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Richard Grinell, Coventry, England
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THE KILLER OF CODES

6/3/2018

 
THE 340 CIPHER WAS CRACKED ON DECEMBER 3RD 2020 BY DAVE ORANCHAK, SAM BLAKE AND JARL VAN EYCKE, SO THIS EARLIER ARTICLE SHOULD BE VIEWED IN RESPECT TO RECENT DEVELOPMENTS.
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The Zodiac Killer did not mail the three July 31st 1969 letters to the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle and Vallejo Times-Herald, although the murderer of Betty Lou Jensen, David Faraday and Darlene Ferrin certainly did. In the letter to the Chronicle, the author suggested that within the code he had mailed we would discover his identity.

He wrote "Here is part of a cipher the other 2 parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors of the Vallejo Times and SF Examiner. I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper. In this cipher is my idenity. If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Fry.1st of Aug 69, I will go on a kill ram-Page Fry. night. I will cruse around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend".

When the cipher was decoded a matter of days later, the code revealed "
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 dangerous animal 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 that when I die I will be reborn in paradice and all the (people) I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife".

The killer of three assured us that his identity was concealed within the cipher, while all along, knowing the enciphered text would reveal that he was unprepared to give us his name. He was effectively equating his identity with his name, not with his pseudonym or other covert means of identifying him. That is probably because the assailant at Lake Herman Road and Blue Rock Springs was technically not the Zodiac Killer. The "Zodiac Killer" 'only' killed two people under the Zodiac pseudonym, that of Cecelia Shepard and Paul Stine. As covered in a previous article 'Born on August 3rd,' it was argued that the killer had no "identity" or pseudonym to reveal to us before August 3rd 1969, because he hadn't yet assigned one to himself. Being called the 'code killer' or 'cipher killer' in the newspapers clearly didn't sit well with an ego-driven murderer. He had to give himself a pseudonym worthy of his perceived stature - hence, the "Zodiac Killer" was born. 

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​The San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle of August 3rd 1969 opened with the lines "A self-accused killer failed to keep a threat of mass murder here, but there was no slackening of tension or mystery caused by the warning. The police department telephone system was clogged at times by anxious callers asking if the "cipher killer" had been caught".  The next day the killer would waste no time in introducing us to his new identity or pseudonym, opening with the line "This is the Zodiac Speaking". In other words, looking for his identity in the 408 cipher, in either the enciphered or decoded version may be a futile exercise, because it appeared he wasn't going to reveal his real name - and it is extremely likely he had no identity or pseudonym at this juncture.

Had he already attributed himself the pseudonym "Zodiac" prior to the July 31st 1969 letters, then this threefold barrage was the perfect time to announce the menacing "Zodiac" to the world, something he clearly failed to do. In fact, he could only muster the unoriginal "
This is the murderer of the 2 teenagers last Christmass at Lake Herman + the girl on the 4th of July near the golf course in Vallejo". ​Four days later however, he would be triggered into action by the lame 'cipher killer' pseudonym designated to him by the public and featured in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle of August 3rd 1969. He was in control, and as such, was not going to be labelled by anybody.

It was now a simple task of replacing one word in his introduction, from "This is the murderer" to "This is the Zodiac". This could have significant implications regarding the Riverside murder of Cheri Jo Bates on October 30th 1966, and in particular the three Bates letters. The idea that the symbol on these letters was an alphabetical Z indicating Zodiac would now be nullified, as the Zodiac pseudonym was 827 days in the making. 

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Had the murderer opened up with the 340 cipher on July 31st 1969 rather than the 408 cipher, then the statement "in this cipher is my identity" would have had very few detractors, when just four days later a further communication arrived stating "This is the Zodiac Speaking".

Comparing this introduction to the 'near Zodiac' at the foot of the 340 cipher would have left few in doubt this was deliberately placed, and indeed, he had concealed his identity in the cipher. However, because the 340 cipher was mailed on November 8th 1969, it is often argued that the 'near Zodiac' may have fell out accidentally on his creation of the cipher - something that would likely never have been argued three months earlier. Therefore, if the Zodiac Killer did belatedly give us his identity or pseudonym in the second cipher, when we already knew it, one could suggest it has a secondary purpose, other than to be deciphered in exactly the same way as the other 334 characters. 
 
There is a growing perception that the 340 cipher is effectively a "bag of puzzles" rather than a continuous uninterrupted message, as many of its features can easily be linked or shown to compare favorably with other correspondences mailed by the Zodiac Killer. This man wasn't a Professor Moriarty style genius - so he either created a method of encryption so illogical, as to make the cipher unsolvable by the logical mind or computer created by logic, he created a mix of puzzles disguised within the cipher, or he created the perfect ghost cipher, to which he would eventually keep his promise by placing his identity within a cipher, but little else. 

