Dr. Olsen's deciphering results shattered Brian's plan to overturn the case through bribery. These are personal photos retrieved from his mobile phone after Brian was arrested by the police. The 9mm caliber pistol worn on his waist in the photo is exactly the weapon used in the crime. The cipher letter sent by Brian was successfully deciphered by linguists, and the English word corresponding to the numbers between two commas circled out is "Please".
According to Britain’s Daily Mail website on February 26, 23-year-old British suspect Kieron Brian wrote a letter full of strange numbers on its back while awaiting trial in prison. The suspicious police asked cryptanalysis experts for interpretation, and it took them three whole days to analyze 840 encoding methods before they cracked it. It turned out that Brian indeed hoped to evade responsibility through this confidential document.
Brian was originally a rapper in Manchester, UK. Last March, he was arrested for being suspected of shooting the doorman of a local nightclub, Abdou Shaka. Not long ago, as the court prepared to start reviewing the case related to him, he wrote a "private letter" filled with numbers on the back, addressed to his sister.
In the letter, Brian said those numbers were just a small game, instructing his sister not to pay attention. However, this still aroused the suspicion of the prison guards, who decided to intercept this suspicious letter and carry out an investigation. Later, the police invited renowned British judicial linguist Dr. John Olson for help.
Olson has participated in hundreds of case investigations around the world. At the beginning of the decryption, he found that the number sequence in the cipher letter occasionally had commas appearing, and several numbers between two commas could form a word. However, the exact relationship between Brian's numbers and English words and punctuation marks was still a problem.
This linguist later discovered that Brian's coding method was more complex than expected. Brian didn't simply use 26 numbers to replace 26 English letters, but randomly selected 23 numbers between 1 and 43 to replace 23 letters, and used punctuation marks such as emphasis symbols to replace another 3 letters.
By comparing the usage frequency of various numbers in the cipher letter with the usage frequency of English letters in normal letters, Olson found the 7 most commonly used English letters corresponding to the numbers in Brian's letter, namely "a, e, i, o, s, t" correspond to "10, 5, 8, 16, 25, 3, 27".
The breakthrough in decoding came when Olson deciphered the word "please". He found that Brian used the following numbers to express this word: 38, 9, 5, 10, 3, 5. And the content of the entire sentence containing these six numbers was: "Please do everything possible to complete this task."
The entire decryption process lasted 3 days, during which Olson painstakingly analyzed 840 possible language combinations using computer programs, eliminating some of the most common combination methods. He remarked, "The cipher shows that the coder is very capable, intelligent, and talented."
Through interpreting all the ciphers on the letter, Olson discovered that Brian wanted his sister to bribe the plaintiff Shaka with 15,000 pounds. The decrypted content of the letter was: "Task: Let Abdou Shaka tell the court through a private lawyer that my identification was entirely due to the police's implication. I have already contacted Shaka. To make Shaka change his testimony, we need to pay them 15,000 (pounds)."
Later, the court found out that the incident of Brian shooting Shaka originated from a quarrel between the two. Because of his suspicion that Brian stole 7,600 pounds, Shaka managed to get a friend to drive away Brian's car as collateral. An angry Brian then gathered a group of thugs and attacked Shaka on March 2 last year. At that time, Shaka was shot in the chest and thigh, but he survived thanks to wearing a bulletproof vest. Shaka subsequently reported the incident to the police and identified Brian.
Since the letter was eventually cracked, Brian's scheme to buy off the plaintiff failed. The court ultimately sentenced Brian to 25 years in prison for attempted murder and illegal possession of firearms, and one of his accomplices was also sentenced to 11 years in prison.
(Source: China Daily Website Xin Lian, Liu Hongjie) Share to: Welcome to comment, I want to comment Microblog recommendation | Today's Weibo Hotspots (Editor: SN026)