“I like to kill people because it
is so much fun. More fun than
killing wild game in the forest,
as man is the most dangerous
animal of all. Killing is the most
thrilling experience. It is even
better than sex.” Nonetheless,
deciphering that fi rst Zodiac
code didn’t lead to the hoped-
for breakthrough. Though the
message revealed a lot about
how the serial killer thought, it
did not reveal much about his
identity. The Zodiac Killer still
hasn’t been caught, even after
revealing his name: One coded
note begins “My name is,” but
the rest was never deciphered
despite decades of scrutiny by
the best cryptographic experts.Can an encrypted
FORMULA
reveal how a SERIAL
KILLER thinks?
D
ecember 20, 1968: On
this night in a gravel
parking lot in a town
40 miles northeast of
San Francisco, two teenagers
are shot to death in a car by an
unknown assailant. They are
the fi rst victims in a baffl ing
series of at least fi ve murders
that may never be cleared up—
even though the perpetrator
has written dozens of letters.
In his messages he utilized an
encryption system of his own
devising that consisted of at
least 65 encoded characters.
Among them are the symbols
of the 12 signs of the zodiac—
thus, Zodiac Killer is the name
ascribed to the murderer. The
system of encryption was so
good that police and the FBI
revealed the ciphers to the
public—in the hopes that an
amateur cryptographer might
be able to solve the puzzles.
And in fact, Bettye Harden
and her husband, Donald (at
right), were able to succeed
where everyone else failed:
They’d managed to decipher
a 408-character cryptogram
that the Zodiac Killer had sent
at the beginning of July 1969.
They suspected the killer had
a very narcissistic worldview,
so they concluded from this
that his message began with
the words “I like...” It was the
key to deciphering the code:AMATEUR CRYPTOGRAPHER
Donald Harden and his wife succeeded in
cracking part of the Zodiac Killer’s code.THE ZODIAC CODE:
ideasanddiscoveries.com 39 Mar 2017