Since 1991, John Walsh (best known as the host of “America’s Most Wanted”) has received a sequence of letters signed “SCORPION”: some of these contained cryptograms, more usually referred to as “The Scorpion Ciphers”. However, only two of these ciphertexts and a handful of pages of text have so far been released.
The first Scorpion Cipher is known as “S1”, and is laid out in a 10×7 grid: 53 of its 70 symbols are unique.
The fifth Scorpion Cipher is known as “S5”, and is laid out in a 12×15 grid: 155 of its 180 symbols are unique.
The Scorpion text released so far is:
I am your worst nightmare coming true. My true identity is not known to you yet, and hopefully will not be for a long time, Your show is more exciting, interesting and factual than any shitfulled movie or series. I have recently moved into New Jersey and began a new crime spree. I am currently responsible for 23 unsolved crimes ranging from Arson to Burgulary to sabotage homicide and occasionally everything in between. I strongly advise that you keep this letter and start a rather large file, since you will be hearing from me again. I have enclosed a rather difficultly encoded message containing information that will prove rather useful to you. This code took a lot of time and effort to develop, in hopes that it will defeat FBI and CIA codebreakers. Anything you wish to tell me or ask me can conveyed to me on your show.
SCORPION
intricate and difficult to recopy onto these cards. My style of handwriting on these cards is verry much altered, and controlled in order to throw off graphologists, I would much rather communicate with you with letters sent between us but you and your over anxious associates would try to nail me even if I used a P.O. Box for a return address. This would create a rather messy situation since I do not plan to be taken alive if at all, and I truly believe in the use of superior firepower. This creates a problem for our communication since the only way I can communicate with you is by letter and possibly phone and your only safe medium in both of our best interests is your informative and helpful show. Consider this your second and definately last chance, since I will soon start collecting bodies for you, to prove that this is not a prank. Hopefully for you no one will expose themselves to me as an easy target for my ever growing anger before I get a chance to hear from you. I now realise with many hundeds of hours of
mindracking experimentation with my complex ciphers that my first one that I sent you was comparatively simple to my second, third, fourth, and now temporarily final cryptograph system. I have been encoding useful information for your use and have done it fairly, since all of my ciphers can be decoded simply, once the limited patterns and systems are discovered. I have enclosed another cipher for you to deal with. See you in hell amigo!
SCORPION