a statement, the FBI confirmed that their solution is indeed correct.
“The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by private citizens,” the agency said.
“We continue to seek justice for these brutal crimes. Because of the ongoing nature of the investigation, and out of respect for the victims and their families, we will not be providing further comment at this time.”
It’s not the first time one of Zodiac’s ciphers has been cracked. In 1969, a Salinas, California, schoolteacher cracked another, shorter message.
That one, however, said nothing more than: “I like killing because it is so much fun.”
We’ll just have to see whether this new revelation will help in figuring out who the Zodiac Killer was. But at least one more part of the puzzle in now in place.