FBI asks public for help breaking encrypted notes tied to 1999 murder

hey sry to bust up in here without reading though every page like i usually do. but i was JW if anyone typed up the the entire note? ive got it printed out working on it (my scribbles look like a lunatics) but there are a few letters that are a little hard for me to tell because of the way it printed etc.
best of luck to everyone, if i figure out any big crack ill be sure to post here immediately !

nvm just randomly clicked page 10 and found it. :/ waste of 2 post

To me it kind of feels like trying to read a message about those studies about people being able to read things even though the letters of the words are out of order, except they took all the spaces and most of the vowels out. I'm probably way off though

Edit: Also, it looks to me like the second page wasn't written left to right, top to bottom with the position of that smeared ink. If they were right-handed and wrote it traditionally, there wouldn't be any smeared ink. If they were left handed, it would be smeared a bit from the left over to the write. The way it is, though, makes it look to me like his hand was sitting on that area while writing up the page.

Then again, it could just be that the note got wet at some point.

reply to post by reedbananaboat


That was really, really good thinking.

I think you might be on to something there---a drug log for a bi-polar person. That was great reasoning.

It just occured to me that maybe the code doesn't go left to right or right to left. What if the code was meant to be read diagonal or in some bizzare order, something like Sudoku for letters instead of numbers? My brain seriously feels like it gets it, but doesn't get it. It's frustrating.

The letter decoded:

www.castigliola.com...

Why would the FBI be so interested in this after so many years? I've seen reports of it being "solved" all over the web, so if it can be "solved" that fast it does not bode well for our intelligence services at all. This whole thing smells fishy....

What I see:
- it all rhymes
- and its a very childish way of coding something
- i guess i would describe it as a giddy-childish thought pattern - maybe a self therapeutic method of lifting his spirit.

How I'd describe it:

step1 - initial thought:
Let's say if I use a piece of the title as an example: "FBI asks public for help"
FBI ASKS PUBLIC FOR HELP =>

step2 - adding that giddy-childish word playing (not quite coded yet though)
FBIDZY WYDZY TWYDZY
ASKE WASKE PUBZY LICKE
FORSE GORSE NORSE PORSE
HELPY SBELPY TRELPY VELPY

step3 - final result - adding the coding (either taking out vowels, replacing letter with other sounds ..probably again something childish)
FDZE WBDZE TWIDZE
AZKRE WRSKE PBRSE LCKE
HRPE LRPE TRPN VLPE

I really doubt this guy has been killed, or if he has i doubt the killer would have anything to do with the notes.
i'd say he was a bit of a paranoid, introvert, self therapist, childish guy.

IS this a mental patient?
B/c I'm a psych nurse and I've never seen a bipolar keep a drug log like that.
Of course my experience is with really sick inpatients.

I looked at it WITH the assumption it was written like some of my past patients write, lol

And I came up with this- Now this is not really encryption at all, but psych patients do these things.

(MND MKNEM RSE-N-S-M-KNARE) ( ACSM )

TFRNE NPKNSE NPBSE RCBBNSE NPRSE INC
nurse receive---- nurse with

PRSE NMRSE DPREHLD CNLDNCBE(TFXLF TCXLN NCBE)
Nurse replied child don't you be saying those things]
text

AL-PRPPIT XLYPPIY NCBE MGKSE INCD RCBR NSG PRSE
happily nice magic with praise
management


WLD RCBRNSE NT SGNENTRSE - CRSLE - CITRSE WLD NCBE
wild in enter circle - citrus wild and ___

AL WLD NCBE TSME LRSE RLSE URGLS N EAS N WLD NCBE
a wild time ---------urgent __eat and wild ____

( NOPFSE NLSRE NCBE ) NTE G D DMN SENCURE RCBRNsE
No point nite god da** sense/cure

( TENE TFRNE NCBRTSE NCBE INC )
has their ____ _____ included/with

My spacing got messed up> NCBE throws me. Nuclear Chemical Biological environmental is the only thing I have seen that stand for.

I thought of starting with "NCBE," since it appears many times, including after 71, 74, 75, as well as after what appears to be a possessive or a plural ("WLD'S"). (Some people mistakenly form plurals with an apostrophe.)

I've been searching for 4-letter words where no letters repeat and this is a short list of possible translations for NCBE that I've come up with:

ACRE, APTS, BAGS, BEDS, BOYS, BROS, COPS, DAYS, EACH, EAST, EASY, FISH, GOLD, GONE, GUNS, GUYS, HITS, HOUR, INCH, JEWS, JOBS, KEGS, KEPT, KEYS, LAPS, LEFT, LEGS, LIES, LOAF, LOST, LOTS, MADE, MICE, NEAR, NEXT, ONCE, PADS, PANS, PETS, PICS, RAGS, RAPS, RATS, REPS, ROAD, SKIP, SOLD, STOP, TAKE, TENS, THEM, TIPS, TOMS, TONS, TOPS, TYPE, WAYS, WENT, WEST, WITH, WONT (won't), ZERO, ZONE.

