NCJ Number
218446
Date Published
April 2006
Length
6 pages
Annotation
This article provides a historical overview of the role cryptoanalysis (code breaking) has played in specific major criminal cases over the past 400 years.
Abstract
The introduction profiles a 2004 case in which the FBI decrypted an enciphered message a jailed man wrote to his brother, which contained incriminating references to hiding evidence and moving the victim's body. The second case involved Unabomber Theodore Kaczynski (1978-1996), who kept notebooks in which he logged his crimes in a handwritten numerical code in both English and Spanish. The decryption and translation of these notebooks sealed the case against him. The third case reported involved the Zodiac killer, who has yet to be identified. He wrote ciphers related to his serial murders for publication in newspapers. Zodiac' most famous cipher was broken within a few hours by a husband and wife team of amateur code breakers. Other Zodiac ciphers, however, remain unsolved. The fourth case mentioned is the "Hollow Nickel Case" (1953-57), which involved a newspaper boy's accidental discovery of a microphotograph of a numbered code inside a hollow nickel that split when he dropped it on a sidewalk. The numbered code was a Soviet spy's one-time pad encryption system. The code was not broken until 1957, after a Soviet KGB officer defected to the United States. This eventually led to the conviction of a Soviet spy known by his alias of Rudolf Abel. Other cases include the work of cryptanalysts William and Elizabeth Friedman; the decryption of coded telegrams related to the Teapot Dome Scandal of 1924; and ciphers used in messages between conspirators in Lincoln's assassination and the Confederate government of Jefferson Davis. Also described are the use of ciphers in communications between Mary, Queen of Scots, and her coconspirators in the plot to kill her cousin Elizabeth, Queen of England. 18 references