Melbourne mathematician Samuel Blake and two fellow cryptologists have been officially recognised by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation for solving a 50-year-old cryptic message written by an as yet unnamed serial killer, known only as the Zodiac.
Dr Blake worked on decoding the message known as the "340 cipher" with two other cryptologists and a University of Melbourne supercomputer called Spartan to eventually reveal its content.
The cipher bears a distinctive circle with a cross through the middle and was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper on November 8, 1969 by a man who called himself "Zodiac".
The correspondent killer sent letters to newspapers over several years up until 1974, including proof he was responsible for the deaths of at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The official cracking of the 340-character cipher provides insight into the killer's thoughts and actions but does not reveal a name as promised in separate letters sent to newspapers.
Dr Blake told the ABC he had been working on finding a solution to the 340 cipher, considered one of the holy grails of cryptography, since contacting Zodiac cryptologist David Oranchak early in 2020.
Mr Oranchak hosts a website dedicated to cracking the Zodiac ciphers and has posted several YouTube videos detailing the work he has done over 15 years trying to solve them.
In a statement released on social media Dr Blake paid tribute to US-based Mr Oranchak and software programmer Jarl van Eycke, based in Brussels.
"During the year we tested, by trial and error, around 650,000 different reading directions through the cipher. This search turned up — more or less — nothing," he said.
"From this fragment, David, Jarl van Eycke and I reworked the key and corrected an error Zodiac made in his diagonal enumeration of the second vertical segment of the cipher.
"Jarl's fantastic program, azdecrypt, was essential in this process."
A deciphered section of the code
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
Dr Blake is a visiting fellow at the University of Melbourne and described how the university's supercomputer, Spartan, solved the cipher after processing 650,000 other possible solutions.
Eventually a solution that drew out a message that included the phrase "GAS CHAMBER" was revealed.
Mr Oranchak sent the proposed solution to the Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit of the FBI and within a day they officially approved the solution.
In a statement released on Friday, US time, the FBI confirmed that the cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by "private citizens."
"After 50 years of active research, this cipher has finally been solved. We now understand why it resisted attacks for so long," Dr Blake wrote on social media.
"The reading direction through the cipher was so obscure, that the only way it could be found was with a massive search through many candidates using sophisticated software which can efficiently solve homophonic substitution ciphers.
"Not only were we lucky enough to find the needle in the haystack, but we were lucky enough to pick the right haystack in order to start searching for the needle."
Dr Blake and his colleagues have dedicated their work to the murder victims and their families.
The Melbourne mathematician now hopes the solution he and his colleagues have revealed will help crack the two remaining unsolved short ciphers: one with 13 symbols and the other with 32.
In correspondence, the killer hinted that these ciphers contain his name.
"I find the Zodiac case intriguing, but I'm far from a Zodiac killer expert," Dr Blake said.
"Perhaps my lack of knowledge of the case helped as it wasn't a distraction.
"It would be fantastic if this helps the investigation in some way, now it's over to the experts in interpreting the meaning of his message."
Australian mathematician helps crack 50-year Zodiac serial killer mystery
Sam Blake, together with two other cryptologists and a supercomputer, is recognised by the FBI as having cracked a code used by the infamous Zodiac killer.www.abc.net.au
Crime Zodiac killer code cracked by Australian mathematician Samuel Blake more than 50 years after first murder
- Thread starter theshep
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- Oct 23, 2018
All jokes aside from """funny""" speds. This is exciting. Zodiac was never literate.
One step closer, I guess.
One step closer, I guess.
- Joined
- Mar 30, 2020
He became a chemistry teacher in New Mexico who started a drug empire...say his name.
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- Mar 23, 2019
You joke, but...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paradise,_California#Naming
Edit: I'm sure the town of Paradise would love to weigh in on the topic but sadly it was mostly burned to the ground two years ago.
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- Dec 10, 2017
The afterlife will be ruled by abortion doctors in that case. Even the Pharaohs of Egypt will be envious.
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- Sep 13, 2016
We never know, he could have been one of those guys who was obsessed with the Egyptomania that happened during the 1920s and never let go of it - like Chris and children's media. It is interesting to see how they (ancient religions) all separately came to adopt similar concepts - even Imperial China had something similar, with the Terracotta Armies that were constructed for tombs.
smallredboy
kiwifarms.net
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- Nov 25, 2020
So I'm getting that I'm not alone in being disappointed but not surprised that it was just Zodiac jerking his ego and not leaving any actual clues. Oh well.
