Expedition Files (2024) s01e05 Episode Script

1
Coming up on "expedition files,"
a notorious serial killer goes
on a murder spree in the 1960s,
and taunts the police
with cryptic ciphers.
Over five decades later, we
may have finally deciphered
this madman's identity.
An adventurer creates a
modern-day treasure hunt.
Now, new clues might
lead us to where he buried
his precious riches.
And we open the world's
most mysterious book,
potentially cracking impenetrable secrets
encoded within.
In the corridors of time
are mysteries that defy explanation.
Now, I'm traveling through history itself
on a search for the truth.
New evidence,
shocking answers.
I'm Josh gates,
and these
Are my "expedition files."
Whether we realize it
or not, we are all expert
code breakers.
We spend our lives decoding
the world, solving the riddle
of what those around us
are saying, thinking, feeling.
But some codes can't be cracked.
Some mysterious riddles
remain incomprehensible years,
even centuries, after
they were conceived.
Tonight, we'll examine three
files of the strangest and most
disturbing unsolved codes in history.
One, a cryptic cipher that
reveals a brutal serial killer.
Two, a puzzling poem that
guarantees incredible riches.
Three, an ancient manuscript
that just might hold the answer
to the origin of life.
Three files, one question
how do we break the code?
Our first story starts
at a good place to get
lost and a terrible place to be found.
To the local teens in vallejo,
California, this peaceful
overlook is known as lover's Lane.
And love is in the air, because tonight,
December 20th, 1968,
17-year-old David Faraday
and his 16-year-old girlfriend,
Betty Lou Jensen, are
on their very first date.
Unfortunately, Betty and
David's night out is about
to turn into a nightmare
because this stranger heading
down the road has
other plans for the couple.
His destination? Murder.
In moments, the infamous
reign of the zodiac killer
will begin.
Please, please stop, please stop!
Please stop!
When police arrive at the scene,
the killer has long fled.
Betty and David become
known as the notorious killer's
first victims.
The tight-knit community of
vallejo and the surrounding
bay area is stunned by the murders.
Fear quickly spreads that
there's a gun-crazed maniac
at large. They are not wrong.
The killer will soon strike again.
In the summer of 1969,
22-year-old Darlene ferrin
and 19-year-old Michael mageau
are parked at blue rock spring
park, an infamous spot for
rebellious teenagers
less than four miles from
the first attack.
But this twisted murderer is
not content to let his bloody
handiwork speak for itself.
He wants credit where credit is due.
Later that night, a
police dispatcher picks up
a call from a pay phone in vallejo.
The caller's words are
impossible for the dispatcher
to ever forget.
I want to report a double murder.
If you will go one mile east on
Columbus parkway to the public
park, you will find the kids in a brown car.
I shot them with a 9mm luger.
I also killed those kids last year.
Goodbye.
But the killer is wrong about one thing.
It is not a double murder.
Although Darlene ferrin
tragically dies, Michael mageau
miraculously survives.
But his description of
the killer is vague at best,
saying only that he had a large face.
It seems the killer's call to
the police fails to give him
the notoriety he craves,
so he decides to take his cat
and mouse game to the next level.
On August 1st, 1969,
he contacts the press.
Dear editor,
this is the murderer of the
two teenagers last Christmas at
lake Herman and the
girl on the 4th of July.
Wanting credit for his horrific acts,
the shooter provides facts that
only he would know,
including the exact brand name
of the ammo used in
the shooting, super x.
And here's where
things get truly diabolical.
Accompanying the letter is
a 408-character cryptogram,
which, if solved,
promises to reveal more of
his sinister plans.
He urges the police to publish
the cipher in the newspapers
for all to read, and then
ends with a chilling vow to kill
again, and signs off with a
symbol that eerily resembles
the crosshairs of a gun scope.
And when the police don't
respond, he sends a second,
more detailed letter with
another cipher, and in this
one, the killer gives
himself a name, the zodiac.
The letter also contains
more details of the crimes,
convincing the police
that the author is their killer.
