Chilluminati Podcast - Episode 246 - Zodiac Killer: The Great American Rabbit Hole - Part 2

Episode Date: April 13, 2024

Deeper and deeper the rabbit hole goes.... MERCH - http://www.theyetee.com/collections/chilluminati Special thanks to our sponsors this episode - Hero Forge - http://www.heroforge.com Promo Code: Chill All you lovely people at HTTP://PATREON.COM/CHILLUMINATIPOD Jesse Cox - http://www.youtube.com/jessecox Alex Faciane - http://www.youtube.com/user/superbeardbros Editor - DeanCutty http://www.twitter.com/deancutty Art Commissioned by - http://www.mollyheadycarroll.com Theme - Matt Proft

Hello Hello everybody and welcome back to the Chiluminati Podcast, episode 246. As always, I am one of your hosts, Mike Martin, joined by the Kale and Kade of LA. Kale and Kade, the two- Jesse and Alex. I hate you. So much. I want you guys to know, we've been through something awful together since we last spoke. Like band of brother shit.

Like it has nothing to do with the Zodiac killer. It has nothing to do with anything. We just watched what was that fucking movie called? Something twin twisted pair. Twisted pair. Twisted. I have a twisted pair after watching that fucking movie. I feel like somebody twisted my pair and stepped on it with a

fucking high heel shoe. One of the worst things I've ever seen. Mathis once again, asks us to watch a film that we know is going to suck. And still it has been a week since they've allowed me to pick a movie for us to watch for that stupid show. And they will not, they will not allow me every time I say they're like, yeah, you'll go next, you'll go next. And then Mathis is like, all right, today we're going to watch another movie that has no plot

and makes no sense. And it's an hour and a half long. And I'm like, that was an extremely important political and sociological message to throw off the chains of capitalism. I don't think you know what political or sociological messages are, bro. or sociological messages are bro. I would say that in a way it exceeded my expectations in that it was worse and more unwatchable and just even more boring and bummery than I... Dude, I haven't seen Jesse laugh so hard than the first like 15 minutes of that movie

and the action scene and like the weird footage he would freeze Let me tell you here's the thing when I feel awkward or I am witness to something that is catastrophic I laugh. I just thought it was hilarious I once was a part of a very serious role play thing where a character died and Everyone was like, oh and I was laughing so it was so awkward that my reaction was to laugh was like, and I was laughing so it was so awkward that my reaction was to laugh. That's how I get when things are awkward.

And this was the most awkward thing I've ever seen in my entire life. I laughed. You want to watch along with us watching Neil Breen's masterpiece, twisted pair from 2018, where can they go to do that out licks? I'll, you know what? Tell you what I'll get to that in a minute. What do you, what do you say? Deal. Hey, hey everyone.

Hey, welcome back to my three-part series with four episodes. Zodiac. No, don't do that. It is a three-part series with four episodes in a real way that makes sense. Zodiac, the great American rabbit hole, where in this week's episode, which is the second chapter, the conclusion of part one, the five phantoms, we finish off a pretty dense, relevant and irrelevant fact-filled look at the sort of like pop culture version of the zodiac timeline courtesy of

ex San Francisco Chronicle cartoonist and true crime obsessive Robert Graysmith's super popular book, Zodiac, the masterpiece David Fincher movie based on that book, except with a bunch of huge Marvel actors in it, which is also called Zodiac, and the help—help—of everyone's favorite bowtie-wearing, larger-than-life cartoon homicide investigator Harry Callahan. Oh! I mean, Dave Toskey. And just as a reminder, once we're done with this,

there's still two more weeks of the Zodester. If you want to start calling him that. I'm not going to call him that, but you can start calling him that. When I shift over to a pair of much more recent books on the subject, Motor Spirit and How to Find Zodiac by a neat writer I'd really love to talk to called Jared Kovac. Part two next week is called Ghostbusters, where we go over everything we just learned again with fresh eyes and decades of new knowledge to bring things much further into the real and fact-based world of unclear and possibly unsatisfying conclusions. And then, the week after that is part three, which is called the sixth phantom, and which I think will actually draw some fairly satisfying conclusions after all.

But before all that, I just wanted to remind everybody that this is actually the fifth of eight episodes slash series I'm planning to do this year, all leading up to something called episode H8, which I will not spoil for you no matter what you say. Along these eight episodes, I'm making eight keywords to go along with them. They are hidden, heavyweights horse hello huge him again and hero again they are hidden heavyweights horse hello huge him again and hero. You have the subreddit in a tizzy. I wanted to say the subreddit has already cracked a lot of the Chodiak. They ton of it. No, they think they have. What they are ultimately for, I'll leave up to you, but they are also rather obvious clues

to my next couple episode topics. So let us know what you think at our Chiluminati pod on Reddit. I know as they have just said, the sub is already absolutely abuzz with speculation. And I absolutely love that no one can tell if I'm serious or if I'm joking. So let me just say this. Either this is completely actually real and you're all in for a big awesome surprise or it's fake and I'm laughing at you so hard inside that it hurts and both to me are wins. So that's good. Anyway, here's Mathis with a poem that is called, Not Sick of Giving, Willing to Subscribe. Okay?

Okay. Ad Free. Green. If Minnesota Green. Video Minnesota's spurting rotten popcorn all over her new monthly digital art poster from Studio Molector. Oh well, it was Minnesota anyway. New merch draining into uncertain death.

It won't die. It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one.

It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one. It's a new one. over her new monthly digital art poster from Studio Molector. Oh, well, it was Minnesota anyway. New merch draining into uncertain death. It won't die. This time someone will pay us $10,000. Just wait till you sign up now at patreon.com slash Illuminati pod. Now get this next part exactly right. I D H R F N B H V Q R K U E D J L. Love the Chodiak Shiller. KTC.

Whoa, that was so weird. Huh? Yeah, man. I guess it bongos. I don't know. I guess that I guess that guy from last time did say he would send more ciphers. So that's- I wonder why that is. I wonder why that he is doing that. Yeah. Who could it be?

That's so weird. Anyway, now we're finally almost at the talking more about Zodiac Parts. So let me just begin with 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, this series is about a serial killer who kills people which I only mentioned because graphic depiction of violence and cruelty Lie ahead so turn on the adaptive noise filter on your kid's AirPods now.

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, not to mention the moments last week where we already did that. So apologies for that. We mean no harm. And just like always, more than anything, we want to promise you what we're working are that we are working our hardest To try and put on the best show possible for all you kind folks out there listening also Shout outs to our longtime researcher Deanna who really helped me change all this insane and often

Directly conflicting information into something that's hopefully very digestible informative interesting and fun like the magic school bus Find her on Twitter if you want at DeannaWritesInc. Don't forget that's Deanna with two N's. Tell her you think she's awesome if you want to because she is awesome. Anyway, onto the second half of Zodiac, the Great American Rabbit Hole, part one, the five phantoms. Here we go. Last time, we started by looking at the 1968 murder of high schoolers Betty Lou Jensen and David

Faraday who were shot up in their car at a turnout near Vallejo, California by a mysterious someone in another car who drove away and was never caught. That's the one that is not in the movie. That's the first one. Then we talked about the very similar murder of 22-year-old Darlene Farron who was attacked along with one of her apparently numerous boyfriends, year old Mike Mujoe. Mike described a sort of vague outline of a man who shined a light on them, possibly acted as if he were a cop to get their guard down, or maybe was a cop according to Graysmith's

various weird... he just like I say last time he just says stuff and then like looks at you. He's like, what do you think? I'm not gonna say, no, no, no. I'm not saying it went that way, but if it go that way, it would make a little sense. Yeah, that's like as much conclusions as he ever draws. It's so wild. There's lots of weird things about this story,

like how Darlene said she saw this one dude kill a guy once all casually and that something crazy was gonna happen soon that would be in the papers and this guy was maybe coming around and calling and visiting her at work or maybe this guy doesn't really exist and he's just a composite of many guys doing many different weird things and someone called and taunted the 911 operator about this after she was dead and the last murder and Signed off with a really creepy

Good-bye Oh, yeah, and for some reason Mike Maggio was wearing three entire sets of clothes that night But who knows why because Graysmith doesn't ever really quite commit to a clear theory around that either But he does commit to it one theory later, which is kind of funny to me Anyway, this version of zodiac is phantom number one who if you remember I said was kind of just like a normal criminal suspect Or maybe even just like a group of suspects in a straightforward local police murder investigation No one cared about this guy But the police the public probably heard almost nothing about it until they personally knew the victims and I made him up to represent the extremely short amount of time anyone had to do any

like undisturbed investigating before the circus began and muddied the water so badly that they are like in 2024 today still not clear at all. Then we get the letter with the ciphers and the three newspapers and the crosshair symbol. This makes a huge splash, levels this case right the fuck up to like national news status. This cipher is solved really fast and says this dude is killing two collect slaves in the afterlife and he references the most dangerous games, specifically the 1930s movie version where Count Zaraf wears all black with gloves and boots, carries a huge knife, a Luger pistol, and a scoped rifle. The police ask him for more info, he gives more, proving the letter writer is likely the killer of these car-bound lovers lanes shootings because he has information that

the police kept from the public. This is the one where he calls himself Zodiac for the first time and this sort of wild, Riddler-esque, genius, mastermind villain character he made up either intentionally or unintentionally is created. This is the second phantom that we were talking about last time whose plan to evade capture seemingly to generate so much noise that anything true gets completely lost in the shuffle, which literally seems to be exactly what happened. Like genius plan, honestly. This is the time where I think Zodiac's feeling himself the most because next is when he goes to Lake Berryessa and he dresses up just like Count Zaraf from Most Dangerous Game, ties up and stabs

two students, 22 year old college student Cecilia Ann Shepard, stabs her to death with a huge footlong knife. He also sticks them to the back of her hogtied ex-boyfriend, 20-year-old Brian Hartnell, who is 6'7", and giant and invincible and survived, which is how we know that in addition to the Xeroff outfit that he was wearing, he was also wearing something like a cross between a medieval executioner's hood and a mask made out of an upside-down brown paper bag, except it's black. And on it, on the chest, is a four-inch wide version of his crosshair symbol, like the crosshair over a circle, professionally embroidered version of the symbol that the Zodiac uses to sign all his letters, like costume or quality.

He also leaves the symbol, along with a tauntingunting message on the door of Brian's white Volkswagen Carmen Ghia in black felt-tipped pen. He also calls in the murder again via payphone like a dickhead, and a local radio DJ almost catches him in the act, but he only finds the receiver hanging off the hook. And then suddenly it's fall of 1969, Zodiac ups the ante by moving the killings straight into the heart of Presidio Heights, which is a rich San Francisco neighborhood where he shoots and kills 29 year old cab driver, Paul Stein,

in front of a bunch of kids at a kickback who almost called the police fast enough to catch him. But unfortunately, the SFPD thought that he was supposed to be a black guy for some reason. I don't know why, maybe because they're fucking police officers. And they let a guy who later decided was they was actually the probably zodiac They let him go because he was white

Resulting in that set of two incredible drawings you get if you search zodiac killer composite on Google today You know the ones that we were talking about him a lot last time This time when they get the third letter, Zodiacs tease them for losing them and to their extreme disgust they realize he's also now going to be using pieces of Paul Stein's bloody shirt that he tore off at the scene to verify the authorship of further letters. He also threatens to snipe kids on school buses after shooting out the tires which is you know kind of a bummer for everyone and what was already the biggest case in the city's history now becomes unignorable.

Then we meet Dave Toskey, who's the investigator, homicide investigator, who kind of helped write this version of the facts, and who was the lead on the case at the SFPD for an extremely long time. And we also meet Sherwood Morrill, who's the librarian from Seinfeld in the movie, if you remember that fucking show, who represents the insane, imprecise science of handwriting analysis, which is so central to the Zodiac case for some reason. And they and all the other various people working the case in official capacity meet for a Zodiac summit and nothing happens because they're just all pissed off and they have nothing but like a bunch of crossed wires and a bunch of the same information. And then finally I teased the third phantom who I made to represent the shift in focus away from Zodiac as a specific guy to a more nebulous part of American

cultural folklore who lives more in like your imagination. Uh, the third phantom of Zodiac can literally be anybody, anybody wants like your neighbor who makes too much noise is now the Zodiac killer or whatever you're like, you're gonna go out at night. Don't cruise. Yeah, don't stay out at night because the Zodiac killer is gonna get you. It's like, you're not thinking about like a real person.

