Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 245 - The Zodiac Killer - A Great American Rabbit Hole Part 1

Episode Date: April 6, 2024

In what might be our biggest topic we've tackled yet, Alex, Mike and Jesse begin the 4 part descent into one of the most mind bending true crime tales of all time.MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminatiSpecial thanks to our sponsors this episode -All you lovely people at HTTP://PATREON.COM/CHILLUMINATIPODJesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecoxAlex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/superbeardbrosEditor - DeanCutty http://www.twitter.com/deancuttyArt Commissioned by - http://www.mollyheadycarroll.comTheme - Matt Proft

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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to the Chulamani podcast, episode 244. As always, one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by the Charles Xavier and Blackagar Boltigan of L.A. I get to be Professor Axe. He can be Blackagar Boltingen. I'm BlackBolt. He's my favorite Marvel character. If you know, you know, and if you don't, yo, fucking don't. Okay, can you tell what we were talking about right before we started rolling?

Alex has some unique taste. No. The amount of love you spew for X-Men and then to come out of nowhere and be like, oh, yeah, but Black Agar Bolt again is my favorite. It's just like, what? Creations are the same guy. They're both excellent and awesome. So why didn't you enjoy X-Men V in humans, the event or whatever it was?

Because it was not good. It wasn't well-written. Anyway, hi everyone, listening. Hi, everyone. Alex is standing a character named Black Bolt Who's the real name is Blackigar Bolt again And that's the stupidest lazy He's not in love with him.

He's just good. He's not good. He's not good. This man has not read one single Inhumans comic book and he's trying to tell me Black Bolt is not good. That's why like, it's like saying my favorite fucking X Like a mutant is Toad. Toad from Ray Park.

Yeah. I actually, Ray Park, you know. Oh, he's sick. Yeah, you know what? I'm not going to fight. I'm actually not going to fight you on that. I love that. The best part of his character in the first one was when he

twirled the thing just like a double-bladed lightsaber. Right. Because he was, he was literally only known for that. Yeah. Doesn't Storm like strike him with lightning and then say some like, she says, you know what happens?

Yeah. Oh my God. One of the worst lines in movie history. What is it? Do you know what happens to a toad when it gets struck by lightning? And then she's like, same thing is everything else. It's the dumbest,

the dumbest line in movie history. Wolverine's like, what was that about? She's like, I had nothing. I'm sorry. Hallie Barry was doing like a weird accent with Storm. She kind of gave it up after like a movie or two.

100% gave it up. Yeah. Yeah. Thank God. Maybe she just lived in New York long enough that she kind of just assimilated. I don't know. Storm also, storm second place to Black Agarboltegon as baddest ass. I'm with you know, she's way cooler than Black Bolt.

Agreed. The episode one in X-Men 97 where she strikes sand with lightning and turns it to glass. It's just like. You need to read Al Ewing X-Men Red. You will lose your mind. Jesse, you should read that too. You will lose your mind. that is not the inhuman, so you won't have to clown on it.

It's just real good. Just like the stuff we put on our Patreon. Yeah, but I'm not going to do that because this is a very highly structured episode, you know. And so we're going to pretend like you didn't even say that. And I'm just going to jump right into my outline. So look, folks. I mean, I would have backed off. There's no warnings needed.

There's no warnings needed. Nobody gets a warning when this guy's coming around. Before we dive in, because it's going to be maybe the biggest topic we've done, certainly the one with the most involved people doing, research, including you being the lead, obviously doing a ton of it. We have Deanna in on this. I'm in on this. Jesse's just along for the ride.

I don't know what this is. Yeah, that's great. A shout out to R2R2 again on our subreddit for drawing Richard Vagina. Like the most amazing fucking like, it's like, I listen to the voice and then I look at the picture and I see it. You know what I mean? That's exactly like the kind of person I also pictured when you knew the voice was happening. I love that.

And that's on the subreddit, right? Yes. You can go see that at all. R slash Chulamati Pod. So look, folks, it's time for another enormous undertaking here on the show, a topic which has claimed many victims,

both in terms of actual human life lost and just... Our lives and books? People who have dedicated their lives to a mystery that is so deep and so perfectly exemplifies a lot of the types of problems that Americans romantically see in themselves today. It's kind of like a very symbol.

violent crime case, especially the types of Americans with the bravery to actually look back in the past and learn about who we are and internalize it and try and be better. But, you know, before we get into any of that, I'm just going to attempt to lay out this whole complicated structure again for everybody out there interested in exactly what wild strangeness it is I'm building to in 2024 because I have all this extra time that I spend doing my thing in my episodes. Or is the truth just exactly what just exactly what Bessie thinks it is, a bunch of meaningless noise by someone half clever who cares less about the big picture and more about staying in the spotlight.

Alex Fossiani. Or am I talking about the subject of today's episode perhaps. Oh, what? Oh, fuck! Anyway. I had the angry video game nerd theme song playing in my head. He's gonna kill you in the past. Dude, imagine an angry video game nerd version of a true crime YouTuber?

What would that even be like? There's probably a subreddit that has exactly that same tone. Anyway, yes, as you likely already know, because I have an annoying but meticulous habit of constantly recapping for everybody that I'm doing eight major episodes this year tied to eight different key phrases and all of them start with the letter H. There have been rumblings in the past about a mysterious episode H8, but really, what does it all mean? And can you use my keywords to help you predict what topics I'm covering next? H-8 helium on the periodic table or something. No. First, there was hidden about defense contractors hiding UFO technology in plain sight.

That was hidden. Then there was heavyweights covering some of the strangest mysteries in the history of the WWE. Third, it was horse, which was a reference to the giant blue demon horse in front of the bizarrely cryptic and like kind of chill vibes cryptic Denver airport. Yeah, that's a fun one. Up now. Now this is the last one we did, we got three chunky, episodes on the mystical and psychedelic aspects of dreams, courtesy of our ever-present and very, very cool-headed overlords, the Shlubinati. And thanks for Pat for being there. Yeah, shout-outs to Pat.

And with this being the fifth episode in the sequence, we have crossed the halfway point with the keyword, hello, which is now revealed to be my very special multi-part mini-series on the Zodiac Killer, which I'm officially calling Zodiac, the Great American Rabbit Hole. I'm going to go ahead and put on paper. We solved it. We did not solve it. Somebody, we're just going to like point at somebody who I think solved it. And before we get any more distracted by that, same thing.

Yeah. The other three remaining keywords in the list are huge, him again, and hero. Huge, him again and hero. Write them down. Discuss them on the subreddit that I was talking about earlier. Yeah. Guess what else I'm going to do episodes on and what this is all leading to now that I figured it all out?

What topic are, do you think he's going to be? revisiting for him again. Right? I don't know. Who knows? It's JFK. Probably think about that later, though, because right now it is episode time. To begin, this is a quick disclaimer that even though I'm just an internet guy talking about some incredibly famous cultural and historical events with the expertise of a comedian, and it has certainly already been covered better and more thoroughly elsewhere, wrong facts will only ever be repeated accidentally and with the best intentions. Also, I don't usually do serial killers. That's one thing I want to say. That's more Mathis's thing. As you'll soon see, this one is a little different.

Nevertheless, graphic depictions of violence and cruelty lie ahead. Scoot the little ones out of the room for this one. And before I forget, you can bet that each one of us is going to display some serious insensitivity about these topics at one point or another throughout. So apologies for that in advance. We mean no harm. And just like always, more than anything, we promise we're working our hardest to try and put on the best show possible for all you kind folks out there listening.

That sounds scripted, dude. I don't know. You know, maybe let the kid stay in on an episode. and if he starts looking like he's having too much fun, take him to a doctor. Yeah. It could be a warning sign. It could be like canary in the coal mine,

catch your serial killer early. And speaking of catching your serial killer early, because you wouldn't be able to do, we wouldn't be able to do big giant episodes like this without listeners like you over at patreon.com slash Tulumati pod. We let one lucky fan write today's Patreon ad. That's right.

In a new segment, we're calling the Patreon advertisement of the week. This one comes from somebody, called, let's see here, Taral Cabot from somewhere near Vallejo, California, and now Jesse's going to read this for everybody right now.

Dear Editor, I am the patron of that one subscription last Christmas at patreon.com slash Chulomotipad, and

the one last fourth of July. To prove this, I shall state some facts which only the police know. Christmas, period. One access to Discord and add free episodes. I'm already committed. I realize now what Alex is done, but I'm already committed to the bit, and I can't back out now. We're in. We're in.

I'm here for this ride. Two bonus episode fired every time a new to Luminati episode drops. Free! Video episodes are great for watching on your back with feet to car. Four unreleased episodes of rotten popcorn pod great for lying on right side feet to west. Fourth of July, one girl was wearing a new piece of Tulumanati merch. I don't like what this is. I don't like what's going on here.

A little weirder and we're weirder. Every time we release one. Two, Boy, was also shot $10,000 to believe in ghosts or aliens. Three, ammo was made by Western. Here is a cyphor. The other parts are being mailed to other parts of the miniseries. I want these edited in by deed by sat afternoon. If you do not include this cypher, I will go on a shill rampant.

sat night. This will last the whole weekend. I will cruise around shilling to people who are alone at night until some... Why do I have to do this? Sunday night. Or until I shill to a dozen people.

You could be done with this if you hadn't made this very specific... You know what? I'm aware. I'm aware. Then there's a symbol of some kind that I can't decipher, all caps. But I'm... I'd say it was wrought, all caps, by a true visionary all caps.

