Known as the "340 cipher", it was a message, written in code, which would confound codebreakers for half a century. Every attempt to break the code, to discover what exactly the Zodiac had said within it had failed. It would ultimately take a team of three highly-skilled professionals to unravel the mystery of this true crime stumper.
The Zodiac did not come up with this name for his cipher. In fact, he did not give it a name of any kind. It was simply another one of the many messages he had grown so fond of sending to the San Francisco Chronicle, a way of reminding people that he was still on the loose, still out there, waiting to take his next "victom".
The Terror Begins
His reign of terror began on a cold, December night, on the outskirts of Vallejo, California. A teenage couple had chosen to spend time on a lonely stretch of country road, a lovers' lane, a place where amorous couples could be alone with each other and their desires. As they sat in the front seat of their car, a lone man drove up and parked next to them. This unknown stranger got out of his car, approached the couple, and began firing a gun at the two dumbstruck teen-agers, ultimately killing both of them. He then got back in his car and drove away. Thus began one of the most infamous - and most mysterious - series of crimes ever committed.
The police did what they could to find the person responsible for the heinous deed, to no avail. The killer seemed to simply vanish, as quickly as he had appeared. It seemed the cold might go cold.
Then came three letters.
All mailed within days of each other, each of the letters contained basically the same message.
Dear Editor -
I am the killer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman and the Girl last 4th of July. To prove this I shall state some facts which only I + the police know
Christmass
1 Brand name of ammo Super X
2 10 Shots fired
3 Boy was on back feet to car
4 Girl was lyeing on right side feet to west
4th of July
1 Girl was wearing patterned pants
2 Boy was also shot in knee
3 Brand name of ammo was Western
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a cyipher or that is part of one. The other 2 parts have been mailed to the S.F. Examiner + the S.F. Chroinicle I want you to print this cipher on your front page by Fry Afternoon Aug 1-69. If you do not do this I will go on a kill rampage Fry night that will last the whole weekend. I will cruse around and pick off all stray people or couples that are alone then move on to kill some more untill I have killed over a dozen people.
Christmass
1 Brand name of ammo Super X
2 10 Shots fired
3 Boy was on back feet to car
4 Girl was lyeing on right side feet to west
4th of July
1 Girl was wearing patterned pants
2 Boy was also shot in knee
3 Brand name of ammo was Western
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Here is a cyipher or that is part of one. The other 2 parts have been mailed to the S.F. Examiner + the S.F. Chroinicle I want you to print this cipher on your front page by Fry Afternoon Aug 1-69. If you do not do this I will go on a kill rampage Fry night that will last the whole weekend. I will cruse around and pick off all stray people or couples that are alone then move on to kill some more untill I have killed over a dozen people.
What made these three letters even more intriguing was the fact that each contained what was later determined to be one-third of a single cipher, which when combined as a whole spelled out a terrifying message:
"I like killing people because it is so much fun it is more fun than killing wild game in the forrest because man is the most dangeroue anamal of all to kill something gives me the most thrilling experence it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl the best part of it is thae when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the I have killed will become my slaves I will not give you my name because you will try to sloi down or atop my collectiog of slaves for my afterlife ebeorietemethhpiti"
A Killer Set Apart
It wasn't the crimes that set this murderer apart from so many other deranged killers. It was the fact that he had begun to actively communicate with the public. In so doing, he was behaving in a manner opposite of what almost every other at-large criminal would do - and it made him famous.
As time went on, and the hunt to find the madman progressed, the Zodiac continued to murder, and to mail his cryptic communications to the San Francisco Chronicle. The Zodiac had a flair for marketing; he instinctively knew that the newspaper was the place to spread his message of terror, fully aware that the newspaper would have to publish what he wrote. More often than not, the Zodiac included ciphers within these letters.
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| The "340 cipher" as it is known, originally sent to the San Francisco Chronicle by the Zodiac (public domain image via Wikipedia) |
The 340 Cipher
While the majority of the ciphers the Zodiac created were short in length, two of them, the original 3-part cipher and the 340 cipher, were quite large, the latter containing exactly 340 symbols (not including the symbol at the bottom of the cipher, which the Zodiac seemed to use as a personal identifier, the circled cross). The symbols in the 340 cipher were arranged in a grid-like structure, seventeen across and twenty down, making it appear as a rectangle.
Attempts At Breaking The Code
It was discovered that unlike the first 3-part cipher, a much simpler coded message which had been quickly solved by a schoolteacher and his wife, the 340 cipher contained anomalies within its' structure which made it incredibly resistant to even the most seasoned of codebreakers. There was even attempt to design a supercomputer which could think like the Zodiac, resulting in a very powerful computer which still could not break the code. To many, it seemed as if the possibility of solving the mystery of the 340 cipher had been lost, possibly forever.
Three Fresh Sets of Eyes
In 2006, David Oranchak, a professional codebreaker, first saw the 340 cipher and thought to himself that he could break the code relatively quickly. However, it soon became apparent, as it had to so many others who had tried, that the 340 was not going to give up its' secrets easily. Oranchak, who lives in Virginia, teamed up with Sam Blake, an applied mathematician from Australia and Jarl Van Eycke, an advanced computer programmer from Belgium, and they began working together, to see if they could make progress where so many others had not.
The trio started with the theory that the Zodiac had done something different with the text of the 340 cipher before assigning individual symbols to each letter in the message. It was this something, they believed, which was making it more difficult to break the 340 cipher. Next, they then began sifting through nearly three quarters of a million possible arrangements of the cipher text, supplied by Blake. This sifting was done by feeding each possible arrangement of the cipher text into AZdecrypt, a specialized software program, created by Van Eyck, designed specifically to attempt to break the 340 code.
On December 3rd, 2020, fourteen years after Oranchak had expressed an interest in attempting to crack one of the most baffling Zodiac ciphers of all time, AZdecrypt came up with something which caught his attention. It was still mostly gibberish, but within the alphabet soup, certain phrases started to stand out:
HOPE YOU ARE
TRYING TO CATCH ME
WHICH BRINGS UP
THE GAS CHAMBER
Through continued work on the portions of the message which still did not produce legible words, the three code sleuths eventually discovered a full message, one which they believe was what the man who called himself Zodiac had been trying to communicate, all those years ago. On December 5th, 2020, they submitted their solution to the FBI.
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
Upon receiving the cipher decrypt from Oranchak, the FBI issued the following statement:
“The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by private citizens. The Zodiac Killer case remains an ongoing investigation for the FBI San Francisco division and our local law enforcement partners. 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. Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, and out of respect for the victims and their families, we will not be providing further comments at this time.”
Sadly, the coded message did not reveal the true identity of the killer known to this day, only as the Zodiac.
Learn more about the inspired effort to break one of true crimes most enduring mysteries, with David Oranchak's video, Let's Crack Zodiac - Episode 5 - The 340 Is Solved!
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