THE FIFTH SCORPION CIPHER

Beginning in 1991, John Walsh from the popular television show America's Most Wanted, started receiving a sequence of sinister letters and cryptograms that many have considered may have been authored by the infamous Zodiac Killer. The title of the fifth Scorpion cipher stated "Hi!, Remember me?", and was accompanied by a 180 character cryptogram. The implication being, we were supposed to infer it may have been the Zodiac Killer. But was it? The cryptogram had 155 unique characters, meaning any conventional technique of breaking this mystery was nigh on impossible. So I decided to take a look at previous Zodiac Killer encipherments and examine if any correlation exists between the Scorpion cipher and his solved cryptograms. In previous articles (visit links provided) a case has been presented to show that the 148 character cryptogram mailed in 1971 and the Albany letter mailed in 1973 are likely connected, as well as the 340 character cipher and 148 character cipher. [1] [2]. But let's take a look at the 148 character cipher and fifth Scorpion cipher. Below is the solved 148 character cipher, followed by the accompanying text that came with this communication.

Thanks to Howard Davis for unearthing this communication

Thanks to Howard Davis for unearthing this communication

This communication was signed with a "sun cross" rather than the usual Zodiac crosshairs, leading some to believe it was an obvious hoaxer. However, somebody prepared to mail a Zodiac communication complete with a 148 character cipher, is hardly likely to be ignorant of the Zodiac Killer crosshairs that adorned virtually every single communication mailed by the Bay Area murderer. This "sun cross" signature on the letter was also present in the cryptogram, in which it was determined to represent the letter "Z". Therefore, the author of this letter likely signed off with the letter "Z" to represent the "Zodiac", as he had done in the Halloween card on October 27th 1970. It was probably a clue to begin the decoding of the 148 character cipher. When the letter "Z" was used for the "sun cross" in the cipher, the inevitable phrase of "Zodiac Speaking" is revealed (see above). The "sun cross" is also twice present in the 180 character Scorpion cipher. If you take a look at the bottom of the 180 character cipher, the letter "Z" applied to the "sun cross" allows "Zodiac Speaking" to conveniently end the cryptogram. There is even room to place "The Zodiac Speaking" before the repeated letter "N" prevents further progress.       

The 148 character cipher had not been released into the public domain by the time the Scorpion ciphers arrived, but I have highlighted with a blue square the five symbols used in the Scorpion cipher that look eerily similar (and the same) as the 148 character cipher. The number "7" in both the 148 character cipher and Albany communications represented the letter "A". It is present in the Scorpion cipher also. Could the Zodiac Killer have teased us with the introduction of "Hi, Remember Me" and finished the message with "This is again the Zodiac speaking"?

Here are the other parts of the Scorpion cipher communications released Science Blogs.