Cryptic Zodiac Killer message finally cracked after 50 years
The serial killer is still wanted for several Bay Area crimes, including murders in Vallejo and Benicia.
(Graphic by Solano News Update)
A team of amateur sleuths successfully cracked a cryptic message connected to the infamous Zodiac Killer, who remains wanted for several high-profile serial killings in Solano County and the San Francisco Bay Area.
While carrying out the crimes, someone claiming to be the murder suspect sent several messages to law enforcement and local news organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area, including a coded message sent to the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle.
One cipher, nicknamed “Z-340” by local law enforcement, went unsolved for more than 50 years until this month when a trio of amateur sleuths in the United States, Australia and Belgium announced they’d finally solved it. The solution was confirmed by the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s San Francisco field office on Friday.
“The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by private citizens,” the agency said.
The person responsible for the Zodiac Killer slayings has never been caught, and federal law enforcement officials declined to offer more information this week because their investigation remains open.
(Crime scene image courtesy FBI San Francisco; Graphic by Solano News Update)
Police say the suspect is connected to seven shootings and stabbings carried out between 1968 and 1969, including two shootings with four victims in Vallejo and Benicia and a stabbing with two victims at Lake Berryessa in Napa County. An additional murder was reported in San Francisco toward the end of the killing spree.
While carrying out the crimes, someone who claimed to be the Zodiac Killer began sending cryptic messages to local news organizations. The first cipher was solved by a couple in Salinas after it was widely published in newspaper reports. The second cryptogram, Z-340, went unsolved for 51 years until this month.
“It was incredible,” David Oranchak, one of the three men to help crack the message, told CNN in an interview.
Oranchak has been working on the cryptogram since 2006. A software developer from Virginia, he and his two colleagues eventually used several computer programs to help them crack the case. They ran into several roadblocks due to spelling errors in the cipher itself, but eventually they had enough of the solution that they felt confident presenting their work to law enforcement, which they did earlier this month.
“When I talked to the FBI, they only needed to make one change to the solution,” Oranchak told a Zodiac Killer-focused blog. “We couldn’t figure out [one part], but their cryptanalyst called me and said she thinks it’s supposed to say [something else] instead.”
The solution was taken to senior FBI cryptanalysts in Washington, D.C. who confirmed it was authentic. The message was then shared with others working the investigation at the FBI’s office and San Francisco and the San Francisco Police Department.
The cryptic message read:
“I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. That wasn’t 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 will be an easy one in paradice. Death.”
The writer’s message about a TV show is in reference to “AM San Francisco,” a local program hosted by radio personality Jim Dunbar that aired on KGO-TV (Channel 7) in the 1960s. In 1969, an individual claiming to be the Zodiac Killer called KGO’s studios and agreed to a live interview.
Police hoped the cryptic message would help lead them to the identity of the person responsible for the slayings, but on Friday, they indicated that the message would ultimately be more of a dead end than anything.
“The Zodiac Killer terrorized multiple communities across Northern California, and even though decades have gone by, we continue to seek justice for the victims of these brutal crimes,” an FBI spokesperson said.
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