Civilian code-breakers have finally managed to crack a 340-character cipher by the ‘Zodiac Killer’ 51 years after it had been allegedly sent to the San Francisco Chronicle. For the uninitiated, this serial killer was never caught and the case still stands as an ingoing investigation for the FBI.
The killer who terrorised the San Francisco Bay area in the 1960s murdered 5 people before disappearing. The cracked code in question was one of several sent to newspapers during their killing spree.
According to the BBC, the code was cracked by 3 people, David Oranchak(US), Jarl Van Eycke(Belgium) and Sam Blake(Australia). The decrypted message read:
I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me.
The trio who cracked the code also posted a video of the same on YouTube.
The FBI also confirmed the cracking of this code on Twitter.
According to the reports, this is not the only encoded message allegedly sent by the killer. Two more of these messages remain encrypted, one possibly containing the name of the Zodiac Killer.
The case not only terrorised the US but became one of the most studied cases in the world. The murders became so infamous that there have been classic movies have been made on the subject- 2007’s Zodiac starring Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal and 1971’s Dirty Harry starring Clint Eastwood.