Zodiac: The Wicked Code of a Killer Shattered
It took 51 years to break Z340
The phone in the Vallejo, California, Police Station rang on July 5, 1969. The dispatcher noted it was 12:40 PM and said the caller spoke in a low voice.
“I want to report a murder. If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway, you will find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9-millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.”
Police responding to the area found a young couple shot multiple times in a Chevy Corvair in the parking lot of Blue Rock Springs Park. The “kids” killed “last year” were identified as two teens shot to death in a car along Lake Herman Road in Benicia, California, on December 20, 1968.
The Zodiac Killer, who terrified the residents of the Northern California Bay Area in the late 1960s and early 1970s, was on the hunt.
I had little interest in a California serial murderer a thousand miles from me until I heard he was sending letters in codes to local newspapers. He threatened to go on a killing spree unless his cryptograms were published.
The first, a substitution cipher, was made public in three California newspapers on August 4, 1969.
In cryptography, a substitution cipher is one where each letter in the message has a symbol or a different…