And now I also gave this particular Phantom the nickname Sam. And I said that you'd learn more about that today. So now that we are all brushed up, come with me again. So two hours after midnight in the early morning of October 22nd, 1969. There you are. Look, look, where there's a nice nice nice here. You're at the Oakland police department and there is a phone ringing. It's two in the morning at the police department and the phone's ringing. According to the records, the person on the other end of the line said that they were Zodiac and that they'd like to speak to the attorney F. Lee

Bailey or as a second choice, the equally popular lawyer Melvin Belli. But not only that, they wanted to do that that same morning in five hours live on the AM San Francisco show. Live! Who's from New York? in five hours, live on the AM San Francisco show. Live from New York. Literally, hosted by Jim Dunbar, a TV show on channel seven KGO TV, which was owned by ABC. This was the demands of the Zodiac Killer. There are four reasons that will soon become obvious,

conflicting accounts of whether the police really thought that this was Zodiac making these demands. But nevertheless, Tosky and his partner Bill Armstrong are contacted by Captain Marty Lee of SFPD who passes on news of the call, sets up the show with Melvin Belli, who actually lives in San Francisco. So he's like available unlike Effley Bailey, who I think is from Boston, if I'm not mistaken. And by 630 AM, just four and a half hours later, the show's up and running.

Jim Dunbar and his special guest, Melvin Belli, are asking everybody to keep the lines clear because they want to let Zodiac call in, which he seemingly does 40 minutes later at 7.10 before immediately hanging up the phone. And then 10 minutes later, he calls again, and this game of hanging up and calling in again continues for 12 straight calls They never really talked for much at a time

And I will give you guys a link to a video snippet of how that went if you want to see it But I've also put together a little script So we can recreate it for everybody At home as a big continuous chunk. So Mathis you're gonna be Jim Dunbar. Who's the TV host? Jesse you're gonna play Melvin Bell I who actually amazingly is played by Brian Cox Cox get it in the David Fincher movie and though it is honestly kind of a stretch for me I'm gonna be the caller on the line who may or may not be the zodiac killer The situation is that this dude doesn't wanna go

to the gas chamber for his crimes, okay? So that's like what they're talking about. Dunbar, okay. You are Dunbar, Jesse, you're Bell Eye, and I'm the caller. Maybe he's afraid of being beaten up or something like that. Now, well, what can I say? Well, why don't we just ask Sam to tell us a little bit more about what he's feeling right now? Tell us your feelings, just ask Sam to tell us a little bit more about what he's feeling

right now. Tell us your feelings, Sam, or just tell us anything you want to. Then we'll come back and I'll give you a specific answer to this question. Are you going to the gas chamber? Stay with us and I can answer that for you but will you just depend on Jim for just a minute and tell him what you're feeling or just talk to us yeah just tell us what's going on inside you right now just please I have headaches right how long have you had those headaches Sam been a long time.

Since I killed a kid. Well, was it before December that you had the headaches? Yes. If, did, were you in service? That you might have had an injury in service? Did you ever fall out of a tree or downstairs? Were you ever unconscious? I don't know.

You don't remember. Does aspirin do you any good? No. Doesn't do you any good? No. Damn stuff never did me any good either when I had headaches. Sam, let me ask you a question. Did you attempt to call this you attempt to call this program one time, uh, one other time when Mr. Bell I was with us and you called, what did you try to call us one other time about, Oh, two or three weeks ago when Mel belly was with us.

Yes. And you, uh, well, you couldn't get through and we were talking and you couldn't get through. The phones were tied up. Is that it? Yes. Sam, let me ask you this. There's some reason why you go to a particular doctor or a particular priest and some reason why apparently you wanted to talk to me or Lee. Is it that you feel we have compassion for people who get in trouble? Or is it that you feel

that we can do something for you? Or is that you feel we're, we're have enough integrity that if we promise you something that we're going to stick to it? Well, let's find out why you wanted to talk to why don't why did you want to talk to us, Mr. Belly? Sam? I don't want to be hurt. If it all boils down to the question of if you're giving yourself up, if you could be assured that you wouldn't get capital punishment from myself, I would. I don't want to give myself up. Huh?

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Brian Hartnell and the police who spoke with Zodiac either by phone or that one time on the street in Presidio Heights all agreed this guy was too young sounding to be the real guy. And though by the end of the show Sam threatened to jump off the roof of the Fairmont hotel if Melvin Belli didn't meet him alone in Daly City in front of the St. Vincent DePaul thrift shop on Mission Street three hours later at 1030 a.m. Sam didn't show up even though Melvin did so. Interesting.

I don't know. Yeah. Later when the police are able to trace the calls, it's revealed that they actually came from a patient at the Napa state hospital, though going forward, they continue to assume the original call that morning was really Zodiac while Sam calling into the show was not Zodiac. Uh, and that's why the third phantom is called Sam, because he's literally just some guy who decided to mess with everybody.

And here I am, like 55 years later, talking about this guy for no other reason that the Zodiac also exists, even though he is not actually related to the Zodiac murders or letters or anything else in any way. And we don't even actually know for sure who he is or who the zodiac is. The man saw a tailwind and jumped on and took a ride for a little bit. Yeah, so basically something happened, I'm talking about it and we don't know anything about it.

Anyway, a few weeks later on November 10th, 1969, it still hasn't even been a year since this shit started and the San Francisco Chronicle receives two letters simultaneously. Letter number six is actually a greeting card postmarked for two days before on November 8th. On the front is an illustration of a dripping wet fountain pen and the setup is sorry I haven't written but I just watched my fountain pen dot dot dot and when you open it up the pre-print printed joke inside is a bunch of blotchy ink that spells out and I can't do a thing with it. So that's the like cute greeting card. I don't even really

understand the joke. It's just about to say I don't know what that I haven't written but I just wash my fountain pen and I can't do a thing with it. He's not supposed to wash your fountain pen is like washing it do a thing with it. Are you not supposed to wash your fountain pen? Does like washing it make all the ink come out? It seems like a at the time kind of goof. Yeah. Like you had to be alive then.

Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. Also included in this envelope was another piece of Paul Stein's bloody shirt to prove it was legit. When are we gonna win Ben Stein's money though? Yeah, well, Paul Stein doesn't have very much money. He was working two jobs to get through college. Uh, so this, this one also came with a little letter, uh, which

Jesse's going to read for you now. Here it is. This is the Zodiac speaking. I thought you would need a good laugh before you hear the bad news. You won't get the news for a while yet. PS, could you print this new cipher on your front front page? Boy this guy can't spell. I get awfully lonely when I'm ignored.

So lonely I could do my capital thing! I don't know about you, but I think his thing might be killing. Uh. Think so? Yeah, maybe. I thought he just liked he was like really into astrology. I don't know about you, but I think his thing might be killing Yeah, maybe I thought he just liked he's like really into astrology I Dude, I think a lot of people think he's really into astrology and I think that is very very wrong. Is that weird? Yeah, you know it may and maybe you think he when he killed his victims He then like looked at the position of the body and tried to predict what was gonna happen next month If if the body was like, oh crap the the body's in retrograde, got to murder somebody else next Thursday. The bodies and retrograde sucks by the way. But also is he is, is, was

he saying I'm the Zodiac killer or was he called Zodiac before he's calling himself? This is the Zodiac speaking. That was the first, he was the one who he was. That was his, like the very first, no, the first letter, the first letter, he just didn't say anything. He just put a crosshair. I wonder, do you think they asked him for more and they asked him for more information on the crime because everything that was there seemed like it was from the paper. And then he just wrote a spontaneous second letter that said, this is the Zodiac speaking. Okay. Okay. I thought between letter one and two, they were like the Zodiac killer and he just like went with it. But if this

is something that's his vibe, then okay. I'm not. I don't want to spoil it too much but like think about this. Like if you were like into uh let's say crypto or something like that, right? And you wanted to like be a crypto influencer, right? Like naming yourself Zodiac and trying to be an astrology based killer is like the same thing as naming yourself like Crypto Man. You know what I mean?

It's like so, it's like so like basic and dumb that it's like kind of like an, I don't know, like kind of like a out of touch dad kind of vibe, but that's just because I'm really biased from the other books that I've been reading. But this letter is also signed with the crosser symbol Zodiac always uses. Also seems to have kind of like an updated kill tally on the bottom from where he left it on the car door at Lake Berryessa, where before he had only claimed five victims in

four months, he now seems to have listed a date at some point in August, and also claimed two more victims for a total of seven. But you can kind of see what I mean better if I show you a picture of the letter. So here's the here's the letter. This is the first half of the letter. And you can see the the pen. Yep. It's like a cartoon. It's like a very high quality thing. Yeah, weird. But you can see a little scoreboard down there. And then here is a picture of the cipher

that he attached, which is also signed with the crosshair symbol. And as you can see, it looks a lot like the other ones. This one is commonly referred to as Z340, because it has 340 characters. So that's the sixth letter from November 8th. And you guys, I mean, if you notice anything remarkable that you'd like to say about these images,

feel free to chime in, but I feel like it's very much similar to the last set of ciphers that he sent. Yeah, very, very similar. Yeah, that's the sixth letter, which is from November 8th, but the seventh letter from November 9th did not have a piece of Paul Stein's shirt with it, but because it seems to go along with info from the sixth letter and both were found on the same day and look extremely similar to each other, I would say there's almost zero doubt that it's legitimate as well.

And I will drop this chunk of links into the chat right now if you guys want to see because this is a big, this is a bigger letter with a lot of writing. But here's Mathis who's going to read the text, but I'm going to stop him at a few points along the way to show you guys a couple of things. This is a pretty chunky one. So let's get in there. This is the Zodiac speaking. Up to the end of October, I've killed seven people.

I've grown rather angry with the police for their telling lies about me. So I shall change the way the collecting of slaves. I shall no longer announce to anyone. When I commit my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, and a few fake accidents, etc. The police shall never catch me because I have been too clever for them. One, I look like the description passed out only when I do my thing the rest of the time. I look entire entirely little different I Shall not tell you what my size consists of I mean

I imagine he meant disguise consists of when I kill I think he does it on purpose the misspellings because it makes it harder to track his Handwriting crack is his codes. Yeah. Two, as of yet, I have left no fingerprints behind me. Contrary to what the police say in my killings, I wear transparent fingertip guards. All it is is two coats of airplane cement coated on my fingertips. Quite unnoticeable and very effective. Three, my killing tools have been bought through the mail order outfits before the ban went into effect.

Except one and it was bought out of the state. So as you can see, the police don't have much to work on. If you wonder why I was wiping the cab down, I was leaving fake clues spelled C-L-E-W-S for the police to run all over town with, as one might say. I gave the cops some bussy, some bussy work, some, uh, some bussy work. Hold on. Is this guy a time traveler from 2023 Twitch? Did he, he gave the cops some bussy work and, uh, it all checks out now. Is it, is to keep them happy and you know, maybe it did. I enjoy needling the blue pigs.

Hey blue pig, I was in the park. You were using fire trucks to mask the sound of your cruising the prowl cars. The dogs never came within two blocks of me and they were to the west and there was only two groups of parking about 10 minute apart. And the motorcycles went by about 150 feet away going from south to northwest.

Then around this next part, there's a note that says must print in paper. So this is the part that he really wanted to make sure was in the paper, so I'm gonna now give that part to you to read, Mathis. P.S. Two cops pulled a goof about three minutes after I left the cab. I was walking down the hill to the park

when this cop car pulled up, and one of them called me over and asked if I saw anyone acting suspicious or strange in the last five or ten minutes and I said yes there was this man who was running by waving a gun and the cops peeled rubber and went around the corner as I directed them and I disappeared into the park a block and a half away never to be seen again. Yeah so then that's the end of the part that has to be printed. So I think he really wanted to like make the cops look like dumb asses. Yeah, I guess. And then it goes on.

So, Matt, this will keep reading for you. Here you go. Yep. This is a big letter, by the way. No, yeah. Yeah. Hey, pig, doesn't it rile you up to have your nose rubbed in your boo-boos? If you cops think I'm going to take on a bus the way I stated I was, you deserve to have

holes in your heads. Take one bag of ammunition, nitrate, fertilizer, and one gallon of stove. Ammonium nitrate. Ammonium nitrate, sorry, fertilizer, and one gallon of stove oil, and dump a few bags of gravel on top, and then set that shit off,

and we'll positively ventilate anything that should be in the way of the blast. The death machine is already made. I would have sent you pictures, but you would be nasty enough to trace them back to developer and then to me, so I shall describe my masterpiece to you. The nice part of it is all the parts can be bought on the open market with no questions asked.

One bat, pow clock, will run for approximately one year, one photoelectric switch, two copper leaf springs, two six volt car batteries, one flashlight bulb and reflector, one mirror, two 18 inch cardboard tubes, black with shoe polish inside and out. Then the fifth page is a simple diagram of the bomb he's got plans for which I'll show to Jesse and Mathis now so they can describe it to you.

There's a link to the, uh, the death machine diagram. You know, first off, I just want to say for the record, it's crazy to me that they removed the background from this. Yeah. So it's a, it's a bomb. All right. It has. Yep.