I am particularly fond of "EACH", thinking that (194WLD'SNCBE) could be "194 bag(')s each". Also promising are LEFT, GONE and SOLD. There's also the pair of EAST and WEST.

Any thoughts?

I wish I had more time and I couldn’t read through all the posts so this may have been suggested. Has anyone considered it to be his own form of Pig Latin? The way many of the words end in E and SE repeatedly make me think that they aren’t necessarily apart of the word. Plus the words seem like they want to be read yet are scrambled much like in Pig Latin. Given I don’t know much about his background as I only read the brief description of his intelligence and that the family mentioned this was something he used a lot it would be a very simple cipher pattern to adapt early on. For example Ricky would turn into Ickyray..

reply to post by onedrkflame


Hello, I also came across that post onyahoo and at first was most impressed. However, the author states is as a simple "law of 2" but I didn't think it was that simple. The victim was also not a mental health patient but received medication for some lung problems. Then, the law of 2 doesn't make anymore sence at all as you go further along the notes and specially to the page "P1".
But maybe someone can make a sense to the rest ? I believe it has to do with speculation in breeding.

Originally posted by hadriana
IS this a mental patient?
B/c I'm a psych nurse and I've never seen a bipolar keep a drug log like that.
Of course my experience is with really sick inpatients.

I looked at it WITH the assumption it was written like some of my past patients write, lol

And I came up with this- Now this is not really encryption at all, but psych patients do these things.

(MND MKNEM RSE-N-S-M-KNARE) ( ACSM )

TFRNE NPKNSE NPBSE RCBBNSE NPRSE INC
nurse receive---- nurse with

PRSE NMRSE DPREHLD CNLDNCBE(TFXLF TCXLN NCBE)
Nurse replied child don't you be saying those things]
text

AL-PRPPIT XLYPPIY NCBE MGKSE INCD RCBR NSG PRSE
happily nice magic with praise
management


WLD RCBRNSE NT SGNENTRSE - CRSLE - CITRSE WLD NCBE
wild in enter circle - citrus wild and ___

AL WLD NCBE TSME LRSE RLSE URGLS N EAS N WLD NCBE
a wild time ---------urgent __eat and wild ____

( NOPFSE NLSRE NCBE ) NTE G D DMN SENCURE RCBRNsE
No point nite god da** sense/cure

( TENE TFRNE NCBRTSE NCBE INC )
has their ____ _____ included/with

My spacing got messed up> NCBE throws me. Nuclear Chemical Biological environmental is the only thing I have seen that stand for.

edit on 1-4-2011 by hadriana because: (no reason given)

It would help to know if the person knew some Spanish.

edit on 1-4-2011 by hadriana because: (no reason given)

The first line is strange because the M doesn't look like his usual "m". It looks more like a shorthand code or something. Then in brackets you say ACSm, to me it looked like ALSm.

but most importantly your word "receive" RCBNSE" comes back a lot of times.After mGXSE comes WLD RCBRNSE PRSE. Do your patients always use a similar codes to make it easy to decipher or do they remember the meanings when the read it ? It would be interesting to see how one of your patients would read the note ?

Just something I'd like to throw into the mix, more of an observation than anything actually useful. A lot of people have said when they look at it, they get the feeling that their brain "gets it" on some level. I've had the same feeling, and so have two of my friends I shared this with, but interestingly, when we look at the transcripts, that feeling isn't present. This makes me question whether there's some subtle visual, rather than linguistic, level of encoding that some part of our brain is picking up on. As to what that would be..not a clue.

reply to post by toolstarr


They are working this on the Mensa forums too - lots of aspies there so I wouldn't be shocked if one of them cracks it and then builds a Red Stone powered calculator in Minecraft to decode and then display the solved message in lava.



That being said - I'll let them know if you all crack it first!

Wonder if the MIT team that won the last Darpa Balloon challenge are giving it a go as well...

Good Luck - cryptology ain't my thing - so I'll probably get my game on instead.

Some have suggested it is word-replacent encrypted shorthand - and that the shorthand would be easier to understand if he has other unencrypted shorthand samples - or if his daily routine / daily route was better known to the public.

Therefore it may be that the shorthand will be harder to understand than how to unencrypt it.

I think the bi-polar analysis is wrong.

The ' (apostrophes) could be shorthand for "belongs to."

reply to post by Maxisu


Well, usually psych patients are not ORGANIZED enough to come up with actual crytpographic systems, even simple ciphers...instead you see a lot of pseudociphers, which this looks like to me.

One can look at the pages usually and tell a bit about the level of disorganization - and I don't see that much here - there's no 'take up every inch of the page' nor writing on top of writing or illegibility.

But they'll make sense to the person, sorta like, yeah, as one poster said a form of pig latin. Or it might be something like that with some padding or some other simple method.

reply to post by infolurker


E often means end...as end of thought, phrase, topic...............

reply to post by hadriana


You may be on to something...I think this is a shorthand for writing based on how it sounds. I think this person spoke with an accent of some sort....wonder if he was native american..........