Unsolved Cipher Left by US Serial Killer 'Zodiac Killer' Decoded After 51 Years

Zodiac Cipher and Montage. Photo by Yonhap News

[Asia Economy Reporter Nahana] One of the ciphers left by the unidentified serial killer known as the 'Zodiac Killer,' who terrorized the California area in the 1960s with unsolved murder cases, has been deciphered after 51 years.

On the 11th (local time), according to The New York Times, CNN, and others, the FBI announced that a civilian code-breaking team composed of members from the United States, Australia, and Belgium succeeded in cracking the '340 cipher' left by the Zodiac Killer in 1969.

The Zodiac Killer is the perpetrator of unsolved murder cases that occurred in California in the late 1960s, whose identity remains unknown.

He sent letters mocking the investigation authorities and blood-stained clothing to police stations and newspapers multiple times, predicting his next crimes. The letters began with the phrase "This is Zodiac speaking," which led to him being called the 'Zodiac Killer.'

Among the crimes he committed, five murders and two attempted murders have been officially confirmed, and it is presumed that there are additional crimes whose connections have not been identified. According to a letter he sent directly to a newspaper, he claimed to have killed 37 people.

After the crimes, he sent a total of four ciphers to newspapers, one of which was solved shortly after. Among the remaining three, one was recently solved by an American decoding team. The 340 cipher deciphered this time was sent by Zodiac to the San Francisco Chronicle newspaper in November 1969.

The three-person decoding team consisting of David Oranchak, a developer from Virginia, USA; Sam Blake, an applied mathematician from Melbourne, Australia; and Jarl Van Eycke, a computer programmer from Belgium, decoded the message sent by the 'Zodiac Killer' as follows.

"I hope you are having lots of fun trying to catch me," "I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send my slaves to paradise much sooner."

Although the cipher was solved, the message contained no clues to identify the killer and was meaningless.

Oranchak, who decoded the cipher, said, "Zodiac's cipher coding method appears in a code-breaking manual used by the U.S. military in the 1950s."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.