Underestimated Nutria
kiwifarms.net
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- May 2, 2019
I think this is true for 95% of serial killers and probably close to 100% of non-psychotic ones; but you do have mission-oriented crazies like Richard Chase (killing for blood to preserve his life) or those who are hearing the voice of God telling them to kill to prevent another earthquake, etc. Thrill-seekers like Son of Sam and the Florence Ripper are a little less obviously sexual too -- but I'm sure there's significance to them killing couples on summer night's in moonlit lovers' lanes. I'm not sure what to make of Angels of Death -- all the ones I'm familiar with were pretty fucked up sexually? Sex is a pretty powerful motivator and if you have a penchant for violent sex, it's one of the few things that doesn't have palatable legal substitutes ...
MarvinTheParanoidAndroid
This will all end in tears, I just know it.
True & Honest Fan
kiwifarms.net
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- Feb 24, 2015
Who knew all you need to make your cipher unbreakable is to misspell words? He probably did it on purpose.
His message is a bunch of dumb horseshit designed to waste everyone's time, Zodiac is the U.S. version of Jack the Ripper, only significantly more intelligent. And also a troll.
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- Nov 10, 2016
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- Sep 9, 2016
I've never heard of the Florence Ripper before, but if you mean the monsters of Florence, they were apparently an organized group/cult. So I guess you can do another little asterisk and put religious killings in with gang violence and hits as an exception to the rule. You can throw the DC snipers in as another "mundane" serial killer, since theirs was part of a really, really stupid revenge plot or bank robbery, I forget which. Same with most of the spouse-poisoners.
I don't know what to make of angels of death, there aren't many of them but as more get found its likely that they just have a higher likelihood of not getting caught. Is it a sex thing, a result of the horror of working around soon to be dead people for your whole life, just a legitimately warped view of doing good, etc?
Not sure what to make of Son of Sam either, whether he was writing those letters one handedly with the other one firmly around his penis or if he was actually just the world's slowest spree killer.
GoGoNoJo
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- Dec 16, 2019
I can't remember exactly where (probably something by John Douglas), but I read that David Berkowitz would masturbate at the crime scenes after the fact.
I also read somewhere that he was originally planning on shooting up a crowded night club as a sort of "coup de grace" for the shooting spree, so I suppose you could consider him a "slow spree killer".
A great example of this sort of serial killer is Joseph Paul Franklin. He wasn't insane though; he was just a massive racist (real, actual racist) with a hateboner for interracial couples.
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- Sep 9, 2016
Cops don't give that stuff away. There were a load of serial killers active in California in the 60s and 70s, taking advantage of the drifters, runaways and hitchhikers who all went west and then had nothing to do when they got there. So there are decent odds that Zodiac either was already active somewhere else beforehand or moved to another area and continued with different police interactions. So a lot of your names are already connected to other crimes. Its possible that he was also a run of the mill criminal who also burgled people was involved in other crimes (one of the more recent suspects brought up was a back alley abortionist who fled the country, for example.) In those cases, he "went away" because he was jailed for other things. The fact that he used cryptograms singles him out as intelligence, but don't forget, he was a bad speller and books on cryptology were available for purchase at your local book store. Creating a cryptogram is a lot easier than solving one.
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- May 25, 2013
Eh, I can't imagine fetuses making particularly useful slaves. I guess if you have enough you could combine them and make some kind of meat golem though.
Personally I think shit like war criminals who committed crimes against humanity or really high count serial killers like Elizabeth Bathory are who will rule the afterlife slave game. Imagine the crazy shit someone like Josef Mengele would have (fukkin twins sewn together slaves and shit).
On the Angel of Death killers, aren't a lot of them women with extreme munchausens by proxy? I.e. they sicken or kill patients in order to gain attention and sympathy for having them die on their watch (or play the hero by miraculously saving them). Marybeth Tinning is a similar case, she wasn't a nurse but she murdered her children (including adopted ones) because she craved the attention and sympathy being the mother of dead kids gets you (AFAIK it's generally assumed her first kid died naturally and the sympathy she got from that got her hooked).
More serial killers than not are getting off on it sexually, but I think there are more out there than people realize whose motives aren't sexual (or at least aren't entirely sexual).
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- Dec 17, 2019
That would be the chinatown ending. The next two ciphers say the exact location of the evidence and where he lives. He dies a happy life in his 70s and his evidence and dna is burned to the ground soon after. His nurses would overhear him talking about it but didnt understand what a zodiac was and thought he was really into astrology. He attended the premier of the movies and everything.
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- Mar 21, 2019
In the grand scheme making the cypher is WAY easier than decoding the cypher in pretty much all cases. Once you know the rules it becomes trivial and Zodiac obviously knew his own rules.
- Joined
- Nov 5, 2020
Yeah in the mid to late 1960s most people still wrote letters to each other and corispondance was still a big thing back then.