It seems all they need
to do is crack the code to
reveal his identity.
Desperate for help,
they appeal to the public
and publish the cipher in
the San Francisco chronicle.
Their plan works.
Within a week, a high
school teacher and his wife
ingeniously decipher the complex code,
disclosing a chilling message
that explains the zodiac's
demented purpose.
When I die, I will be reborn in
paradise, and all I have killed
will become my slaves.
But the code offers no more
clues to identify the culprit,
and they can only hope the killing stops.
Unfortunately, on September
27th, 1969, college students,
Cecelia Shepard and Bryan
hartnell, are picnicking along
the shore of scenic lake berryessa when
a stranger approaches.
I think someone's here.
Excuse me, can we help you?
The man tells the couple he's
a prison escapee, and he needs
money and their car to get to Mexico.
Thinking that this is just a robbery,
Cecelia and Bryan comply,
and he ties them up.
Then things take a terrible turn.
No!
Cecelia succumbs to her injuries,
but Bryan survives, yet
frustratingly, is unable to
give a description of the killer.
But the zodiac has left a
message on the couple's car
door, the dates and locations
of his previous attacks.
And the very next
month, he strikes again.
Paul Stein is a 29-year-old
San Francisco cab driver.
On October 11, 1969,
he picks up this man,
who asks to be taken to
presidio heights, but this is
no ordinary passenger.
Several blocks later,
the zodiac will kill Stein,
shooting him in the back of the head.
Within days, the San Francisco
chronicle receives a new letter
from the zodiac, taking
credit for Paul Stein's murder.
And to prove it, he
includes a hideous souvenir
from the attack,
a piece of Stein's bloodied shirt.
But there is one positive development.
For the first time, there
are multiple witnesses to one
of the killings.
They describe the zodiac as
a white male, approximately 25
to 30 years old, with a crew
cut and heavy rimmed glasses.
A nationwide apb goes out on the killer.
As tips pour in, the
police and FBI interview
over 2,500 suspects in
connection with the murders.
One of the most promising
suspects is Arthur Leigh Allen,
a resident from vallejo,
where those first murders
took place.
Allen's neighbor had seen
him pulling bloody knives from
the trunk of his car on the day
of the lake berryessa murder.
And, most shocking of all,
Allen even allegedly confesses
to a colleague that he is the zodiac.
But when confronted by
the police, Allen denies
everything and claims he was
joking about the confession.
And, as for the bloody
knives, he says that it was just
chicken's blood.
The investigators do note
an eerie coincidence, though.
Brand of watch is a zodiac,
its signature symbol exactly
matching the crosshairs
used to sign the killer's letters.
But after an intensive
investigation, with nothing
directly linking Allen to any of the crimes,
the police move on.
While the police desperately
search for suspects,
the killer's evil letters
continue, threatening bombs,
murders, even the slaughter of children.
And these letters also contain
three more codes to crack,
including one that the
zodiac outrageously claims
contains his name.
And the letters continue for
six long years, but nobody is
able to crack the code of their meaning.
Then comes 1974, the letters stop.
And just like that, the case turns ice cold,
but not closed. Far from it.
In the decades since,
professional and amateur
investigators alike have spent
untold hours puzzling over
the zodiac's three unsolved ciphers.
If they could just be
unraveled, this cruel madman
could at last be identified.
And now, it's finally happened.
One of the codes has been cracked.
For almost 60 years,
the identity of the zodiac
serial killer has remained a mystery.
But now, cutting-edge technology has
unraveled part of his blood-soaked riddle.
Software designer and cryptographer,
David oranchak used the latest
code-breaking techniques to try
to solve the ciphers.
The zodiac case was interesting
to me, not only because it was
one of the most famous
unsolved mysteries in the world,
but what really got
me interested in it was
the cryptography aspect of it.
He was sending these
mysterious codes to the newspapers
and taunting people with
these hidden messages.
And the fact that his first
cipher was solved led me to
think that it was possible to
solve the second message that
he had sent.
We leaned heavily on very
advanced computer programs that
would help us do a lot of the grunt work.
