Taman Shud Case
This is the case of a man found dead on a beach in Australia in 1948. He had no I.D. on him and nobody could identify the body. He seemed to have been poisoned but the typical signs for poisoning were not present. The case gets weird when on close inspection, a secret pocket is found sown onto the inside of the mans trousers. The pocket contained a small piece of paper that read "Tamam Shud".
Officials called in to translate the text identified it as a phrase meaning "ended" or "finished" found on the last page of the The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Khayyam was a Persian polymath, philosopher, mathematician, astronomer and poet who lived 1000 years ago. The text was rarely published in English, but around the time of the murder a man who had left his car unlocked found a rare copy printed in New Zealand in his back seat. The last page which contained the phrase "Tamam Shud" was missing. However strange pencilings were found in the back of the book...
Along with these strange writings that appeared to be a code, was an unlisted phone number. When the number was called it led to a woman who had served as a nurse in WW2. When shown a picture of the victim she said she didn't know him but began acting strange and appeared as if she was going to faint. She said she once had a copy of the Rubaiyat but she had given it to a soldier named Alfred Boxall.
Boxall was tracked down, but he had the copy which the nurse had given him. The last page was in the book and the nurse had written in the front page:
Indeed, indeed, Repentance oft before
I swore—but was I sober when I swore?
And then and then came Spring, and Rose-in-hand
My thread-bare Penitence a-pieces tore.
The woman was not investigated further because she asked to remain anonymous because she was married and didn't want her family to be linked to a murder case. The police complied and in doing so lost their best lead. After the case went cold, a private investigator later determined that she had lied about being married at the time. The case has yet to be solved however the Cold war setting, the inability to identify the body, and the advanced method of poisoning lead some to believe the man was a KGB agent who was discovered and his murder engineered by a western government agency.
The Zodiak Killer
The Zodiak Killer was a serial killer from the late 60s and early 70s. He sent a letter with a cryptographic message in it to the local news papers saying that if it wasn't published more people would die and only deciphering the message would lead to his identity.
The message was successfully deciphered and this was the message revealed:
His need for slaves in the afterlife was still present so he continued to kill people and released a later cryptographic message along with other letters to the police and news papers. The second message was never deciphered and he was never caught. His last letter was signed Zodiac-37 Police-0.
The Ricky McCormick Case
Ricky McCormick was a high school drop out from Missouri who was 41 years old and unemployed. McCormick's body was found 15 miles from his residence, despite him not having a car and the area not having public transit. A note was found in his pocket which seems to be a code.
The FBI withheld the existence of the note from both the public and the family for 12 years until it was announced to the public in 2011. The code has not been deciphered.