What appears to be batteries, a six volt battery, or is that 16? I guess six volt battery and a six volt battery both connected to a timer, which is then connected to the bombs. Yeah. And you can see kind of how the bus goes by and like gets blown up by the bomb, but the car doesn't because the car is lower. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause like, uh, it's like, it's high up. Yeah. You drew a little diagram. Uh, and then it goes on for one more page. So here's Mathis again. The system checks out from one end to the other in my tests.

What you do not know is whether the death machine is at the site or whether it is being stored in my basement for future use. I think you do not have the manpower to stop this one by continually searching the roadsides looking for this thing. And it won't do to reroute and reschedule the buses because the bomb can be adapted to new conditions. Have fun.

By the way, it could be rather messy if you try to bluff me. Yeah. And then this is the part where Gray Smith mentions he might be one of the very few people in the area who does have a basement because that's the thing. He mentions a basement. It's like there's a famous line in the movie that's like,'s not that many people in northern California with a basement or whatever right? And then he signs it with a pretty weird version of the crosshair symbol that seems to be some kind of hint which Jesse and Mathis will tell you about now. I have no idea what this means. I know people

have theories about this but oh did I just yeah the death machine the death machine signature so it's essentially yes the crosshairs except at six o'clock. And i eight o'clock nine o'clock ten eleven o'clock their little exes on the circle. And so it's like it seems to be some kind of diagrams and people said it's the phases of the moon or something at what the times of the murders that he already did because there's five of them or something like that. But nobody really knows. It's just kind of like an extra little bit of clue. And then he wrote a PS, which Mathis will read for you now, which I'll give to you here. A PS. PS, be sure, spelled SH, to print the part I marked out on page three or I shall do my thing. Yeah. And then on the other side of the paper there's one last message from Heather's to read.

To prove that I am the Zodiac, ask the Vallejo cop about my electric gun sight which I used to start my collecting of slaves. And we talked about that briefly last time how he was talking about how you put a flashlight on the gun and then you can shoot without having a crosshair, you can just spray it the middle. I don't know how well that works,, you put a flashlight on the gun and then you can like shoot without having a crosshair. You can just like spray it the middle. I don't know how well that works, but it's a thing.

That's a thing that he references a lot of times. So yeah, there's a lot to unpack here from these letters, especially once you really start to try and look for clues on your own in Zodiac. Like once you're familiar with the case and you just start to like go on the internet and read a bunch of wrong shit about it. And then you realize how fucked up research is and how crazy and

cavalier people are with facts. Even I am guilty of it now as I'm doing this. It's just inevitable it feels like. But man, it's so crazy. The main takeaways though for now are that A, yes, this bomb could work as designed. That's a real bomb design that's in there. And B, coupled with the threat that he will kill if the letter isn't printed, things could get dangerous very fast. So that's where everybody's head is at. Also with regard to the cipher, about 10 years later, August of 1979, Graysmith himself claims to

have solved cipher Z340 using a method that was approved by specific people he name-checked at the American Cryptogram Association. But I won't mention their names here because I don't want to embarrass them and I don't want to explain how he did it here because it's very complicated. But anyway, here is Jesse trying his best to read the first part of this boo boo solution he made, which supposedly frames the whole thing as a letter to Herb Kane from the San Francisco Chronicle. Also, full disclosure, this next part is all just poorly spelled and has nothing to do with my fun hijinks I've been planning. This is just real zodiac shit. That is not part of my thing. Here we go

So excited to read it Hurricane I give them hell to blast these lies sleuth Should Should see a name below Killears film a pills game. Pardon me except to blast. Bullshit. These fools shall meet killer. Please ask Lundblad. Yeah. So apparently, according to Gray Smith, Lundblad is actually Detective Sergeant Les Lundblad from Vallejo PD. And

that the pills game means that he's high while he's writing these letters It even gets better though. I'm cracked out on his mind. Yeah, it gets even better though. So again, here's Jesse trying his best Holy fucking shit, what the fuck is that? Come on, man So L at LSD, all clear Lake. So stare, I eat a pill asshole. I plant Mr. A H phone Lake B. Gray Smith says that Lake B is obviously Lake Berryessa and that Mr. A.H. quote unquote might be talking about Art Hopp who is also a writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. And then it goes on and so too does Jesse's attempt to parse it for you. But this is the last section so don't worry.

You're a monster. You're a monster for this. I think this man might be on LSD. Oh, slaves! He says it like a snake. Probably dude. He says like reptilian, right? Because LSD will stolen either slave shell. I hell slash Toshi the pig stalls deal. Oh, see eighth soul slain or so well. It doesn't matter. I always said fuck Toshi dude. Yeah, fuck Toshi bro. That's apparently that's Dave Toskey, the investigator. Wow, that sure is a strange message.

And it's such a coincidence that Gray Smith's writing partner on the book happens to be mentioned in it. Isn't it? Actually, I know I said I'd wait longer on this correction stuff, but this one is a little bit too egregious for me to let stand. So on December 12th, 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, the FBI San Francisco division Twitter posted a message with the caption, hashtag breaking our statement regarding the

Zodiac cipher, which Mathis will read for you now. This is a real thing that happened about four years ago. Pretty cool. The FBI is aware that a cipher attributed to the Zodiac killer was recently solved by private citizens. The Zodiac killer case remains an ongoing investigation for the FBI San Francisco division and our local law enforcement partners. The Zodiac killer terrorized multiple communities across Northern California. And even though decades have gone by, we continue to seek justice for the victims of these brutal crimes.

Due to the ongoing nature of the investigation and out of respect for the victims and their families, we will not be providing further comment at this time. Yeah. However, I personally can add that just a week or so earlier on December 3rd, 2020, American software developer David Oranchak, Australian mathematician Sam Blake, and Belgian programmer Jarl van Eyck actually solved this cipher, the Z340 cipher, using lots of math and an app that van Eyck created himself called AZ Decrypt. We talked about this in one of our earliest mini-sodes ever, because that was right around the time we were doing the mini-sode stuff. Exactly, exactly.

In real time, this broke. Yeah. Here's Jesse now with Zodiac's actually way more consistent, readable real secret message finally solved after 55 years. I hope you're having lots of fun and trying to catch me that wasn't me on the TV show, which brings up a point about me. I am not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to paradise all the sooner because I now have enough slaves to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradise so they are afraid of death I am not

afraid because I know that my new life is uh is life that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradise death And a DJ. Yeah, so he does spell paradise para D I C E DJ yeah, so that's that and I guess he must have been watching that day But when when Sam called in but even though he keeps hinting that he's collecting more slaves and claiming more victims, he must be doing a pretty good job with those cover-ups because there's not really any local crimes or reported missing persons in this period. They could really be that haven't been solved since. Out of curiosity, what are the chances he was hitting, like we've talked about with

other serial killers, the lesser dead, the homeless, the homosexual community in the sixties and seventies, things that cops actively were trying to basically just like ignore and still have issues with to this day, but not nearly to the degree it was back then. Is there any chance that you think he may have been hitting like the homeless population or like the homosexual or the, uh, or like, uh, the escort or sex worker popular, like part of the country? Yeah, I, I do. I do think it's possible, but I would say that in the case of the Zodiac killer,

like everything about the way that they act and the way that they claim their own kills. I mean, it's true. No, you're, I mean, it's definitely possible. He does. He does say, he does say, I'm going to change it. So it's just going to be like normal killings and you won't be able to tell when it's mere when it's normal because I'm such A genius, but that's like what a little fucking stinker asshole says, you know what I mean? Like I don't think most serial killers That's what they are though, right? Like they're all little like little stinker assholes from another perspective suck at everything in life Well, you talked about last episode where in two of his kills. He didn't even kill two of the people

He was so fucking egotistical thinking he did it right Right. Exactly. And think about this just for just as a thought experiment. This is kind of secure to me right now, right? If you think about this in another way, he realized that he left a fingerprint by accident at the cab and never killed anybody ever again. That's very true. Yeah. You know what I mean? Very possible that that's what happened. And I really don't think it's the killing that's Zodiac's deal anyway. So back in 1969. Well, yeah, based on another question, because this is another serial killer thing that we've talked about before. Do you think what kind of serial killer do you believe Zodiac was?

Like, to me, he comes off as what's known as a process killer. It's about the process of killing the taunting of the police, everything around the killing, rather than the killing of itself that he truly enjoys. I know he preaches like it's all about slavery and like afterlife, but I'm not sure how much of that is just him being an asshole. You know what I mean? If you ask me, if you ask me personally, what I think after reading all this shit, like I'll get into it more and then we'll get into it later. Well, no, in the next couple, I will say this. I do think that he doesn't buy into it at all. I think that he is more into the writing the letters and being a sensation part of it than he is about the killing. I think he sees the killing as a

means to an end. And I think that we'll see, we can actually, you can actually trace a pattern using some of the information that we'll go into next week about. Honestly, that makes sense. More of a product killer. More of like, it's not about the killing, but everything around, like what after, the attention, all that other shit. You're actually asking like the exact right question. Like, as we move through this next part,

just start thinking about these guys, just start profiling this guy a little bit more. And like, you'll see like, this guy's a faker. Yeah, he's just a lucky guy. What would, yeah. And why is he so hard to catch? Well, one, in the 60s, it was so much easier to fucking just disappear.

Like, there's no internet, there's no digital trace of you anywhere. You could literally write letters to cops and no one could find you. People were contacting the police before. People were contacting the media before. But there wasn't a combination before of a guy who would like walk up in the middle

of the night and blow two strangers away and then disappear into the night and then taunt the police because it did something where it got in your imagination and it scared the shit out of you. And the same way that, you know, people started locking their doors after the Manson family happened, like similar type of thing where it like just the world was not ready for the zodiac and that's why the zodiac was able to move through it so long without being caught. Like I say, I will get more into the specifics of what I think is a really good theory for who he is in the next couple of sections. But back in 1969, we do not hear from Zodiac again until December 27th.

And it's not through one of the usual methods. Instead, Melvin Belli, the lawyer from the TV thing, receives word while he's at a conference in Munich that a Zodiac letter postmarked for the 20th, aka the one-year anniversary of that first murder of those two kids at the turnout but it was delayed because of the Christmas post it arrived at his home in San Francisco with a piece of Paul Stein shirt inside and it went unnoticed for several days because he was out of town so once he heard about on the 27th he immediately had one of his legal associates fly out to meet him in Germany with a copy of the letter and I'll show you guys scans of it now just so you guys can kind of see the effect that I'm gonna need to talk to you him in Germany with a copy of the letter. And I'll show you guys scans of it now,

just so you guys can kind of see the effect that I'm gonna need to talk to you about in a minute. But I would say that one word, like I would describe it as this is a neater version of the Zodiac as in tidy. So here's Mathis with the text of that for you now. Dear Melvin, this is the Zodiac speaking. I wish you a Happy Christmas.

The one thing I ask of you is this. Please help me. I cannot reach out for help because if this thing in me won't let me. I am finding it extremely difficult to hold it in check and I am afraid I will lose control again and take my ninth and possibly 10th victim. Please help me, I am drowning.

At the moment the children are safe from the bomb because it is so massive to dig in and the Trigger mech requires much work to get it adjusted just right But if I hold back too long from no from no nine from no nine I will lose complete all control of myself and set the bomb up. Please help me I cannot remain in control for much longer He's implying that he has eight victims and that he's he's holding out on no nine. He wants he's trying to stop himself

again. He's ninth victim. Where did this come from? Again? I apologize. This was mailed to Melvin's house and has Paul Stein shit. Gotcha. And of course, it's always signed the typical crosshair symbol. But the way I see it is this. On one hand, if Zodiac really did try to get Melvin Belli to come on TV and talk to him that morning by calling and asking the police, maybe this is just another earnest cry for help.

Maybe he really is reaching out to Melvin Belli because he wants to, he admires him and wants help from him. But on the other hand, to me, it kind of sounds mocking, kind of wry to me. Maybe just a way to celebrate his first murder from the previous Christmas while also trolling Melvin Belli even harder than Sam did on TV. And if you notice towards the end as the letter finishes, the neat style kind of like if you look at the pictures of the letters, like the neat style, kind of like it's almost like he's doing like a visual art project where he's like showing the madness

taking over again towards the end of the letter and he's like turning back into the zodiac. Which yes, it's interesting because like yeah, yeah. On the one hand. Yeah, like it everything about him up to this point has been taunting like very trolley in a lot of ways. But at the same time when with And yeah, like it, everything about him up to this point has been taunting, like very trolly in a lot of ways. But at the same time, when with the letter, it just harkens to every serial killer that I know, and we've, you know, everyone we've covered and will cover.