Now play close attention to this next part, because it has to be exactly right. T, Y, R S, F, V, C, T, Z, Y, K, H, I, P, G, Q, D, K, D, Z, O, Z, Z, Z, O, Z, O, Z. Oh, wait, O, Z, Z, Z, Z. Read that last part one more time for everybody. Tricks if it's... You want me to letter by... Yeah, just one time through again, just for everybody. T-Y-R, S-F-E, C-T, Z-Y-Q, D-H-I-P-G-Q, I-P-D-O-Z-Z-Z-Z.

Oops, and yep, sorry about that. I've just now received word in my earpiece that after several complaints, the Patreon advertisement of the week's segment has now been canceled until first notice. And I guess I'll just keep doing all of the shilling myself. Anyway, now that that's all out of the way, come with me in your mind. Failure. I was set up for failure and I don't like it. Come with me in your mind. I'm serious. Like, close your eyes even while you listen to this. Use the dream techniques. You think Alex is the Chiluminati? You think those people aren't real and he's actually them? I'm starting to think you might be. I'm starting to think you might be right.

I don't think, I don't think there is a most chill one. I don't know. I don't know. about that. I don't know. I feel like he's making it up. I'm pretty sure I have the letters, so I'm not, I'm getting the letters from somewhere. Yeah. Not the AI. Close your eyes. Use your, you use the dream techniques that we flirted with last time. Use them to literally try astro project yourself to the long stretches of the highway in an area of quiet, open. Northern California. This place is called Cordelia, okay? It's Cordelia. It is named after the wife of the clipper ship captain who founded it. And nowadays, it is not known for much more than a spot where two freeways meet on the road to Sacramento or Lake Tahoe. And it's also known for being haunted by a very particular

type of ghost. Okay. And this is Mathis with a quote from an archived post in Archive X, which is an old online repository for ghost stories, which was by user Alex Breitler from like 2007 at the absolute latest. So here you go. Read this first. The Phantom of Cordelia. It is said that the ghost of a now probably dead mass murderer haunts the lonely roads in the area, tailgating women on moonless nights and his Chevy. Also, it is believed that on cold December nights, the killings are reenacted as they occurred so long ago. Nobody knows who the killer was, but many say they have seen that ghastly car on the roads, hunting for yet more victims. A stocky man is behind the wheel, glasses reflecting in oncoming headlights like snake eyes,

and he is doomed to roam the deserted back roads of Solano County for all time, for it is on those same roads that he committed his worst atrocities. And if you are alone in that area late at night and you pick up a tail, maybe a white car, maybe flashing its high beams at you, whatever you do, do not stop. Pretty interesting stuff. And really, if you think about ghosts as entities that stick around even after they're dead and gone because they have unfinished business, maybe that is exactly what. what the Zodiac, who this post is obviously about, maybe that's exactly what he is.

Or maybe, to be more accurate than that, it is about the ghost of Zodiac. And maybe if you have enough unfinished business, somebody like Zodiac can leave lots of different phantoms behind. I'm going to put quotes around, phantoms, which when you make a splash into the cultural mindset as big as he did, even though no one knows who you are, nobody ever figured out who this was. so many different types of people have their own weird guess. And somehow it kind of makes sense altogether. So this mini-series, Zodiac, the Great American Rabbit Hole, whose first chapter, which is called The Five Phantoms,

will be diving into today, is based on my own experience during COVID. When I was watching the movie Zodiac for the first time in a couple of years, and I got fully swept him to mystery because I was like, I wonder, like, the thought was like, what has happened since the movie ended? Because the movie's now, like, 15 years old. And I was totally gobsmacked by a pair of books that recently were published on the matter by a writer-journalist guy called Jarrett Kobach, a person I'd really love to interview.

There's some way to contact this man. And the sort of stunning way he was able to re-contextualize and refresh the whole vibes surrounding this case for me. It's pretty cool. However, first, for the sake of cultural rather than just factual accuracy, which is a distinction that we can talk about further in due time. This story is going to be told in three separate parts. So today, starting today in part one, we're going to begin by discussing the Zodiac killer as he exists in the zeitgeist now, like the popular image of this, like the popular story of the Zodiac killer that everybody knows.

We're going to like kind of dive deep into that story. We're going to use the, again, incredible David Fincher movie, which I think is like a masterpiece movie. It's just called Zodiac. And the book that inspired it, which is. is also called Zodiac by Robert Graysmith, who was a cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle at one point, and it became like a true crime writer and is actually Jake Gyllenhaal's character in the movie. So this first part is where we're going to establish our basic timeline for these

crimes and just the entire Zodiac event and go over the-zodont foundation, if you will. Yeah, and we're going to go over the crimes as they happened according to popular understanding and specifically without any of the knowledge of any further discoveries made in the case, since this sort of, 1986 version of this, that's the main version that everybody knows, just sort of like crystallized for a while. Okay, so that's going to be like part one. That's going to probably be this week and next week.

And then once you're all experts, in part two, we're going to cross-examine that story with the help of the first book that Jared Kobich wrote on the topic, which is called Motor Spirit, which is the book that he meant to write about this, as well as additional research, as Mathis said, undertaken by myself and our in-house researcher and, like, very good friend, Deanna, who I've now worked with now like two or three times.

Always a pleasure. And as Mathis often says, she's completely indispensable. Shout out Deanna at Deanna writes, Inc. on Twitter, aka X, aka Living Digital Hell. cobeck's book is a particularly great read because not only does he write with like an ear for like good writing like beautiful writing uh but he also like

revisits the timeline that graysmith established reframes it takes all the information that was available goes back to the police reports and the newspaper articles and the actual primary sources starts with like no assumptions fresh late and it recontextualizes a lot of stuff and i think that the fact that he has this sort of like intuitive human thinking that Graysmith doesn't really have. Grace Smith seems to kind of be writing more towards some kind of like, he kind of picked a suspect and kind of like wrapped his whole story around that.

And he was maybe a little bit, because of that was kind of willing to kind of like distort things a little bit more. That's later because right now we need to learn that distorted version. So now it's time for part one, which is called the Five Phantoms. It's mostly factual. I try to keep it. I'm not like going to lie to you straight up.

I'm going to keep it as accurate as possible while telling you something close to the story that everybody knows already. So part one, the five phantoms. Let's go right back to Northern California's backroads one more time, but this time we're also going to be going 60 years back in time to December 20th, 1968. It's 1115 p.m. at the Benicia water pumping station in a small gravel turnout near gate number 10 on the Lake Herman Road,

which is about 3.2 miles south of Columbus Parkway. And by the way, if you have never heard a single thing about Zodiac before, buckle your ass up because this is about to be fucking wild bro. Yeah. If this is your intro, you're going to probably lose a month of your life just trying to figure it out on your own. Yeah.

This is your warning. Anyway, this little turnout by the pumping station was a popular lover's lane at the time because of its remoteness and because you could only comfortable, you could only really fit like three or four cars in there without it getting overcrowded. So it's kind of like low key. If you look at a picture, but it's very small. It was also a popular meeting place for shady groups of teenagers,

which is probably what Petit, quiet little Stella Borges, thought as she drove from her ranch down the road to pick up her grandson at Benicia High School, and her headlights lit up the scene that she arrived at the turnout. At first, she saw the Rambler parked there with its door open and thought that the man lying on the ground was drunk, and had fallen out of his car or something and gotten hurt.

But then, closer to the road by the yellow street sign, she noticed the body of 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen, who was a student at Hogan High School in Vallejo, California, who had been out on a date with the guy over by the car, who was a 17-year-old from Vallejo High School, nearby high school, called David Faraday. Earlier that night, around 8 p.m., David had picked up Betty Lou from her parents' house,

allegedly to go see a Christmas concert at her school. however, that's pretty late for a concert. And what actually happens is they swing by their friend Sharon's house for an hour to like nine. And then headed over to this place, Mr. Ed's after that, to grab a soda. It's kind of like Happy Days vibes if you're trying to imagine it. But it's like the 60s. It's a little after Happy Day's vibes. According to two passing raccoon hunters who were driving past the turnout at around 930,

unbeknownst to Betty Lou and David, there was already someone parked at their makeout spot in a car that looked like a Chevy Impala around 930. However, according to the person in that Chevy who was there, those people were chased away by a second car, which looked like a Plymouth Valiant that chases them for several miles after. They like chases them out of the parking lot and then follows them for several miles. And then like the guy like gives up or misses a turn or something. David and Betty Lou never see any of this. They get there 45 minutes later, 10, 15. A couple people saw this car parked there alone. one witness named Peggy Yower or Yore said she saw them around 11 out in front of the car.

So they were there for 45 minutes. They got out of the car at some point. Ten minutes later, a worker at Humble Oil sees them passing in a truck. And another car is also there parked to the turnout with nobody outside of their cars. So that's at like 1110. And then five minutes later, in comes Stella, who saw all the blood. and who immediately drives off to find help. And thanks to that timeline,

we know whatever violence happens here fits right in those five minutes between the oil man seeing them and Stella finding them. So it's a quick moment. A quick hit and run. To underline this point, when the police arrive moments later, the car is still running. All doors besides the front one are locked.

This is a dark road, rural road in California. If you know what that's like, it's probably the only lights in the area are these headlights. All doors besides the front door are locked. There's a 22 caliber shell casing on the floor of the passenger side of the car. One ricochet mark on the inside ceiling. There's a bullet hole in the left rear wheel housing and the rear right window is shattered.

They find eight more casings at the scene, seven slugs. And around the car, going around it on the passenger side, they found very, very light footprints. And then like one other pretty deep footprint, but it was on the other. side of a locked gate, so like probably not involved. The bullets themselves are thought to be from a 22 caliber J.C. Higgins model 80 or high standard model 101, which if you look them up, are very like lugery looking guns. With Super X copper-coated long rifle ammo made by Winchester. Betty Lou is facing the road.

