User:Igor the Lion/files

Blakeley Research Institute incident
On February 8, 2006, e-mails encrypted using the Vigenère cipher were sent from  to several students in the 9th grade classes in Pestalozzi Gymnasium, Munich. The owner of the account, Alex K., denied ever sending the letters. Upon decryption, the letters were found to contain a warning written by a certain "Jacob Glockenmeier", and were about the imminent abduction of a student, Tim D., by the mysterious Swiss Blakeley Research Institute. The letters said that a certain acquaintance of Tim bore a grudge against him and had paid the institute large sums of money to kidnap Tim and some of his classmates for ransom. This was supposed to happen on May 2, 2006. Over the course of several days, the student in question also received several SMSes from the above address, all bearing the code "Parsley and Turnips", which was the key for the letter.

The school authorities were informed of this letter incident, but dismissed it as a prank. The account used to send the letters was blocked and closed towards the end of February. The incident was widely regarded as a hoax, the culprit believed to be Alex K.

However, in the week of March 19, 2006, more emails were received, this time from , all bearing the tell-tale signs of being BCC letters. The person sending them, a certain Dr. Jacob Marcel, again used the Vigenère cipher to encrypt his missive, with a different key for each part, presumably for security. The second and fourth paragraphs were the first to be decrypted, on March 21 (with the seemingly nonsense key "kqaiyawikqeqc"); the former informed the students about changes in the kidnapping plan, which were to be revealed in the next (as of that date still enciphered) paragraph, and about the murder of officer James Gardner, the real name of Jacob Glockenmeier, by "secret agents" of the Institute; he was drowned in a river as he was found leaking information (probably to the students). It further stated that the mastermind, a Mr Charles Murray, no longer wished to hold the students for ransom and would use them for genetic experiments instead. Dr. Marcel allegedly tried to combat this "unethical" decision, but had no power over the other influential bodies who were in favor of the arrangement. The fourth paragraph is merely a farewell greeting to the students, and nothing more of importance is said other than the fact that Mr Gardner had attempted to send another warning through the address, but failed due to its being blocked. This puts the time of his murder after the end of February.

After some inquiries at WP:RD/M, the secret of the nonsense key was found. The nonsense key was in fact the master key encrypted using itself. Upon decryption with "Sine maleficio" (March 23), the first paragraph was found to contain instructions as to the decryption of the letter: the whole of the letter had been encrypted twice, with the exception of the middle paragraph, which was to be decrypted first using "parsley and turnips" and then with "sine maleficio". This revealed the said changes for the plan, namely, that the assault had been moved to April 28 of that year, and that the thirty veteran soldiers would be arriving in "spacious airplanes," and would "not be easy to miss." The names of the students to be taken were also given, along with the comforting promise that Dr. Marcel would secure their release upon arrival at B.R.I. Some of the students' names were misspelled (S[c]humacher, S[c]hopf).

Inquiries as to Messrs Gardner, Murray, Marcel, and the B.R.I. turned up nothing. Though there are no links to the B.R.I. on Google, it is possible that, being a "newly-founded institute" (in the words of Gardner), no websites have yet been made. The whole incident could be a hoax, but some users, upon questioning, think that the unusual persistence could prove otherwise. School authorities and police have yet to be informed.

Wikipedian similarities

 * None found, as of March 25, 2006

Keywords

 * Kqaiyawikqeqc (sinemaleficio * sinemaleficio)
 * Parsleyandturnips
 * Sinemaleficio ("without wrongdoing")