It's like they always have that, that cooling off period. We're like, they get it out of their system and you see some try to like get back on the straight and narrow, try to like get it in control. They don't want to do it again. But as time goes on and time passes, the urge begins to well up. And then they put themselves in situations where they can't control it. The thing is the cooling off period between each one almost always gets shorter and shorter and shorter. Occasionally there'll be like a huge long break,

but that's rare compared to usually rapid. It gets really, really rapid. Ted Bundy, like any of all the serial killers we covered have had that kind of an example. That is not the case with the yeah. He has a big break where he doesn't do anything. So it's interesting. It's the pattern at first and then Paul Stein dies and then it's just very unlikely that I think that he killed anybody else.

Though depending on who you believe the Zodiac Killer is, there's a lot of different strings of murders that you can break off into. I don't know if you ever read Graysmith's book, but it's one of those books that has a big ass index, like glossaries and index. And half of it is just a list of people that maybe were killed by the Zodiac.

And they're all women, and there's a couple other strings of serial killers that people are like, oh were killed by the Zodiac and they're all women and there's like a couple other strings of serial killers that like people are like, oh, it's the Zodiac and that like tie into some of the timelines. And yeah, that makes it so difficult because yeah, you're talking about 1969, 1970. There were so many active serial killers within miles of each other that were all, we're all becoming huge names later on. And like, just as we, it was nuts to think about, like, Ampemper, Ted Bundy, Zodiac,

they were all active within the same decade or two. In the same, like, exact mindset, which is so weird. Yeah. But I think it feels almost melodramatic, the way this letter changes from like- Sure, I can see that. It feels almost like theater to me almost like I don't know. Maybe it was a theater dropout.

It would make sense. I feel like he's a little winker. I think he's winking. He is a little winker. You know what's a great name is a winker. He is a little winker in a quote from an article by Robert Downey Jr's character in the Zodiac movie, a San Francisco Chronicle reporter called Paul Avery, who also becomes a major character in the Zodiac cinematic universe pretty soon.

It feels like regardless of what Zodiac meant, Melvin Belli mostly just sees this whole thing as an opportunity. It's the whispers of Bell Star and the opportunity that they saw there. He's like a weird public figure, right? He was doing, like, if you read Zodiac, sorry, Jesse, let me just get into this real quick okay you know you know that famous rolling stones concert where like uh the hell's angels

got hired to be security in san francisco and they like killed somebody or something they like stabbed the man no but that's like while the rolling stones were fucking playing just like a guy got murdered like that was melvin belli's joint uh and then there was like another like i forget he always gets involved in like shit he's like a celebrity lawyer you know i mean. It shows up when she's getting weird and it's like you know. Oh it's melvin belly like jackie childs are you here yeah yeah. Yeah go ahead jesse sorry well i said that if zodiac fears meeting him in california because of murder warrants against the killer in the state. Zodiac fears meeting him in California because of murder warrants against the killer in the state.

We can meet elsewhere, say in Nevada, or anywhere in the world for that matter. Well, I said that he is scheduled to remain in Europe for several weeks. He has a trial starting next week in Naples and then plans to fly to Algiers to confer with fugitive Black Panther Eldridge Cleaver, but will return to the United States soon if Zodiac will meet with him. I'll catch the first plane back, if that's what he wants, Belle said. You know what I'm saying?

He just seems like he's wheeling and dealing a little bit too much. There's no way that there's a lawyer that needs to be all over the world like that. That doesn't even seem like it's possible. I would not even know. I have no idea. I couldn't even speak to it. If you look at him, I gave you the clip of him on the show with Jim Dunbar. Just you could just look you can just

see that he's like doing he's trying to you know he's trying to be like the real Matlock or something. I don't know. But perhaps laughing his ass off or maybe genuinely wounded by such a crass response to his earnest plea, Zodiac doesn't reply and his opinion seems to kind of sour on Melvin Belli going forward as you'll see for yourself pretty soon. But before you do, if you think of the five phantoms of Zodiac as evolving into each other as our story develops, come with me now a few months into the next decade, to March 23rd, 1970, where the third

phantom evolves into the fourth phantom. Where instead of Zodiac suddenly having the possibility of being anybody, this is when the fourth phantom, some of these guys that are out there might actually start to accidentally become Zodiac back, especially sinister crimes, especially on a stretch of road. Dude, is he like the Joker and he infests people with the Zodiac virus and they all slowly become the Zodiac? In a non-literal way, I think so. Especially sinister crimes, especially on a stretch of

road in Vallejo where people have been reporting someone driving around harassing people in their car. In the early morning hours around 2 a.m., a man in a large semi-truck is driving along the Highway 132 when his headlights illuminate a distressed looking woman on the side of the road holding a baby and trying to flag down help. She explains her whole story to him and he stays and listens and when it's done he completely understands why she doesn't feel like getting in the car alone with him and sits with her at a distance until a woman comes along that she can get in the car with and go to the police. When she goes back into town, she eventually introduces herself to police as 22-year-old

Kathleen Johns. And the wildest thing about this is that not only did she have her 10-month-old daughter Jennifer with her throughout the entire ordeal, she was also seven months pregnant during And the wildest thing about this is that not only did she have her 10-month daughter Jennifer with her throughout the entire ordeal, she was also seven months pregnant during this entire ordeal. And she's 22. Think about that. That's fucking crazy.

Here's what she said happened. Like my mom. Yeah. Yeah. Here's what she said happened, either perfectly calmly or totally in a frenzy, depending on which police report you read. There's at least three, but I'm mostly going to go with her own testimony from America's Most Wanted in 1998 because it's like one of those deals where it's like way later, but she like it's her. So I don't know. Earlier that night with the plan of

visiting her mother, Kathleen leaves from San Bernardino, California, which is near us down in LA nearby to Petaluma, California, which is like a 465 mile trip at about 7 p.m. And she does it this way because it's easier to travel with the baby while she sleeps through the night. The baby's like tired at night, so she can make a big long drive and not have to like stop and feed the baby and take care of it and stuff.

Sometime around midnight, she notices a car behind who's gaining on her in the rear view as he's moving to pass her. And like a good driver, she slows down to let him pass. But when she does, he starts flashing his headlights to have her pull over to the side of the road. She does, and when the second driver approaches her from outside of the car, she's almost relieved to hear him say he stopped her because he saw her left rear wheel wobbling and he didn't want her to get hurt. When he offers to tighten it up for her she says yes. So she does it she doesn't even get out of the car he just goes and does it and once he's done they both get back in their cars and drive away. But to Kathleen's horror after a couple more minutes on the road her left

rear tire now falls completely off the car, sparks flying. She pulls over to the side of the road again, worried about her daughter and her new baby. So she's like now pulled over with a tire missing. After a minute, the same guy shows up, apologizing that the problem seems to be worse than he thought, and he offers a ride to an Arco station about quarter mile away. Kathleen puts her car seat in the stranger's vehicle, straps her daughter in and accepts the ride. Almost immediately things get weird because he blows right past the gas station and one

thing everybody can agree on is that regardless of whether he was acting scary or non-aggressive, regardless or non-aggressive, regardless of which one it is, because there's both described in police reports. He drives her around, for sure, he drives her around the back roads of Northern California for a full one to two and a half hours, ignoring her anytime she asks him what he's doing, and just kind of like zooming around. Kathleen, at this point,

she's feeling extremely weird about this, very nervous, and depending on who you believe, at this point, she's feeling extremely weird about this, very nervous. And depending on who you believe, at this point, she asks him if he helps people a lot. And he says something that hangs in the air a bit, like kind of like, quote, "'When I'm done with them, they don't really need much help.'" Says something like that.

So now fear is a 10 in the car. Tensions are high, silent vibes. And amazingly, she gets a lucky break Now fear is a 10 in the car, tensions are high, silent vibes. And amazingly she gets a lucky break because car guy accidentally drives up, up an on ramp the wrong way or he stops at a stop sign or something and he has to stop the car 100% complete stop. So she just unbuckles her baby and like jumps clear the car and like gets in a ditch to hide what uh What city would did they get picked up in like where this is in?

Vallejo is that anywhere near Santa Cruz County? I mean Anywhere near like yeah Yeah, because I asked cuz I'm not saying this is but fucking ed Kemper was active at this time He was active right now and one of the things he used to do is he would test himself by having, picking up people in their car and not just driving around with them until he eventually either left them,

like drop them off or they jumped out of their car till eventually to like murder. So I'm just throwing out there cause that's where he's active right now in 1969 in Santa Cruz County. Very well could be. That's the type of stuff that is always happening

on the message boards too. But the fear is at 10, she's out, she's in the ditch on the side of the road. And again, no matter what, no matter what story you believe, this guy does come back, but depending on what report you read, he either sits in his car silently for five minutes without turning any lights on before speeding off kind of angry, or was literally outside of his car searching for

Kathleen and her daughter on the side of the road with a flashlight when the semi-truck driver rolls up and scares him off, who as we know waits on the side of the road until the woman stops for her to get in the car with her and go to the police. When she gets to the station, she apparently sees a pair of the zodiac composites from the Paul Stein cops that stopped him without knowing it was him. And without knowing who they're supposed to be, she sees them and she freaks out and she's like, oh my God, that's the dude. Oh shit, that's him right there.

And when the cop tells her that's supposed to be the Zodiac, she like freaks out. Uh, so later, uh, they find her car, uh, totally burned out by the side of the road, uh, which I don't know if that's consistent with Ed Kemper, but maybe it is. I don't know. It's like, I'm looking right now too. It's like Ed Kemper kind of looks like the Zodiac composite too. He doesn't not, he doesn't, he doesn't not look like the Zodiac. Yeah, yeah.

Does she give a description of him? Like height, all that stuff? Are we getting, like I don't know. I could, yeah, let me pull it up right now actually. I think I- Yeah, because if like, the real telltale sign is that Ed Kemper was enormously tall. Yeah, no, I don't think it was. I think he was like 5'11 max.

They find a car burned up by the side of the road, and while most people assume it was. I think he was like 5'11 max. They find her car burned up by the side of the road and while most people assume it was the man who took her coming back to tie up a loose end, nobody really knows for sure because there's no actual evidence connecting the two things. It's just they find her car burned out. Now, there's actually quite a lot of debate about whether this was Zodiac or not. As Kathleen gave a description describing a similar height, average weight, short dark hair, rimmed glasses, dark clothes. So I don't have the exact number, but she did say similar height. But we'll get more into why that is. Yeah. It says my Google foo says between five eight and five nine for most descriptions. So yeah, not was not him. So we'll get more

into why that's that description comes in a moment but first I want to take a second to show you how another way to describe this phantom is like zodiac fan art if you want to think about it that way which is kind of like what the Joker effect is that we're talking about here so for example in the same way zodiac loved to clown on the police, so too did a man throughout the month of April 1970. Highway Patrolman Lyndon Lafferty plays a sort of cat and mouse game with a green car that he first notices watching him from across the freeway.

So they're both sitting in like stacked parking lots, okay, and they're sitting on opposite sides of the freeway from each other and He realized that the guys like like looking at him like like and he's a cop right? so he's like what's this guy doing so he decides he's gonna like go down there and like roll up on this guy and When he gets up to the top of the other parking structure the guy is on the top of the other parking structure Like now it's whipped swift places now on the other side of the of the freeway. So this happens again, two days later, and a few more times over the next few weeks. And even though this guy in the green car hasn't really committed like a crime of any kind,

it still bothers him a lot because it's a fucking weird thing to do. And so one day he goes back and this time while waiting in the lot for the green car to show up across the way, the green car pulls up right next to him about two inches away from his door. It's a four-door Ford LTD, so close to him that neither of them can open their doors. So he's right next to him. And so he doesn't look at the guy first right away because it scares the shit out of him, but he eventually turns to look into the slightly scary face of a man who Gray Smith calls Andrew Todd Walker, but who's really called William Joseph Grant.

Middle-aged, got a big face like an owl's face is what it says. Thin lips, graying hair, dark rimmed glasses, pot belly, over 200 pounds, six feet tall. And eventually this guy becomes one of the bigger suspects in the Darlene Farrin case too, though most people don't really think he's Zodiac today. But that's what I mean. It's like fan art. And you know, maybe it's not like he was actively making a tribute to his favorite evil killer, but Zodiac definitely set a tone and he did kind of have admirers, so who knows? And speaking of admirers, also that same month on April 19th, or maybe they were just trying

to get out of being fingered for the suspect, but we'll get into that. No, man, there are people like serial killers, love letters, people truly like, ugh. So same month, April 19th, 1970, speaking of admirers, 40 year old man called Robert Salem is found violently murdered, nearly decapitated and missing his left ear. Like the killer took it. On his stomach is a circle with a crosshair symbol on it and written in blood and scrawled on the wall with the phrases Satan saves and zodiac. However, almost immediately, it's never been his motive. Almost immediately

a suspect they already have in custody for another crime, Stanley Dean Baker, admits to doing this. And sure enough, they find plenty of fingerprint evidence in the scene to place him there. It's deemed a copycat killing by the cops and the case is closed. It's fan art. On the same day though, amazingly, April 19, a letter is sent to the San Francisco Chronicle containing a short cipher, which has likely not been solved

and includes a second bomb diagram. And here's the text from Mathis Street. Let me really quickly send you the image. Image version. Yeah, yeah, link it. So you can see the cipher there, and you can see the bomb here. And here is the letter text for Mathis to Read.

