Criminology - The Riverside Connection

Episode Date: September 9, 2017

In this episode, we talk about the tip which leads Paul Avery down the path of investigating a murder in Riverside which could be connected to the Zodiac. If it is, it's very possible that this could be his first murder. In 1966 a college freshman named Cheri Jo Bates was murdered. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the facts surrounding this murder and the mysterious letter that is sent after it occurs. Is this the earliest known work of the Zodiac?    You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. This is episode five of criminology. I'm Mike Ferguson. With me as my co-host, Mike Morford. Morf, how are you today? I'm doing good. I'm excited to get into this episode.

We're going to go deep and we're going to come up with a really interesting connection to the Zodiac. So this should be pretty good. Now, this is one episode that I've been looking forward to, and I think everyone will see why when we get into it. Yeah, this is one of the most puzzling pieces of this whole mystery, so I really hope that we can cover it and cover it thoroughly. So just a quick reminder, how we left off at the end of episode four. The Zodiac had mailed a threatening Halloween card to San Francisco Chronicle reporter Paul Avery, which included the threat, you are doomed. And this led to publicity of the threat spreading throughout California, which included the town of Riverside just over 400 miles south of San Francisco.

One of the Riverside area of people that read about the threat against Avery was a man that considered himself to be sort of an armed chair detective. Since he had first heard of the Zodiac case months earlier in 1969, this man was convinced that the Zodiac was responsible for a 1966 unsolved murder. in Riverside County. He decided to contact Paul Avery at the Chronicle with his tip, figuring Avery would be all ears. And this tip to Avery would be in the form of a letter. And in the book Zodiac by Robert Graysmith, he quotes the letter as, please forward the contents of this letter to the detective in charge of the Zodiac murder case. I hope this information will also help you, as we would both like to see this case solved. As for myself, I wish to remain anonymous and I know that you will understand why.

A few years ago in Riverside, California, a young girl was murdered, just about, I believe, on Halloween evening. I could write a much longer letter citing the similarities between Zodiac's case and this murder, which occurred in Riverside, but if the police department cannot see said comparative similarities between these two cases, then I will take a slow boat to China, even if these two crimes were committed by two different people. I think, after all the facts are studied, regarding both these cases, if police have not already investigated these possibilities

and are not already aware of the Riverside case, then even so perhaps they should look into it. Letters to newspapers, similar erratic proof, printing, find out about these two different cases. Give Captain Cross a call on the phone. He knows that I do not quit. Mr. Avery, I will give you a call in the near future. Please look into the case. The Riverside Police have a wealth of information. So does San Francisco. Let us hope that they are not too proud to work together. And if they already are, let us hope that there has been an exchange of information. Paul Avery wanted to check out the tip, so he reached out to Riverside Police and got

a hold of Captain Irv Cross, and he was able to learn the identity of the tipster. The man's name was Phil Sins. Avery also learned that Mr. Sins had written to Sergeant Lynch with the Vallejo Police Department. Captain Cross told Avery of how Mr. Sins had been steadily making contact with the Riverside Police Department. He continued to urge them to look into a possible Zodiac connection in the 1966 Riverside murder. Captain Cross went over the background of the 1966 case with Avery and made arrangements to send him some of the case materials to review. Now, Avery was initially skeptical of this Riverside connection to Zodiac. The Riverside murder victim was an 18-year-old college student named Sherry Joe Bates.

On November 9th, 1970, Avery received the materials from Captain Cross. One of the things that Cross had included was a photo of a hand-printed letter that was received by Riverside PD in April of 1967, six months to the day after Sherry's murder. The letter seemed to be written in a childish scrawl, and it was obvious that the author had definitely tried to disguise his writing. The letter read, Bates had to die. There will be more. But it was when Avery looked at the bottom of the letter that he suddenly became very interested in. in a zodiac connection to Sherry's case, because the letter had been signed off with what appeared to be a Z.

And Avery didn't waste any time. He got on a plane for Riverside that very same day. When Avery arrived in Riverside, he met with Detective Sergeant Dave Bonine of the Riverside PD, who was at that time handling the Bates case. Bonine allowed Avery to have access to the Bates murder files and to view the evidence in Sherry Joe's case, case number 352-481.

So Morf, before we get into the details of Sherry's case, I want to talk a little bit about exactly who Sherry Joe Bates was. Like we mentioned, she was 18 years old. She was a freshman at Riverside City College. She had just recently graduated from Ramona High School in Riverside. And in high school, she had been very popular. She was outgoing. She was a cheerleader and an honor student.