Thanks to advances in
technology, David and his team
tackle the zodiac killer's most
infamous unsolved puzzle,
the 340-character cipher.
The 340 he sent on one piece
of paper and one big block.
It's a mix of unusual
symbols, just like the 408 was,
but he threw in some new symbols.
There are a lot of times when
you're trying to break the code
where you start to see his
message coming through,
and you think, "this has
got to be from the killer."
It says, "killing."
It says, "murder." It says, "death."
It's from a serial killer.
But then you hit a brick
wall, because you can't get
the whole message out.
So I got used to failing until
the breakthrough happened.
After 14 years of relentless
effort, David and his team
finally crack one of the
world's most elusive codes
and immediately send
their breakthrough to the FBI.
The FBI responded to me within
minutes when I sent the report
and they were excited
because they believed that it was
the correct answer.
I hope you are having lots
of fun in trying to catch me.
I am not afraid of the gas
chamber, because it will send
me to paradise all the sooner,
because I now have enough
slaves to work for me,
where everyone else
has nothing.
I am not afraid because I
know that my life will be an easy
one in paradise death.
It really did feel like a
new message from zodiac,
even though he had written it
way back in November of 1969.
One down, two unsolved
zodiac ciphers to go.
And tantalizingly, zodiac
cruelly boasts that one of
these two uncracked codes
literally contains his name.
So, building from
oranchak's brilliant efforts,
we decided to roll up our sleeves and join
the community in trying to
solve the remaining ciphers.
And after countless hours
of work by my team and I,
we discovered something astounding.
If you reverse-engineer
the cipher for names of
the most infamous possible
suspects, substituting letters
for symbols, like, for example,
these eight symbols could
represent the letter I,
unscramble the letters,
and you discover that one
suspect's name fits just right.
A. Leigh Allen Arthur Leigh Allen.
The very same suspect who
the police spent the most time
investigating, the same suspect
who confessed to a coworker,
carried bloody knives, and
even wore a zodiac watch.
And remarkably, there's more.
People who knew Arthur Leigh
Allen confirmed that he had
a fascination with
ciphers from his days in
the U.S. Navy.
Plus, investigators
found he had a typewriter,
like the one used to write
some of the zodiac messages,
and he owned a pair of boots
with soles matching those worn
by the killer.
Of course, all of this
evidence is circumstantial,
and Arthur himself died in
1992, denying he was the killer
to the very end.
But when combined with this
possible code-crack and all of
the mounting evidence,
it leaves us to wonder,
could it be that america's
most infamous serial killer is
finally unmasked?
From the cryptic clues left
behind by a vicious murderer to
our next file, which reveals
another enigmatic puzzle,
one that takes us on
a dangerous hunt for
buried treasure.
The year is 2010, and I'm somewhere in
the rocky mountains.
I can't tell you the exact
location because, well,
it's a secret.
And behind me is the keeper
of that secret, 80-year-old
for rest fenn.
He's about to Bury a
treasure worth millions.
That chest he's carrying
is full of gold, diamonds,
rubies, and sapphires.
This millionaire art dealer
is going to set in motion
a modern-day treasure hunt.
What kind of man buries a
chest filled with treasure in
the middle of nowhere,
and then hopes someday
someone else will dig it up?
To properly tell this
puzzling tale, we need to start
at the beginning.
1930 in temple, Texas,
when for rest fenn is born.
From the start, for rest
seemed destined for adventure.
On family trips to yellow
stone national park,
he became an avid fly
Fisher and outdoors man.
Later, he joined the air force,
where he became a fighter
pilot, flying 328 combat missions.
After his military service,
for rest moves to Santa fe
and opens an art gallery.
This proves to be a very successful
and lucrative career.
He's on top of the world
until a routine doctor visit turns
that world upside down.
In 1988, at the age of 58,
for rest fenn is diagnosed with
terminal cancer.
After the shock wears off,
he decides to get his affairs in order.
But for rest isn't writing out
his last will and testament.
Instead, he's writing out
clues to a treasure hunt.