This is the Zodiac speaking. By the way, have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is, and then obviously the cipher, I am mildly Saris. Saris as to how much money you have on my head now. I hope you do not think that I was the one who wiped out that blue meanie with a bomb at the cop station, even though I talked about killing schoolchildren with one. It just wouldn't do to move in on someone else's territory. But there is more glory in

killing a cop than a kid. A kid because a cop can shoot back. I have killed 10 people to date. It would have been a lot more except that my bus bomb was a dud. I was swamped out by the rain we had a while back. The new bomb is set up like this and there's a diagram. P.S. I hope you have fun trying to figure out who I killed. And then he updates the score again. This time Zodiac symbol 10 SFPD 0. In this case, probably the blue meanings he's talking about are the this bomb that happened where a guy like ran up and threw a bomb at a police station or something and killed a one guy Who was in there that had happened in the headlines around that time? but Like I think he wrote that to like throw people like to as a as a plausible deniability for him claiming

Crimes he didn't commit because like well, he said he didn't do this one So why would he claim one and not claim another and this time? I think the bomb design uses photoelectric switches so that time to the heights of the different things, because if you imagine the sun is shining on the bomb, it's like the bus is high enough that the shadow will be covered and cause the bomb to explode, but the cars are low enough that the sun will pass through. So that's kind of the plan for the bomb. If you can see it. Yeah, it's actually wild. Like it, yeah, it's like it blocks it and it'll close a circuit.

If once a shadow blocks the photoelectric sensor, it closes the circuit and opens the other one. Yeah, it's kind of like a rudimentary version of, you know, that thing where it's like the laser. And then the movies, they like put the mirror on the laser kind of like, it won't blow up because the mirrors reflecting it back. Yeah, like that kind of vibe. Literally like a garage door sensor. Yes. Yes. Yes. Uh, did you like jump over and stuff? Uh, yeah. Uh, also, uh, by popular wisdom, the reason the cipher hasn't been solved or we can't tell if it's been solved is just cause it's like

fucking small. So this one is what, like what? 13 characters or something like that. It's a very, it's a very short a very short cipher and it kind of looks a little different than the other ciphers I would say. It's like a little bit more rough and tumble but I don't know. I think it's too short to be solved by conventional means but maybe not. Who knows? We'll see. However, I don't think he really felt like he got his point across because about a week later on on April 28th, another letter arrives in the form of a greeting card. This time with a droopy cowboy, like old man prospector guy on the front, riding a donkey

with the phrase, sorry to hear. And then when you open it up on the inside, the cowboy is like smiling and he's on a huge dragon and it completes the sentence. It says, sorry to hear your ass is a dragon. Get it? And now here's Jesse with the text of that letter. So here it goes. Do you think he purposefully picked truly terrible pun cards? I think he was flirting. I think he purposefully picked truly terrible pun cards?

I think he was flirting. I think he was being flirty. Yeah. Let me look at this card really quick. So describe it. It is, uh, and the front is a Western dude on a donkey and says, sorry to hear, and then your ass is a dragon in this one is sort of like another prospectory looking dude on a dragon. It's it is what it is.

I'm curious about the pen one. Cause I feel like I keep thinking about like, is it, he's thinking like the pens might have the sword or is it thinking like a pocket wash a pen, like a pen, like a, like a pocket knife kind of thing. And it's dripping. Like, I don't know. I don't know what the vibe is, but it's weird. I don't like it, frankly.

Yeah. It's a, it's a, it's unbelievable that it actually happened. You know what I mean? Like this is really fucking happened. Anyway, there's the, there's the text of that letter, Jesse. I hope you enjoy yourselves when I have my blast Zodiac symbol. PS on back. If you don't want me to have this blast, you must do two things. One, tell everyone about the bus bomb with all the details. Two, I would like to see some nice zodiac buttons wandering about town. Everyone else has these buttons like peace, black power, Melvin eats blubber, etc. Well it would cheer me up considerably if I saw a lot of people wearing my button.

Please no nasty ones like Melvin's. Thank you. And then it ends with another zodiac symbol. And this letter sometimes gives falling self-confidence vibes I think because he seems to be weirdly gracious and kind of begging for exposure here he says thank you at the end. But I still think he's being facetious considering he also takes the time to purposely misinterpret an actual popular button at the time because this was like a moment if you don't know about this this is like a moment it was like the button moment where like people were putting buttons on themselves all the time

and it was like a way to express yourself on the city that was cool like a moment. It was like the button moment where like people were putting buttons on themselves all the time There was like a way to express yourself on the city. That was cool. Like a little billboard, right and so slogans was like a big deal on the buttons and one of the big slogans was like Sort of like if you know, you know kind of like a little allusions to literary and stuff So there was an actual popular button that said Melville eats blubber and stuff. So there was an actual popular button that said Melville eats blubber because Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick right and blubbers whale fat so Melville eats blubber makes sense right but in order to clown on Melvin Belli again he changes it to Melvin eats blubber for some reason and then he's like and don't beat up on Melvin everybody's making fun of Melvin but it's

like it's a complete fabricated situation that he's made up in his own head for the most part. And asking for buttons, I think he's doing just to see how far he can take this crazy vibe he's doing. I don't think he's desperate just yet. I don't think desperation is far away. I still think he's feeling himself pretty good right now, but I think he's plateauing. I think that I think where we're at is where he's plateauing. Apparently, the reason he asked to have his bomb detail shared is because since the first bomb letter the police had not allowed mention of any bombs in the papers, right? So to avoid a similar panic to the one caused by the Paul Stein letter, where he threatened

to snipe all the kids, they like left all that out. So this time they did hold the press conference, but they were in the press conference. They were like, we don't think this is something you actually need to worry about, so don't freak out. But this is what he said, but we don't think it's real, so we're not going to do anything. So they got in front of it in that way. There was never any panic about this, and there was never any sort of mass-produced viral zodiac button phenomenon. Though I'm not going to say there were zero zodiac buttons. I think I've seen them around there, out and around at shows

and stuff still to this day. I think in a postmodern way, the zodiac button is kind of popular, which is kind of weird if you think about it. And the fact that I'm doing an episode about him right now, like I say, it's weird. It's weird. But Zodiac was apparently not very pleased as evidenced by his next letter, which arrived two months later on June 29th, 1970, the San Francisco Chronicle. And this time it came with a crazy ass map. So here's Mathis. He's going to read the letter and then I'm'm gonna give you the cipher and the map.

This is the Zodiac speaking. I have become very upset with the people of San Fran Bay area. They have not complied with my wishes for them to wear some nice cross button pins. I promised to punish them if they did not comply by annihilating a whole school bus. But now school is out for the summer,

so I punished them in another way. I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a 38, Zodiac 12, SFPD zero. The map coupled with this code will tell you where the bomb is set. You have until next fall to dig it up. So here's the like weird cipher thing. Little short cipher for you.

And then here is the map. And the map is, I think, the last great zodiac puzzle to be solved. I don't think anybody's got it. But I think it's like the last one that's like kind of something. You see the the peak is right on Mount Diablo. Like if you look at the compass, right on the on the map, you can see like the peak of Mount Diablo is like right at the center of this compass and instead of north, south, east, west, it's like 0639. So it's a clock, but it's the symbol. Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And then if you, if you couple that with the, the, the, the, what do you call it, the crosshair from the previous one that had the little lines coming out of it. Yeah, yeah. Right? Like maybe, I don't know, maybe it's something, but I don't think anybody's figured it out.

I don't think anybody's actually figured out the map puzzle just yet. There's nothing else other than that. And this cipher, which is supposed to be some sort of key to that map. And yeah. Like I say, that thing being like, and he actually gives a little clue about it in a minute. So let me, oh, one second.

So the map is extremely intimidating. It's still unsolved. Zodiac is still claiming victims like falsely since the murder of the police officer he's most likely alluding to here, who is Richard Radetic, was shot to death in his car by a 38. The warrant for whoever actually did that was already out.

There's like no chance that Zodiac did it. So it's just him. Yeah, he's just fucking weirdo. Then we get another two letters in rapid succession a month later, July 24th and July 26th, 1970. They relate to each other in a surprisingly specific way and also brings Kathleen John's late night terror sequence squarely into the Zodiac legend. So here is Mathis with letter 12. This is the Zodiac speaking.

I am rather unhappy because you people will not wear some nice Zodiac symbol buttons. So now I have a little list starting with the Wim Wellman and her baby that I gave a rather interesting ride for a couple of hours one evening a few months back that ended in my burning her car where I found them. This post right here, this letter is where I think depression starts to set in. I think this is the second time he's mentioned the buttons not being a thing. This is the second time he's claimed direct responsibility for a specific high profile crime well after the fact.

In the next letter he goes even harder on the buttons, practically begging for them now. And then he ends with pure insanity that you may not recognize immediately unless you're a pretty hardcore musical theatre head. He even seems to lose patience with this complicated math code. So here's Jesse with that piece of reading. Jesse This is the Zodiac speaking. Being that you are, uh, being that you will not wear some nice Zodiac symbol

buttons, how about wearing some nasty Zodiac buttons? Oh bro. Oh man. Buddy. Yeah. Cuck me bro. Or any type of crosshair buttons that you can think up. If you do not wear any type of crosshair buttons that you can think up. If you do not wear any type of crosshair buttons,

I shall on top of everything else, torture all 13 of my slaves that I have waiting for me in paradise. Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream and twitch and squirm. Others shall have pine splinters driven under their nails and then burned. Others shall be placed in cages and fed salt beef until they are gorge, then I shall listen to their pleas for water and I shall laugh at them. Others will hang by their

thumbs and burn in the sun, then I will rub them down with deep heat to warm them up. Others. I shall skin them alive and let them run around screaming and all billiard players. I shall have them play in the darkened dungeon cell with crooked cues and twisted shoes. Great game. Darkest dungeons are phenomenal. I like crooked cues and twisted shoes. Great game. Darkest Dungeons are phenomenal. Really good. I like crooked cues and twisted shoes. That's an album right there. Yeah. Yes, I shall have great fun inflicting the most delicious of pain to my slaves. SFPD zero Zodiac 13. As some day it may happen that a victim must be found. I have got a little list. I've got a little list of society offenders who might well be underground, who would never be missed, who would never be missed. There is the-

So this is like rhythmic. You can like figure there are pestilential nuances who write for autographs, all people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs. All children who are up in dates and employ you with them plait. All people who are shaking hands like that." You know, he like, he like does a little thing. So yeah. Dr. Seuss. And all third persons with unspoiling take those who insist. They none of them be missed. They none of them be missed. There's the banjo serenader, yep that's how he's to spell that, and the others of his race and the piano organist. I got him on the list. All people who eat peppermint and vom fit, vomit in your face I guess, they would never be missed. They would never be missed. And the idiot who phrases with enthusiastic tone of centuries, but this in every country

but his own. And the lady from the provinces who dresses like a guy who doesn't cry the singular abnormally the girl who never kissed. I don't think she would be missed. I'm sure she wouldn't be missed and it's nice in priest that is rather right with judicial hum hummer wrist I've got him on a list all funny fellows comic men and clowns private life They'd none of them be missed they none of them be missed and uncompromising kinds such as whack them a lack.

Yo, I hate this dude. What you want to call it is thing of a Bob whack him a lack it. Likewise. Well, nevermind and tut tut tut. And what's his name and you know who, but the task of filling up the blanks, I rather leave up to you, but it really doesn't matter whom you place upon the list for none of them will be missed.

