CHILLING NOTE
Zodiac Killer letters: Has the cipher been solved and what does it say?
THE Zodiac Killer murdered at least five people and taunted the police with clues and ciphers.
The killer was never caught but he claimed that his identity could be found in the cipher.
One of the ciphers was only solved in 2020, decades after it was written.
Here’s everything you need to know about one of the most notorious American serial killers and their secret code.
A decades long mystery
In November 1969, the Zodiac Killer sent a 340-word cipher to the San Francisco Chronicle.
The cipher proved difficult to crack and was left unsolved for decades.
Eventually a team of two software engineers and one cryptographer finally solved it in 2020.
The cipher read: "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."
A second secret
The Zodiac Killer had a second cipher which was delivered in thirds to three San Francisco newspapers.
Most read in The Sun
The 408-symbol cipher was solved in five days, but the translation is filled with misspelled words and has very poor grammar.
The cipher said that the killer enjoyed murder because it was “more fun than killing wild game”.
The cipher also had eighteen letters at the end, which have yet to be decoded, that read: "ebeorietemethhpiti”.
A cold-blooded killer
Ultimately, the mystery of the Zodiac Killer’s identity was never solved and it is still unknown if the killer’s claim that he killed 37 people is true.
Police suspected Arthur Leigh Allan who was a convicted sex offender that worked near the site of the first Zodiac murder.
A police search of his house after he died in 1992 found a wristwatch named Zodiac Sea Wolf which had a logo matching the Zodiac’s symbol.
Another suspect was floated by a group of cold case investigators named The Case Breakers in 2021.
They said that Gary Francis Poste’s name provided a hidden message in the cipher and that Gary’s shoe size matched the killer’s.
Poste was also known for having a violent background and even trained a group of men to become “killing machines”.
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