You know, as you do.
Before cancer gets the best of him,
he decides to have one last adventure.
He plans to fill a
treasure chest with gold,
jewels, and other valuables,
and then hide it in one of
his favorite outdoor places
before taking his own life.
But before he goes, he'll publish a poem,
giving clues that lead
to his final resting place.
Whoever finds his grave will
also find the treasure chest.
It's a death just as colorful as his life.
Like the man himself,
fenn's plan is creative,
audacious, and just a little off-center.
But then comes some
fortune he didn't plan for.
His terminal cancer miraculously goes
into remission.
Cancer-free and with a new
lease on life, he goes back to
his routine in Santa fe,
but his idea for the treasure
hunt never quite leaves him.
So 22 years later, at the age of 80,
he sets the game in motion.
In 2010, he heads back
to his favorite spot in nature
and hides his chest.
Then he publishes his
memoir, "the thrill of the chase."
In it, he writes a cryptic poem
that serves as a map containing
clues that will lead a clever
hunter directly to the prize.
Anyone that would go to these
lengths to create a treasure
hunt is a true original.
I found that out first-hand in 2015.
- You must be Josh.
- I'm Josh, yeah.
When I had the pleasure of
meeting for rest face to face.
Ok, so first question, for
rest, should be an easy one.
Where is the treasure hidden?
At least eight miles north
of Santa fe and below
- the Canadian border.
- Ok.
Still got a lot of ground there to cover.
Can you tell me why you
chose the place that you chose?
It's a place that I've visited a few times.
I have fond memories of that place.
Do you know how much
the treasure's worth?
No, I don't.
There are 20.2 pounds of
gold in the treasure chest.
There are 200 and some odd rubies.
There are two ceylon sapphires.
There are eight emeralds.
- There are lots of diamonds.
- What was your intention?
I had a number of reasons for doing it.
The primary was to get
people out in the sunshine again,
to smell the pine
needles in the mountains.
If you want to be a serious
searcher, my advice is look at
clues in the poem.
The treasure hunt is officially on.
And, like for rest said,
everything you need to find
his chest is contained in the poem.
It begins simply enough.
"As I have gone alone in there
and with my treasures bold,
"I can keep my secret
where, and hint of riches,
new and old."
But the clues in the poem get cryptic.
Begin it where warm
waters halt, and take it to
the canyon down. Not
far, but too far to walk.
Put him below the home of brown.
In all, the poem is 24 lines,
and gives nine clues to find
the buried treasure.
But fenn gives one more clue that isn't in
the poem the treasure
is hidden somewhere in
the rocky mountains.
That narrows it down to
roughly 300,000 square miles.
Not exactly a small playing field to find
a 10-inch bronze box.
In 2013, a series of news
stories brings the hunt
into the mainstream, and
thousands, like these guys,
get bit by the for rest fenn treasure bug.
At the height of the mania,
an estimated 350,000 people
are searching.
For most, the search ends
the same way, empty-handed.
But for a few, the adventure turns deadly.
Between July of 2016 and
march of 2021, five hunters perish
searching for fenn's gold.
The authorities ask for
rest to call off the hunt,
but fenn is torn.
He feels the good of the
hunt outweighs the danger,
and wants to keep going.
He lets people know that
the treasure is not a dangerous
location, and that anyone
who is mobile and relatively
fit can find it.
In nearly a decade, though,
since the game began,
no one has found the treasure.
Then, out of the blue, on
June 6, 2020, fenn posts
a message online. It's
short and to the point.
"The treasure has been found."
It appears the mystery
is over, but in many ways,
it's actually just beginning.
In 2010, eccentric art dealer
for rest fenn announces he has
hidden a treasure trove of
gold and jewels somewhere in
the rocky mountains.
Now, 10 years later, fenn
announces the treasure has
finally been found, but the
supposed discovery only
leads to more questions.
Peter frick-Wright is a journalist who has
investigated this story extensively.
When for rest announces that
the treasure has been found,
every searcher wanted to
know the same three things
who found it? Where was it?
What did all the clues mean?
