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CHAPTER 5 Mystery Solved? Cipher finally cracked It took 51 years to crack, but one of the taunting mes- The F.B.I.’s San Francisco field office also released a sages written in code and attributed to the Zodiac Killer statement on the breakthrough, which was reported by has been solved, according to the F.B.I. The mysterious The San Francisco Chronicle on Friday. The statement 340-character cipher, which was mailed to The San said the field office was aware that a cipher attributed to Francisco Chronicle in November 1969, does not reveal the Zodiac Killer “was recently solved by private citi- the killer’s identity. But it does build on his image as an zens.” “The Zodiac Killer case remains an ongoing in- attention-seeking killer who reveled in terrorizing the vestigation for the F.B.I. San Francisco division and our Bay Area in the late 1960s. local law enforcement partners,” the office said. “The Zodiac Killer terrorized multiple communities across “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me” Northern California and even though decades have gone and “I am not afraid of the gas chamber” are two of the by, we continue to seek justice for the victims of these dark boasts in the message, according to David Oran- brutal crimes.” chak, a software developer in Virginia who said he had decrypted the cipher with the help of Sam Blake, an The San Francisco office said it would not comment applied mathematician in Melbourne, Australia, and Jarl further because of “the ongoing nature of the investiga- Van Eycke, a warehouse operator and computer pro- tion, and out of respect for the victims and their fam- grammer in Belgium. Mr. Oranchak, who runs a website ilies.” The code had long baffled cryptographers, law and YouTube series about the Zodiac Killer’s ciphers, enforcement agents and armchair sleuths obsessed with said he was excited to have solved the code after 14 years the shadowy killer, who was blamed for five murders in of trying to break it. But he said he was also worried the late 1960s. Only one previous cipher attributed to about the effect it might have on victims’ families. the Zodiac had been solved, and it was decoded by a California couple not long after it was sent in the 1960s. “The message in that cipher — I don’t see it as being This one was considered much more complex, suggest- helpful to them,” he said. “It’s more of the same junk ing the killer was frustrated that the first one had been that the killer liked to write about. It’s just intended to deciphered so easily, Mr. Oranchak said. The team that hurt people and make them afraid.” The cryptogram, cracked it came together earlier this year, Mr. Blake said, known as the 340 cipher, that was sent to The San after he reached out to Mr. Oranchak with some ideas Francisco Chronicle in 1969. The F.B.I., which employs on how to unravel the patchwork of symbols and charac- a team of code-crackers in its Cryptanalysis and Racke- ters. “It’s considered one of the holy grails of cryptogra- teering Records Unit, said it had verified Mr. Oranchak’s phy,” Mr. Blake said. “At the time, the cipher had resist- claim of having broken the code, known as the 340 ci- ed attacks for 50 years, so any attempts to find a solution pher. The agency said the cipher was one of four attribut- was truly a moonshot.” For months, Mr. Blake said, he ed to the killer, and was first submitted to an F.B.I. lab and Mr. Oranchak tested, by trial and error, around on Nov. 13, 1969. The bureau said it had received the 650,000 possible solutions, running them through a solution on Dec. 5 from a cryptologic researcher. code-breaking program written by Mr. Van Eycke. “Over the past 51 years, C.R.R.U. has reviewed numer- But the program turned up nothing until it suddenly ous proposed solutions from the public — none of which yielded a surprising combination of words on Dec. 3, in- had merit,” the F.B.I. said in a statement. “The cipher cluding “gas chamber” and “trying to catch me.” “That’s was recently solved by a team of three private citizens.” what caught our attention,” said Mr. Oranchak, who 52
explains the team’s code-cracking process in a YouTube video. “That was the key.” Mr. Oranchak said he was astounded when the decrypted message revealed the phrase “that wasn’t me on the TV show,” because the let- ter had been sent about two weeks after a man claiming to be the Zodiac had called into a Bay Area television show and had spoken to the lawyer Melvin Belli. That meant the solution the team found fit the timeline from that era, Mr. Oranchak said. The full message, submitted to the F.B.I. on Dec. 5, included a misspelling of the word paradise, no punctu- ation and some garbled phrases. Mr. Oranchak said he was not optimistic about decoding the two remaining ciphers attributed to the Zodiac Killer, in part because they are short, making it hard to verify a solution. But if there is a clue in the cipher the team just solved, he said, the chances might improve slightly. Mr. Blake said the 340 cipher had been cracked “with a massive search through many candidates using sophisticated software which can efficiently solve homophonic substitution ciphers.”“Not only were we lucky enough to find the nee- dle in the haystack,” he said, “but we were lucky enough to pick the right haystack in order to start searching for the needle.” “I hope you are having lots of Working from around the globe, codebreakers David fun in trying to catch me that Oranchak in the US, Sam Blake in Melbourne, and wasn’t me on the TV show which Jarl Van Eycke (above) in Belgium solved the Zodiac’s brings up a point about me I am not 340-character cipher after more than 50 years. afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice all the 53 sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me where ev- eryone 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.” - Zodiac Killer (decoded)
BIBLIOGRAPHY https://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/slideshow/The-Zodi- https://populartimelines.com/timeline/Zodiac-Killer ac-Killer-166962.php https://zodiackillerfacts.com/case-summary/ https://www.history.com/news/the-zodiac-killer-a-timeline https://www.cinemablend.com/news/2547434/zodi- https://www.insearchofthezodiackiller.com/431564205 ac-ending-explained-is-arthur-leigh-allen-the-zodiac-kill- er https://www.insearchofthezodiackiller.com/431631949 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/11/us/zodiac-kill- https://www.zodiackiller.com/Letters.html er-code-broken.html https://derekbruff.org/blogs/fywscrypto/historical-cryp- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-55285805 to/the-zodiac-ciphers-messages-from-a-murderer/#:~:- text=From%20the%20late%201960s%20to,he%20 https://vault.fbi.gov/The%20Zodiac%20Killer/The%20 claimed%20contained%20his%20identity. Zodiac%20Killer%20Part%2004%20of%2006/view#doc- ument/p1 https://zodiackillerfacts.com/gallery/displayimage.php?al- bum=11&pid=161#top_display_media http://murders.ru/zodiac%20unmasked.pdf https://zodiackillersite.com/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=103 https://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/18-times-the- zodiac-killer-made-the-front-page-of-napa-county-news- https://zodiackillerfacts.com/zodiac-theories/the-ac- papers-in-1969/collection_327fc9a3-8eb6-5e35-87b7- cused-the-accusers/larry-kane-zodiac-suspect/lar- 673eb99a1c8f.html#2 ry-kane-fingerprints/ https://www.insearchofthezodiackiller.com/431491627 https://www.thefinertimes.com/the-worst-kind-of-serial- killer https://www.biography.com/news/zodiac-killer-mur- der-identity?li_source=LI&li_medium=m2m-rcw-biogra- phy https://www.history.com/news/could-any-of-these-men- have-been-the-zodiac-killer?li_source=LI&li_medi- um=m2m-rcw-biography https://projects.sfchronicle.com/2018/zodiac-timeline/ https://www.kiro7.com/news/trending/zodiac-killer-mys- tery-cipher-cracked-51-years-after-killer-sent-it-san-fran- cisco-newspaper https://www.zodiacciphers.com/zodiac-news https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/a-look-at-the-zodiac- killers-deadly-timeline/ 54
Access all the letters and ciphers sent by the Zodiac Killer by scanning this QR code. You can also view the police statements, files, crime scene photographs and evidence that have been published in the public domain. 55
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