And Sherry Joe Bates was a very pretty girl. She had blonde hair, blue eyes. She was 5'3. She weighed 110 pounds. She enjoyed playing the piano. And Sherry had a part-time job at the Riverside National Bank. So if you look at all this morph, the signs pointed to Sherry Joe being like the All-American girl, smart, ambitious, attractive, friendly, outgoing. I mean, she had everything

going for her and her whole life in front of her. Sherry had a goal of getting out of Riverside and becoming an airline stewardess. Attending RCC seemed like the first step in accomplishing that goal. In 1966, Sherry lived at 4195 via San Jose, along with her father, Joseph Bates. Her older brother, Michael, had recently left home after joining the military. The family had lived in Riverside since 1959 after moving from Nebraska. Sherry's mother Irene is said to have suffered from mental illness and sometime after arriving in Riverside left the family to live in a nearby mental care facility. Ironically, Sherry's mom died on July 4, 1969, the same night as the Zodiac struck at Blue Rock Springs and Blaio. It's been reported that she died from suicide, but it's not clear if that's been confirmed.

So despite Sherry not having her mom around, she seemed to be doing really well for herself. She had a great relationship with her dad. And one other person that we haven't mentioned yet was a boy by the name of Dennis Highland, who was Sherry Joe's boyfriend. The pair had been going steady for about two years. Dennis was similar to Sherry in a lot of ways. He was popular and outgoing. He was an athlete.

and he had attended Ramona High School with Sherry. Now, Dennis had graduated a year or two before Sherry, and he played football at San Francisco State College. It turned out that just a week before Sherry would be murdered, she had gone with Highland's parents to visit him in San Francisco. On Sunday, October 30th, 1966, sometime around 3.45 p.m., Sherry called her friend Stephanie to ask her if she wanted to go to the RCCC

Library to pick up a couple books. She had to study for an upcoming test, but Stephanie declined. Sherry left for the library that was located at the 4,800 block of Magnolia Street between 4.30 and 5 p.m. A ride that would take Sherry 10 to 15 minutes. Her father wasn't home at the time, so she left him a note that read, Dad went to RCC Library. Her father returned home at around 5 p.m. and found the note before he headed back out. Another witness had driven by Sherry's home at 4.30 p.m. and had seen that Sherry's car was in the driveway. So that's how it's been established that Sherry left the house between 430 and 5. So, Morph, one thing we need to mention is that Sherry had a very distinctive car,

and it was a lime green VW bug. And her car being so distinctive is going to help track her movements later on. At about 5.30 p.m., Sherry made a phone call to a co-worker of hers named Donna. Sherry asked Donna if she had seen a midterm paper that Sherry had lost. Donna had not seen it, but the two talked for a few minutes before they ended their phone call. A few minutes after 6 p.m., another girlfriend of Sherry saw her driving on Magnolia towards RCC. The friend mentioned that she waved to Sherry, but Sherry didn't wave back. Now, this would have been strange for Sherry, given everything we've talked about more.

So the friend would think later on that it was most likely that Sherry didn't see her. Because Sherry wouldn't do that. She would have waved back. Sherry's official movements and timeline at this point may seem to get a bit confusing. To help us with the timeline, we reached out to Richard Grinnell, who runs the website Zodiacciphers.com. Richard and I have corresponded about many things in the Zodiac case over the years. One thing Richard's been able to do very well is to document and lay out the various Zodiac case materials and information on his site. This includes the tricky Bates case timeline.

We're going to be referencing his site in presenting the Bates case details. I definitely would encourage all of our listeners to be sure to check out Richard's site. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

So in discussing Sherry's timeline that night, so we know that Sherry went to the RCC Library at some point that night because she checked out three books. And these books would later be found in her car. Now, the library was only open that Sunday night from 6 p.m. to 9 p.m. But one issue is that despite the library being pretty crowded that night, there were not a lot of people that saw Sherry Joe Bates inside the library. And many of the people in there, they knew Sherry. So this would end up being a puzzling aspect of the case. So I think it's important to pick up the timeline here after the phone call to her co-worker Donna, which Sherry made around 5.30 p.m., which lasted a few minutes.

