'I am not afraid of the gas chamber': Zodiac Killer's cryptic message decoded after 50 years

Almost 50 years ago, the neighbourhoods of northern California lived in terror of the mass murderer who was dubbed as the 'Zodiac Killer' and was infamous for leaving coded messages.

Now, after more than 50 years and numerous attempts, a group of experts have been able to decode one of the cryptic messages sent by the Zodiac Killer. The decoded message was sent in 1969 tothe San Francisco Chronicle.

The message contains 340 characters and was thus dubbed '340 cipher'. The team comprisedDavid Oranchak, a software developer in Virginia, Jarl Van Eycke, a Belgian computer programmer, and Sam Blake, an Australian mathematician who had been trying to decode the message for the past few years.

It all began whenDavid Oranchak tried todecipher this message back in 2006 through various computer programs and software.

"All of us in the crypto community on the Zodiac figured the cipher had another step beyond just figuring out what letters belonged to the symbols, and that’s just what we found here,"Oranchak said after solving the mystery.

Turns out, the message was simply a pat on the back for the killer from himself as, in the message, he boasted about being able to run off from the law enforcement groups on several occasions. "I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me…I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice (sic) all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me," the decoded message read.

The killer, who is assumed to be a male by the team, also claimed he was simply collecting "slaves" to serve him in the "afterlife", and said, "I like killing because it is so much fun".

To decode this message, the experts started reading the cryptic message from the upper-left corner, then shiftone box down and move two boxes to the right. Upon reaching the bottom, the experts returned to the opposite corner. This pattern was popular in the US army in 1950s, and is being assumed to have been adopted from there by the killer.

The authorities had hoped they will be able to identify the infamous Zodiac Killer after decoding this message. However, no clues of the killer's identity were revealed in this decoded message.