#340 cypher

[akitastisch]

A Surprising Cup of Tea

its a really short oneshot, but I really am a sucker for small intimacy moments with ma cypher boi.

genre: fluff word count: 340+ words

You couldn't help but admire the elegance with which Cypher prepared his Maghrebi mint tea. It was one of the most expensive teas in the world, and he had somehow managed to acquire it for his personal enjoyment. You had always been curious about it, and as luck would have it, he had offered to share it with you.

"Would you like a taste?" he asked, holding out the delicate teacup.

You nodded eagerly and took the cup from him, trying your best to emulate his graceful movements. However, as soon as the hot liquid touched your lips, you couldn't help but let out a yelp of pain. You had burnt yourself on the first sip.

Cypher's blue eyes widened in concern as he took the cup from your trembling hand. "Are you okay?" he asked, setting the cup aside and taking your hand in his. "Let me take a look."

You nodded, feeling a little embarrassed about your clumsiness. But as he inspected your burnt lip, you couldn't help but notice how close he was to you. His eyes seemed to be searching yours, and you felt a sudden urge to lean in closer to him.

Without warning, he partially removed his mask and leaned in to gently kiss your burnt lip. You could feel his warm breath on your skin and the hint of mint from the tea. It sent shivers down your spine. As he pulled away, you could see a small smirk on his lips.

"Better?" he asked, his voice soft and caring.

You nodded, feeling a strange mixture of emotions. It was as if in that moment, you had discovered something new about Cypher. He wasn't just a stoic, emotionless agent - he was capable of tenderness and affection.

As you sat there, your face turning red, savoring the taste of the tea and the feeling of Cypher's lips on yours, you couldn't help but feel grateful for this unexpected moment of intimacy. It was a reminder that even in the midst of danger and chaos, there was still room for love and connection.

[insanityclause]

[lauravias]

The Zodiac Killer

The self-proclaimed Zodiac Killer is an unidentified American serial killer. He took credit of several murders in the San Francisco Bay Area between 1968 and 1969, but only five are directly linked to him. He taunted police and made threats through letters sent to newspapers in the area from 1969 to 1974. The police never caught him. The mystery surrounding the murders has inspired numerous books and movies, like Dirty Harry, in 1971, Zodiac, in 2007, and Awakening of the Zodiac, in 2017.

Zodiac Killer’s murders timeline

DEC. 20, 1968  The first confirmed murders attributed to the Zodiac Killer took place on the night of December 20, 1968, on Lake Herman Road, just inside Benicia city limits. The victims were high school students David Faraday and his girlfriend Betty Lou Jensen, who were shot to death in their car; shortly after 11:00 p.m., their bodies were found by Stella Borges, who lived nearby. 

Newspaper page about the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen

JULY 4, 1969   Just before midnight on July 4, 1969, Darlene Ferrin and Mike Mageau, her boyfriend, were sitting in a parked car in Blue Rock Springs Park, Vallejo. A car parked beside them, almost immediately drove away, and then came back after 10 minutes; the driver exited the vehicle and approached the couple with a flashlight. He shot them seven times each. Within an hour, a man called the Vallejo Police Department to report and claim responsibility for the attack; he also took credit for the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen of six and a half months earlier.

Photos of  David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen

SEPT. 27, 1969    On the evening of September 27, 1969, the Zodiac Killer approached Cecelia Shepard and her boyfriend Bryan Hartnell as they were picnicking on a shore of Lake Berryessa, in Napa County. The man was wearing a black hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eye-holes, and a bib-like device on his chest that had a circle-cross symbol on it. He approached them with a gun, claiming to be an escaped convict from a prison, and told Shepard to tie up Hartnell, before tying her up. The man drew a knife and stabbed them both repeatedly, badly injuring the couple, then went back to their car and drew the cross-circle symbol with the inscription "Vallejo/12-20-68/7-4-69/Sept 27–69–6:30/by knife". At 7.40 p.m. on the same day, he called the Napa Police Department, to report and claim responsibility for the attack. When the police arrived, Shepard was still alive and described the attacker; she died two days later at the hospital, while Hartnell survived.

Photos of Cecelia Shepard and  Bryan Hartnell

OCT. 11, 1969    Two weeks later, on October 11, 1969, taxi driver Paul Stine was found dead inside his taxi. He was shot in the head by a white male passenger, who had requested to be taken to Maple Street; for strange reasons Stine did not stop there but one block after, in Cherry Street. Three teenagers that lived across the street witnessed the passenger shooting Stine, and called the police while the crime was still occurring; they also stated that before running away, the man wiped the cab down. In the meantime, two policemen, Don Fouke and Eric Zelms, noticed a white man walking and entering inside one of the houses in the street; the suspect they were looking out for was supposedly black, and since the man they witnessed was white they did not stop him. As the murder did not seem to fit the Zodiac’s pattern it was initially thought to be a robbery, until the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter from the Zodiac Killer claiming the crime.

