Finally, after 51 years, cryptographers have successfully decoded one of the most mysterious messages of the serial killer Zodiac Killer – who killed dozens of people in the 60s and 70s of the last century. in northern California, USA.
Betty Lou Jensen, 16 years old; David Faraday, 17 years old; Darlene Ferrin, 22 years old; 3 of the victims of the Zodiac Killer, shot dead in 1968 and 1969.
Zodiac Killer is the code name of the killer whose identity is still unknown. He claimed to have killed 37 people, but only 5 of them were confirmed, 2 people were lucky to escape. The California Department of Justice has maintained an open record of murders by the Zodiac since 1969.
Sketch of the Zodiac Killer when committing the crime based on the narration of Bryan Hartnell – a lucky survivor. Hartnell and his girlfriend Cecelia Shepard were attacked by the Zodiac Killer on September 27, 1969. Hartnell survived being stabbed seven times in the back, Miss Shepard did not survive.
He called himself the Zodiac and the killer often called the police to report his “treasures” and sent dozens of letters to newsrooms in San Francisco and Vallejo. The special thing is that these letters are written with a special type of character or code. Some were quickly solved, but some remain a mystery to this day.
The letter was sent to the Chronicle, San Francisco by an international team of cryptographers in November 1969, and cryptographers called it Z-340 because the letter contained 340 characters. Despite the efforts of amateur cryptanalysts to professors and even law enforcement cryptographers, the contents of the letter remain a mystery to this day. Its full contents are as follows:
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
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
Software engineer David Oranchak has been tinkering with the Z-340 letter since 2006. At first he thought he would be able to solve it right away, but it took 14 hours. In a video posted on YouTube, Oranchak said he and mathematician Sam Blake used a decryption software developed by Belgian programmer Jarl Van Eycke called AZdecrypt. All three have been trying to decipher the letter Z-340 for many years, Sam Blake has compiled more than 650,000 different variations. Oranchak enters variations into the software every time he notices a clue comes up such as the words “hope you are”; “trying to catch me” and keep trying.
The theory is that the Zodiac Killer may have rearranged the characters in the message according to a certain rule that makes the letter difficult to decipher, and they were right. Oranchak then changes the software’s settings to recall the sentences that appear and solve the rest of the cipher. When the message “that wasn’t me on the TV” appeared, Oranchak jumped out of his chair with joy because he knew he was on the right track.
Specifically, two weeks before the letter was sent to the Chronicle with the victim’s bloody shirt, someone reported that the killer called a morning news channel hosted by Jim Dunbar and said: ” I don’t want to go to the gas chamber”.
After successfully decoding the Z-340 letter, the team sent the results to the FBI. FBI spokesman Cameron Rogers Polan said: “The FBI has received information that a Zodiac Killer ciphertext has been decrypted by the public. The Zodiac Killer case is still being investigated by the FBI in San Francisco as well as in San Francisco. local law enforcement partners.”
In fact, there was a person who decoded the Zodiac Killer’s letter Z-340 before that. Massachusetts-based Corey Starliper produced the first translation in 2011 and has many passages similar to David Oranchak’s results. Here are the results of Starliper and if we read through, we see that the Zodiac Killer is even more “creepy”:
KILL/SLF/DR/HELP/ME/KILL/MYSELF/GAS/CHAMBER/AEIOUR/DAYS/QUESTIONSABLE/EVERYY/WAKING/MOMENT/IM/ALIVE/MY/PRIDE/LOST/I/CANT/GO/ON/LIVING/ PRINT/THIS/WAY/KILLING/PEOPLE/I/HAV/KILLD/SO/MANY/PEOPLE/CANT/HELP/MYSELF/IM/SO/ANGRY/I/COULD/DO/MY/THING/IM/ALONE/IN/ THIS/WORLD/MY/WHOLE/LIFE/FUL/O/LIES/IM/UNABLE/TO/STOP/BY/THE/TIME/YOU/SOLVE/THIS/I/WILL/HAV/KILLD/ELEVEN/PEOPLE/PLEASE/ HELP/ME/STOP/KILLING/PEOPLE/PLEASE/MY/NAME/IS/LEIGH/ALLEN/