Name: Zodiac ‘340 Cipher’ cracked by code experts 51 years after it was sent to the S.F. Chronicle
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Zodiac ‘340 Cipher’ cracked by code experts 51 years after it was sent to the S.F. Chronicle

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This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe solution to what’s known as the 340 Cipher, one of the most vexing mysteries of the ’s murderous saga, has been found by a code-breaking team from the United States, Australia and Belgium.The cipher, sent in a letter to The Chronicle in November 1969, has been puzzling authorities and amateur sleuths since it arrived 51 years ago. Investigators hoped the in the Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, would reveal his name in one of his many ciphers, but there is no such name in the 340.According to code-breaking expert David Oranchak, the cipher’s text includes: “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 paradice (sic) all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me.”The Doodler: A renewed hunt for a forgotten serial killerIn the mid-1970s, another monster terrorized San Francisco’s gay community. Police called him “The Doodler” because he sketched his victims. And he may have been responsible for as many victims as the Zodiac Killer.&nbsp;Oranchak, a 46-year-old web designer who lives in Virginia, has been working on the Zodiac’s codes since 2006.“This is exciting,” Oranchak said in an interview Friday. “We’ve been sitting on the solution since last Saturday. When I first started looking at the Zodiac ciphers all those years ago, I thought, ‘Oh, I can just write a computer program and solve it,’ but it’s been kicking my ass all this time. Until now.”Cameron Polan, spokeswoman for the FBI’s San Francisco office, confirmed Oranchak’s claim Friday. In a statement emailed to The Chronicle, she said:“The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by private citizens. The Zodiac Killer case remains an ongoing investigation for the FBI San Francisco division and our local law enforcement partners.More for you“The Zodiac Killer terrorized multiple communities across Northern California, and even though decades have gone by, we continue to seek justice for the victims of these brutal crimes,” she continued. “Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation, and out of respect for the victims and their families, we will not be providing further comment at this time.”This is the second time a Zodiac cipher has been cracked. The first, one long cipher sent in pieces to The Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner and Vallejo Times-Herald newspapers in 1969, was solved by a Salinas schoolteacher and his wife.Known as the 408 Cipher, it said little beyond: “I like killing because it is so much fun.”To crack the 340 Cipher — so named because it contains 340 characters — Oranchak teamed up with two fellow amateur code crackers and ran the bewildering set of symbols through special software programs. His teammates were Sam Blake, a mathematician in Australia, and Jarl Van Eykcke, a warehouse operator in Belgium.“I could not have done this without them,” Oranchak said. “All of us in the crypto community on the Zodiac figured the cipher had another step beyond just figuring out what letters belonged to the symbols, and that’s just what we found here.”Text of the 340 CipherThe solution to the 340 Cipher, according to Oranchak's team: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 DEATHCipher videoTo see a video about cracking the code, go to:Oranchak’s findings started leaking out on some of the many Zodiac amateur sleuth forums, such as , over the past couple of days, causing much excitement in that widespread world of true-crime buffs.In most ciphers, like the 408, the solution consists mainly of figuring out which letters are represented by certain symbols. In the 340 Cipher, it turned out the alignment of the words runs diagonally down the page, and occasionally they get shifted over a column.It’s a complicated bit of code creation, Oranchak said, but a basic scheme for it can be found in at least one U.S. Army code manual from the 1950s.As the team began breaking down the methods in the cipher, they unpeeled a couple of phrases that let them know they were on the right track. There were references to “gas chamber” and “the TV show,” which seemed to refer to Jim Dunbar’s “AM San Francisco” show on KGO-TV that aired in October 1969. On that show, Dunbar and attorney Melvin Belli took a call from a person claiming to be the Zodiac, and he said, “I don’t want to go to the gas chamber.”In the solved cipher, the Zodiac writes: “That wasnt (sic) me on the TV show.”