Once again, Sherry's distinctive lime green VW bug is going to help us establish a timeline based on eyewitness accounts. Sometime at or around 610 to 6.15 p.m., another witness, an Air Force man, observed Sherry driving up an alley parallel to the Magnolia Avenue Library location. the witness added that her car was followed closely by what looked to be possibly a bronze mid-1960s oldsmobile. Around the same time that the Air Force man saw Sherry's car, four young men standing at a fence very close to where Sherry parked saw her pull in. The men would later estimate the time to be around 613. It's assumed that Sherry made her way into the library shortly after this point. Now, the four men along the fence say that they hung out there till around 715.

And it's important to point out that from where they stood, they had a very good vantage point of Sherry's car. Now, there was one witness inside the library that would later state that he saw Sherry Joe. This was a male student. He'd been waiting in the RCC parking lot for the library to open at six people. Once inside, it would just be a short time later that he saw Sherry. He noted that she was busy writing in a blue spiral notebook. Nobody witnessed Sherry exiting the library. So we can't say for sure when she left.

Friends of hers that were in the library from about 6.30 p.m. to 6.40 p.m. did not see Sherry anywhere in the library. Other friends of hers that were in the library from about 7.15 p.m. until 9 p.m. when the library closed, also did not see Sherry in the library that night. These friends of Sherry's that didn't see her that night did see the four men sitting along the fence when they two arrived at the library around 7.15 p.m. So Morph, based on the accounts of all the people that were in the library, this is what seems to make the most sense.

Sherry arrived at the library around 610, 615. She was only in the library a short time and probably left prior to 630, Because like we said, none of her friends saw her between that 630 to 9 time period. At 9 p.m. when the library closed, the students that were inside all departed to the parking lot. Some of them, although they had not seen Sherry, did see her lime green VW parked in the lot. Some of these people also reported that a light colored Tucker torpedo was parked behind her car. This car didn't belong to any of the students leaving the library. Now, Mor, if we have to talk about the Tucker torpedo, it was also known as the Tucker 48,

and seeing this car in that parking lot, it would have been a pretty big deal because the Tucker car company, they only rolled out 51 of these cars before they ceased operations and closed the company. So this was a very rare car, which makes it possible that the witnesses could have been mistaken, and that what they actually saw was maybe a late 40s or early 50s Studebaker, which shared a lot of similar features with the Tucker. And it seems like police came to this conclusion as well because a newspaper article about Sherry's case would later be printed in which police were asking for tips. In the newspaper article, it stated they were looking for a late 40s to early 50s,

light-colored studebaker with oxidized paint. At 9.30 p.m., a female student was walking near the alleyway near Terracina Drive, a road that ran alongside the library. She saw a man in the shadows smoking a cigarette. She was startled by him, but they exchanged to Lowe's and she walked on. This alley was on RCC property, a short distance from the library itself. Two unoccupied houses that were part of RCC property partially obscured the view in that area, as well as made the lighting more difficult for the female student to really see the man well. The area that these two houses was situated in made it an ideal spot to look out towards the library and the parking area. So at this point, the library's been closed for 30 minutes. The parking lot area is pretty quiet.

But sometime between 1015 and 1045 p.m., a nearby resident heard a terrible scream coming from the area of the alleyway. About two minutes later, the resident heard what sounded to them like an old car startup. And then the area went silent. There was a second person in the area that also said they heard a scream at about 10.30. On the next morning, October 31st, 1966, Halloween, an RCC groundskeeper named Cleophis Martin drove his street sweeper along Terracina Drive. It was around 6.30 a.m. When he came to the area of the alleyway, he spotted the bloody body of a woman lying face down in a dirt driveway. He immediately went to summon police.

Police arrived at the crime scene and examined the body. This was a gruesome scene. There was blood everywhere. There was no doubt that the woman had been stabbed and slashed to death. And it wouldn't be long before police would identify the woman as 18-year-old RCC student Sherry Joe Bake. Police worked the crime scene and were careful not to disturb the body so that the coroner could come and examine it. It seemed clear to the officers, judging by the condition of the ground nearby, that Sherry did not go quietly and that she literally fought her attacker to the very end. The police on the scene started to comb the area for clues that might be related to the murder, and they would come up with some pretty big evidence.

They noted dried blood spots on the ground that led away from the alley onto the area of Terracina. and they felt that the killer may have headed in that direction after the murder. They did not find any murder weapon. Police did, however, almost immediately find a wristwatch within 10 feet of Sherry's body. And they felt sure that Sherry had pulled this watch from the killer's wrist during the attack. The watch was a men's time X with a torn 7-inch wristband, and police took notice that it had been splattered with what turned out to be white-pans. A very common type of paint used in a variety of painting projects.

