The San Francisco Chronicle just posted a review of the first episode of “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer”, premiering on the History Channel at 10PM Eastern / 9PM Central on Tuesday November 14th.
http://www.sfchronicle.com/tv/article/Can-the-latest-Zodiac-hunt-finally-solve-12340076.php
The History Channel series focuses specifically on what is considered the Holy Grail of the investigation, one of four cryptograms sent by the killer. The cipher in question, called Z340, is a 340-character puzzle sent by Zodiac to The San Francisco Chronicle that allegedly contains the identity of the killer.
The History channel has been running promos for the upcoming documentary “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer” which premieres Tuesday November 14th. Here are four of them; three of them show scenes that include us members of the code team as well as the field investigators.
Looks exciting! Can’t wait to see how it turned out.
History channel updated their online schedule with the summary for Episode One:
Should be interesting!
Yesterday’s episode of Riverdale, a contemporary reimagining of characters and settings from the old Archie comics, features a killer operating as a copycat of the Zodiac Killer.
Known as the “Black Hood” killer, the character mails taunting letters, and in yesterday’s episode included a cryptogram that he said would give the location of his next attack.
Characters in the show even namedropped Robert Graysmith’s books as the “definitive” sources of Zodiac information.
The episode features many scenes involving the Black Hood’s cipher, including characters’ attempts to break it. They do end up solving it but don’t get into any details about the specifics. Though I did like the “spitballing” scene where they toss around ideas such as common letter pairs, doubles, and trying out words like “KILL”.
Here’s a video I put together of the cipher-related scenes (WARNING: SPOILERS)
He even says, “This is the Black Hood speaking!” (Side note: The symbols in the cipher remind me a lot of the Albany cipher)
This latest entry into popular culture really continues to demonstrate how effective Zodiac was with creating notoriety for himself via his letter and cipher writing campaign. This case will resonate for many years to come.
Karga 7, the production company behind the upcoming History channel documentary about the Zodiac Killer, posted a new title card for the show:
The ciphers are featured quite prominently in this series. Tune in to the History Channel this November 14th at 10PM to watch us on the code team dig into clues in the ciphers while working together with seasoned field investigators Sal LaBarbera and Ken Mains, as they chase the many clues in the Zodiac case.
Former FBI task force member and cold case detective Ken Mains (left), and retired LAPD homicide detective Sal LaBarbera (right)
The “Code Team”. Left to right: University of North Texas computer science professor Ryan Garlick, Google staff research scientist Sujith Ravi (seated), University of Southern California research director and computer science professor Kevin Knight (and the Code Team’s fearless leader), and York University math and cryptology professor Craig Bauer. I’m unfortunately out of frame in this shot. 🙂
The first episode of the upcoming documentary “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer” is now listed on the official schedule on History.com:
Who is the new suspect?
History Channel just posted this teaser for the upcoming Zodiac Killer documentary:
Will the Zodiac Killer's identity finally be revealed? pic.twitter.com/Xd1RHpdpkU
— HISTORY (@HISTORY) October 30, 2017
Here is the talk I gave at the 2017 Symposium on Cryptologic History in Laurel, MD, in the “Ciphers and Crime” panel which was moderated by retired historian Dave Cooley.
The presentation is about 23 minutes long, followed by about 16 minutes of questions and answers with me and fellow panelist Craig Bauer who gave a fascinating presentation about the Paul Rubin case, a man who was found dead with an enciphered message taped to his stomach. Check out Craig Bauer’s book “Unsolved” which details that case and many others: https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10949.html
I’ve added some more visuals to the main presentation as well as to the Q&A portion.
Also check out my 2015 talk at the same venue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BV5R3TBMWJg
Catch me and Craig in the upcoming documentary, “The Hunt for the Zodiac Killer”, premiering on the History Channel on November 14, 2017. http://realscreen.com/2017/10/27/history-karga-seven-embark-on-hunt-for-the-zodiac-killer/
I was also recently featured in an episode of the Criminology podcast about the Zodiac Killer: http://criminology.libsyn.com/ep11-zodiac-ciphers-conversation
This is the UK promo for the upcoming Zodiac Killer documentary on the History Channel:
Cracking the code of one of America's most notorious unknown killers…#Zodiac coming soon. pic.twitter.com/0vqIYRNZ51
— HISTORY UK (@HISTORYUK) October 28, 2017
It airs in the UK on November 22nd and in the USA on November 14th.
A new documentary about the Zodiac Killer is airing on the History Channel starting November 14th:
History Premieres Limited Series THE HUNT FOR THE ZODIAC KILLER, 11/14
Premiering on Tuesday, November 14 at 10PM ET/PT, this five-part limited series, features a team of top investigators and code-breakers, working in tandem with a super-computer, known as CARMEL, the first of its kind programmed to think like a killer. This team believes they may have broken a significant portion of the diabolically complicated code, Z340, and have been granted unprecedented access to police files, new witnesses, new clues, and the cooperation of representatives of the CIA and FBI.
I was privileged to be a part of the cast of this show, working with and learning from some very talented codebreakers and cryptology experts. Looking forward to seeing how it turned out.
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