Crime scene of Paul Stine’s murder

MARCH 22, 1970    On the night of March 22, 1970, Kathleen Johns was driving with her newborn daughter on Highway 132 near Modesto, when a driver flashed his headlights at them. Johns pulled off the road and stopped, and so did the man; he told her that her right rear wheel was wobbling, and offered to tighten the lug nuts. After doing such, the man drove off, and when Johns pulled forward to re-enter the highway, the wheel almost immediately came off the car. The man came back and offered to drive her and her daughter to the nearest gas station. He drove them around for a long time, passing several gas stations, and when he stopped at an intersection Johns jumped out the car with her daughter and hid in a field. She later identified her kidnapper as the man depicted in a wanted poster for Paul Stine's murder, the Zodiac. Police never officially attributed the incident to the Zodiac.

Newspaper talking about Kathleen Johns kidnapping attempt

During the 1990s, many investigators claimed to have identified the Zodiac Killer; the most likely and most often cited suspect was Arthur Leigh Allen, a Vallejo schoolteacher who had been institutionalized for child molestation.            The police were able to create a sketch of the Zodiac, using the descriptions of several witnesses; for example, the three teenagers who saw the man leaving the scene of Paul Stine’s murder, and Kathleen Johns, who identified the man that tried to kidnap her from the sketch of the Zodiac. Despite the mounting evidence and the numerous suspects, the killer remained at large.

Sketch of the Zodiac Killer made by the San Francisco police department

Letters and cyphers

The Zodiac sent several letters containing cyphers to various newspapers located in San Francisco, the San Francisco Examiner, the San Francisco Chronicle and the Vallejo Times-Herald. The newspapers received the first letter on August 1, 1969, where the killer took credit for the Benicia and Vallejo murders. To convince the police that he was the author of the murders, he included details that only the killer could have known. Each letter was closed by a circle with a cross through it, that would later become the Zodiac Killer’s symbol. High school teacher Donald Harden and his wife, Bettye, were able to solve the first cypher. 

A couple of days after the murder of Paul Stine, on October 15, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle received another letter from the Zodiac, where he took credit for the murder; this is also the first letter in which the killer uses the name “Zodiac”. At the end of the letter, the killer mused that he would next shoot out the tire of a school bus and "pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out". The Zodiac Killer continued sending letters to the San Francisco Chronicle, where he claimed to have committed several more murders and mocked the police for their inability to catch him. The letters stopped in 1974.

In 2020, after 51 years, one of the messages written in code and attributed to the Zodiac Killer has been solved. The cypher does not reveal the killer's identity, however, it confirms his image as an attention-seeking killer who revelled in terrorizing the Bay Area in the late 1960s. 

The three men who decrypted the code are David Oranchak, a software developer in Virginia, Sam Blake, an applied mathematician in Melbourne, Australia, and Jarl Van Eycke, a warehouse operator and computer programmer in Belgium. The F.B.I., which employs a team of code-crackers in its Cryptanalysis and Racketeering Records Unit, said they had verified Mr Oranchak’s claim of having broken the code. 

It read: “I hope you are having lots of fun in trying to catch me that wasn’t me on the TV show which brings up a point about me I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradice all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradice so they are afraid of death I am not afraid because I know that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradice death.”

Though he had claimed to be responsible for 37 deaths, no Zodiac victims have been discovered since 1969, and in both the known and presumed Zodiac murders no suspect was ever arrested. Since the Faraday-Jensen murders, the inability to identify the Zodiac Killer has continued to frustrate law enforcement.

Sources:

Zodiac Killer - Biography

The coded message has been solved - New York Times

Zodiac Killer -  Wikipedia

Zodiac Killer Timeline - San Francisco Chronicle

[mspbandj]

imagine being the Zodiac Killer and seeing that the code you wrote 51 years ago that you forgot about was finally cracked and just thinking oh shit did i really write that that is the most cringe thing ive ever fuckin read

[forgivehimgoosebumps]

Exactly I can't stop laughing 😂😂😂

Your laughing, they finally cracked the Zodiac killer’s 340 cipher and figured out the fucker can’t spell ‘paradise’ and you’re laughing.

[criminol]

Zodiac Cipher Solved

Code-breakers have cracked a 51-year-old, 340 character cypher sent to the San Francisco Chronicle by the Zodiac Killer. The three code-breakers are from the USA, Belgium and Australia and translated the following: "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 message was described by one of the code-breakers as "more of the same attention-seeking junk from Zodiac." The Zodiac Killer, who remains uncaught, murdered at least five victims in San Francisco in the 1960s. He sent a series of coded messages to newspapers at the time of his crimes.