And what you saw was
essentially the five stages
of grief. People are angry.
People are sad. People don't believe it.
There is a lot of just
resentment, animosity.
I mean, you could call it
jealousy, towards this person
who did the thing that tens
of thousands or hundreds of
thousands of people had been
trying to do for now 10 years.
To put some doubters' minds
at ease, fenn reveals photos of
the chest and even announces
the state the treasure is
discovered in
Wyoming.
Then, on September 7th,
2020, three months after
the search is declared over,
for rest fenn dies at the age of 90.
He lived to see his treasure hunt solved,
but with his passing,
the secret of who found it
seems to go with him to the grave.
Shortly after fenn dies,
an article appears online,
written by someone
claiming to be the one
who found the treasure.
I am the person who found
for rest fenn's treasure.
The moment it happened was
not the triumphant Hollywood ending
some surely envisioned.
It just felt like I had
just survived something,
something, and was fortunate
to come out the other end.
Not long after the finder speaks out,
the lawsuits start flying.
Another treasure hunter
accuses the finder of
stealing his leads.
The finder knows his real
name will come out in court,
so he decides to reveal his identity.
In December of 2020,
outside magazine publishes
an article titled, "the
man who found for rest"
"fenn's treasure," revealing that
the mysterious finder is a man
from Michigan named Jack stuef.
Stuef is a 32-year-old medical student.
He had heard about for rest
fenn's treasure hunt in 2018,
and went down a rabbit
hole, listening to, looking at,
reading everything that for
rest fenn had ever said that
he could find.
He figured out where
the treasure was pretty
much immediately.
But it took him 25 days of
boots-on-the-ground searching
over the course of two
years to actually find it.
Thousands of frustrated hunters
now know who found the treasure
and how he solved the puzzle.
But there is one last question
that Jack stubbornly refuses to
"answer exactly where did he find it?"
Fenn put this in the place
that he wanted to die.
So it was a special place to him.
And Jack wanted to protect that place.
So he said, "I am not going to
share where this was, kind of
no matter what."
To the searchers who've dedicated
years of their lives to
the hunt, the fact that Jack
won't reveal where he found
the treasure is frustrating to
say the least.
People are desperate to know
how close they may have been,
and everybody just wants closure.
And then they get it,
ironically, in the form of
another lawsuit.
This lawsuit was from a man
who accused for rest fenn of
repeatedly moving the treasure,
making it impossible to find.
It looked like Jack stuef was
going to be called to the stand
and forced to reveal the
exact location of where
he found the treasure.
But before this could
happen, an injunction to stop
his testimony came in
from a surprising source,
yellow stone national park.
And so what that told me
and what told the rest of
the hunting community was
for rest fenn hid the treasure
in yellow stone national park.
So it turns out the treasure
was in yellow stone after all.
They just wanted to keep
thousands of tourists from
damaging this pristine spot.
Two years after finding
the treasure, Jack, who is in
debt with medical school loans,
sells the bronze chest and all
the gold and jewels
inside to a private buyer for
an undisclosed sum.
That buyer then puts
it up for public auction,
netting 1.3 million dollars.
And so fenn's thrilling
chase has come to an end.
The mystery of the treasure's
location was in the end
revealed not through
fenn's poem but through
a series of lawsuits.
That's not the way for rest
fenn would have wanted it.
But inspiring thousands of folks to enjoy
the great outdoors?
Well, that's exactly
what for rest intended.
And hiding a chest full of
gold nuggets or yellow stones,
if you will, in yellow stone national park?
Well played, for rest fenn. Well played.
Our next file introduces us
to arguably the world's most
mysterious book, a Tome that's
been identified as everything
from a spy's secret code
to an occultist spell book,
even a message left behind
for us by extraterrestrials.
It's 1912, and I'm in Italy,
on the outskirts of Rome,
where a jesuit college is
selling off old manuscripts to
the highest bidder.
A Polish rare books dealer
named wilfred voynich is hoping
to score some ancient texts
that he can sell for a profit
in London, and today is his lucky day.