Five bullet wounds in her back as if she was killed running towards the road. Probably trying to flag down help or something. she was pronounced dead at the scene Faraday is on the ground by the car face down he's like he almost opened the door and fell out of it with a single gunshot wound into the back of his head a lump on his right cheek powder burns behind his left ear

he was still breathing when he left the scene in an ambulance but he was pronounced dead at the hospital five minutes after midnight on December 21st the next day that's pretty much all there is to say about this part of the case for now since taken on its own even though this is likely the first in a series of sensationalized crimes.

At the time, it didn't really seem that different from your average senseless act of violence, maybe a jealous boyfriend or whatever. But just to give you an idea of the vibe at the time, here's a quote from Grace Smith's book for Jesse to read. I'm going to just drop them in the chat for you right now. The victim's last day was exactly reconstructed minute by minute. 34 detailed statements were taken. The family and friends of Betty Lou and David were question.

as well as the routine local suspects. Among other possibilities, there were 290 registrants from Napa State Hospital for the insane living in the area. From Betty Lou's family, the police learned that there was a lovesick boy who had been bugging her at school and who had threatened David. I'm thinking about using brass knuckles on you. They also suspected this boy might have been the one prowling about the yard at night. The police passed this information on to an investigator who discovered the suspect had an airtight alibi. After his sister's birthday party, the boy watched Global Affair on TV until 11 in the company of a Mare Island policeman. Leeds from the public were followed up, but there seemed to be no motive to the brutal slings outside of killing for the sheer joy of it.

The police could find no attempt at robbery or sexual molestation of the victims. perhaps the killing itself had served as a sexual release for the murderer. Later, of course, we find that this killer had much bigger things in mind. And from now on is when we get into the kind of like much more canonized part of the Zodiac story. Like the first murder that we just talked about is not in the movie at all. Just referenced. The movie actually starts with this one. This one is the one that has lots and lots of details and stuff.

Many of you out there may already know or at least familiar with thanks to the movie. again, we're going to lay these out as faithfully too popular understanding as possible before we start dismantling, questioning everything. Because I think for the new info to really hit, you kind of need to be familiar with what the popular thinking on it is out there in the world. Because kind of like JFK or whatever, a lot of people care about it and have their pet theories about it and things have become kind of like politicized around it in the world of internet sleuthing.

So I kind of want to like arm you with some foreign knowledge. What does that mean exactly? just like there's like a lot of like toxicity and stuff out there amongst investigators of this who are like on the r zodiac killer subreddit and stuff they you know certain people feel about one theory it's like it's like a fandom versus like the console wars of true it's exactly the same vibe as like keeping of the zodiac killer yeah no jokes it's like exactly the same thing as like people arguing about like stephen moffat versus chris chibnall versus people still think the menendez brothers are innocent there's always like

like people. Right. But okay. All right. It's interesting. I don't know why there'd be like, no. This is no. You're,

this is incorrect facts. What you're saying here. What you're talking about right now, like the thing, the incredulity that you're showing right now is like, exactly like the like if I was like a like a journalist pitching this to a newspaper, that's like the angle that we're going with. Um,

yeah. So yeah, just people, it's like politicized. Like I say, uh, so to me, having this in your bat.

belt or whatever, this version, even though it's not fully accurate 100%, it's kind of like neutral ground. Like, as weird as that is, like knowing this story kind of like arms you to have a conversation. So that's why I'm doing this. Anyway, almost eight months pass after that first crime. And now back in imaginary old-timey Northern California, it is now midnight between July 4th and July 5th, 1969, literally midnight in the parking lot of the Blue Rock Springs golf course, still, a very quiet, remote place to be at that time of night, only a couple of miles away from the Lake Herman Road turnout where Betty, Lou, and David were shot last Christmas.

Just a couple miles. Now, in the days before the internet, one thing that teenagers used to do, and which in my heart, I wish some people still do today. I hope somebody's doing this, because other than getting murdered or profiled by the cops or whatever's going to happen while you're out, this is an awesome thing to do.

pile into a car, cruise around town for shits and giggles, parking in private places to do private things, cultivate a budding sense of independence for yourself as a youth, learn how to, you know, be out, go be a human. Right,

but have you heard of chat rooms? They're fine, but you don't go anywhere. They're fine, but you don't go anywhere. I'm pretty sure that's the point. I know. Because if you don't go anywhere,

you can't be brutally murdered by like a dude in the middle of the night. Odds are you're going to make it. But that's kind of part of the lesson. I, that's kind of hard. You're going to make it. To be fair, Jesse, you could be talking to somebody who will murder you in the talk in the chat room. That never happens. Yeah, I bet you I'm never going to do.

AISL is always legit, dude. That's true. Every time. It's the same law that cops have to tell you their cops. Yeah, you have to tell us. Yeah. Yeah. And wouldn't you know it?

Cruising is exactly what Deborah, Roger and Jerry were doing up late after all the 4th of July festivities. And they were pulling into the Blue Rock Springs lot because since it, It too was a popular place for kids to go to be alone. They thought it might be a good place to find Rogers' friend, since they did not yet have cell phones at this time in history, and since she was a teenager just like them, they figured the best way to see if she was there was to just literally get in the car, all of them, drive to where they thought she may be and see if she was there.

Isn't that crazy? Unfortunately, what they find isn't their mysterious friend. But another unlucky couple who ran into some evil out on the road that night and got shot up for it. 22-year-old Darlene Farron, who lives in Vallejo and works at Terry's Waffle Shop in town, is slumped over the steering wheel in the front seat of the car, while 19-year-old Mike Mijot, who regularly fought with his twin brother, Stephen, for Darlene's affection, and talked to her on the phone at home almost twice a day, is on the ground in front of the car, covered in blood and writhing in pain.

The three teenagers, who are not even suspicious enough to be asked their last names by the cops, apparently, are too scared to stay away, like, to, they don't want to stay because they think maybe like the guys who got Mike and Darlene are like around. So they all get together back in the car

and they go get the police because they're afraid. So months earlier, back on February 26th, and again, remember, this is the midnight of after 4th of July. back on February 26th, Darlene,

who I should mention lives and has a daughter with her current husband, Dean Farren, in a house on Wallace Street in Vallejo, was working at the Waffle Shop, while her babysitter Karen looked after her daughter,

Dina, at home. And funnily enough, that Karen eventually grew up into a real kid. I'm just kidding. Just the right time. Just the right time period. Anyway,

apparently, Karen notices that some weird man seems to be staking out the house that day, February 26th. But according to Karen, when she brings it up to Darlene Darlene kind of laughs it off, makes an offhand remark that it's fine

and she says something like, it's only because she says something like, it's only because I saw him kill somebody once, don't worry about it. And she was like, what the fuck? It's not even clear whether she was being serious or what with that remark. Yeah, still. A little more about Darlene, since it's starting to seem a little

weird maybe, is that she used to be called Darlene Suenen. And even though she's only 22 at the time of her murder, she already had one marriage with a guy named Jim, who she may have spent some time beach bumming her way around the Virgin Islands with and like seeing some shit. She seems to have lived several little lives all over the country before finally landing back in Vallejo. And though I don't want to like pour fuel on the like, she's a ho fire, because I don't think that's what this is. I do know and want to just acknowledge that she kind of had a less conventional relationship with men in her life.

and while she was married and dating two twin brothers, allegedly among others, including several cops, she really was just like a bright light of a girl who loved a good time, seemingly in all things, fully had the blessing or whatever passed as the blessing in 1969 of her husband, Dean, who also worked at a restaurant in town called Caesars, by the way. Dean did not have anything bad to say about Darlene at all.

So I'm just taking my Robert Greysmith mask off for a second to just say, please don't jump to conclusions about her. Nothing really like, nobody's like she's a ho. Like literally no one in this story who knew her says anything like that. I just want to point out again, reminder, if this was John Smith doing the exact same things, we would not be having discussion of if someone's a ho. So just put that out there's nice, there's nice good people everywhere, if you're a little more open minded. Anyway, a month after Karen sees Darleen's casual murder stalker guy person, February 26th,

this is a month later. Darlene's sister Pam notices a guy, she's a big family. Darlene's sister Pam notices a guy leaving packages on Darlene's porch one at a time over the day on March 15th. The third time he comes to drop off a package, she meets him at the door to grab it and he gives it to her. But he says not to open any of the packages, which is like a weird thing to say. Though apparently one of these packages, according to some sources, did end up containing some of the floral fabric she was eventually made into the dress she was wearing that

night that she was killed. So that's a weird coincidence. I don't know if that's relevant, but this weird guy dropped off this package and in that package was the material that she used to make the dress that she was wearing when she was killed. So the implication is like,

make this dress, wear this dress, I'm going to kill you in this dress. It's like his vibe is what you're saying? Part of the problem with this book is that like, there's a lot of stuff like this in here where it's like, you know, I'm not going to, you know, thrown out there.

It's weird. Even more complicated. It was more ritualistic. He doesn't, like, draw any sort of conclusion from this. Like, there's a little bit of threads that he, like, spins out of it to, like, kind of suggest things maybe about this guy. He nudges you in a particular direction. Sometimes, sometimes about certain things.

But a lot of the stuff is just kind of vague and kind of like, just, I feel like it's there to make you paranoid. I don't know. Yeah. Because it doesn't, like, it doesn't really all stack up to anything, you know? I don't know. And that's part of, like, the mythification of, like, serial killers. some authors do. Absolutely.