[acerosedrop]

I leave for two hours to go Christmas shopping, and the freaking Zodiac Killer’s 340 cypher finally getting cracked isn’t even the weirdest thing that’s happened so far.

[thebadacefangirl]

the fact that any other year this would probably be a major headline but now we’re just like

OH MY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AFTER 51 YEARS!!!

According to code-breaking expert David Oranchak, the cipher’s text includes: “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.”

Oranchak, a 46-year-old web designer who lives in Virginia, has been working on the Zodiac’s codes since 2006.

Source: San Francisco Chronicle

[orca-iguana]

I got blocked by 300 accounts because of this but worth it:

[ID: a tweet from Orca-Iguana saying " @TedCruz Didn't know your handwriting was so messy senator! If you're writing legislation you should really make it more clear" with an image of the zodiac killers 340 cypher attached /end ID]

@raaindropps I feel you'd appreciate this.

[smh0217]

Today in “Holy Shit, wasn’t expecting that” news:

The cypher that was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle by the Zodiac killer has finally been decoded.

[shurisneakers]

EXPLAIN THE TED CRUZ PARADISE THING PLS I BEG OF YOU

okay!!

so basically one of the most infamous serial killers around is the Zodiac Killer. no one knows who he is, but they agree he’s very smart due to the highly complicated cryptograms and secret messages he sent to the police while he was evading capture to taunt them.

one of those was the 340 Cypher. for years people have been trying to solve it to help with catching whoever it was but they couldn’t.

flash forward to the rather forgettable year of 2015 when suddenly everyone is going apeshit over the new meme. senator and future presidential candidate Ted Cruz is now the new suspect for the zodiac killings even though it makes absolutely no sense because the man was born in 1970 and the killings started like 10 years before his birth.

anyway everyone is convinced that this man with the face of a 12 year old you want to punch really hard is the killer for no reason other than “they have a feeling” and “it’s rlly funny”

it becomes very very popular and soon the senator just gets associated with a serial killer from ten years before he was born. you cannot physically say “ted cruz” without following it up with “is the zodiac killer”. i think there were books about it too.

it stays on for a pretty long time 

flash forward to the rather unforgettable year of 2020, where following john mulaney’s quote of “this might as well happen”, the 340 Cypher gets cracked. they figure out what it reads and once again the internet freaks out

because this man, who had the police and public stumped for 51 years, who is still yet to be captured or even identified

couldn’t spell the word ‘paradise’ correctly. 

internet begins to cyberbully the zodiac killer, who is presumably dead, for not knowing basic spellings but acting all cool with his fancy coded messages. 

someone connects the two memes and boom 

this comes out of it

[bassistreggie]

Who had “code-breakers solving the Zodiac Killer’s 340 Cypher after 51 years” on their 2020 bingo card?

[supersnarky]

From CNN: After 51 years, the Zodiac Killer's cipher has been solved by amateur code breakers

After 51 years, the Zodiac Killer's cipher has been solved by amateur code breakers

[winterscaptain]

me: oh my GOD they solved the zodiac 340 cypher how exciting!! i want to know EVERYTHING 

also me, feeling a lil guilty for getting excited about serial killer developments when the victims’ families dont have closure: *closes nyt tab*

[just-a-demi-bean]

Some stuff that has happened in the week that I’ve been inactive:

More important stuff:

I’m in Korea now!

My grandparents aren’t doing too well, so my family took a last minute trip to help them out. I’ll be here for a month, possibly more.

Don’t worry, I’m staying safe! The Korean government is very strict about this (and it works, it’s keeping cases low!) which means that I am not allowed to leave my grandparent’s apartment for two weeks. We got tested as soon as we got here, and for the next two weeks we’ll be wearing masks around the house for my grandparents, just in case.

This means that (unfortunately) I’m going to have to do online school at night. I’ve been sleeping in two separate intervals.

I also have an app that tracks my symptoms. Slightly creepy, but it’s alright!

Less important stuff:

I found out that the Zodiac 340 cypher was solved when i opened tumblr a few days ago and my sister screamed in the airport because i found out before her (remember her, the serial killer enthusiast? I talked about her obsession in that post about Albert Fish)

She was so mad! “HOW DID YOU FIND OUT BEFORE ME??”

She also got a book on the Zodiac Killer

Strawberries in Korea are REALLY GOOD

But also REALLY EXPENSIVE

I forgot cocoa powder back at home! So no cocoa! For two weeks! AAAAAAAAAA???

Honestly idk how I’m gonna survive

I have had so much kimchi-jjigae, my grandfather makes the absolute best

I’ve been binging all of the Ghibli movies, because they’re on korean Netflix!

I think that’s everything, I’ve missed you guys!

[appendingfic]

Just watch it’s going to end up to REALLY be Ted Cruz just to cap off 2020