Yeah, Mike. The police would later wind up tracking and finding out that this wristwatch had been purchased at a military base in England. There were bases in the Riverside area, most notably March Air Force Base, so police would be interested in this angle. One other clue that they found close to the watch was a man's heel print in the dirt. The heel print was from a boot made by B.F. Goodrich, and it consisted of a waffle design. Police determined from this heel print that the boot in question was likely a men's size between 8 and 10. Additionally, investigators found a cigarette butt in the alley. This cigarette butt was very close to the spot in which the female student had walked by the night before and noticed a man in the shadow smoking the cigarette.

The cigarette boat was collected and saved, but it would take decades before DNA science would be developed and put to use in examining the cigarette butt. Next, the police turned their attention to Sherry's car. green VW bug, it was still parked in the parking lot where Sherry had parked the night before. They could see through the window that there were books on the front seat. These would turn out to be the books that Sherry had checked out from the library. They located the car keys in the ignition and as the police looked further at Sherry's car, they opened her hood to check out the engine compartment. That's when they discovered that the car's distributor wire had been dissoned.

The Riverside PD was able to locate and record greasy palm and fingerprints in and around the engine compartment of the VW. Police theorized that Sherry's killer likely had disabled her car before he attacked her. One thing worth pointing out is that VW bugs in particular were exposed to engine tampering more so than other vehicles. This is because entry could be gained to the engine area from the outside of the car without the hood needing to be released from within side the car. The greasy prints that police found would never be matched to any suspect. After Sherry's body was removed, it was sent to the coroner's office for a full examination. This examination would give investigators even more to work with.

They looked over Sherry's body very closely in an effort to learn anything they could about her murder. One of the first things that they wanted to do was to examine her fingernails for evidence. They knew she had put up a vicious fight and theorized that she may have scratched or drawn blood from her attacker. Now, you have to remember that this autopsy was conducted decades before DNA would become an important tool in murder investigations. So while police weren't checking for DNA per se, anything that they found such as hair or blood could give them something to work with if they developed suspects. The coroner found several hairs at the base of Sherry's right thumb. These were carefully removed and placed in a clear plastic container for Riverside PD. These hairs, if they belonged to Sherry's killer, would be a major piece of evidence for police. After removing the hairs from her thumb,

the coroner moved on to other parts of the inquiry, including the examination of Sherry's wounds. The coroner noted in his report that Sherry had a fresh laceration on her upper lip. She also had sustained a gaping laceration to her thyroid cartilage. And this cut deeply into Sherry's carotid artery and jugular vein. It was so deep that Sherry was almost decapitated. The coroner report also said that Sherry had sustained a knife wound to her chest area above her left breast and the lower area of her right breast. So this was a horrible attack. There's no doubt about that. The coroner also noted that Sherry had abrasions on her face, hands, and forearms, but these were superficial compared to the deep penetrating knife wounds to Sherry's neck.

This was all evidence of Sherry fighting her attacker to the very end. The coroner concluded that Sherry was not raped or sexually assaulted, and that the cause of death was hemorrhage and blood loss due to the laceration of the right carotid artery. He concluded that the weapon used to kill Sherry Joe Bates was very likely a knife, with a blade half an inch wide and three and a half inches long. There was other information in the coroner report, which would be beneficial to police, but at the same time would raise more questions. The coroner started his autopsy at 9.23 a.m. on October 31st,

and he estimated that Sherry had been dead between 9 and 12 hours. This would put her time of death between 9.23 p.m. the night before and 1223 a.m. earlier that morning. Now, this would put the murder as occurring after the library closed and during the time when people reported hearing screams. The other important thing noted by the coroner was that Sherry had eaten a meal probably not more than two to four hours before her death. Yeah, Mike, this is the part that raises some questions. If she really did eat a meal two to four hours before her death, then this would mean that she ate it between 5.23 p.m. and 10.23 p.m. the night before. So it's possible that Sherry could have eaten the night of her murder

immediately before she headed to the library and just barely fit within the coroner's timeline. But if Sherry ate that meal later than 5.23 p.m., where did she eat it? And with whom? So the coroner says that the earliest that he thinks she could have been killed was 9.23 p.m. And more, if we talked about Sherry's visit to the library and from everyone they interviewed, the most logical conclusion is that she was probably out of there by 630. So assuming that she was murdered at 930 or 923, let's say that, what did Sherry Joe Bates do during that three hour time period? And did she eat that last meal with someone between 630 and 923?