None of them will be missed. Zodiac PS, the Mount Diablo code concerns radians and pound sign inches along the radians. Hey, hi, the Zodiac killer sucks. Like he's a fucking loser. This is the biggest. The man started with, look guys, I see you're not wearing buttons, but I'll take any buttons. Like any, you could call me an asshole in that button. I want it. Like that's the most pathetic shit I've ever heard. Ever. Sorry. I said, be nice. You could be mean if you want. Uh, and as you may not

know, like I said, unless you're a pretty hardcore musical theater head, I've Got a Little List is a song from the classic and devastatingly racist Gilbert and Sullivan musical, The Mikado, in which the Japanese quote unquote lord high executioner whose name is Coco sings this light fun song about all the different kinds of people he can put to death. On the surface, I think this is Zodiac attempting to maintain his sort of winking, scary, carefree tone. But switching to ask for mean buttons and giving hints to his cipher to me speak as someone looking for a very specific result who's

trying to be cool about not getting it. It also seems more like a personal interest coming through, this Gilbert and Sullivan thing. Feels like a very niche coming through this Gilbert and Sullivan thing feels like a very like niche thing that like This guy listened to this, you know what I mean? Like this is like a serious amount of work that he put into this So remember Gilbert and Sullivan It's not something you'd expect a spooky killer character to be into but I'm already speculating way too much However, this is where the pattern breaks

But I'm already speculating way too much. However, this is where the pattern breaks. Because in order to test the theory, these letters are held back and are not published or reported on in any form from July until October 12th, 1970, two and a half months later, after receiving a 14th letter one week earlier on October 6th at the San Francisco Chronicle. So here's Mathis with that letter, but I'm just going to kind of give him the link and let him describe

it to you and read it to you. I've already wants because once he sees it, you'll understand. You'll see what I mean. Great. Yeah. This looks like like someone type, right? It on type, right? I like like a fricking index card. Yeah. Basically. Or, or, or better yet, like a yes, one of those absolutely like tro tropy ramps and letters. Yeah. Yeah. This is on Monday, October 5th, 1970. Dear editor, you'll hate me, but I've got to tell you this, this pace isn't any slower. In fact, it's just one big 13th. 13 isn't the number 13. Some of them fought. It was horrible. That was like in quotes. Then there's like a red cross, like a Jesus below that.

Yeah. Like a Jesus cross. And so the people that the right of that and to the Zodiac symbol and then to the left of that, there's a PS that's upside down says PS there are reports. There are reports. City police pig cops are closing in on me. Let's say fuck. I can't read what that says. IK?

On me, fuck. Yeah. Yeah. I'm crack, I'm crack proof. What is the price tag now? Yeah, and then I do want to draw attention to the black Circles on the right hand side. Oh my yeah, they're kind of organized It's like it looks like their hand hole punch to make some sort of arranged pattern

I don't know what the pattern is 13 of them So I wonder if that just represents his supposed 13 victims very very much could very much could but it's still a strange thing and just yeah, I just to point out, and yeah, he seems to be claiming another victim here. That's just somebody like 13, we went from 12 to 13. Yeah, yeah, now there's 13 dots. Yeah, yeah. And then with the 15th letter, which arrived on October 28, 1970, San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, aka Robert Denney Jr. without the famous face or flashy movie outfits, takes center stage with a strange new letter addressed directly to him,

except for some reason his name is misspelled Avery on it. I think it's a joke at the San Francisco Chronicle and whose envelope has a strange new symbol on it that looks like this. So here's the new envelope. We've got to kind of describe this to people. The front of it, um, has a moon landing or at least moonshot of earth stamp. And then Paul Avery is, is on the like two, who it's for, but then the top is some sort of like Batman esque villain logo where it is. Imagine if an L and an F sort of met in the middle with a Z underneath it you know when you draw a seagull in the distance it's just a V

with some bends yeah that's what it is yeah and then one of them is one of the seagull wings is an L and one is an F and then there's two little dots above the V in the middle and two little dots underneath the V and then a Z underneath that. It looks like a bit Rorschach-y. Yeah. Yeah. Inside this was another modified greeting card, this time Halloween theme, because it's October, with the skeleton both inside and outside and a few other clue-y things. So this time I'm going to send Jesse the letter and have him describe it to you and read all the little bits for you. So here you go. You're going to read this card. So this one says from your secret pal, I feel it in my bones. You ache to know my name.

And so I'll clue you in. But then why spoil the game? Happy Halloween. Boo. Yeah. And I don't know if he had that card especially made, but it's you know, it's very apt. He kind of like edited it. I think he added the eyes to it. There's like a bunch of eyeballs on the side that it looks like he added. And then I think that the pumpkin on the front of the of the skeleton is not originally there. I'm not sure.

And then there's like a 14 on the skeleton's hand on the front of the card that's definitely added. And then there's like another 14 that says like 14 as in like 14s maybe, but it's like 14 also. There's a spiderweb that I think is, and I think that also the cracks on the skull on the inside are added. Yeah. Also we have, yeah, it could be also, I seem to recall on this, just based on the way the legs look that they used to make cards where like it would kind of move. It was like floppy. Yeah. Like it's floppy legs.

I don't know. But anyway, his new Zodiac logos in in there. Plus is the plus the Zodiac like infamous symbol. Um, and then there's a bunch of eyes everywhere. Like Alex was saying, he drew a bunch of eyeballs. Um, and there's something written on what appears to be like a tree, like a hole in a tree, like a knot or something, but I cannot make out what that says. It says peekaboo. And then it says you are doomed. Gotcha. Gotcha. And then in the back in sort of a cross formation, he wrote paradise slaves. And then he wrote by fire, by knife, by gun, by rope. Yeah. Paradise and slaves. It's like the A in slaves and the A in paradise

in the middle are like making a cross like visually. He's having a hard time adapting. People are moving on. Society is finding new things to be excited about. They're over it. Let go. They're over them. He's changing his thumbnails. It's just not working anymore. Exactly. That's exactly what's happening here. It reminds me of YouTube. You know what's sad? Besides the murder, ignoring the obvious, what's sad about this is he fell into the trope of entertainers. Like he tried to make it entertainment and he got caught up in the like, I want people to talk about me, it's feeding my ego. And when it fell off, that hurt him. The dude thought he had way more sway than he did when he asked for buttons.

That's when the cops probably like this idiot. I'm not going to do, but yeah, he tried to sell merch and like a lot of celebrities when they get to the point where they saw a merch and they realize people aren't buying it anymore, it hurt him personally. So we just started trying to roll out like it's like a Minecraft YouTuber. We didn't do Minecraft for five years doing a new Minecraft video. Really hoping people like a YouTuber who went off to go do a TV show and came back thinking they could do YouTube again. Yeah, it's tough. That's not what it is. There's

so many examples of it. Yeah. And basically from there, the fourth phantom version of Zodiac practically gets its own PR rep in the form of Paul Avery, because when you receive a letter personally addressed to you from a real serial killer, and he's talking about a victim nobody knows the name of yet and he says peekaboo you are doomed I'd have figuring out who that guy is on my mind too And in addition to everyone at the Chronicle getting buttons made up that literally said I am not Paul Avery on them that they actually wore around Paul Avery also bought himself a 38 pistol for self-defense

And after printing the letter, he gets an anonymous tip that leads the fourth phantom to his final form, where now not only are old crimes turning into, not even current crimes are being called zodiac crimes. Now he can reach back in time to the past and turn anybody who's ever died into a Zodiac victim. Dude, and this is also very common with serial killers.

Like, they will start claiming things of their own, just trying to bolster their own name. Yeah, exactly. But this is like beyond him trying to do this. This is like culture doing this to him. So, speaking of the past, let's jump back now about four years from where we are at Halloween 1970 all the way to the early morning of October 31st 1966 and we're not going to be in NorCal anymore. We're going to go

about 500 miles south of San Francisco down into the southern California County of Riverside, beautiful Riverside, where Riverside city college groundskeeper Cleophis Martin. Cleophis Cleophis. Cleophis Martin. It's C L E O P H U S Cleophis Martin is driving his sweeper. Is that, um, the technical term? It's like a, he's a janitor and he's got a sweeper thing that he's driving. And he just was in San Francisco.

This, this like the information sweeper, like a big Midwestern vibe for like anything that cleans anything, be it like a vacuum cleaner or like the street sweep. Like, I don't know. I don't know. I think like probably like a rideable cleaning apparatus. Uh, he drives it into an area of Teresina drive by river, uh, Riverside city college in between two unoccupied houses.

And he comes upon the body of 18 year old student, Cherry Jo Bates, who's faced down and sprawled out on the gravel path, close to the library parking lot. And once authorities arrive, she's identified almost immediately because she still has her ID in her purse. And her dad had only reported her missing about an hour earlier. So the previous day, Sunday, October 30th, 1966, has been reconstructed as follows. That morning, Cherry Jo and her father Joseph attend Catholic Sunday Mass at St. Canthred

of Alexandria Church before grabbing some breakfast together at a restaurant in town. Her dad leaves the house around 10 a.m. once they're home to go start his day, but Cherry Jo hangs around for a while at home until she decides to go to the library at school and get some work done. She calls her friend Stephanie twice at 3 and at 3 45 p.m. to see if she wants to come. First time, no answer. Second time, Stephanie picks up, but see if she wants to come. First time, no answer. Second time, Stephanie picks up but she doesn't want to come. So Cherry Jo decides she's going to go alone and she

leaves her house between 4.30 and 5 after calling her coworker Donna to chat, just to chat for a little bit and to ask her about some missing bibliography pages from her term paper. And Donna remembers something like Cherry Jo saying, now I'll have to start over on all my note cards, something like that. So when her dad gets home from whatever else he's doing that day, which is also around 5 p.m., so he must have just missed her, there's a note for him on the fridge that says, quote, dad went to RCC library. He doesn't think anything about it. He heads out again for the night. He leaves a note for her back and a little after 6 p.m. one witness says they see her in her VW Beetle headed in the direction of school. The witness says that she was being followed closely behind by a bronze old mobile

that looked like it was fairly recent from 65 or 66. So a bronze old mobile is following right behind her. After arriving at the library, we know she checks out books because they're in her car when they find her the next day, and lots of people who were there that night place her in the library until it closes around 9pm. While she's inside the library studying, however, someone else sneaks up to her car, clips a wire on the distributor, pulls out the distributor coil and the condenser, which renders her car unable to start. And according to one witness, there had been a man about 20 standing around 5 foot 11 who

had been creepily stalking, kind of like keeping eyes on her car from across the street in the shadows. Somebody saw that. And as she was walking past this guy she even like said hello to him and he was friendly. So unfortunately after the library closes Cherry Jo finds her car, it's sabotaged, she has no idea why it won't start and it's only natural that when a kind seeming passerby comes by and offers her help he proceeds he's like you know I'll give you a ride and he leads her away from the library and from all the people.

And this is like, you know, after the library is closed post 9 p.m., sometime between 10 15 and 10 45 p.m., one neighbor hears a scream and then silence and then an old car engine starting and a second witness who puts themselves in the same area around 10 30, which is right in the middle of that. Here's two screams. So Cherry Joe's dad gets home at midnight but is a little worried because the note that he left has not been touched and Cherry Joe is not home but he's like, oh she's probably at Stephanie's house so he's like I'll wake up in the morning and see what the vibe is.

And when he wakes up in the morning he calls Stephanie like early like in the five o'clock hour. When stephanie answers she explains she didn't have any plans to cherry dot sleepover she's not there so he calls the police and he's worried now and it's five forty three am and he calls police reports. She is found dead less than an hour later at school. She's bloody where bodies found less than an hour later like i said according to the autopsy report her cause of death was repeated at the school. She's bloody when her body is found, so less than an hour later like I said, and according to the autopsy report, her cause of death was repeated kicks to the head and repeated sharp force trauma with a short knife, which was confirmed by the knife that was sticking out of her shoulder. The knife had also severed her jugular vein and her larynx and left her head much less attached to her body than it's supposed to be. And she has skin and brown hair fragments under her fingernails as evidence of scratches

that she probably left on her attacker after a considerable struggle. And she even seems to have pulled the man's watch off his wrist as a paint-spattered Timex watch, a pretty cheap one, is found next to a size 8 to 10 footprint a little like maybe 10 feet away from her body. There also don't seem to be any signs of sexual assault or attempted robbery. Like I said, her ID is like on her body so they find it. She had like 50 cents in her wallet that was there, you know, like her car is parked 75 yards away. It's discovered not just with fresh library books in the back The windows are rolled down the keys in the ignition and there are several smeared greasy palm and fingerprints believed by the police to belong to the attacker all over it, so

however as Horrible as that is up until now other than a few superficial things, there's not much here that specifically screams Zodiac. But this is about to change because about a month after the murder, two copies of the same nearly identical typewritten letters arrive, one at the Riverside Police Department and one at a local newspaper, the Riverside Press Enterprise, which contains information about the crimes that was not available to the public, including the missing distributor. So they do think it's written by the murderer, though the Zodiac legend is not yet even a twinkle in anyone's eye.

So who's to say if it's connected? Here is a picture of the letter for you guys to peruse. And here is the letter itself from Athisteria. A confession by, and it has like a blank spot for the name. She was young and beautiful, but now she is battered and dead. She is not the first and she will not be the last. I lie awake nights thinking about my next victim. Maybe she will be the beautiful blonde that babysits near the little store and walks down the dark alley each evening about seven.

Or maybe she will be the shapely blue eyed brown that said no. That said no when I asked her for a date in high school. But maybe it will not be either. But I shall cut off her female parts and deposit them for the whole city to see. So don't make it too easy for me. Keep your sisters, daughters, and wives off the streets and alleys. Miss Bates was stupid. She went to the slaughter like a lamb.