So that happens in March. Not just authors, podcasters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. You're certainly. Uh, media. Anyway, after March 15th, almost two months later on May 9th, Darlene and Dean move from their house on Wallace Street to a new house on Virginia Street. And a few weeks later, on the 24th of May, Darlene has a painting party at our new house with a bunch of friends, some of which are actually local Valleo cops,

but one of the ones who's not a cop is a memorable, strange character who several people call Paul without a last name and who Darlene's sister Linda remembers Darlene warning her to stay away from. Stay away from Paul. That's what Darlene told Linda. One month later, after that, on June 22nd,

Linda, one of Darlene's sisters, is at Terry's Waffle Shop and sees Darlene being buying bothered by someone while she's working, though she's not sure who it is. Two days later, Darlene tells her younger, like an even younger sister called Christina that some big things are going to be happening soon, but that she can't tell her what and that she's going to have to read about it in the newspaper, but she doesn't want to say what it is. And now we've caught up to the day of the murder, July 4th.

At 6.30 p.m., Dean's boss at Caesars says Darlene and her youngest sister Christina came in to Caesars to see Dean on their way to a 4th of July boat parade at nearby Mayor Island, where there's a huge naval shipyard. So they wanted to go see like a 4th of July boat deal down there. Dean says he gets off at 10, wants to have a party at home after work with a couple friends, like kickback vibes. So Darlene says she's in and that she'll grab the fireworks on the way home, yada, yada, yada.

15 minutes later, she stops by the waffle shop to tell her friend Bobby about the party and then she heads out. So now we're like close to 7 p.m. At 8 o'clock, she calls Mike to make a plan to see him later, Mike Mujo, her boyfriend. At 1015, she calls the babysitter, who isn't Karen this time, but another babysitter called Janet to check in on her daughter. Janet says that someone's been calling the house asking for Darlene. 15 minutes later, at 10.30, she returns to the Waffle Shop with Christina, who notices that someone in the restaurant is watching Darlene, but for some reason she doesn't want to worry Darlene, it doesn't tell her about it. After that, Darlene drives home with Christina.

But after taking a phone call in the other room, she comes back out and asks Janet if she can stay till 12, 15, because she still needs to get the fireworks. So that's a weird thing that happens. But now we're after midnight on the babysitter. And she heads out at 1155 and goes and picks up Mike Mijot at his house. And he's so excited that he leaves without turning off the light, or the TV or shooting the door to his house, which maybe was just chill to do at that time. I'm not sure.

Maybe they just felt safe doing that, but that's the vibe. And they were allegedly, briefly and scarily followed by someone who was parked under a tree just outside Mike's house before speeding up, taking turns, losing the tail. That's another thing that happened. That night. And after driving a bit more to make sure that he was gone, Darlene, who was the driver, nervously turned into the Blue Rock Springs lot. maybe they were already headed there.

Graysmith in the book says he thinks they were being, quote, herded there. Don't know. It's kind of a bold claim to make. Again, yeah, it's another one of those nudging you in a direction. Either way, according to Mike at this point, a car pulls up next to them, parks off to their left,

makes them nervous because the guy's just kind of like robo style, before speeding off seconds later. And that kind of like chills them out. first. But then five minutes later, the fear becomes creeping back because they realized the car that left earlier now has pulled up right behind them, or some car has pulled up right behind them, cutting off their escape route. And the driver has a flashlight that is so bright that they can't like see really. Like it's a bright light behind them in the car. In fact, the light makes them so nervous, they actually got their IDs out because the way the car pulled up and blasted on them

like that, they thought it might be the cops. Legit. Mike rolls down the window to speak to somebody he believes to be a police officer. And immediately, he's shot in the face, which shreds his jaw and his tongue. And then this dude who shoots him in the face just keeps shooting. And some of the bullets that are hitting Mike are also going through Mike's body and into Darlene's body.

And eventually, Mike stretches his body up in pain and kind of tries to get away from it and goes over the seat and lands in the backseat on the ground. And after this, the shooter thinks he's done and goes to leave, but Mike is like, ah, he like comes online and starts feeling pain.

So the shooter comes back, shoots each of them two more times before getting in his car and driving away. At some point, Mike says one of them tries flagging down help by flashing the headlights, but to give you an idea of how fucked up he was, he couldn't even remember if it was him or Darlene who did that.

Yeah. Your brain is at that point just fucking firing every chemical to keep you alive. Also, according to him, the door handle was missing when he tried to get out of the car, and he ends up having to wriggle out the window to get out of the car. Though strangely, when the car is brought in later for analysis, the handle seemingly replaced, which is something that Graysmith puts in there to make you think that, like, the cops could be involved somehow.

He doesn't straight up say it. He just kind of like, is like, she was having sex with cops and there's cops. It's just weird. Rather than assuming that maybe a guy with actual. brain damage remembering something wrong could happen. Like maybe there was a handle and just... Traumatized mind and just misremembering. For nothing and didn't, his brain didn't

recognize the handle or just grabbed a part of the door that he was unfamiliar with. I don't know. Anyway, when the real police arrive, it's one of the guys from the painting party responding to a call about gunshots. But considering it's the 4th of July, he's thinking it's going to be some like firecrackers that are

being reported as gunshots. He's wrong about that. Somehow both Darlene and Mike are still alive when they show up, but they're in a bad way. There's lots of blood everywhere, and they do not seem to be doing, like, very good at all. They're running out of time. The car has both windows rolled down. The engine is running. The radio is on, and the car is in low with no handbrake on, and there are 11 shell casings found at the scene. Darlene has been shot nine times, twice in each arm, five in her right side, piercing her lung and left ventricle. Mike has four

gunshot wounds, one in his knee, one in his hip, one in his neck, and one that went through the left cheek and out the right that shredded his mouth up. And you can look at him in an interview in 2007 and he's still fucked up. I think he's dead now, but at the time, there's a, there's a documentary online that's called, This is the Zodiac speaking. That's like all like primary sources. Not primary, but like people who were there, well, I guess primary, but they're talking about after the fact.

Darlene was witnessed by an officer on the scene, trying to speak. But she couldn't breathe because your lungs were too punctured and she was making no sound. and she's pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital, 12.38 a.m. But miraculously, Mike actually pulls through, though, like I said, not without life-altering injuries, both mental and physical, that stay with him for the rest of his life. Two minutes later, after they get it to the hospital at 12, 1238, at 1240 from a payphone near Joe's Union on Springs Road in town, which is less than half a mile away from Dean and Darlene's house. Don't know.

Yeah, came from a man whose calm collected voice and long-taunting pronunciation of goodbye. Scared the shit out of police dispenser Nancy Slover. And here's Mathis with a dramatic reading of the transcript. 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. They were shot with a 9mm luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye.

I traced the call and tried to ring back, which got them a physical description when someone saw him take the receiver back off the hook. But by the time they got there, all they found was a receiver hanging off the hook. Here, Graysmith takes a moment in his version of the story to let everything breathe for a minute. Like a moment in a sci-fi movie when the scientists realized the AI is smarter than they realize and it's going to kill them or something. We're on their way there in real life. Yeah. And then he lets the terror and the implications and the question of the not Zodiac himself sink in. The moment is admittedly quite dramatic.

They find Mike's house empty, just how they left it with the door open and the TV blaring and the lights on. Then the 4th of July kickback that's still going at a Dean and Darlene's house long after they're dead, gets a 1.30 a.m. call with heavy breathing on the other end of the line, hours before the crime is reported with the public. They didn't know she was dead. They thought it was one of Darleen's boy. friends trying not to get caught by her husband. That's why he was not talking. A few minutes later, Dean's parents get the same call. Then Dean's brother. Darlene's parents had an unlisted

number and did not get a call. Just saying. The police investigates plenty of suspects, but it never really goes anywhere. Mike moved into a second floor apartment. He called his hideout, died his hair red, only left the house when his dad would drive him back and forth for treatment of his injuries, which some people actually use as evidence in saying that he knew the killer. But again, Gray Smith just kind of wilded. And here, folks, we meet the first of our five phantoms of Zodiac. This version is the not Zodiac. No name, no character, just the guy who the police think did these two crimes.

He could be a bartender, he could be a boyfriend, he could be a desperate drug dealer. There is no romance, no mystery yet. Just an anonymous local triple murderer made a really scary phone call who the cops are slowly developing a suspect for based on descriptions by a bunch of people related to the victims who maybe knew the guy thanks to the shaky circumstantial theory that the killer knew his victim. This guy's not a super genius yet. He's not a weird folk hero, evil folk hero. He's not a comic book villain.

But still, even this early on, nevertheless, he seems to be someone who's clearly finding a certain amount of enjoyment or at least amusement in his work. based solely one on the weird goodbye, the slightly flirtatious idea that he would call in his own crimes in the first place, and even the cockiness to assume it was a double murder that night when one of his victims totally lived. It's like first contact with a predator above you on the food chain.

It's probably why it freaked out that dispatcher so much. It was like talking to a monster, like legit. From Karen the babysitter, who told Darlene there was a man watching her house, we can imagine a man with wavy, dark brown hair, and the round face of someone heavy set and sort of middle aged. From Darlene's sister Pam,

we know this guy also had horn rimmed glasses. She was the one to receive the packages from this guy. Though again, in 1969, it was not like horn rimmed glasses are not like a bold, charming, memorable fashion choice. This is like everybody's fucking glasses. You know what I mean? Didn't look weird, but he had them.