because we talked about it, Morf, her car had been seen by a lot of people. And when it was ultimately found, it was in the exact same place. But the screams that were reported were heard between 1015 and 10.45 p.m. And we're assuming that those screams came from Sherry. So even if she was at the library until closing at 9 p.m. And this is a big if, because this would mean that none of her friends in that library, saw her, how did she not get attacked until sometime between 1015 and 1045? So in any of these scenarios, it seems as though Sherry spent some unknown amount of time

outside of the library that night. But the questions are, where was she and was she alone? And if she wasn't alone, Morp, who was with her? One thing that we need to mention here is that very early on the day Sherry was murdered at 2 a.m. October 30th, the clocks were turned back for daylight savings time. If somehow the people that heard the screams on the night of October 30th had not turned their clocks back, then they might be looking at a clock that read 1015 to 1045 p.m. When it was in fact an hour earlier just after 9 p.m. This could explain a way that Sherry could have been killed just after leaving the library

if she did in fact leave it at 9 p.m. We're just putting this out there. There's no way to know if the scenario happened, but hopefully the Riverside PD verified the actual time of these screams and if the witnesses in question had adjusted their clocks. The police didn't have a lot of answers to their questions, but they did come up with the theory. Based on the greasy prints found under Sherry's hood and the fact that her distributor wire was pulled, they felt that her attacker likely disabled her car and then waited for her to return to it.

And the area newspapers wasted no time reporting on Sherry's horrific murder. Within a day, articles detailing the attack were printed and the AP picked up the story running it in newspapers across multiple Western states. And it's shocking, morph, just how many details that police would give to these newspapers. Yeah, Mike, I agree. Many times in these murder investigations, police want to hold back as many things as many things as they can. In Sherry's case, they seem to share a ton of information with the press, and later on, this would come back to bite them. One of the details written in the papers in the days after the murder was that the distributor and coil wire were torn loose. And this is an exact quote. This is

exactly how it was written in the paper. So essentially, police gave newspapers one of the biggest clues to support their main theory. So I think, Mike, at this point, it would be a really good time to do a recap of where we are with the evidence collected in Sherry's case. Police found the greasy set of prints, a wristwatch possibly from her killer, and the hairs removed from Sherry's thumb. The fingerprints and wristwatch would be strong ties to Sherry's murder if they could find a suspect that own both. But in the meantime, the hairs were helpful. They knew that the hairs found on Sherry's thumb were brown and that they belonged to a white male. So in the aftermath of Sherry's murder, the town of Riverside is horrified by this brutal and senseless tragedy and the loss of an amazing young woman.

Sherry's dad Joseph was obviously devastated at losing his only daughter and especially in the way that it happened. At Sherry's funeral, only a few days after the murder, Joseph Bates collapsed under the stress and grief. And Morph, this is something that no father should have to endure. 250 people attended Sherry Joe Bates' funeral at St. Catherine's Catholic Church. And mixed into this crowd were Riverside detectives who were there to secretly take photos of various men in the crowd. Police knew that there was a possibility that Sherry's killer may turn up at the church. The date of Sherry's funeral was November 4th. 4th, 1966.

But many years later, Sherry's family would have her body exhumed and they would spread her ashes at sea. Following Sherry's funeral, police started looking at her inner circle of family and friends, and they worked their way out from there. They wanted to see if they could identify anybody who may have had an issue with Sherry or who might want to harm her. Police soon learn just how well-liked and popular Sherry was, and her friends couldn't think of anybody that would do something like this to Sherry.

Police started to think that due to the savagery of the murder and the use of a knife, that Sherry's murder might have been a crime of passion. They also felt that if Sherry had willingly gone to the dark alley where she was killed, then she possibly knew her a killer and that she likely wouldn't have gone there with a stranger. On November 13, 1966, just two weeks after Sherry's murder, police organized and carried out a reenactment at the RCC Library. They contacted 65 people that were at the library that night and arranged for them to take part in this reenactment. The police requested that the attendees all wear the same clothes they had worn on the night of the murder and to sit in the same spots they sat in that night.

They also had them park exactly where they had parked the night of October 30th. So police wanted to get a full accounting and a full understanding. of who was there, when they were there, and what they may have seen. The students were also asked to give samples of their hair and submit to fingerprinting. So, Mike, this was a huge, organized project for the Riverside PD, but it went pretty well. Everybody participated and cooperated, and it allowed for police to determine that only two people were missing from the night of the murder. A young heavyset male with a beard and a young woman.

