The 340-symbol cipher cracked in 2020 — and the message that still names no one
In December 2020, a team of codebreakers announced they had cracked the 340-symbol cipher.
David Oranchak, a software developer, and Sam Blake, a mathematician were among them.
The cipher was one of four cryptograms sent by the Zodiac Killer to Bay Area newspapers.
It had sat unsolved for decades.
The solved message contained no identifying information.
No name. No address. No confession that matched a suspect.
The identity of the Zodiac Killer is not established by the cipher or by any other record.
That is the hollow fact at the center of the crack.
The first cryptogram, the 408-symbol cipher, was solved in 1969 by a high school teacher and his wife.
It revealed the claim: "I like killing people because it is so much fun."
That message taunted.
The 340-symbol message taunts too, but it does not name a killer.
The 2020 solve renewed public interest in the case.
News coverage followed. Online forums buzzed.
No new charges followed.
Not because the codebreakers failed. But because the message gave investigators nothing to charge.
What did the solved text say? It was a boast, a threat, a joke without a punchline.
That would require evidence the record does not provide.
The cipher is solved. The case is not.
It is a solved mystery that still refuses to close.
FIVE ATTACKS, ONE YEAR
Five attacks in eleven months.
The first came on December 20, 1968, when two teenagers were shot and killed on a secluded road in Benicia, California.
On July 4, 1969, two people were shot in Vallejo.
One died.
The survivor later described the weapon as a 9mm Luger.
On September 27, 1969, two people were stabbed at Lake Berryessa.
A knife was used.
One died.
On October 11, 1969, a taxi driver was shot and killed in San Francisco's Presidio Heights.
The murder weapon was a .22-caliber pistol.
Four attacks.
Four weapons.
Three jurisdictions.
One unknown person.
Between December 1968 and October 1969, an unidentified serial killer later dubbed the Zodiac murdered at least five people in the San Francisco Bay Area.
The killer sent taunting, cryptogram-laden letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald.
The letters coined the name "Zodiac."
They claimed additional victims.
Authorities have never confirmed all his claims.
That is not established in the record.
The claims remain claims.
The five deaths are documented.
The sixth victim survived the shooting.
The seventh survived the stabbing.
Two attacks left survivors who provided descriptions to police.
No one has ever been charged.
The compressed horror of a single year: five dead, two wounded, one taunting voice in the mail.
The cipher is solved.
The case is not.
THE INVESTIGATION'S LIMITS
The investigation was hampered by the lack of physical evidence and the difficulty of coordinating across multiple jurisdictions.
The Vallejo Police Department. The Napa County Sheriff's Office. The San Francisco Police Department.
Each one held a piece of a case that spanned a single year and five attacks.
San Francisco homicide detectives David Toschi and William Armstrong led the SFPD investigation.
They had the Stine murder scene, and they had what it yielded: a partial fingerprint and a palm print.
Neither has ever been matched to any person.
That is what the record does not establish — a match.
A composite sketch was drawn from witness descriptions, including that of a teenage witness who saw the killer flee the Stine scene.
A face on paper. A print with no owner.
The case outlived its original detectives.
In 2007, a task force of four agencies — the FBI, the California Department of Justice, the Vallejo Police Department, and the Napa County Sheriff's Office — was formed to review the case.
In 2018, the FBI announced it was again reviewing the case.
In 2021, the FBI confirmed it was still actively investigating.
No arrests have been made.
No one has ever been charged.
The fingerprint goes nowhere. The palm print goes nowhere. The composite sketch points at no one who has been named.
The agencies coordinated, eventually. The task force reviewed. The FBI reviewed again.
What remains is the absence: a partial print, a palm print, and a case that still holds no match.
THE ONE NAMED SUSPECT
One name surfaces more than any other: Arthur Leigh Allen.
Allen was investigated extensively in the 1970s and again in the 1990s.
He was never arrested. He was never charged.
Author Robert Graysmith publicly named him as a suspect in his 1986 book *Zodiac*.
The book made the name famous. The record never made it a charge.
In 2002, DNA testing on material from the Stine crime scene excluded Allen.
He had died in 1992, a decade before the test cleared him.
The exclusion is documented. What is not established is any alternative.
Several other suspects have been named in books, documentaries, and online forums.
None has been confirmed by law enforcement.
No suspect has been officially identified.
No one has ever been charged with the Zodiac murders.
The difference is the gap between a name in a book and a name in a charge.
Suspicion is not proof. A theory is not a finding.
The fingerprint goes nowhere. The palm print goes nowhere.
The solved cipher taunts, but it names no one.
The record has never matched it to a name.
That would require evidence, and the evidence has not arrived.
Allen was investigated, named, and excluded.
The case remains an unsolved homicide investigation.
It is open. It is cold.
The distinction matters: a suspect is not a perpetrator, and a book is not a verdict.
AND THE STORY STILL ISN'T OVER
The case remains officially unsolved and open.
It is also static.
No hearing date, no motion, no decision pending — none of that is in the record.
The FBI and local agencies continue to receive tips.
The tips arrive. The case does not move.
Michael Mageau, who survived the July 4, 1969 attack, died in 2021.
Bryan Hartnell, who survived the Lake Berryessa attack, has spoken publicly about the case over the years.
He has described what he remembers. The record has not matched those memories to a name.
The families of the victims have lived for decades without closure.
Decades is a long word. It does not measure the weight.
The case has been the subject of numerous books, including Robert Graysmith's *Zodiac* (1986) and *Zodiac Unmasked* (2002).
It has been the subject of a 2007 film directed by David Fincher.
It has been the subject of documentaries, forums, and theories.
A theory is a theory. The record does not establish more.
The 340-cipher was solved in 2020. It taunts. It does not identify.
No one has ever been charged. No one has ever been brought to justice.
The identity of the Zodiac Killer remains unknown.
The case is open. It is cold.
That is where things stand. That is all the record shows.
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