And they're just kind of like, he kind of looked the same in those two descriptions. Coincidentally, Darlene's sister said that mysterious Paul guy that I'm in, mentioned from the painting party also wore horn-rimmed glasses and wouldn't you know it he too was an older guy with wavy hair was roughly five eight uh mike mizhou however uh with a light in his face and bullets flying into his body and a hole in his face he still described a heavyset man but said he was younger uh and slowly the the first phantom comes into focus

congeals into a single mysterious let's still completely mundane shape some things certain some things, no matter how you try to explain them, still seem strangely out of place about this case. Here's another one, another one of these Greysmith Zingers. For example, why on earth was Mike Mujo discovered to have been wearing, and this is verifiable, why was Mike Mijot discovered to have been wearing three complete sets of clothes that night, despite it being Fourth of July in California, three full layers of all his clothes? Checking the records outside of the book, I just checked to myself, even at the time of the attack late at night, it was still about 60 degrees out,

or 15.5 degrees, if you are a Celsius tribesman, with almost no wind that night, which to me, I could wear shirt and shorts and slippers in that weather. Like, I wouldn't be 100% comfortable, but it is not like multiple layers of clothing weather.

60 degrees is not. We do live in L.A., and I will say that there's sometimes during midday, it's like 60, you'll see people in a parka. Fine, but no wind, they're in a car. Like, I don't know.

It doesn't seem right. I mean, not wrong. It seems weird. But he's hinting that maybe he knew he was going to be attacked. That's what the, that's what the hint is. Oh, the hint is that he put those layers on. So if it was stabbed or something, that it or whatever. He's like layered up.

Oh, okay. But he doesn't straight up say it. He just kind of hint it. It leaves you in that direction. Which is probably why I'll keep on saying the same thing. There's always something that doesn't fit. Always. And speaking of which, before the story takes its first huge left turn,

let's get even more disoriented by skipping ahead for a moment to Sunday, August 3rd, 1969, almost 125 miles south of Vallejo in another slightly famous NorCal town, familiar to fans of the author John Steinbeck, Salinas, California. There, in Salinas, a 41-year-old history and economics teacher at North Salinas High School called Donald Gene Hardin was having a lazy Sunday with his wife when he noticed a strange set of ciphers in the newspaper. Having had an interest in cryptography back in college, he bust out a copy of his old code breaking book, Secret and Urgent by somebody called Fletcher Pratt, got to work for three

hours without making too much progress beyond deciding it was a substitution cipher, which is one of those ones where the alphabet is replaced by various symbols, even though it seemed too complex for a simple one-one transposition. Probably something a little bit more complicated than that. After that, Donald's wife, Betty June, who's an amateur writer and poet herself, joined him. They worked on it until bed, woke up, kept going to Monday morning.

According to the original story, it was around then that Betty made her breakthrough of identifying two cribs in the message, which are, cribs are words that she believed were hidden in there in specific positions in the cipher text.

It's like guessing what word you think it is, kind of, to try and help you work backwards to solve it. You know what I mean? Sure. Yeah.

Like you were like, yeah. So in the case of the cipher, she imagined that the author would be vain, for some reason, we'll get into a minute, and start their message with the word I. And next, for reasons that will become clear in a moment, she guessed she'd find the word kill, or even a combo of both cribs, like, I like killing, which she fucking did find. and after a few hours of working backwards from this, they had their solution, and the hardens would forever be enshrined in the history of this story

as the people who helped reveal our killer's motivation, which was seemingly much more sinister than anybody might have thought. Here's Jesse, with the transcription from their worksheet for the solution, complete with all kinds of weird grammar and spelling errors, which he loves, and which you'll soon see are kind of a theme with this guy. I would love to know what her like, yeah, it says kill. Like what was going on or besides? You'll see, you'll see why.

You'll see why. But let's read the solution first. Here we go. I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill. Oh, to, no period. Most dangerous animal of all, assumed period. To kill something gives me the most thrilling experience.

It is even better than getting your rocks off. with a girl. The best part of it is that when I die, I will be reborn in paradise and all the I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of Slavs for my afterlife. Dude love sloths. Yeah, like me. Yeah. After that, the message is followed by a jumbled string of extra letters, which are now thought to be a garbage leftover from the encryption process. But at the time, people were trying to unscramble

them into someone's name. Without an implied endorsement, my two favorites were Timothy E. Fibberti, which you really have to see spelled out to enjoy, which I'll drop that in the chat for you now. It'll make you give you a laugh. That's a cousin of Black Agar Bolt again. Yeah, Timothy E. Feberty, is an inhuman. Timothy E. Fibberti. And then Robert Emmett, the hippie, which straight up adds three extra letters that aren't in the cipher text. And funnily enough, non-starters, both of those. Those never led anywhere, surprisingly. But now, let's go back a couple days to see exactly what

got everybody so excited about this cipher in the first place. On August 1st, 1969, almost a month after the attack on Darling and Mike, three relatively local newspapers, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times Harold, each received a specially written copy of the same basic letter. It wasn't signed with a name. It was signed with a symbol, which was a simple crosshair over the center of a circle, a circle with a crosshair on it. Here's Mathis with the version of that letter that was sent to the San Francisco Chronicle,

since that's where Robert Graysmith, who was working at the time, he was working there. He enters our story at this point when the letter shows up. He was there. and he becomes kind of a character in the action sometimes here on now, especially in the movie version. And seriously, if I haven't convinced you to watch Zodiac yet, let me just say again, you should watch Zodiac, though maybe you should wait until after you here next week's episode to watch it, because otherwise it'll kind of spoil it for you. Though really, this all kind of actually happened in real life, too, so like, are we really spoiling it? I don't know.

Let's not go too far down the way I'm at home with that. Here you go, Mathis. Let me give you this. Sorry that this letter sounds extremely familiar. Dear editor, I'm not doing Jesse's voice. Probably a good call. Probably a good call. This is the murderer of the two teenagers last Christmas at Lake Herman and the girl

on the 4th of July near the golf course in Vallejo. To prove I killed them, I shall state some facts which only I and the police know. Christmas, brand name of ammo, Super X. Ten shots were fired. The boy was on his back with his feet to the car. The girl was on her right side feet to the west. Fourth July. Girl was wearing patterned slacks.

The boy was also shot in the knee. Brand name of ammo was Western. Here is the part of a cipher. The other two parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors of the Vallejo Times and SF Examiner. I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper. In this cipher is my identity. If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Friday, the first of August 69,

I will go on a killing Rampage Friday night. I will cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night, then move on to kill again until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend. And then for you two, here's a link to images of these actual letters and ciphers. I'm sure most of you listening have seen at least one of these before. If not, they're easily available if you look for the Z-408 cipher or just the specific letter, the zodiac letter from August 1st, 1969. Otherwise, let these two describe it to you.

Just go ahead and click through there. You can see it. Yeah. So first off, he is ending. these letters with that symbol that symbol that is like a cross air

yeah and the cipher is it looks like compared to the rest of the letter much better writing if that makes any sense like neater yeah yeah and it is

a mixture of letters symbols and letters that are backwards a lot of them are like kind of like occulty looking symbols. It's all done. I would say like black felt pen or actually I think it's blue felt blue felt pen in color. This is just a Xerox, but I think it's I think it's blue felt pen. Felt tip pen. And by August 3rd, even though it was late, not every paper put on the front page, all three

papers have basically complied with the letter writer's demands. And everything he has to be printed actually shows up, which is exactly how Don and Betty were able to solve the cipher so fast. but also because pretty much all the info he gave about the murders could be taken from various news reports on the crimes. Belio Police Chief Jack E. Stilts issues a statement asking for more information that might eliminate any doubt that this was really the killer they were communicating with and not just some weirdo. And by the way, just wanted to point out that he did not give his name in that cipher even though he said he would. Don't know what that says about him. Nevertheless, amazingly, even though the cipher isn't reported so. You know what it says about him? It says,

Bawa says every serial killer. They're cowards. Yeah, chicken shit. They're just a chicken shit, little fucking measly nobodies who desperately want to mean something so kill other people because it's all they can do.

Amazingly, though, even though this cipher is not reported solved till like almost two weeks later on the 12th, he answers the chief's request for more info almost immediately with a letter one day later on the 4th of August, except this time there's no cipher. Instead, he just gives us something to call him.

So this is a pretty important letter. And Jesse, I'll have you read this letter now. Dear editor, this is the Zodiac speaking. An answer to your asking for more details about the good times I had I have had in Vallejo.

I shall be very happy to supply even more material. By the way, are the police having a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up. When they do crack it, they will have me.

On July 4th, on the 4th of July, I did not open the car door. The window was rolled down already. The boy was originally sitting in the front seat when I began firing. When I fired, the first shot was at his head. He leaped

backwards at the same time thus spoiling my aim. He ended up in the back seat, then the floor in the back thrashing out very violently with his legs. That's how I shot him in the knee. I did not leave the scene of the killing

with squealing tires and racing engine as described in the Vallejo paper. I drove away quite slowly so as not to draw attention to my car. The man who told the police that my car was brown as a negro about 40 to 45 rather shabbily dressed. What?

The man who told the police that my car was brown. Oh! The man who told my police that my car was brown was a Negro 45, so he's ratting this dude out. Yeah. I was at this phone booth having some fun with the Valleocops when he was walking by. When I hung up the phone, hung the damn phone up thing, right? Sure.

When I hung the phone up, the damn thing began to ring. And that drew his attention to me in my car. In Jesse's defense, the Zodiac is one of those guys who loves to like spell things badly on purpose. Scene was spelled C-E-N-E. Yeah, just to give you an idea. There's a ton of misspellings in all of these things. Last Christmas, two S's, in that episode, the police were wondering as to how I could shoot and hit my victims in the dark. They did not openly state this, but implied this by saying it was a well-lit night and I could see the silhouettes on the horizon.

Bull shit. That area is surrounded by high hills and trees. What I did was tape a small pencil flashlight to the barrel of my gun. If you notice in the center of the beam of light, if you train it at a wall or ceiling, you will see a black or dark spot in the center of the circle of light about three to six inches across. When taped to a gun barrel,

the bullet will strike exactly in the center of the black dot of the light. All I had to do was spray them as if it was a water hose, there is no need to use the gun sites. I was not happy to see that I did not get front page coverage. And here's for you guys, here's pictures of the real thing. So you guys can see it. Also available at zodiac killer.com.

