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51 years later, FBI confirms Zodiac Killer's 340 cipher finally solved

Here's one of Dave's videos from this past May where he speculates on how to crack it by using the number of bigrams to know if you're on the right trail. Interestingly, he points out how some folks had discovered that if you use transposition of 19 that the bigrams shoot up. Turns out that 19 was indeed the magic number.


 
Rimbaud82 said:
What's the solving of this cipher by private citizens in multiple countries got to do with your tax dollars?
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I think he misunderstood and figured that the FBI had been the ones to solve it.
 
Cubo de Sangre said:
Here's one of Dave's videos from this past May where he speculates on how to crack it by using the number of bigrams to know if you're on the right trail. Interestingly, he points out how some folks had discovered that if you use transposition of 19 that the bigrams shoot up. Turns out that 19 was indeed the magic number.


Click to expand...

Interesting thing about Oranchak is he was a part of the TV show "Hunt for the Zodiac Killer", as part of their cryptography team. In that show, they offered up a potential solution to the 340 cipher that was apparently an erroneous one, but which they were able to get a few apparent experts to endorse at the time. Since the show aired, Oranchak has been critical--not in a mean way, mind you--of past claimed solutions to the 340, but hasn't said a word about the one offered up on the TV show he was a part of. It makes me think he signed some sort of agreement with the History Channel to not publicly criticize that solution.

In any event, it is awesome that his hard work finally paid off.
 
Broken arrow said:
no he had another one that supposedly spells out his name but it’s to short to solve



why not see which one of the suspects had extensive training in this code cypher shit?
Anyone think of that yet? Sheesh
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They have, but none of the popular suspects really have anything solidly verifiable. People try to stretch connections out, like someone was in the Navy and MIGHT have had some training, etc. Thing is, if he was an amateur cryptographer, who knows if anyone would really know about it, especially if he wasn't a very social type.
 
The collective wisdom of the Wu Tang Clan could have solved it in an hour if they had set their minds to it.
 
Kforcer said:
The Zodiac Killer, America's most infamous unidentified serial killer, murdered at least 5 people in the North Bay Area and San Francisco. What added to his infamy, however, were the bizarre letters he sent to newspapers, some of which included ciphers, reminiscent of a villain of the pages of a pulp magazine or a comic book, the first of which he claimed held the key to his identity. His first cipher--titled the 408 by cryptographers--was solved by a schoolteacher and his wife shortly after it was published in the papers. His second and third were never solved, until today, which the FBI officially confirmed the successful decrypting of his second cipher, the 340. It was accomplished by a team of cryptographers from America, Australia and Belgium. Perhaps unsurprisingly, it contains nothing of substance beyond the killer's egotistical ravings:

I HOPE YOU ARE HAVING LOTS OF FUN IN TRYING TO CATCH ME - THAT WASN’T 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 WILL BE AN EASY ONE IN PARADICE DEATH

Nonetheless, its resolution strips away yet another layer of the killer's facade of mystery and glamor, further revealing the petty, sad egomaniac that lay behind it. I'd say the cryptographers who cracked this deserve a good deal of praise.

https://www.lmtonline.com/crime/art...-cracked-by-code-expert-51-years-15794943.php
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Ha, didn't know it was 408, that's my area code. So clever they worked it out.
 
Broken arrow said:
no he had another one that supposedly spells out his name but it’s to short to solve



why not see which one of the suspects had extensive training in this code cypher shit?
Anyone think of that yet? Sheesh
Click to expand...
Ross Sullivan took cryptography classes.
 
The Zodiac killer will probably take his secret to the grave, he's around his 70s now. Unless he trips up like the BTK guy which seems unlikely.
 
nhbfan8080 said:
The Zodiac killer will probably take his secret to the grave, he's around his 70s now. Unless he trips up like the BTK guy which seems unlikely.
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I read some stuff about the detective, Ken Landwehr, that lured the BTK out. I guess he was on the taskforce that looked for him in the 80's and when the case went cold, he decided that the best course, if he resurfaced, was to play to his ego. He seemed like a really decent, humble guy, basically the opposite of the guy he caught. Even BTK's daughter said that he played a big role in consoling her after he busted her dad. I kinda wonder if that game-plan would have worked on the Zodiac.

Anyway, we still have DNA...who knows?
 
Kforcer said:
I read some stuff about the detective, Ken Landwehr, that lured the BTK out.........
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IIRC there was no luring. BTK was the one who resume communications by sending packages to the police out of the blue. What Landwehr did was to answer BTK's question in a public newspaper advertisement, telling him that it was ok to send a floppy disk. The Zodiac killer is probably smarter than BTK who flunked out of college.
 
nhbfan8080 said:
IIRC there was no luring. BTK was the one who resume communications by sending packages to the police out of the blue. What Landwehr did was to answer BTK's question in a public newspaper advertisement, telling him that it was ok to send a floppy disk. The Zodiac killer is probably smarter than BTK who flunked out of college.
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What Landwehr did was basically open up a public communication with BTK and stroke his ego by talking about how he found him interesting after BTK resurfaced. If you look at his actual comments, they were kind of subtle, but I guess he'd determined that course a while before (ever since the case went cold). He did get somewhat lucky with the floppy disk, but he actually should have had him earlier if not for crappy security cameras; BTK dropped off a package in a store parking lot and while they captured footage of him, it was too grainy for an identification.
 
Ah ok I didn't know Landwehr was stroking him before the floppy disk. BTK was 60 when he was caught, Zodiac is estimated to be 75 now.
 
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