The two missing people never came forward and were never. were able to be identified. Everybody that assisted in the reenactment and gave their hair and fingerprints was eliminated as being the murder of Sherry Joe Bates. Approaching the one month anniversary of the murder, the Riverside Press Enterprise ran a news article about Sherry's murder and the hunt for her killer. On November 29th, 1966, almost a month to the day of Sherry's murder, both the Riverside PD and the Riverside, side press enterprise, both received carbon copies of a typed letter. 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 lay 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'll be the shapely blue-eyed brunette that said no when I asked 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 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 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. It just might save that girl in the alley. But that is up to you. It will be on your conscience, not mine. Yes, I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning. Beware, I am stalking your girls now.

So the letter you just heard is known as the confession letter. And I think it's pretty obvious why it's called that, since the letter writer is taking credit for the murder of Sherry Joe Bates, in addition to being really creepy, you know, this letter, as well as the Bates case itself, is going to be linked to the Zodiac case. Yeah, Mike, and there's going to be even more things in regards to Sherry's murder, which are going to connect the Zodiac that we'll get into on the next episode.

We're going to find out how a morbid poem might link the Bates and Zodiac case. We're also going to find out that in 1969, while the Zodiac murders are happening, the Riverside PD was actually thinking that the Bates murder might be related to Zodiac. And this is a full year before Avery got the tip that wound up linking the two cases in the public eye. But Morph, the one thing that really strikes me about this letter, and like you said, we're going to get into it in a lot of detail in the next episode. but if it is somehow connected to Zodiac, then is this his first letter? Is it his first communication? And if it is, to me, it's very, very dark and somewhat different than the communications that we know come later from the Zodiac.

So is it that the Zodiac evolved in his writing, in his communication, as the years went on. I mean, again, this is something we'll get into, but I wanted to point it out right now because we're talking about this letter connected to the Sherry Joe Bates' murder, and I think it's an interesting conversation. Yeah, I agree with you, Mike.

While there's some things that are different and darker in this letter, we're going to find out that some of the things in this letter actually do coincide with what Zodiac would later right. Well, and that's where you get into words and phrasing, right? More things like that. That's probably what we're going to be talking about in episode six. Absolutely. As as it relates to Zodiac communication. And in the next episode, we're going to get into it in depth. But that's going to come in episode six of criminology. If you like to show, take time to subscribe and help us out by

rating and reviewing the show on iTunes or your favorite Android app. And I just want to thank everybody for leaving all the five-star reviews that we've gotten. You know, it means a lot to us that you're taking the time to leave a review, and that's important to us. So thank you. And of course, you can follow us on social media. We're on Twitter at Criminology Pod. And you can also find our Facebook page. Just search our Facebook page, Priminology Podcast.

And if you want to discuss the podcast or the Zodiac case, You can join our Facebook discussion group, criminology podcast discussion and fans. So as we move through this Zodiac case, we know it's a long and winding road. There's a lot of facts. There's a lot of details. There's a lot of clues. By the end of season one, there may be listeners morph that still have some questions or may even have a theory of their own. Heck, they probably have one right now.

but definitely by the end of the season, there's going to be people out there that want to talk about this case. So touching on what Mike just said, there's one thing we'd like to do at the end of season one of criminology, and that's to have an episode in which we read listener emails

and play their voicemails on the air. We figured this would be a good way to wrap up season one and the Zodiac case. We want to make sure that you have our contact information for the show. You can send us an email to criminology podcast at gmail.com or you can leave a voicemail by calling us at 661-77 crime.

Well, and on top of that, I mean, you can email us, you can leave us a voicemail at any time. It doesn't have to be just for this end of the season show that we're talking about. We'd love to hear from you at any point in time. Yeah, I'm pretty excited about hearing from our listeners. So, you know, send the emails, leave us voicemail. Yeah, don't be afraid to reach out to us. We love hearing from listeners. And Morph, before we go, I want to talk about Nina who hosts the Already Gone podcast.

We love Nina. We both met her at CrimeCon. She's an amazing person and an amazing podcaster as well. So if you have not checked out, already gone, please do. You will not be disappointed. Here's Nina herself to tell you about her show. I'm Nina Instead, host of the Already Gone podcast. Each week, I share stories of the missing, the mysterious, the murdered, and the lost.

Stories that I share tend to focus on Michigan or the Great Lakes region, and there are stories you may not have heard before. I hope you'll join us.