Without identifying a key and demonstrating which communication it was found, then the '13 Symbol' and '32 Symbol' ciphers are simply too short to ever be proven as solved. In a previous article we highlighted a piece by Dave Oranchak, in which 46 consecutive alphabetical letters from the historical text of Edward Hyde, Earl of Clarendon can be placed successfully into a portion of the 408 cipher. Dave Oranchak, the foremost expert on the Zodiac ciphers, commented on this "So, only one piece of text, from a vast collection of eleven billion pieces of text, fit into this chunk of cipher text. A one in eleven billion chance seems to suggest some significance. But don’t be fooled by this. Just because this rare event occurred, doesn’t mean it is anything more than a simple coincidence. If we didn’t already know the real solution to the 408, how do we know that this chunk of old and obscure text isn’t the correct solution?"  

Therefore, one can easily see the multiple solutions that can be harvested from these inadequately designed ciphers. The Zodiac Killer wasn't a genius, but he certainly wasn't a fool either - and must have known that the variability of the '32 Symbol' cipher, and lack of characters within the '13 Symbol' cipher were open to multiple solutions. This was probably part of the fun.
The man, eventually to become known as the Zodiac Killer, mailed the 408 cipher on July 31st 1969. This was a genuine cipher, decoded by Donald Gene and Bettye June Harden of Salinas, California, who both used homophonic substitution to identify the solution. The "cipher killer" or "code killer" would not have lived up to the name given him by the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle on August 3rd 1969 -  the "killer of codes" would have been far more suitable. 

Shawn
6/3/2018 05:01:51 pm

I think there is a good chance Zodiac's name is in the 408. There are many ways to hide a name in the 408. Only knowing Zodiac's name independently of the 408 will allow you to find it.

Also, he said he would give his "identity" in the Chronicle letter. Identity does not necessarily mean name. He does not say "I will not give you my Identity"

"I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife."

Could mean Social Security Number or maybe Military I.D. number

Alex Lewis
6/3/2018 11:39:18 pm

"In this Cipher is My Identity..." a statement which has always, and I think always will be, interpreted with an assumption that Identity means or is interpreted to mean A persons Name. I've seen dozens of statements that actually state Zodiac dwclared that c his 408 was deciphered, in it we would find His Name when, factually speaking, the writer never said that
His Name could be found in that code if broken, it's simply assumed that i what he meant when he referred to "My Identity."

In communications from him that followed, when He wanted toake reference to his name specifically, then he did several times.

"Have You cracked the last cipher I sent you?

My Name Is. . ."

Then:

"I feel it in My bones, you ache to know My Name & so I'll clue you in..."

Given that when He wants to refer to His Name here in Tw1qo examples, He is direct in saying 'My Name' when claiming that his Name is within A letter or a greeting card, why would He not do the very same if, In the 408 accompanying letter, He meant the very same, too?

Surely We should expect Him simply say:

'In this Cipher is My Name'

I would argue this assumption is a far safer one to make as it's based on the known fact of later referencing in later letters that are clear that if Z wants to tell you his name is in this here or found in that there, then he tells us very specifically exactly that without any Ambiguity at all.

Sigmund
6/8/2018 04:40:17 pm

I wonder if Ted Kaczynski has ever spoken or written anything about the Zodiac's 340 cipher? Clearly he has plenty of time on his hands so I can only presume that he might have cast his eye over it once or twice. Or perhaps other serial killers are not really his thing and he is still obsessing over more important things like corporate greed, deforestation, and Global Warming?

It does seem to me that people have spent decades presuming this cipher must be homophonic. It is almost as if the experts cannot see past their noses on this one. They have forgotten that there are actually a great many different kinds of ciphers. What if the 340 is not a homophonic cipher, but something else entirely? What if, for example, it is a more complex Kaczynski style of cipher?

http://scienceblogs.de/klausis-krypto-kolumne/2016/09/04/the-ciphers-of-the-unabomber/

BB
7/18/2018 04:34:54 pm

Global Warming! The thing is with cults - Ray - I mean Sigmund - they get their members used to drinking the Kool-Aid - so in the end they can spike it when things get too hot. Semper Fi

Nichole
7/12/2020 02:09:03 pm

Has anyone looked into the last name Fry? The misspelling seems deliberate and could be where he inserted his identity.


Comments are closed.
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    The Zodiac Killer may have given us the answer almost word-for-word when he wrote PS. The Mt. Diablo Code concerns Radians & # inches along the radians. The code solution identified was Estimate: Four Radians and Five Inches To read more, click the image.
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