She did not put up a struggle. But I did. It was a ball. I first pulled the middle wire from the distributor, then I waited for her in the library and followed her out after about two minutes. The battery must have been about dead by then. I then offered to help. She was then very willing to talk with me. I told her that my car was down the street and that I would give her a lift home. When we were away from the library walking, I said it was about time. She asked me about time for what? I said it was about time for her to die. I grabbed her around the neck with my hand over her mouth and my other hand with a small knife

at her throat. She went very willingly. Her breast felt very warm and firm under my hands, but only one thing was on my mind, making her pay for the brush-offs that she had given me during the years prior. She died hard. She squirmed and shook as I choked her and her lips twitched. She let out a scream once and I kicked her in the head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her and it broke. I then finished the job by cutting her throat.

I am not sick. I am insane. But that will not stop the game. This letter should be published for all to read. It just might save that girl in the alley. That's up to you. It will be on your conscious, not mine. Yes, I did make that call to you also.

It was just a warning. Beware. I am stalking your girls now." And it's cc'd to the chief of police, Enterprise. Then several months later, a second set of similar notes appears this time handwritten address to the police and cherry just father and maybe a third one to the enterprise but i'm not sure about that. It says baits had to die there will be more or she had to die there will be more and here's a picture of it for you if you want to see it. Most people think that the second letter is probably a hoax or copycat that's in poor taste, just like a lot of what I do here on this fine show. But according to some, that's mostly because in 1966, nobody sees any significance

to the small two or Z that is included on both copies of the letter as well. Though of course, now we kind of maybe do see the significance. Yeah, it's very similar like cadence at least. Little after this though, now about six months after the murder, a janitor at the city college, another janitor finds a crazy poem etched into the bottom of a foldable school desk that had been located on the library floor at the time of Cherry Joe's death,

which is photographed and added to the evidence file as circumstantial. So I'm going to send you a picture of it. And then here's Jesse with that poem. And this time it is not a brand deal for our Patreon. Sick of living, unwilling to die. I'm pretty sure it's a vampire weekend lyric, but anyway, sick of living, unwilling to die. Cut clean if read clean. Blood spurting, dripping, spilling all over her new dress. Oh well, it was read anyway. Life draining into an uncertain death. She won't die. This time, someone will find her. Just wait till next time.

RH. Pretty much this sounds to me like a girl writing a poem about her failed suicide. But I don't know. If you look at it, if you look at the image of it, right, at a glance, it kind of does look similar to the handwriting to that the Zodiac uses, right? But when Avery gets down there, whether there's any actual evidence connecting these two criminals to each other or not,

and he notices the Zs immediately on the two notes, he sees some similarities between the Zodiac letters and the handwriting, which is, by the way, carved into the desk with a knife or something. And even though you can't analyze amateur wood carvings, because those aren't in any way created the same way as pen writing, Avery takes the sample to our boy Sherwood Morrill and gets a match on it as the Zodiac, which is crazy first of all, before sharing anything with the police, which probably ticks lots of people off, especially Dave Toskey and Bill Armstrong from the SFPD, who back in 1971 now on March 22nd with Avery down in

Riverside are dealing with another set of two Zodiac letters within a week after a long drought. So we're now in 1971. And like I say, handwriting analysis is absolute fucking shit because let's be honest, this is very likely not the Zodiac killer. This is very likely this desk almost has nothing to do with the other crime that happened. Like if we consider Cherry Jo Bates' murder, and what happened, and the notes, and all that stuff,

this poem, other than being about blood, is like really not related, but it's in the case. So, I don't know, and it's the piece of handwriting that connected it to the Zodiac, because nothing else, I don't know, it's just kind of a fucking, it's kind of a mess. This time, the first letter arrives at the Los Angeles Times of all places, which is crazy, far, far, far south of Zodiac's normal stomping ground and postmarked outside of San Fran in Pleasanton on March 15th.

But according to him, there's good reason for that. Here is the envelope for that one for you to look at. Here is the letter for this one for you to look at. And then Mathis will read the letter for us now. Let me just grab it for you here. Sorry, one second. Just drop that one in there. There you go. This is the Chodiak speaking. Like I have always said, I am crack proof. The cipher does not contain my name, but it does contain my game. Be sure to get this part exactly right. I U O S I E P Z T E W Y I T M Z I T M C U A W E. Wait a minute.

Hold on. Whoops. Dragon Quest 11 cinematic universe in the wrestling. I don't know. I'm so sorry. I must have got my crazy round. That is what it is. It was my notes that got mixed around.

That's what occurred there. Sorry. Here's the real letter they got at the LA Times. This is the Zodiac speaking. Like I've always said, I am crack proof. If the Blue Meanies are ever going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses and do something because the longer they fiddle and fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my afterlife. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my Riverside activity. They're only finding the easy ones. There are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason I'm writing to the Times is this.

They don't bury me on the back. They don't bury me on the back pages like some of the others. SFPD zero Zodiac 17 plus. God, we're at the, we're at the like, he's just doubling and doubling and doubling down. The pity part, yeah. You guys don't put me on the back page. I like you guys. You guys are real fans. You're my real fans.

I'll write a letter to Los Angeles who always supported me. At this point, like we said, he's in full desperation mode is what I'm vibing on. He's frustrated people aren't paying attention to him anymore now that he seems to be just lying about killing anybody after Paul Stein, which is getting close to two years ago now when he killed Paul Stein. It just feels like whining and complaining at this point mostly instead of badass cool villain talk. Now it seems clearer to me than ever before what we were talking about earlier is true, that it was publicity and not murdering that this guy was really after and that he only really sees murder as a means to an end.

He tries again from another angle, March 22nd, he sends his 17th Zodiac letter straight to his new PR guy, Paul Avery, at the San Francisco Chronicle. But to me, even if there really is something that he's actually hinting at here, possibly the location of his 12 victims remains who was implied to be known missing person Donna Lass Skull was only just discovered in the area last December it doesn't seem very thought out or deep and more just an attempt to pad out and create buzz around his brand without adding any new information so I'm going to send this to Jesse here he can like describe it to you. Okay. So on the, uh, sender, the side of card for address, he has the times San Francisco examiner and the Chronicle listed as, uh, like the address and it

says attention, Paul, Avery equal Chronicle and then same misspelling of Avery by the way, and then he has a Zodiac with this symbol up the top for the return address and it is a Sierra club postcard that says, uh, peek through the pines past Lake Tahoe areas, sought victim 12 and around in the snow. And then there's an image of what appears to be kind of like the forest. Yeah. Kind of just like a weird sort of puzzle letter thing, but that's what I'm saying.

It doesn't, you don't get the like exciting, intriguing, like there's something going on here vibe to this. It's just kind of like, uh, more, more. Okay. Uh, and, uh, then amazingly without getting the level of attention he's obviously craving, there's no official communication from the Zodiac for almost three entire years. He just takes three years off until January 30th, 1974, when he writes into the San Francisco Chronicle again to talk about the movie The Exorcist for some reason. Here is a picture of the letter. Excuse me. Here's a picture

of the letter and here is Mathis to read the letter for you. I saw and think The Exorcist was the best satirical comedy that I've ever seen. Signed yours truly. He plunged himself into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the suicide's grave titwilo titwilo titwilo titwilo PS I do not see this note in your paper. I will do something nasty, which you know, I'm capable of doing I'll see this tit willow You best believe and then it's got at the bottom of it's got like a weird like it I wouldn't that I wouldn't call it a symbol. I don't know that looks like a bunch of like half finished letters. It looks like Characters or something like this. It looks like something.

Yeah. Um, and then, uh, the letter briefly continues after that, uh, with a crazy new update to the scorecard for math is to read here. There you go. Yeah. Oh yeah. Me 37 SFPD zero. I mean like triple the score real fast. 37. Oh true. Well, he was three years with no communication, right? So the implication is that he just went ham in private for three years. Like shut the fuck up Zodiac. He's gotten really, really, really the fuck up. Yeah. He's so high. May he's media shit. Yeah, this sucks. I don't know what the like symbols are supposed to be,

but it looks like it's meant to be his signature symbol. And in a way- Are you saying that because you truly don't know or do you actually not know? Cause I know. I've seen this before. You know this? I know what this might be.

I don't know what it is. So if you arrange it properly, it ends up spelling out Lee for Arthur Lee, what was his last Lee or Arthur Lee. What was his last name? Arthur Lee Allen. Yeah, so if you move things around, it comes out to be Lee.

I see. Which there's actually a GIF I saw. Hang on, I can find this. If you move things around and it comes out to be Lee is like a perfect summary of Robert Greatsmith's entire book. If you just move some shit around. Here we go. Copy image address. There we go. There we go.

Okay. Okay. Let's see. I mean, Yeah. I mean, I mean, I'd say I've seen it before. I know. I like it. I knew it looked familiar. I get it. I see it. I just, that is just like numerology level.

It is kind of like if you move this here and do this and change this. There's like a middle part that doesn't even, that's like, they just start making another shape first. I don't even know what that part is. But apparently, yeah, apparently according to the Zodiac Killer, 25 more people die in less than three years, which would be insane, which along with these new, unfamiliar symbols feels more like a crazy swing before like the inevitable like fizzle out. Like when someone takes a break from uploading YouTube videos for a while,

come back with like a half ass version. They quit after five episodes. They didn't see the numbers they were expecting. Got to go. Uh, maybe we are in the wind down because the next letter isn't sent till May 8th and nobody even sees it till June 4th. And it's mostly just about the movie Badlands or at least the advertisements about the movie

Badlands. Here's the letter. It isn't even signed with a crosshair, though. Most agree it is likely legit for some fucking reason. And then here's Jesse with the letter for you. Yeah, the handwriting is very similar. Sirs, I would like to expression my concern, concern not T on concerning your poor taste and lack of sympathy for the public, as evidenced by your running of the ads for the movie Badlands featuring the blurb in 1959.

Most people were killing time. Ken Hawley were killing people. In light of recent events, this kind of murder glorification can only be deplorable at best. Not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable. Why don't you show some concern for public sensibilities and cut the ad a citizen. Oh my God. Yeah. It's the, it's the blame the video games of the fifties. Yeah. Well, except I, I think the Zodiac is kind of, this is actually to me feels like

a little inspired for the Joe for the Zodiac. Like he's doing a winking joke considering he's like, can we be a little bit less violent? What do you guys think? Can we cut it out with the violence in this culture? Love Zodiac, right? But I think that's where he's coming from on it. But a month later, we get one more letter on July 8th, which despite its strange, flamboyant looking handwriting is also largely considered legitimate, at least according to Graysmith who, you know, whatever.

Some people think Zodiac was being cute here or trying to be some kind of other good guy character for once, but I think it's a letter directly from my desperate fourth phantom himself trying out a face turn angle for everybody and By the way, the count Marco column is an anti-feminist column in the Chronicle that was written by Marco Spinelli So here is the picture of this and you can see how very different the Lettering is and then here's and here's Mathis reading it for you. That doesn't look anything like his writing at all. Oh, okay, let me go ahead and read this. Editor, put Marco back in the hellhole

where from whence it came. He was a serious psychological disorder, or he has a serious psychological disorder, always needs to feel superior. I suggest you refer him to a shrink. Meanwhile, cancel the Count Marco column. Since the Count can write anonymously, so can I. The Red Phantom.

In parentheses, we're at red with rage. Yeah. And like I said, right, like, for some reason or another, be it handwriting analysis or psychological profiling, this was considered a legitimate Zodiac message. But just to give you an idea of how spooky and uncertain and dangerous things felt, this letter actually did cause 15-year employee Spinelli to retire from the Chronicle and move to Hawaii. It's that hard to tell how scared you should be by the Zodiac Killer.

Like once he says, I'm going to kill you or whatever, it's scary. And so we come to the fifth and most powerful of the phantoms who can destroy the enemies of zodiac with without barely lifting a finger and if you're not careful the fifth phantom will come and destroy you but that's only because the truth is the fifth phantom is you and the corrupting desire to solve or even just simply survive the zodiac at any moral cost that's what happens to Spinelli and he's neither the first or last. Letter 21, which doesn't come for four more years, is from the fifth phantom. So let's investigate. Come with me again. Close your eyes. Travel there. It is now April 24th, 1978, and yet

another Zodiac letter arrives, the San Francisco Chronicle. In a lot of ways, I'd call it a very standard Zodiac letter, but we can talk about it, uh, if you guys feel like anything's changed in his style in the last four years or not, here is an image of it. And here is Jesse with the letter text for you to read. Here you go. Dear editor, this is the Zodiac speaking. I am back with you. Tell Herb Cain. I am here. I have always been here

That city pig Toshi is good, but I am both smarter and Better he will get tired then leave me alone I'm waiting for a good movie about me who will play me? I am now in control of all things. Yours truly Zodiac guess SFPD zero. Like total just, I mean, I don't know. Something interesting happens at this point. Uh, what do you guys think of that letter? First of all, I mean, this guy sucks. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know. It doesn't match any of the way his other letters look though. Visually? Yeah, the way his letters are, they're too neat. They're too like no spelling errors. I kind of agree with you. It's interesting.