While rummaging, voynich
finds a strange book.
When he opens it, it's like traveling into
another universe.
It contains cryptic diagrams
and strange illustrations.
The book is written in an
unknown language that is so
mysterious that, for over
a century, it has defied all
attempts to translate it, and
its author remains unknown.
Now, researchers have uncovered
new clues that will help reveal
whose hands wrote the world's
most enigmatic book and what
secrets it contains.
Voynich is no amateur
when it comes to books.
He's dedicated his life
to buying and selling rare
and unusual texts, but even with all this
expertise, he still can't make
sense of this mysterious Tome.
The voynich manuscript is
relatively small, measuring
nine by six inches
and two inches thick,
with exactly 240 pages.
Each page is made of calfskin
parchment and is densely
covered in cryptic
looping script alongside
bizarre illustrations.
Depictions of strange plants
that don't match any known
species, peculiar scenes of
nude women bathing in pools,
even a six-panel foldout that
looks like the coolest board
game you've ever seen.
Though the artwork is vivid
and strange, it's the cryptic,
indecipherable script that
captures the most attention,
eventually becoming
known as voynichese.
I would love to have a secret
language named after me,
but gatesese doesn't
really roll off the tongue.
As for voynichese, I will say
that I have spent a fair amount
of time with this, and well, I'm stumped.
It really is as puzzling a text
as anything I've come across.
Luckily, voynich finds a clue.
Within the pages of the
book, he finds a letter, written in
Latin, that mentions the author
was possibly the 13th century
philosopher and alchemist Roger bacon.
Bacon is an interesting
guy, to put it lightly.
He's a franciscan friar by
day, and dabbler in forbidden
knowledge by night.
And he's really into
magic, and using ciphers to
encode texts.
Voynich decides that if bacon
is the author, then he has
his hands on a secret manual
of alchemy and magic, filled with
powerful and perhaps
forbidden formulas.
Voynich is also excited,
because that's something
he should be able to
sell for a significant sum.
With Europe being consumed
by world war I, voynich realizes
that if he wants to make
a sale, he needs to travel
somewhere safer.
With book in hand, he heads
to the land of opportunity,
the United States.
Once in america, he
opens a bookstore in.
New York City and tries
to attract wealthy collectors.
But he gets little
interest in this rare book,
because of course the text is unreadable.
So, in 1915, voynich departs
on a tour across america,
trying to woo top libraries
and museums, offering them
the book for a special,
but still expensive price.
While this nonstop promotion
makes the manuscript one of
the most famous books in
the world, voynich realizes
that without cracking the
code, he will be unable to
sell the book.
He knows whatever this book
is, he's got something special
on his hands.
But all of his efforts to publicize the book
unintentionally attract
a different audience.
After all, world war I is still
raging, and the authorities are
alerted to this suspicious foreigner.
In 1917, voynich gets
a knock on the door.
In walk the feds.
The bureau of investigation,
which would eventually become
the FBI, interrogate him,
concerned about why he has
an unreadable text and whether
he could have stolen American
codes or be distributing German ones.
Hand over the manuscript!
After turning his bookstore
inside out and going over
voynich's story with a fine-tooth comb,
the U.S. government concludes
voynich isn't a current threat
and doesn't possess
any enemy intelligence.
Although cleared by the government,
voynich unfortunately dies in
1930, having failed to unravel
the text of the manuscript or sell it.
But his constant promotion
has given the voynich manuscript
fame and allure.
Over the next several decades,
the greatest code breakers in
the world use increasingly
cutting edge technology to
decipher the manuscript.
But it remains a mystery.
Many believe the voynich
manuscript can't be cracked.
That is, until now.
Forrest fenn's treasure hunt
had modern day adventurers
channeling their inner
Indiana Jones, but fenn's chest,
as impressive as it was,
pales in comparison to one of
the biggest hidden treasures ever found,
the nuestra senora de atocha.
In 1985, after a 16-year search,
treasure hunter Mel Fisher
struck gold, literally,
off the coast of Florida.