If you want to check them out. You know, classic. And now at this point, now we have this letter situation going, the second phantom emerges, the real actual zodiac entity that this killer believes himself to be. Not just a crime suspect that the police are looking for, but this guy is, this is his image of himself as a criminal. After seemingly carrying out his crimes, Scott Free, getting

somewhat front page attention in several major newspapers, and even giving himself like a gnome de Gaer. In my opinion, this version of the Zodiac is the closest the world's come ever to an actual Batman-style comic book villain. And the reason that he's never been caught suddenly becomes much more clear when you realize that after this first month as the not Zodiac, the effect the second version has, the second quote unquote phantom had on the national psyche, made it impossible to carry out an impartial investigation of these crimes ever again. They had like a month to like do this like any other crime and then anything useful is lost in a sea of tips, crazy people, other violent crimes that are like,

sometimes conscious of this other crime, confirmation bias, people's vanity, all kinds of stuff. It's literally like when you think about the movie The Batman and how they based Paul Dano's version of the Ridler on Zodiac, somewhat, kind of makes sense. I'm not even sure that the Ridler style archetype existed before the Zodiac. It's like almost like the Riddler is Zodiac, almost. I don't think that matches up, but it's close.

I feel like Riddler was probably early. I'm curious. Yeah, I don't know. 48, Riddler. Yeah. So Riddler's a little before. But this is a real type of serial killer now. This guy who leaves clues, right? This is the Zodiac thing that he created.

For a second there, this guy really did have Gotham City in his clutches. Personally, I think he was really feeling himself too because of the bizarre way that this next situation goes down. This is, I think, where he was feeling himself the hardest. On September 27, 1969, we're still in the same year, a couple months later, 39-year-old man from San Francisco called Ronald Henry Fong was out fishing with his son in a beautiful cove at a man-made reservoir about 45 miles north of Vallejo. It was built in the 50s and was known to locals as Lake Beriesa.

As the sun was getting low, a little after 5 o'clock p.m., Ronald thought he was maybe hearing someone yelling from outside the cove, but he didn't take too much stock in it because people are making noise all the time at parks. But after about 10 or 15 minutes, he thinks maybe it's really, and he decides to take his boat over there and check it out. What he finds, his boat slowly going up the coast, he finds a 20-year-old Pacific Union college student named Brian Hartnell, one of the tallest people he's ever seen,

handsome, strapping, thick black glasses, doubled over and bloody on the shore of the lake, waving his arms around, legitimately screaming for help, saying something like he was attacked and robbed. Nearby, 22-year-old Cecilia Ann Shepard, she's a student in the process of moving over to Union College, at Riverside, further south below L.A., like closer to San Diego,

who was quickly losing strength as she tried DL2. Immediately, Ronald fired up his engine and headed to a nearby resort to contact the authorities and get help. But that doesn't come for a while. Earlier that day, these two students, Brian and Cecilia, are meeting up to help pack up some of Cecilia's stuff

for her to bring down to her new school in Riverside. And since they kind of used the date, kind of were still into each other, but they're like going to two different schools now. They decided to make a day of it, catch up, maybe, you know, I don't know. At first they thought about going to San Francisco. They decided I'm going to Lake Beriasa last minute because it's way closer, give them more time together. Here's some pictures of it from the time so you can tell the people what it looks like. And by the way, again, Zodiac Killer Fax.com is another great website for stuff.

But here's the, here's the Lake Beresa gallery. You can kind of look at, see overhead. You can see it's manmade. You can see how the, it looks kind of golf course. yeah but if you see the movie it's very accurate these photos are so incredibly 1950s 1960s yeah they are just everything about them god it looks like a western like like tv program like overhead shot but i mean it like it's golf coursey it's kind of like everything's like round land masses i don't know it's kind of orbis looks like super nintendo somehow i don't

know how to quantify that better i mean sure you know what i'm saying i don't know you'll figure it out go to zodiac killer facts dot com and check out the guys even before they get there, an unassuming Chevy sedan was seen lurking at the lake. By 4 p.m. Brian and Cecilia are parked nearby and walking the quarter mile down to a nice little peninsula

with a tree on the end, which I think you can see in one of those pictures is the shady two trees there. It's like at the end of a peninsula that's like a little further into the water. So much so that sometimes in the summer it even becomes an island from time to time. But unfortunately not today. After about an hour of being

there at 5 p.m., a dentist and his son who are also at the park, notice a solitary man near this area, heavy set, roughly 5 foot 10 inches, who quickly moves out of sight, when seen. And then a little after that, Cecilia notices a man approaching from the trees before he ducks behind one like a cartoon. She tells Brian about it, but Brian thinks she's talking about different trees that are much farther away, and he's very surprised when a few seconds later he's right on top of the couple walking fast and he has a pistol. Hartnell is not good at gauging height

because like I said he's very tall. He's six foot seven. So he's always looking down on people so it's hard for him to tell how tall they are. But he says this guy is between 510 and 6.2 Between 225, 250, somewhere in there, pounds-wise. And aside from the gun, which was most likely a cult 1911, that like classic handgun based on descriptions, You guys know what that is, right? Yeah.

I always have the thought. If I had to describe somebody to the cops, I feel like I would fuck it up. I feel like I have an inability to judge someone's height and weight with any accuracy and that the person I described would not be anywhere near the person that, like, assaulted. What if I told you there are entire podcasts just about that? I mean, that doesn't surprise me. It wouldn't surprise me at all. So in addition to this gun, he also had a large amount of thick white plastic,

clothesline and a wooden sheath hanging from his belt, which contained a large bayonet or bread knife three quarters to one inch wide, about a foot long. So we're talking about a big fucking medieval cooking knife, like a big ass knife. It had brass rivets, white surgical cotton tape around the hardwood handle, like medical style cotton tape, around the hardwood handle. A guy was wearing a blue slash black, dark windbreaker over some kind of of red or black wool shirt, black gloves which he tucked his sleeves completely inside of,

and baggy dark slacks with pleats that were tucked into heavy boots. Okay. On top of this, this is the part that everybody remembers. Over his head, he wears a strange black hood with a flat top,

like a bag, like a paper bag upside down that had four square corners, which hung all the way down below his shoulder and over his chest, like down below his nipples. He cut slits in the hood for eyes, which he covered with like the clip on front of some sunglasses.

And in the center of his chest, sewn on like a knight's insignia was a big four inch wide white version of the crosshair symbol that was at the bottom of every zodiac letter. It looked like it came from a costume shop or like a novelty store. It was fairly professionally made. Look, you know, sewn. Just visible through the eye slits was a greasy forehead

and the suggestion of dark hair. And here is a composite of both the man that the dentist and his sun saw who was not wearing this hood, as well as the guy in the hood as described by Brian Hartnell. You can pull it up and look at it. I mean... It's like when Spider-Man was in the fantastic four outfit and wearing a paper bag over. Yeah, it looks... I mean, if you've seen the movie, this is probably the most memorable scene in the entire movie.

But he's kind of iconic. Robert Graysmith is a cartoonist, and he drew a version of it that, like, I still see everywhere on like stickers that kind of looks like comic book art. I'm sure you've seen that one. Maybe. If you've ever seen a picture of the Zodiac killer that's not a composite drawing, this is the this is the drawing you've seen. I left in the composite drawings because those are based off the testimony

and are a little bit more accurate. Like in the movie, he looks like he's wearing like an all black suit almost. But he's actually wearing like this thing over a windbreaker and some slacks and he just tucked it in weird to make it look weird. The man says that he recently killed a man while escaping prison in Montana. and that he's not looking to hurt anybody as long as he can get some money

and swap out his stolen car for a new one. Brian says he only has 75 cents, but the man is welcome to it, he says, and he's also willing to write him a check or offer any legal assistance or at least whatever assistance he can provide as a pre-law student, right? None of that really matters to the guy, though.

Sure. And eventually he just has Brian lie down on his stomach and make Cecilia tie him up with the hollow plastic clothesline, which he does loosely. to try and give him an easy way out. Then the man hog-ties Cecilia himself, and then, unfortunately, goes back and double-checks Bryan's and tightens him up. At this point, he's huge.

He's like a huge man. He's not used to being threatened by other people. He's like the biggest guy he's ever seen. He thinks he's being carjacked. Part of him is almost interested in what's going on. Like he's like, well, guess I'm going through a robbery. And he's like, hey, if you're going to leave him, us out here. Like maybe just let us get up because it's very fucking cold out here and it's

getting dark. Um, and he's like, hey, is the gun loaded? Because like I said, he's like a, he's almost like, I don't want to say he's enjoying himself, but he's, he doesn't think he's as as much danger as he actually is. Yeah. Yeah. And he hears stories that, and this is from his testimony. He, you hear stories that sometimes people are too scared to end up actually shooting somebody. so when they do a hold up or whatever, they don't actually load the gun. Yeah, okay. But the guy comes right up to him.

And, you know, it's one of those guns where the clip comes out of the bottom of the, of the handle. So he pops it out and just like, look of this shit, bitch. There's fucking bullets in there. Wow, this is kind of neat, actually. Now I'm in danger.

Yeah, he's not messing around. Immediately after that, he stabs Brian with his giant footlong knife six to eight times. And it's so horrible. And Brian can't do anything. So he just decides to, pretend like he's dead and it totally works.

And this guy moves on to Cecilia. Stabs are 10 times, probably because she's moving around a lot more trying to get him to stop because she saw what he did to Brian. Like, Brian wasn't scared because he didn't know he was about to get stabbed. He started getting stabbed probably before he realized. He said something like he started hearing the sound before he realized that he was getting stabbed. Yeah, your body just immediately puts you into shock.

