The Uncrackable Ciphers of the Zodiac Killer

At Krakit Escape Game we put you through the paces to solve your way out of a dodgy (but pretend) situation. But the type of thinking needed to crack our escape rooms sometimes has real-world applications …

In the late 1960s, in the San Francisco Bay Area, a serial killer known only as the Zodiac Killer murdered five people and seriously injured two. A further five killings are linked to the Zodiac, with the murderer himself claiming to have slain 37 people in total.

To this day, the murders have never been solved and the identity of the Zodiac Killer is still unknown.

However—being one of those truly annoying serial killers who taunts the authorities—the Zodiac claims to have revealed his true identity in a series of coded messages sent to San Francisco newspapers throughout the early ’70s. According to him (assuming it is a him!), the truth is out there.

It’s been more than 40 years since the Zodiac sent his last letter (in 1974), and still the ciphers of the Zodiac have yet to be solved. However, that doesn’t mean people haven’t been trying.

The Zodiac demanded that three major newspapers publish his three cryptograms, like the one below, on the front page of their August 1, 1969 editions, or else other murders would take place.

The police—along with FBI and navy cryptographers—were unable to solve the ciphers, leading the Zodiac to mock them (and, as it turns out, kill more people). However, local couple Donald and Bettye Harden managed to crack the code, starting with the basis that the Zodiac had a massive ego and therefore the message would begin with an “I.” It did, with the first line reading: “I like killing people because it is so much fun.”

Most of the ciphers remain unsolved, though—with the Zodiac’s identity contained somewhere in there.

One of the more recent attempts to crack the code comes from Ryan Garlick, a computer science professor at the University of North Texas, who led an entire class devoted to solving the cryptograms using an online tool. But, no luck so far.

Need a new obsession? See if you’ll be the one to finally crack the code.