A code-breaking team made up of private citizens from the U.S., Australia and Belgium have now cracked a cipher used by the so-called Zodiac serial killer that has confounded investigators for more than 50 years.
Code-breaking expert David Oranchak says in a video posted to YouTube that he and Australian mathematician Sam Blake and Belgian programmer Jarl Van Eycke were able to crack the “340 Cipher.”
The cipher was originally used in a letter sent to the San Francisco Chronicle in November of 1969.
Oranchak revealed that the full deciphered text reads, “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me that wasnt (sic) me on the TV show which brings up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice (sic) 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 on in paradice death.”
“The message doesn’t really say a whole lot,” said Oranchak. “It’s more the same attention seeking junk from Zodiac.”
A spokesperson for the FBI confirmed to the Chronicle that Oranchak’s team solved the cipher, writing in a statement, “The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by private citizens. The Zodiac Killer case remains an ongoing investigation for the FBI San Francisco division and our local law enforcement partners.”
Investigators had hoped that the 340 Cipher would provide clues to another cipher sent in a later letter, which the Zodiac claimed would reveal his name, but that was not the case.
Another, simpler Zodiac cipher was quickly solved by Salinas schoolteacher Donald Harden and his wife Bettye in 1969, although the final portion of the message has never been solved. It read in part, “I like killing because it is so much fun.” That cipher also contained a mention of collecting slaves for the afterlife.
The killer murdered five people in the Bay Area and injured two others between December 1968 and October 1969, although in a letter he once claimed to have killed as many as 37 people.
The killings and the highly publicized letters to news outlets and law enforcement terrorized the area and has captured the curiosity of generations since.