Pretty crazy. When he's done, the man calmly walks the quarter mile back over to Brian's wife. Volkswagen Carmen Gia. And on the right side door with the black felt tip pen, he writes Vallejo 122068, 7-469, September 27th, 1969, 630 by knife. And below it, he writes the fucking crosshair symbol. At the same time, the man is riding on the door, Brian and Cecilia are up and screaming at Ronald Fong in the bay again. And after he takes off in his boat without coming ashore with no idea that he'll ever return. Cecilia is now going down. She's not doing well. Brian kind of like says he hits kind of like a point where he's not going any lower. He's like,

he like comes online and realizes that he might like be all right, not all right, but he might be able to like make this. So he gets up and he like kind of goes like, I would say like 300 yards up the road until he runs into the two park rangers, because he takes a really long time to do this. He runs into the two park rangers who were sent to check on him once Fong made it over to the resort. So Fong made it to the resort and radioed to the rangers, and then they headed towards him.

And they ran into each other as he was like bloodily walking up the road. They wrap the kids up to try and stop the bleeding as best they can, but the problem is that Lake Beriasa doesn't even have like bathrooms at this point. It's like a remote park. It's like state land and there's rangers, but there's not like trash cans or anything like that. You know what I mean?

Takes almost an hour for the ambulance to get there. They're finally on the way to the hospital by 6 p.m., which is, or I'm sorry, by 8 p.m. At 7.13, Napa sheriffs finally arrive on the scene at 740, 30 miles away at 1-2-3-1 Main Street in Napa. Police dispatch officer Slate is called from a payphone. and here's Mathis with a dramatic reading of what was said. I want a reporter. No, a double murder. They are two miles north of park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen, Carmen Gia.

I'm the one that did it. Again, coccily guessing it was a double murder when really he only killed one person. But this time, however, he's not even good at what he wants to do. The one thing he's trying to be good at he keeps fucking failing at. Well, you'll see if he fails or not. Well, you know what I mean? Like, even again, that mediocrity, even in the most hanged. like low level thing you can do, you still keep fucking it up.

This time, though, after he finishes making the call, he remembers that the ringback is what got him. And this time, he just doesn't hang up the phone. He just leaves it there. And five minutes later, after not being able, this is amazing part of this story that I didn't know about before. Five minutes later, after not being able to trace the call, they put out a call for help on like the general radio waves. And this guy, Pat Stanley, who was a news director at Kvon radio, like local radio, he took action after hearing about it on the police scanner. And Here is a quote from the guy for Jesse to read from the Napa Valley Register. Pretty amazing.

The receiver on the phone the Zodiac used was put down, but not hung up. Technology then was not like it is today. The phone company could only report that the call came from a pay telephone somewhere between Lake Beresa and Napa. The Napa County Sheriff's Department wanted to find the phone and fast, so virtually any official with the radio was asked to help. The reporter jumped into action. After a brief stop at the Sheriff's Department, I drove north on Main Street. Driving past a car wash in the historic Sam Key laundry building, I spotted a payphone, but thought the call must have come from closer to the lake, nearly 30 miles away.

At the last second, though, I swerved my car toward the phone booth and was shocked to find the receiver off the hook. I use my own two-way radio back to Kvon where I was instructed, where I instructed the on-duty DJ to call police. They in turn told me not to move until officers arrived. So isn't that crazy? He just like drove out and tried to find a phone off the hook and he fucking found it.

And it wasn't, I mean, apparently it's a lot of people. This was like a whole thing. People were out looking. People were out looking. This is something that I didn't look into. I kind of, maybe it will for next episode. I wonder how. often there were pay phones. Like how often did you come across one? How many pay phones were in that area?

Were they like every block? I mean, at the time, there would have been pay phones at least every two for sure. Every couple blocks, yeah. There's a lot of pay phones, but like not that many in a town like this, but it wasn't like this was the closest pay phone to Lake Barry S. Right, right. I was just, it's just an interesting. I just, I mean, they were so prominent for so long. We're talking about an hour and 10 minutes after this happened. So like, he could have gotten pretty far. You know what I mean? At this point, the police get their first nice, detailed interview with the Zodiac survivor and Brian Hartnell, who is like pretty lucid, even shortly after, and finally start putting together some kind of psychological profile for the second version of Our Phantom.

They see him as a killer with a strange motivation, not just sex or money, and some sort of acts to grind against young couples, possibly more the women than the men, considering that it's men that are surviving these attacks and that he seems to like punish the women a little harder than the men. They imagine he likes to switch up his weapons between murders and always tries to kill near water at some type of remote lover's lane type place and always likes to involve cars. They also noticed that he liked common days off for his killings like weekends and holidays when he might feel lonely and that likely for obvious reasons they always happen closer to night time than daylight. However,

However, Graysmith also goes out of his way at this point to mention that Zodiac standing there with his knife in that weird outfit is kind of like a dead ringer for Count Zaraoff in the 1932 movie version of the most dangerous game, which immediately reminds me of that cipher that the Hardin solved earlier when Zodiac says man is the most dangerous game. Oh, that's right. Yeah. And sure enough, when I went back to check, Graysmith mentioned the movie in that chapter too. And here's Mathis with an excerpt from that. The 1932 RKO Radio Picture, based on Richard Connell's famous 1924 short story, is the tale of a mad hunter, Count Zaroff, who uses fake channel lights to lure passing ships onto the reefs just off his island's stronghold. The survivors of the sunken vessels become human game to be hunted in the Count's private jungle. Quote, my life has been one glorious hunt, he tells as prisoners.

It would be impossible for me to tell you how many animals I have killed. One night as I lay in my tent with this head of mine, a terrible thought crept like a snake into my brain. Hunting was beginning to bore me. When I lost my love for hunting, I lost my love of life, of love. Here on my island, I hunt the most dangerous game. Only half the kill, only after the kill, does man know the true ecstasy of love, says Zaroff. It is the natural instinct. Kill then love.

When you have known that, you have known ecstasy. It's basically the liver king. And yeah, that's all, that's all well and good on its own, right? And tons of villains wear long-sleeved black turtlenecks with dark boots, but not that many use luggers and long-scoped rifles and carry around extremely huge dumb knives and sheets around their waist. And in case you doubt me, here are a bunch of links. Actually, you're just like a bunch of pictures to the, on the internet movie firearms database, the IMFDB. which has a bunch of screenshots of Zer off completely with the Lugar, complete with a Lugar and I've scabbard and a scope rifle.

So you can compare them. Have a look at these pictures and tell the people how similar they are to the Zodiac image. You'll see him. He's the guy in the black suit, not the, he's not the heroic guy. But if you scroll a bit down, you can see better. Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, it's a similar. Like you said, too, it's just a very common, simple outfit as well. Yeah. But he does have a Lugar, which the Zodiac used. He does have a big knife. with the Zodiac used. And he does carry around a big giant rifle, which the Zodiac never officially uses a rifle, but you'll see why a rifle is still relevant. And that leads me to the question of what if the Zodiac didn't have a fixation on hot young couples at all? What if

lovers lanes are just naturally the most strategically practical human game? So what you're saying is the government is right and violent movies make violent criminals. If you have not seen the most dangerous game. I have not. There's a couple. There's a man and a woman being hunted by the guy. So like, it kind of checks out. Two weeks go by.

Suddenly we're down in San Francisco proper. The day before Columbus Day, October 11th, 1969, still in the same year on the corner of Washington and Cherry in a safe, upscale neighborhood of Presidio Heights. Two minutes before 10 p.m. at 9.58. during a break in the action at a party going on in her house, a 14-year-old girl looks down out of her second-story window and 60 feet across the street to see a man in brown pants and a dark blue black parka about 5'8 with glasses and a reddish crew cut

sitting in a cab, cradling the cab driver's head in his lap. He's possibly robbing him, possibly engaging in some kind of sex acts with him. So she calls the cop, she calls her two, two siblings over to see. Suddenly the whole party is now looking at the window. It's like a little kickback, but they're all looking out the window. And while they're talking on the phone with the police, they watch him, he gets out of the car, walks around the cab, wipes it down with some kind of rag, and then just kind of like calmly walks away. They tell the police they're witnessing a crime in progress. They describe the same guy I just did to the police. Two minutes later, a 10 on the dot,

moments after the kids finish with the dispatcher, when two cops stop a stocky, clean-cut white guy lumbering down the street in the fog to see if he saw anything. He says he saw a man waving a gun around headed in the opposite direction. They let that guy continue going off into the night, drive off after the gunman without even getting out of the car, trying to catch the killer as quickly as possible before he gets away. The cab driver was a 29-year-old San Francisco State student and part-time insurance agent who works night shifts in the cab from 9 to 5 a.m. to pay his way, that's the overnight shift, by the way. 30 minutes into his shift, 9.30 p.m. He He accepts a fair over on 9th Avenue in San Francisco from where he's at over by the St. Francis Hotel, if you know where that is, a ways away from there.

