When a prisoner sent his sister a letter from his cell with a strange sequence of numbers on the back, police were naturally suspicious.
They feared Kieron Bryan, 23, was trying to get secret messages to those on the outside.
And, after hiring one of the world’s leading codebreakers to decipher the message, their hunch proved correct.
It helped expose Bryan as being responsible for shooting a strip club doorman.
Guilty: Kieron Bryan, left, was jailed for 25 years. His accomplice Dean Fleming, left, was given 11 years
Bryan, an aspiring rapper nicknamed Gunz, is now beginning a 25-year jail sentence after being convicted of attempted murder and possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life.
Manchester Crown Court heard that Bryan sent the letter while on remand after being arrested for the shooting of Abdou ‘Shaka’ Nyang, 36, in March last year.
Expert: Dr John Olsson cracked the coded message which proved Bryan's guilt beyond a doubt
In the letter, Bryan told his sister to ignore the mysterious sequence of digits on the back because they were just ‘number puzzles’.
But when the letter was intercepted by prison staff and handed to detectives they suspected there was more to it.
Police enlisted the help of forensic linguist Dr John Olsson, who, using a computer programme, managed to crack the code.
Bryan’s system used 23 random numbers in place of letters and substituted some letters for punctuation marks and other letters.
Dr Olsson painstakingly analysed 840 possible word combinations and isolated those which appeared most often.
The breakthrough came when he discovered that the sequence – 38, 9, 5, 10, 3, 5 – represented the word Please. The code revealed that Bryan was asking his sister to offer Mr Nyang a £15,000 bribe to drop the case. The message read: ‘Da task has to be completed by any means necessary please.
‘Task – statement from Shaka through independent solicitor saying the police made him pick me out in da ID parade by giving him a signal – I have already made contact with Shak’s bosses – they want fifteen K for da statement.’
Dr Olsson, who has worked on hundreds of cases for police around the world, told the trial: ‘The thought process behind the code shows someone who is very able, very intelligent, very skilful.’
The court heard that the shooting was the culmination of a feud which began when Mr Nyang accused Bryan of stealing £7,600 roulette winnings from him.
Mr Nyang acquired the keys to Bryan’s Porsche Cayenne and arranged for a friend to drive off with the vehicle as security for the missing cash.
Deciphered: Bryan's coded letter, which provided the key to the case when it was cracked
An angry Bryan put together a gang and days later, on March 2, they ambushed the victim at 7.30am outside his home in Blackley, North Manchester.
Mr Nyang, who worked on the door of a lap dancing bar, was shot in the chest and thigh with a 9mm handgun but survived because he had started wearing a bullet proof vest amid fears he could be targeted. Bryan was arrested after Mr Nyang went to police and picked him out at an identity parade.
Bryan of Moss Side, Manchester, was charged and, while on remand at Strangeways Prison in Manchester, sent the coded letter. He denied the charges but was convicted on Friday after a three-week trial.
His accomplice, Dean Fleming, 23, of St Albans, Hertfordshire, was convicted of causing grievous bodily harm with intent and possession of a firearm and was jailed for 11 years.
Two other men, Alvin Khumalo, 21, of St Albans, and Dane Bowen, 23, of Ladbroke Grove, West London, were cleared of attempted murder and firearms offences.
Vanity: After he was arrested, police discovered these pictures on Bryan's mobile phone of him posing with a 9mm pistol stuck in the waistband of his jeans
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