That's about all we have to say for now." Michael Andraychak told the Chronicle, "Our statement is very much in line with what the FBI said. We're aware of the cipher solution, and continuing to try to solve this case. 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." "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. "The Zodiac Killer case remains an ongoing investigation for the FBI San Francisco division and our local law enforcement partners. "The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac Killer was recently solved by private citizens," the Bureau's San Francisco office said in a statement posted to social media (and Twitter users kept on making their own adjustments to the message right there in the thread). The results of the team's efforts were duly forwarded along to the FBI, which acknowledged receiving the information. 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." Part of the message read, according to Oranchak, "I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me. Oranchak said he'd been working on the Zodiac cipher since 2006, which can't help but bring to mind the efforts of Chronicle political cartoonist turned Zodiac expert and author Robert Graysmith, who was working at the paper when the messages started arriving (he simply had an affinity for puzzles, he would explain) and couldn't let the case go. "We now understand why it resisted attacks for so long," Blake told the paper. Until now." Aiding his quest were Sam Blake, a mathematician in Australia, and Jarl Van Eykcke, a warehouse operator in Belgium. 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. "We've been sitting on the solution since last Saturday. "This is exciting," David Oranchak, a web designer based in Virginia, told the San Francisco Chronicle in a Dec. While some of the messages were decoded half a century ago, the fact that it took 51 years to figure out this one is testament both to how crafty the killer could be, as well as to the strength of the grip his brief but destructive reign of terror had on not just Northern California, but on anyone who couldn't bear to let this puzzle go unsolved, for all these years. The team said they obtained a 1975 FBI memo to Riverside police saying that Bates was a Zodiac victim.This cryptogram, which came to be known as the "340 Cipher"-a large block of 340 letters and symbols that resembles a deranged word search, signed as always with a circle with a cross through it, which may have been the astrological sign invoking spirit and matter but also unmistakably the crosshairs of a sniper's gun-was solved by a three-person team of amateur codebreakers separated by thousands of miles. Nevertheless, the Case Breakers believe Bates was a victim of the Zodiac Killer and have continually tried and failed to get police investigators to compare her DNA to Poste's. However, Fox News noted that the Riverside Police Department's Homicide Cold Case Unit determined that her murder is not connected to the Zodiac. The Case Breakers also believe that Poste is responsible for the murder of 18-year-old Cheri Jo Bates, who was found dead in an alleyway in Riverside, Calif., two years before the Zodiac killings. "I just don't think there's any other way anybody would have figured it out."
#ZODIAV KILLER VICTIMS FULL#
"So you've got to know Gary's full name in order to decipher these anagrams," she said. Jen Bucholtz, a former Army counterintelligence agent who works on cold cases, said the team also found deciphered letters sent by the Zodiac that revealed Poste as the killer, according to Fox News. The team said a few images featured in the press release show scars on his forehead that match scars on a sketch of the Zodiac Killer. The Case Breakers say they identified Poste as the killer after uncovering forensic evidence and photos from Poste's darkroom.