And on the way, trying to make the most out of his drive time, he picks up another fair on the way to where he's going, because it's kind of on the way, who directs him to the intersection of Washington and Maple Street in Procedo Heights. When he gets there, the fair notices that there's a man walking in front of the cab walking his dog. So he asked Paul to take the car down one more block, Paul Stein. I don't know if I said his name. He asked Paul Stein to take the car down one more block to Washington and Cherry. Just before 9.55, with the meter still running in the cab, the fare places a 9mm handgun close enough to Paul's head behind his left ear that when he pulls the trigger seconds later,

the sound of the shot is so muffled that the kids don't even hear it across the street. The fair moves from the backseat to where the teenagers saw him, Up front, he did his dirty business that he was doing, and then he vanished into the night. Or did he? At 10.10, just a little, like, we're 12 minutes into this crime. 10, 10, two officers finally arrive on the scene to find the kids from the house now coming down out into the street near an active murder scene. He ushers them into an alcove in front of their house, takes the suspect's description again. He realizes that somehow the first time after the 911 call, the police put out a bolow for a black guy,

instead and immediately jumps in the radio to correct it. False description has only been out 15 minutes, 10 minutes or so. The damage is done. Here's Jesse with a quote from Donald Fouke, Fouke, one of the officers who stalked that stocky lumbering white guy from their patrol car, didn't take a close look at him, even though he would have been covered in blood at the time. Here's a quote. We proceeded on Jackson Street toward Argyllo.

Argyllo. How do you say that? Argeo, Argelo. Something like that. Argeo probably is right. Continuing our search. As we arrived at Argeo Street, the description of the subject was changed to a white male adult.

And believing this suspect was possibly the one involved in the shooting, we entered the presidio of San Francisco and conducted a search on West Pacific Avenue. The opposite side of the wall and the last direction we observed the suspect going. We did not find the suspect. So, yeah, extremely disappointing, though it was the 10th, testimony of these police officers that led to the most popular Zodiac composite that we have today when they updated it after becoming convinced that it was. In fact, Zodiac, they probably stopped that night. And I'm not saying that it's for the same reason, but I am not surprised that the cops

were looking for a black guy. Anyway, a black glove was found in the cab on the passenger side floor. They pulled one casing from the car, one fingerprint with only eight of the possible 50 points of identification that fingerprints normally have was pulled from the beam between the front and rear windows of the car. The rest was just wiped away as they watched him kind of wipe, so they assume that's what happened. Typically, you need at least 12 points of identification on fingerprint for results to be taken seriously.

I think I said that before on another episode of something, maybe from JFK. But yeah, there's 50 possible. You need 12. They had eight here. 20 minutes after the correction goes out, we meet another major major character. in the Zodiac lore, as well as a player in the creation of Greysmith's book itself. And that's Homicide Inspector Dave Toskey, who arrives on the scene at 1030 p.m. With his partner, Bill Armstrong, who were the on-call homicide team that night.

You should pay attention to Toskey. He'll be around for a while. And in the Fincher movie, which you should watch, he's played by Mark Ruffalo. So you know he's going to be important. That's an Avenger. It's the first Avenger of several Marvel-affiliated people that are in this movie. Mysterio doesn't count, but Jake Gyllenhaal also was in Marble. Three days later, on October 14th, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle receives a fifth letter now.

We're up to five letters in this episode, which this time seems to include a piece of bloodstained fabric inside an enveloped marked, quote, SF Chronicle San Fran Caliph. Please rush to editor. Please rush to editor. Instead of the return address, again, just the same. symbol. Now here's Mathis to read the letter to you. This is the Chodiac speaking. Make sure and get this exactly right. B, A, V, H, E, T, M, H, M, H, O R, I-U-I-Q. Oh, whoa, sorry, man. I don't know what that was. Here's the real letter here. Oh, this is the Zodiac speaking. I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington Street and Maple Street last night. To prove this, here's a bloodstained piece of

his shirt. I am the same man who does. and the same man who did in the people in the North Bay area. The SF police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcycles, seeing who can make the most noise. The car drivers should have just parked their cars and sat there quietly waiting for me to come out of cover. School children make nice targets. I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning.

Just shoot out the front tire and then pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out. And there is that scoped rifle implication that we, have. Even though he never uses it, there's the implication. And of course, again, it finishes with the symbol. Immediately, they hand the thing over to Toski and Armstrong who become like the leads on the case. And that's like when he really gets locked into this case for like pretty much the rest of his like professional life. They test this letter. They confirm that the little bloody scrap is indeed a match to the fabric from Paul Stein's shirt that they found at the scene. And for the first time, they hand the letter over to Zodiac, supporting character Sherwood Moral, an expert in the

currently rather pseudosciencey fields of graphology and forensic handwriting analysis, who is quoted in his own obituary from 1988 as saying, quote, sometimes you feel like you're playing God when you shouldn't be, which is like a wild thing for a guy who, with his job to say, and which in a story about a mysterious character who writes anonymous letters is sort of the perfect thing to maintain plausible deniability for any given suspect, uh, considering how central it becomes to a lot of the theories people love to work for this guy. You know what I mean? Like the handwriting should not be considered nearly as much as it is. Though I think in a superficial way, you can maybe rule some people out. You know what I mean?

I think I, I think you can maybe see when it's definitely not the same guy's handwriting, but that's about as I'm still over here thinking about the Chodiac. Um, Don't worry about that guy. Don't worry about the Chodiac. That guy doesn't exist. Don't worry about him. Don't worry about the Chodiac's fine. It'll be all right.

There's much, you can hear from him a lot more times. Look for Sherwood Morrow later too. He's like the Boba Fed of this story. They simply use him too much. By the end, he quote, unquote, clears 9,000 people. How could you possibly do that? Anyway, suddenly, we're back on October 16th

where those two cops are being interviewed for the updated composite. it. And the updated description is that of a slightly older man than before, uh, 34 to 35 to 40 with a thicker jaw and a barrel chest coming in at least 200 pounds, reddish brown crew cut, navy blue black waist length jacket, more like the one described Lake Beriesa, heavy rimmed glasses. If you look at this picture, I think that he looks like DB Cooper in this picture. Did I not? Here are the two pictures. You can see, I believe, the one on the left is the updated one. I believe, I believe. This is also at Zodiac killerfax.com. But you can see the top of that one. There's like the two guys that look kind of the same. They look

like D.B. Cooper, I'm saying. This is what most UFO websites look like, too. Yeah. I think the one on the left is the updated one. They look a little different from each other, but not much. Not much, really. I would not. If you showed me both, I'd be like, that's the same guy. Anyway, the next day on October 17th, the letter is published and understandably it causes widespread panic among parents in the San Francisco area with the talk of all the buses and the shooting of the kids and all that. It causes police resources to be spread thin, giving school buses extra security, instructions to just keep on driving even if Count Zaroff shows up and snipes out your tires. And in fact, just to give you an idea of how real this is and how serious it was taken,

here's Jesse with an excerpt from the emergency bulletin as seen in the Greysmith. To all law enforcement agencies, a San Francisco cabby was murdered by an unknown psychotic, who has threatened to wipe out a school bus, then pick off the kitties as they come bouncing out. One, continue driving the bus on a flat tire. Do not stop. Two, tell children to get below the level of the window and lie on the floor. Three, the driver will continue driving and turn on all lights and sound the horn. 4. The school bus shall not be stopped until arriving at a well-populated area. Five, upon arrival at this location, a local law enforcement agency should be notified immediately.

At this point in the Graysmith narrative, Zodiac mania has reached like a fever pitch. There's so much attention on the case. California State Attorney General C. Lynch convenes an actual Zodiac seminar, the San Francisco Hall of Justice for cooperation between San Francisco, Napa, Solano, Benicia, Vallejo, San Mateo, Marin, the FBI, naval intelligence for the fucking cryptography, U.S. postal inspectors for the letters, highway patrols because of the cars, and the State Bureau of Identification and Investigation. Though at the end, most feel they're no closer to solving the case than they were when they started, which is the exact problem.

And now, at this point, you've now seen every crime that's commonly, definitively linked to Zodians. between almost all the theories. And I would say that at the end of today's halfway dip into the five phantoms of Zodiac, as we've reached such a natural stopping point at this point, there's just one more thing to do, and that is to tease the next one, phantom number three. For reasons that will become clear to you soon as we continue part one next week, the third idea of Zodiac is known as Sam. And to me, he represents a shift in our focus for the public,

away from thinking of Zodiac as someone who's responsible for specific crimes to someone who lives more in their own imagination. Like, for people who don't know the details of this crime and just know the name, the Zodiac and the kind of vibe that he writes letters and stuff, which is at this point most people, because the internet does not exist and they're just kind of picking it up and flashes and it's kind of just like a sensation.

Zodiac is just at this point anybody that they want it to be. If your neighbor's too loud, it's probably the fucking Zodiac. Your boss is a creepy guy at work. He's the fucking Zodiac killer. that one dude who goes too hard into the RP at Renfair, he's the Zodiac. A podcast host, does too many ARG teases, teases his audience all the time, makes up stuff, Chodiac, you know what I mean? You get what I'm saying.

Anyway, you come back next week, please, for the back nine of the Greysmith Zodiac Theory. There's still like 15 more Zodiac letters to go. And after that, watch us tear it all down, replace it with a new ideal and possibly even a much newer suspect, a bonus sixth phantom, who will meet a few weeks later in part four. right yeah this has been the cheluminati you've been listening to zodiac the great american rabbit hole is a show i'm very proud of thank you jesse and matthes for being here thank you for listening thank you robert graysmith contact me jared kobak please diana fucking rules the mystery search continues good bye

hello everybody welcome back to the cheluminaity podcast of your host, Mike Martin, joined by the... I don't know who they are. There's two... What? Terrence Hill and Bud Spencer. No. Neo and Trinity.

No. I don't understand, and I probably never will. Let me just tell you right now that there's two... On Kennedy and Claire Redfield. I'm telling you, I think he literally just looked up. Famous Dich and Chich and Chaw. And it's been going through the list ever since. I'm trying to dig down.

Deep. Which one of you is Dick Powell? Me? Your name's Jesse Cox. I want Chaluminati. I want my Baudelaide. I want Chaluminati.

I want my Bautenade. Welcome back to the Chulminati podcast. As always, I'm one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by Alex and Jesse.