Ancient Cryptography
General => Other Mysteries => Topic started by: Stun90 on November 19, 2006, 10:10:11 AM
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This is the original site where I came across this cypher, with a copy of original cypher included....
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2006/01/handwritten_rea.html
Please note that there are several in the comments that claim to be either family or friends of the slain family. You decide what is fact and what is fiction.
Here it is reported by the Boston Globe newspaper http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2004/02/05/killings_suicide_baffle_authorities/
Here it is on the Boston News Channel http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/2817655/detail.html
The most comprehensive site about the cypher that I could find:
http://www.israeltorres.org/The_Rayburn_Files.php
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This cypher is available so I presented it. My opinion to this is that it may not be real. Explanations coming. Is the cypher solvable? What do you think, is it real or a hoax? Your opinion is appreciated.
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Intriguing, though the cipher, if it is real, is quite a mess. I haven't found much about it besides what you linked to.
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If this cypher is real then why wasn't it mentioned by the police or the press. Why was the alleged cypher written on before it was made public? I would tend to believe that credibility would be lost if some type of alleged evidence would be used before it was shown.
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Well, perhaps the family wanted to keep it quiet at first if there was the possibility of a hidden will or stash of money somewhere. Who knows.
Then they gave up and released it to the public.
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that is a possibility. Maybe one of them knows the answer and just allowed it to appear after it was all over. The letters and symbols written on the sides maybe because he felt that he was running out of room and added them there. Symbols maybe because he may have been using more than one letter as a substitute and felt like he had ran out of subs. Dunno, just a thought. Looking at the shortness of each line I would tend to believe that they are single words and not sentences. Since he liked NFL football and New England Patriots, who knows maybe the 3rd and 4th lines spell New England. Prehaps one of the 7 letter lines spell their last name Rayburn.
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One thing I was pondering is whether some of the numbers/symbols could represent directions to go...
1=SW, 2=S, 3=SE, 4=W, 5=?, 6=E, 7=NW, 8=N, 9=NE. Similar to how the numpad on the keyboard is set up, and with the symbols belonging with thir corresponding numbers.
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Gee Aaron, I do not know if anyone thought of that or looked in that direction (no pun intended). Now I will look at it from that point of view also. I do not know what 5 would mean. If the symbols corrolate with the numbers on the keyboard, and if the numbers are not direction, which now I believe they can be, then maybe they still represent the same letters, such as 2=S Thanks bud You just breathed life into my Rayburn notes. Now what would directions mean or is that part of the cyper to solve?
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Presumably part of the cipher would be directions to some will or treasure or somesuch, perhaps just a very private letter for all I know. So if there were something buried, 2 steps to the north or somesuch would be logical. Otherwise, it's possible that there's something in a safety deposit box and the code/key's location is in the cipher.
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I am reading up on Rayburn's personality. What he liked or disliked. Perhaps other facets of his life that may lead to hints of this puzzle. I do not think that this would be a very complicated form of encryption since there was no college listed as education. He was an unemployed, high school educated person. Maybe it was a double encryption, just a possibility. Usually someone that is going to commit suicide will make their demands plain and simple, loud and clear. And some of this looked like well written penmanship(better than mine anyway). So I do not believe that this was a message of his intentions. This cypher, IMHO was other than of his own death. Usually death messages are written faster with less care on penmanship. I also do not believe that it is long enough to show intent and regret, two components usually seen in enraged writings of this caliber. Once again that is IMHO. It is not a professional statement.
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Interesting take on things, and I certainly doubted it would be something written shortly before death. Though, for all you know it could be a listing of music... I know there are some music programs out there that let you play the keyboard like a piano, including letters and numbers and symbols. Maybe the margins would be extra tunes that were just further experiments, who knows. :P
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I do not believe that these were passwords. The line "Mmg" would probably be too short for a password. I do believe that because of the way that the symbols were written from the left side that the creator is left handed. I don't think that someone would turn the paper 180 just to write a few symbols. His wife said that he was a computer tech, though it was stated that he was unemployed. The symbols are from a keyboard.
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I just came across another site pertaining to this subject. This site seems to have valid arguements for the authenticity of the cypher. That makes me happy. It may even be computer code. Interesting thread on the subject, there were several good questions and ideas there. Good to see something fresh on this one. Please read. It can be found here. http://www.johndouglasmindhunter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3232
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Very nice! I like how detailed all the relevant information is. ;D
Much more to go on than a mysterious note and vague details of what happened.