The atocha, a Spanish
galleon lost in 1622,
carried a real-life pirates of
the Caribbean haul packed with
over $400 million in
gold, silver, and emeralds.
Fenn's hunt may have
sparked modern-day gold fever,
but the atocha is the
holy grail of treasure finds,
one that transformed Fisher,
an Indiana-born chicken farmer,
into one of the world's
greatest and wealthiest
treasure hunters.
The mystery of the voynich
manuscript has stumped scholars
for over a century.
Then, in 2009, a new revelation.
Researchers at the university
of Arizona carbon-tested
the calfskin pages, dating
them to 1404 to 1438 ad.
This means voynich's theory
of Roger bacon and a manual of
magic is off the table.
Unless bacon invented time
travel, too, there is no way
a 13th-century philosopher
could write on something from
the 15th century.
Now, a recent book published
by scholar Stephen Skinner could
reshape our understanding
of this enigmatic text.
For a long time, people
believed that whoever
wrote the book must have
been somebody of note.
But historian sami jarroush
has done an in-depth study of this
new theory.
Stephen Skinner, in his book,
posits a theory that the author
of this book is a Jewish
physician, a Jewish herbalist
living in northern Italy in the 1400s.
Here's why.
Skinner starts to take a closer
look at the visual aspects of
the book, all these drawings
of these bizarre plants,
and what might these drawings
have to do with the authorship
of this book.
When considering the images
in the book, some of the most
perplexing are the pictures
of the nude female bathers.
Skinner starts to put pieces
together, and he comes to
the conclusion that, wait,
these aren't just random
nude bathers that exist.
These baths are
what's called a "mikvah."
A mikvah is this ritualistic bathing
that is done by orthodox Jewish women.
Skinner goes on to posit
that the only person who would
really know about this
would be somebody from
a Jewish background. But there's more.
One of the other clues that
he sees is that in the book,
you have these sort of
ramparts that were very specific to
these castles.
These were only found
in parts of Italy around
the 15th century.
Now, in that region of Italy,
you have these towns in these
cities like pisa, for example,
which had a very large
Jewish population.
On top of that, he's also recognizing that
the indecipherable language
in the book, what's been labeled
as voynichese, and
he's thinking to himself,
"it could be a book that is
filled with a lot of medicinal
and medical knowledge."
This is a physician that understands
medicine, that understands
herbs, plants, so on
and so forth.
This is fascinating.
We have a Jewish doctor
from the 1400s living in Italy,
writing a book about medicine.
But the last question is,
"why the indecipherable code?"
So perhaps because the types
of plants that they're talking
about, or the types of herbs
or medicines that they're
talking about, might be
something that this particular
physician didn't want other
people to know or be familiar
with, perhaps this type of
writing is a sort of shorthand.
So in a sense, it's a way
to try to keep his secrets for
himself, so that potentially
this physician could stay ahead
of his competitors,
because they have this
potentially secret knowledge
that they've written down in
this book.
Interestingly enough,
soon after his new theory is
published, a pair of Canadian
computer scientists at
the artificial intelligence
lab at the university of alberta
claim to have solved the language part of
the voynich code.
They fed the text into
an AI trained to recognize
380 languages.
The AI's analysis of letter
frequencies suggested the text
was coded in alpha grams,
where letters are shuffled
and vowels are omitted.
Based on this, they
concluded that the text
was most likely written in
Hebrew, further supporting
this new theory.
When wilford voynich picked
up a dusty manuscript over 100
years ago, he couldn't have
predicted just how much this
one book would captivate the world.
The newest evidence
suggests the author of this
incomprehensible text was
not a magician, not a spy,
not an extraterrestrial,
or even voynich himself,
but rather a doctor.
This may simply be a medical
text, albeit a very exotic one.
But what does it actually say?
Well, today, the voynich manuscript rests
safely in a library at Yale.
The entire volume is also
digitized and available to
the public online.
Just waiting for the
next curious mind to try
and decipher the most
mysterious book in the world.
Good luck. I'm Josh gates.
Until next time, travel adventurously.