The Zodiac Ciphers: Four Codes, Two Solutions, No Name

2026-07-17 · Unsolved Ciphers · 7 min read

On a cold night in December 1968, two teenagers were shot to death beside a car on a dark rural road outside Vallejo, California. There was no robbery and no apparent motive, and nothing connected the killer to the young couple. On the night of July 4, 1969, on another quiet road not far away, a man walked up to a parked car and shot the two people inside. One of them survived. Less than an hour later the gunman telephoned the Vallejo police himself to report the shooting, and the earlier one as well.

Over roughly a year, the same attacker struck seven young people in Northern California and killed five of them. Then he did something almost no killer had done before: he began writing to newspapers. He signed the letters Zodiac and marked them with a crossed circle, a symbol resembling a gunsight. In them he claimed a rising tally of victims, eventually as many as thirty-seven, a figure investigators were never able to support. And he wrapped part of what he wanted to say in cipher.

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