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Yes that is a very nice site about the Rayburn murders and the cypher. Although his education did not include college, he is a veteran. It is possible that he copuld have learned this in the military or since he did work with computers at one time, it is possible that he could have learned this on the job training. I have also learned that he was bipolar. I may be rethinking this to areas that I did not think of before. Some of the reasonings at http://www.johndouglasmindhunter.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=3232 were pretty convincing. Some of what Aaron said here are good possibilities. Following some leads may lead to somethig but which to follow?
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I read and reread the current clues, stats and general info about this. Sometimes it seems to me that this just may be a computer language cypher. I do not know how well trained this person was in this area. I wonder how many computer languages there are available to him to understand considering no college education but he may have received tech knowledge. Then again I think to myself, if the police said this was an open and shut case and this cypher was never solved, could it have pertained to the case? Could it have a significant meaning?
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Heh, would be funny if it were as simple as converting from Qwerty to Dvorak for the values given.
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Very interesting. There are several languages that is available to a keyboard. Very interesting Aaron. Remember that I believe that it is possible that he could have been left handed. If so then a left handed Dvorak would be used. It may give an explanation for the symbols that he used.
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Hi, all; Was Rayburn an internet music junkie? I started putting in lines (or parts thereof) from the cipher. A common word that appeared in conjunction was remix. In particular, a number of the lines or portions showed up with remix on the yuba.stanford.edu pages. I don't even know if these pages were around before the murder/suicide. But strange that they created a number of matches. Don
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Looking around with the search, a number of those lines or parts also show up with NASA or NOAA or other government or .edu websites. Maybe it ties back to a common software that uses a certain naming or data scheme. If so, maybe there are files that were on Rayburn's machine with these particular codes embedded. By the way, McAfee blocked me from opening the files that came up (even NASA). Don
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Hmmm... well, remixing is technically computer music, not internet music, but it does sound interesting. Maybe several messages were "remixed" into one message?
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Mixing messages is possible, though it would be tough to find out, if the material was on his computer. I was thinking more along the lines that the codes might not be a hidden message, but maybe just a way to hide where he has been looking. DC
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(excuse for my english, but I am italian :-) )
I have some meditation i wish to share with you.
What do you think about the line inside every letter?
I think this is a simple method to remember the case (lower or upper) of the letter;
So the 'i' in second line six position is intended like 'I', the 'e' in four line seven position is intended like 'E' and the 'r' in line ten position seven is intended like 'R'. All other letters are correctly rappresented.
This scenery seems like a group of case-sensitive password;
Moreover, the total of letters are 64 ( in the main part), and 64, in computer science, is a 'special' number; it is also 4 multiple, and this clue remind me the 'base64' code. In base64 every group of 3 byte is codified inside 4 byte so a binary message can be transferred over internet without the effect that some special characters (like ESC or other) can activate inside application.
So, all the (64) letters can be a key for some application that provide a ciphering of portion of hard disk ( or entire).
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Ninochirco, No need to apologize for your English. Good for you that you are bi-lingual. Your first language is one of the "romantic" languages. Next, that is a very good view of the code. Have you ever followed up on your ideas? If so. please tell us. If not, do you need assistance of any kind in working with the cypher? I started this thread and I am sure that others here are more than willing to help also. Thanks for the insight.
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The letters could be broken down into binary, making for a 256-bit encryption code. At that point, "all" you would need to do is find out the two primes that multiply to create that code. Of course, there's still the question of what it was used to encrypt (the stuff in the margins, perhaps?).
Or, a much better possibility is that it's a 64-bit encryption key on the margins (16 letters!) and the text in the middle is the actual message, with corrections. Now, the question remains as to what the symbols stand for number-wise.
Or it could have nothing at all to do with RSA, but you have to admit that 16 letters in the margins * 4 = 64 letters total, the main body of the message. So I still strongly suspect that the margins are an encryption key of some kind.
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Aaron do you think that it is an encription key to this cypher or is it just part of the cypher? Maybe a key to another cypher?
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I'm leaning heavily towards the margins being the encryption key to the body of the message. If you'll notice, he made no mistakes with the margins, but there are "edits" here and there in the main body of the text. I'm guessing he was in a hurry when he was encrypting the message and made a few mistakes. The fact that the number of characters in the margins divides evenly into the body of the message is another strong reason why.
Of course, there's still the chance this is some kind of weird hoax, but I haven't found much new information on the Rayburn situation since January 2006. Has anyone found any newer information?
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If you break it down by numeric value of items per line, you get 573-775-7878 which is an unpublished phone number for a person in Steelville Missouri. (I did a reverse phone search on whitepages.com) Just trying to look at it from a different view point.
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Well I suppose that is one possibility... a secret friend of his that's holding onto any remaning clues / keepsakes.
And welcome to the forum! :)