“We knew we had something because of the Dunbar show,” Oranchak said. “One of the interesting things about this is that it forces the minimum date of the cipher’s construction — maybe he had one and adjusted it, but it couldn’t have been in that form prior to Oct. 22, when the Dunbar show aired, and ... when The Chronicle got the 340 letter.” The Chronicle published a story on the letter and the cipher on Nov. 12.The San Francisco Police Department, like the FBI, was short on reaction Friday to the cipher’s solution beyond acknowledging the code had been cracked. The Zodiac’s last victim, taxi driver Paul Stine, was shot to death by the Zodiac in October 1969 in San Francisco. And like any homicide, it’s still an open case until it’s solved.“Our statement is very much in line with what the FBI said,” said Sgt. Michael Andraychak, a department spokesman. “We’re aware of the cipher solution, and continuing to try to solve this case. That’s about all we have to say for now.”However, former city Homicide Inspector Gianrico Pierucci, who oversaw the Zodiac case for several years before retiring in 2017, said the new solution probably doesn’t advance the investigation much. The difficulty of the code indicates the murderer was intelligent, but the bragging about slaves and the misspelled word “paradise” were already present in other Zodiac writings.“Besides being taunting again, psychologically, which is what he’s good at, there’s not a lot else,” Pierucci said. “What you really want is — does it give you a location? An address? Some sort of riddle you can figure out? A certain person, a job — anything that gives you a clue to who he is?Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.“But it is what it is,” he said. “And it’s good to finally have it solved.”The Zodiac sent two other ciphers to newspapers that are left to decode. And in at least one of his communications, the killer said his name was in one of his ciphers.“That’s the one the code-breakers have to work on now,” Pierucci said. “We need his name.”The name most commonly put forth as the man likely to be the Zodiac is convicted child molester and Navy veteran Arthur Leigh Allen of Vallejo. Despite scores of theories by amateur sleuths about suspects — many in books and communications sent to The Chronicle for decades — Allen is the only suspect ever named by investigators.However, he died at 58 of a heart attack in 1992 before police could build enough of a case to charge him.Meanwhile, police in all three counties where the Zodiac killed — San Francisco, Solano and Napa — continue to receive tips and investigate leads in the old mystery. It is arguably the most famous unsolved murder case in America.The Zodiac’s first victims were David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, shot to death in their car on Dec. 20, 1968, in Benicia. Next came Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau in Vallejo in July 1969, a shooting that Mageau survived.Cecelia Shepard and Bryan Hartnell were stabbed at Lake Berryessa in September 1969. Hartnell survived.Sam Blake, one of the threesome who solved the 340 Cipher, became interested in the case after seeing Oranchak’s work online. On Friday, from his home in Melbourne, Australia, he said the team tested “around 650,000 different reading directions through the cipher” before coming up with the right combinations. They worked together for eight months on the puzzle.“We now understand why it resisted attacks for so long,” Blake said in an email. “The reading direction through the cipher was so obscure, that the only way it could be found was with a massive search through many candidates using sophisticated software which can efficiently solve homophonic substitution ciphers.”But even so far from the murder scenes, conquering the science of the puzzle didn’t dissuade him from the most basic element of the case — the human element.“We would like to dedicate our work that culminated in this solution to the victims of the Zodiac killer, their families and descendants,” Blake wrote. “We hope this is a stepping stone towards finding justice for these people.”Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: Twitter:Updated to include drought zones while tracking water shortage status of your area, plus reservoir levels and a list of restrictions for the Bay Area’s largest water districts.

This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigateThe solution to what’s known as the 340 Cipher, one of the most vexing mysteries of the ’s murderous saga, has been found by a code-breaking team from the United States, Australia and Belgium.The cipher, sent in a letter to The Chronicle in November 1969, has been puzzling authorities and amateur sleuths since it arrived 51 years ago. Investigators hoped the in the Bay Area in 1968 and 1969, would reveal his name in one of his many ciphers, but there is no such name in the 340.According to code-breaking expert David Oranchak, the...

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Zodiac ‘340 Cipher’ cracked by code experts 51 years after it was sent to the S.F. Chronicle

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