Cipher discovery sparks claim Zodiac Killer may be behind two historic murders
- By Asim Mallick -
- Apr 25, 2026
An independent investigator, Alex Baber, has made a bold claim linking the Zodiac Killer to the Black Dahlia case, suggesting both crimes may have been carried out by the same person after what he describes as months of work on encrypted messages.
Alex Baber, who has been working through Zodiac communications for nearly nine months, says he focused heavily on the Z13 cipher sent in 1970, the one that begins with the line “my name is.”
That message has always been one of the most debated pieces connected to the Zodiac Killer, and Baber now believes he has managed to decode it using a combination of cipher techniques and AI-assisted analysis.
What he says he found is a name that he believes points toward Marvin Margolis, a man previously mentioned in older discussions around the Black Dahlia murder of Elizabeth Short. From there, Baber builds the argument that the same individual may be responsible for both cases, which if true would connect two of the most famous unsolved murders in US history.
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The Zodiac Killer case has had no shortage of theories over the years, but Baber’s approach leans heavily on pattern matching and linguistic comparisons. He says there are similarities in writing style and structure between the Zodiac messages and material linked to Margolis, along with other background overlaps that he thinks are too specific to ignore.
In his view, the Zodiac Killer mystery may not be just about one set of letters or one crime scene, but part of a wider pattern that also reaches back to the Black Dahlia case in 1947. That’s a big claim, and one that naturally puts him at odds with more cautious interpretations that have existed for decades.
Authorities are reportedly reviewing the material, though there has been no official confirmation of the cipher breakthrough or the identity link. The Zodiac Killer case itself remains officially unsolved, and for now Baber’s theory sits among many competing explanations that continue to circulate around the case.
Still, the idea that the Zodiac Killer could be tied to another historic murder case is already drawing attention, simply because it touches two of the most persistent cold cases in American crime history.