Yeah. So let's first take a detour back a couple of years, 1976, which is two years ago from our present, 1978. Popular author Armistead Maupin was serializing the first four novels in his Tales of the City series about San Francisco and the interesting and frequently gay people who live there in his capacity as a writer for the Chronicle.

So he's like serializing his books in the paper. Obviously he's a San Francisco local, so he's swept up in the case as much as anyone is. So it's only natural that eventually he would make his way into the Tales of the City. Obviously, he's a San Francisco local, so he's swept up in the case as much as anyone is. So it's only natural that eventually he would make his way into the tales of the city. The Zodiac Killer does, only he's renamed the Tinkerbell Killer. So if you watch coverage of the case on television like Maupin did, you would certainly be very familiar with the larger than life character Inspector Dave Toskey, who as the head of

such a popular investigation, he's constantly being interviewed on TV and stuff. So again, it's only natural that Toskey, who is a well-known public figure in the city, also starts making a couple appearances in the story as Inspector Tandy. However, once Toskey appeared sometime in 1976, Moppen starts getting these really weird pieces of anonymous fan mail that praise not only the story themselves, but weirdly, specifically Toskey's appearances in them, leading Moppen to believe that it was actually Toskey himself writing the fan mail. Fast forward back to 1978, Moppen reads the letter in the paper, this new letter after four years, sees how it praises Toskey,

asks who's going to play Zodiac in a movie. It reminds him of the fan letters he suspected Toskey wrote himself, and he took it upon himself to file a formal complaint against Toskey, which then caused Toskey to make this statement, which Mathis will read for you now. He did this on the evening news. It was a silly mistake. He made me the hero of the story, and it was fun for me and my family. So I sent some notes, three or four of the story and it was fun for me and my family. So I sent some notes, three or four, saying how good it was that he put a real life homicide inspector in the column.

It was kind of like sending fan mail to myself. It was done in a harmless way. I don't think anyone was going to be hurt by it. Any suggestions that I faked a Zodiac letter are absolutely absurd. When Chief Gain told me that the state documents experts had checked my handwriting against that of the Zodiacs over the weekend, I was shocked. I wrote an OZEOT Zodiac letter. The fact that Zodiac mentioned me by name for the first time disturbed me and my family

very much. This is what he said. This is his statement. This is his final truth on the matter. Nevertheless, he's immediately removed from the Zodiac case after years and years and years. He's reassigned to the pawn shop beat. It's a pretty huge downgrade. And though Sherwood Morrill eventually said the letter was definitely from Zodiac,

even though for some reason this one time Tosky doesn't take it to Morrill at first to get it verified. He takes it to some new guy that has no analysis under his belt. So it's pretty sus that he didn't go to moral this one time. The police now officially their position is that neither Toski nor the Zodiac wrote the letter even though it still ended up destroying Toski's life a little bit. And believe me, we'll talk more about whether or not he wrote that letter next time, but this is largely where the most popular Zodiac timeline ends. And the last hundred pages or so of the book are just here to put together the facts

in whatever way Graysmith sees fit. So before we finish, for the sake of completeness and understanding the zeitgeist, let's take some time to briefly check some specific theories and suspects out in a lightning round that I'm gonna blast through. And we're gonna see how all five of these phantoms, the versions of the zodiac that most laypeople think of, all just come from this one big Robert Gray Smith story.

The first, and to me silliest theory, is that part of zodiac's MO is that the crimes happen near water. Considering the first couple is at a pumping station, the second is at Blue Rock Springs, and the third is at Lake Berryessa, that makes sense. But then what? Is Paul Stein near water because he's in San Francisco? Doesn't that just make the whole Bay Area near water? I don't like that one. I don't like that theory. Second theory, which holds slightly more water, is that these crimes

are killed, these people are killed near calendar holidays. Cherry Jo Bates was killed on Halloween. David and Betty are killed over Christmas break. Darlene and Mike are killed on the 4th of July. Well, Darlene's killed, Mike lives. Cecilia and Brian are attacked on Sukkot. Tabernacles, the Jewish holiday where you eat a harvest meal in a hut to celebrate the Exodus, you know, this holiday, uh, apparently that's one of the holidays on this list and then Paul Stein on Columbus day. So I guess you could say that's a thing, but it could just be that the Zodiac has a whole lot of her busy job and that he has to wait till he has time off to commit his murders like we said last week and weirdly grace mits says this one's unacceptable to which you know good for it. So then there's this is the last theory there's his extremely convoluted astrology theory.

astrology theory. It involves the schedule of equinoxes, moon phases, various other celestial movements to string together, not just confirmed, but tons and tons of extra suspected zodiac crimes, and it just becomes a giant web of mush. Here's an actual note that I'm going to have Jesse Reed from Deanna, who was kind enough to actually write this all out in her notes. And I'm so sorry that I just jumped over it like this, but this is a quote from Deanna because it really sums up what the fuck is wrong with this. The biggest problem is that the connections, the equinoxes and solstices are too tenuous, more tenuous than the unacceptable holiday theory. Gray Smith attempts to say that anything up to three weeks in either direction of a celestial event is connected to the astrology theory and therefore zodiac. Yeah, it's nuts.

Yeah, literally, it's just throwing darts at a dartboard at this point. So lastly, last thing we're going to do, we're going to hit a couple suspects real quick, starting with a guy called Rick Marshall. On August 8th, 1978, Gray Smith himself began putting together a theory that zodiac might write his letters using some kind of tracing set-up, which is substantiated by support from Sherwood Morrill. One day later, on August 9th, now that word has spread that he's writing a Zodiac book, he gets an anonymous tip fingering a man called Rick Marshall for Zodiac, and hears from Sherwood that the same guy called him, too.

He tells them both that Rick Marshall was a movie buff who filmed his crimes, hid his evidence in a silent film canister rigged with an explosive trap that the killer left in possession of a close friend. That close friend is named Melvin Burrell or something like that. So Rick Marshall is also ambidextrous, loved using fake names, and was the only suspect ever to have the type of dark room that Gray Smith imagined for his tracing theory and the type of copy machine thing that he needed to do it too. Teletype machine is what it's called. And there's this crazy, unsubstantiated story about Gray Smith going down and talking to that guy Marvin Burrell, which becomes the creepy basement scene from the Zodiac movie that's very famous, whether he thinks

there's someone upstairs and it gets really creepy and he like reveals that it was him who wrote the thing and it's like really cinematic and scary, but it largely amounts to nothing. And he doesn't really draw any specific conclusions. And in the end, Rick Marshall doesn't even match It was him who wrote the thing and it's like really cinematic and scary, but it largely amounts to nothing. And he doesn't really draw any specific conclusions and in the end, Rick Marshall doesn't even match the popular physical description of Zodiac anyway. So what's the point? Next, we're going to talk about William Joseph Grant, aka the guy who kept switching places on the other side of the freeway with that cop, Lafferty.

Because this is not the only place he interacts with the Zodiac case. For example, he's also the first guy Darlene Ferent's sister Linda identifies as the guy stalking Darlene. He also has his home flooded around the same time Zodiac has his home flooded according to whatever letter that was written. I think it's letter 17. It's the same letter for all of them. His house is behind a row of trees, just like in that look between the pines. He's also connected to the Sierra Club from that letter. Also, he learned some basic cipher stuff in the military. He spent some time at Terry's waffle shop where Darlene worked. He owned a car very similar to the Impala that was described by witnesses on the 4th of July. He's ambidextrous and there wasn't a single attack that took place

while he was supposed to be at work. So that sounds pretty good, but also no handwriting match, which whatever, but also no fingerprint match, which whatever, but also no fingerprint match. He's too old to match the Paul sign, subsets suspects description. And there's lots of conflicting accounts of whether he was ever at Darlene's painting party. I don't actually think he sounds like that bad of a suspect still, at least for some of this stuff, but I'm not sure where he stands with investigators today who are serious about

this. So that's that. And finally, before we go, let's take a second to cover the suspect everybody's been waiting for who Mathis was scrying He was scrying forth in the in the inkblots So Arthur Lee Allen is this guy is aka John Carroll Lynch the actor he used to play Mimi's husband on the Drew Carey show He's an amazing actor in the movie who plays this guy. He's Gray Smith and Toshi's favorite subject He's called Robert Allen star in the book, but he's actually Arthur Lee Allen. This is the 1986, like, official published book, fingered suspect, as they'd have you understand it. And according to them,

it's for very good reason. Basically, in 1971, the family of Arthur Lee Allen called the police because they are seriously worried that he may be the Zodiac Killer. He was also in Riverside at the time of Cherry Joe Bates murder. He owned a Zodiac Seawolf watch which has a logo featuring a crosshair over the center of a circle. It's pretty crazy that this watch brand exists and nobody talks about all the time because it's pretty fucking obvious. You can just look right at the watches and the brand and you're like oh my god it's Zodiac. According to his sister Arthur also kept a paper covered in strange symbols in a metal

box he never let anyone see, and on the day of the Lake Berryessa attack, she saw him with a bloody knife in his car after he had allegedly been out scuba diving at Salt Point, which is less than 100 miles away. Very close for him to drive if you want to murder somebody and have an alibi. Also according to close friends and frequent hunting buddy Donald Chaney, he had been known to show a passing interest in hunting people and that he'd swing by lovers' lanes and use a handgun with a flashlight attachment to walk up and shoot unsuspecting people and how hard it would be to investigate without a sensical motive.

And that if he did, he would call himself the Zodiac and that he owns lots of guns and he would say he wanted to shoot the tires out on a bus and shoot the quote, little darlings as they came bouncing off The bus just like zodiac did in his letters. Okay, that that is apparently why they finger him as a suspect on the 4th of June 1971 Tosky obtains a warrant to search Alan's trailer while he's out finds a bunch of weird caged animals dissected animals animal organs like Dahmer-esque levels of like fucked up animal shit when he comes home they also take writing samples in prints and we take an inkblot test five of his answers started with z. He's also repeat offender pedophile and child molester which tossing armstrong see as a connection to his apartment level in stores kids seen in the letters is eventually arrested for and it and convicted in 1974 before being released a few years later. However, though this looks like an open and shut case at first, a lot

of the major creepy details are scuttled by footnotes in the book. For example, regarding the dissected animals and stuff, it loses a lot of the creepiness when you read the quote, I later learned that Alan was working toward a degree in biology and had received permission from the state government to collect an experiment on small animals. So he's a biology student, he's studying this, he's young enough to be a student. That's what he's doing. That's what that is. And regarding the like, insane story his hunting buddy told where he basically gives him a trailer for the whole case,

consider this footnote in the book, I later learned that there was some antagonism between Alan and one of the hunters that could cause the report to be suspect. So basically what he's saying is this guy just said this shit to like fuck over Arthur Lee Allen. And when you couple this with the fact that the fingerprints and handwriting don't match and that nobody really likes his voice for Zodiac, even with what we know in 1986, he doesn't look that strong anymore. And he seems like he's excited about being Zodiac and he wants to be Zodiac, but I don't know if he actually is.

There's things about Arthur Lee Allen that almost completely rule him out, as much as there are so many things that almost make him the absolute last word in Suspects. Yeah, they like found literally like bomb diagrams, a fucking thing with the letters Z on it They found this is in the police like they found All the shit up in the bait like all the shit that we would be using a weapons drawer of all weapons that are right

Like you know, like it's like that kind of crazy shit and I actually disagree. I think his handwriting looks extremely similar to Zodiacs I'm just saying it wasn't it wasn't Matt. It's like it wasn't a match. Let's put it that way. Sure. According to like that's like him just on like that's just something about him like filling out an application. To me, that looks like it's pretty close.

It's pretty close. It doesn't look not like it. But I'm just saying according to the experts, it was ruled out and the and the and the fingerprints are ruled out. But we'll talk more about that later. Next time and speaking of next time, that's when I will see you next. I hope you guys enjoyed the conclusion of Zodiac, the Great American Rabbit Hole, part

one, the five phantoms. Next week, we got part two Ghostbusters, where now that we have an established timeline, we break it all down again. Thank you for listening. Thank you for subscribing at patreon.com slash ZulilyPod. go discuss what topics you think I might cover next among many other more Sinister things over at our slash to the 90 pod on reddit get zodiac by Robert Graysmith and motor spirit and how to find Zodiac by Jared Kovac and Dean and Deanna are both fucking straight-up killing the game. See you guys next time. Good Bye

time, good bye. I quickly dash back outside, she's looking up at the sky in awe. I look up too, and there's a perfect line of dozen lights traveling across the sky. So Thanks for watching! you