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A team of crypto enthusiasts announced Friday that they had successfully cracked one of the encrypted messages sent more than 50 years ago by the “Zodiac Killer,” a serial killer who terrorized Northern California in the late 1960s. and was never identified.
The message was allegedly sent in November 1969 to the “San Francisco Chronicle” newspaper by the killer, and its code consisted of a series of encrypted letters and symbols.
Detectives expected the coded message to contain the identity of the criminal, who committed at least five murders in 1968 and 1969, but claimed 37 in total and inspired other serial killers.
According to the trio of cryptographers, in the message the author brags and challenges the authorities, but does not give real clues about the motive for the crimes and his identity.
“I hope you are having a great time trying to catch me … I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise (sic) much sooner because now I have enough slaves working for me,” the message says.
David Oranchak, a 46-year-old American web designer, took several computer programs and years of work to crack the complex code he started working on in 2006.
Oranchak was assisted by Sam Blake, an Australian mathematician, and Jarl Van Eykcke, a Belgian logistics expert, explained to the “San Francisco Chronicle,” which confirmed the discovery with the FBI, the federal agency responsible for the investigation.
A first message sent to California newspapers was decoded by a professor and his wife in 1969.
“I like to kill because it is very funny,” said that text, referring again to the “slaves” that he claimed to gather to serve him in the afterlife.
But the code used in the first message was much simpler than the “340 cipher”, so called because it contains 340 characters spread over 17 columns.
Figure 340 is read diagonally, starting from the upper left corner and going down one frame and two frames to the right.
When it reaches the end, the reader should go back to the opposite corner, explained the video expert who posted on his YouTube channel.
Oranchak noted that the encryption system appears in a manual for the United States military dating from the 1950s.
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