Posted on 12/15/2020 9:25:02 AM PST by Red Badger
SACRAMENTO - A team of volunteer codebreakers has cracked a mysterious cipher sent more than 50 years ago to a newspaper by the San Francisco serial killer who called himself the Zodiac, the FBI said on Friday.
The Zodiac Killer — who was never caught — shot or stabbed seven people in the San Francisco Bay Area over the course of about a year in 1968 and 1969, killing all but two of them. During his murderous spree, he sent a series of terrifying letters to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper.
Some of the notes were in code, including a particularly complex missive with 340 characters that became known as the 340 cipher.
"I hope you are having lots of fun trying to catch me," said the cipher, cracked last week by codebreakers David Oranchak, Sam Blake and Jarl Van Eycke, according to a video posted on YouTube by Oranchak. "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."
Like the murders themselves, solving the Zodiac ciphers has become an international fixation for true-crime followers.
Oranchak, whom the San Francisco Chronicle identified as a 46-year-old Web designer who lives in Virginia, said in the video he had hoped the cipher would yield information about the killer's identity.
"The message doesn't really say a whole lot," he said. "It's more of the same attention-seeking junk from Zodiac."
The San Francisco office of the FBI on Friday confirmed that the group had cracked the coded message, and said the investigation into the half-century-old case was ongoing.
"The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by private citizens," the FBI said in a statement posted on Twitter. "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."
No one was ever charged in the Zodiac case, and theories abound as to the killer's real identity. The case has inspired numerous books and movies, including 1971's "Dirty Harry" starring Clint Eastwood and 2007's "Zodiac" with Robert Downey Jr.
cool
Wasn’t alive but when I think of 1960-1964, I think of guys in white shirts, black ties, black jackets, horn rimmed classes and “high and tight” haircuts.
I was 10 years-old in 1963. TV was safe. Schools were safe. The streets were safe. But when the race riots took place and the hippies started their crap and JFK and MLK were killed, it seems like things started to go bad in a hurry.
My dad told me that he went into the army in ‘67 and while he served stateside, he saw more chaos in this country than any other period previously. His hometown of Newark, home to the second largest shopping district in the east coast, burned and never recovered. When he did see action, it was in the streets of Washington DC during the MLK riots.
I was born and raised in Flint, Michigan. It was a great little town. We had Republican mayors until the race riots. People began to move out to the suburbs. Then the dems started getting elected to city council and mayor. Our lovely town began to go downhill after that. Then GM moved out. Then the water crisis took place.
😊
This solution seems much better than previous attempts, but one qualm I have about it is that it produces gibberish for the Z13 (”My name is...”) and the Z32.
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3914574/posts
“The Most Dangerous Animal of All” asks what if your dad was the Zodiac Killer?
Producers spoke to Salon about eschewing the sensational for FX’s first foray into documentaries
By ASHLIE D. STEVENS
MARCH 8, 2020 3:00PM (UTC)
https://www.salon.com/2020/03/08/most-dangerous-animal-of-all-zodiac-killer/
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.