Between 1968 and 1969, the San Francisco Bay Area experienced one of the most devastating terror waves in its modern history. An unknown man calling himself "Zodiac" carried out a series of shooting and stabbing attacks that officially killed five people and wounded two others, while claiming in his letters that he had killed more than 37 victims.
The killer did not stop at his crimes; he turned the media into a platform for his challenges, sending dozens of letters to newspapers bearing the crossed-circle symbol and filled with boasts, threats, and cipher.
Zodiac killer messages and mysterious Ciphers
Four main ciphers reached newspapers and the police: Z408, Z340, Z13, Z32:
- Z408 (1969): The first, quickly solved by a teacher and his wife in California, revealed a message about the pleasures of killing and gathering slaves in paradise.
- Z340 (1969): The longest and most mysterious cipher (340 symbols), it remained unsolved for more than half a century.
- Z13 and Z32: They are too short, making the solution difficult, and have not been solved to date.
Deciphering Z340 after half a century
In December 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that an international team consisting of Dave Oranczak (USA), Jarl Van Ecke (Belgium), and Sam Blake (Australia) had cracked the 340-character code. Although the code did not reveal the killer's identity, it was full of sarcasm and arrogance, as Zodiac wrote:
I hope you enjoy your attempts to catch me.
I wasn't the one on the TV show.
I'm not afraid of the gas chamber; it will send me to paradise quickly.
I now have enough slaves to work for me, while others own nothing when they die.
As for me, I'll start a new, easy life in the paradise of death.
These words confirmed once again that the goal was not just to kill, but to deliberately create a horror myth that thrives on fear and mystery.
Artificial intelligence enters the scene
In 2017, the History Channel aired a documentary titled The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer. In collaboration with Professor Kevin Knight of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, they developed CARMEL, an AI-based language model designed to simulate the Zodiac's way of thinking.
The program was trained on the killer's message style and tested in cryptanalysis, particularly Z340. It also wrote cryptic poetic texts that mimicked the Zodiac's tone, combining obsession, distorted romanticism, and darkness.
Although CARMEL was unable to definitively crack Z340, it demonstrated the potential of artificial intelligence in processing cryptic texts and exploring the space of linguistic possibilities.
The dangers of simulating criminal minds
Simulating criminal minds through artificial intelligence techniques may open important research avenues for understanding deviant thought patterns, but it also carries significant ethical and psychological risks.
When the model learns the languages of violence and obsession, it may reproduce them in ways that appeal to some individuals with deviant tendencies, transforming horror into a source of inspiration.
Repeating hate speech or sadistic tendencies in machine-generated texts may lead to the normalization of this discourse, or even its exploitation to justify deviant behavior.
Even worse, simulating a diseased mind without strict ethical boundaries may sow the seeds of a new myth that glorifies the criminal rather than revealing his atrocity.
Therefore, researchers have a double responsibility: harnessing the power of artificial intelligence to understand crime, while preventing the tool from becoming a means of reproducing or glorifying it.
An unsolved crime: will it remain a perfect crime?
Despite decades of investigations, the Zodiac serial killer has never been officially identified, but the list of suspects included prominent names that sparked widespread controversy.
At the forefront of these was Arthur Leigh Allen, the fired teacher whom investigators considered the only official suspect. He was linked to several circumstantial clues without conclusive evidence, and his name remained frequently mentioned until his death in 1992.
Thus, the list of suspects remained open, reflecting the vacuum of true identity that created the Zodiac Killer myth and prolonged its lifespan in the collective memory.
In conclusion, the Zodiac Killer story represents the convergence of three worlds: crime, media, and ciphered language. Half a century has passed, and the ciphers, suspects, and dark poems continue to captivate researchers and the public.
If the criminal mind was ahead of its time in exploiting journalism and codes, today's artificial intelligence is trying to catch up, not to create a new killer, but to unravel the mysteries of the past and reveal to us how a word, like a bullet, can leave a lasting impression.