Criminology - Zodiac Suspects Part2

Episode Date: October 14, 2017

We continue the discussion on Zodiac suspects in this part 2 episode of the Zodiac suspects. This part 2 focuses on some of the lesser-known suspects, some of which have developed in recent years. We also discuss some of the various suspects that have resulted in family members stating that they believe that their father, sibling, etc. was the Zodiac. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast to ensure you get all future episodes. Please rate/review the podcast on Itunes.    You can support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey there, it's Wayfair here, where delivery and setup are as easy as a few taps on your phone. You're relaxing in an old hammock, scrolling Wayfair's app, when you spot it, a brand new patio set. Next thing you know, Wayfair delivers it right to your patio and sets it up. Oh, you need a new grill too? All right, Wayfair's got you covered. With Wayfair's room of choice delivery and fast experts set up on qualifying orders, life gets a little easier. Visit Wayfair.com or the Wayfair app. crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised.

I'd like to welcome everyone to episode 10 of criminology, season one. This is all about the Zodiac. So in episode nine of criminology, we got into the suspects, finally. And it was worth the wait. You know, Morph and I had a lot of fun doing it. We finally got to discuss some of the big early Zodiac suspects. These were the ones featured in the book Zodiac by Robert Graysmith, guys like Arthur Lee Allen and Rick Marshall, who are now household names in Zodiac circles because they've been around since the beginning of the investigation. But there are a lot of interesting suspects and persons of interest, and we're going to talk about a whole bunch of them in this episode.

So reading through these Zodiac police reports, some of these men jump out for a variety of different reasons. And we're going to get into some of those names and discuss suspects developed in more recent years. But we wanted to start off following up on Robert Grace Smith's book Zodiac with his sequel Zodiac unmasked. We're going to really load up this episode with a lot of different names, so it should be pretty interesting. You've asked to hear about a lot of different suspects, and you've also wanted longer episodes. So this is it. this one's going to have a lot of material and a lot of ground to cover. And one thing that you'll really want to do is listen to this entire episode.

We've got a very cool Easter egg hidden somewhere in the episode so you don't want to miss it. Now, in the book Zodiac, Gray Smith mentioned the town of Santa Rosa and Arthur Lee Allen's connection to that town. Remember, that's where investigators conducted a search of Allen's trailer. In the sequel, Zodiac unmasked, Graysmith finally refers to Alan using his real name. And there's another Santa Rosa man discussed in that book as possibly being connected to Alan through Santa Rosa Junior College where Alan had taken some courses. The book doesn't refer to this man by name. It merely mentions that he was a Santa Rosa Junior College writing instructor. But that instructor's name was Fred Manali.

Fred Manali was very fond of writing and of poetry. He wrote several letters to a variety of literary types. And when these letters that Manali had written were examined, they revealed some eerie similarities to Zodiac's writings. Some of the word choices, phrases, phrases, spacings, and overall writing produced a lot of similarities between Manali's writing and Zodiacs. Fred Manali, as a literary writer,

used the word shall in his writings. just as Zodiac did. Manali used the word satirical in a letter, as did Zodiac. These similarities and coincidences between Manali and Zodiac didn't end there. In the summer of 1969, Fred Manali had a short story of his published titled Paradise. It's a Nice Place. At around the same time, Zodiac included the line Slaves in Paradise in the first cipher he sent that August. In another short story written by Manali entitled Strategic Withdrawal, he used the term hang by your thumbs.

And in one of Zodiac's letters, he used the term hang by their thumbs. On August 25, 1976, Fred Manali was killed when the car he was driving swerved head on into an oncoming car. Two days later, on August 27th, in the San Francisco Chronicle, a personal ad ran, which read, Zodiac, your partner is in deep real estate. You're next. The Imperial Wizard can save you. Surrender to him or I'll terminate your case. R.A. The timing of this personal ad running two days after Manali was killed just seems amazing. It sounds as if it's a signal of some sort that Manali is dead, so this is sort of fueled speculation that there might be some sort of connection or Zodiac team that included Manali and possibly some other person, possibly Arthur

Lee Allen. Upon his death, some very troubling drawings were found in the belongings of Manali. And one of these drawings was believed to be one of the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murder victims. The drawings were allegedly of Kim Wendy Allen and they depicted her in S&MC. scenes. The drawing closely matched the binding type of strangulation that she experienced when she was murdered. Kim Allen had been a student at Santa Rosa Junior College. And another thing that was disturbing about the drawing of Kim Allen is that Fred Manali drew himself into the scene, but as a woman, Manali wrote his name on this drawing as Frida. So that might seem to play.

into some type of latent homosexual angle. In all, there were multiple Santa Rosa hitchhiker victims attached to the Santa Rosa Junior College that Manali worked at. If you remember from our discussion of Arthur Lee Allen, Santa Rosa police were trying to look into him as a suspect in those murders, but they couldn't link Alan to those murders. And here in Zodiac unmasked, author Robert Graysmith tried to indicate a possible connection between Allen and Manali. But there's no evidence that Manali and Arthur Lee Allen even knew each other.

And while Fred Manali can't be confirmed to be connected to Arthur Lee Allen or the Zodiac case, he is a person of interest in the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders. And it turns out, Manali knew he was a suspect. He wrote the following in a letter to a friend in January of 1973. So what else is new? Many distractions. Living in SF again. Pleasant Studio in a Victorian mansion on Ashbury Hill.

And the price is right. I'll be going to state again next semester on the GI Bill. I left Santa Rosa under a cloud of paranoia. The cops questioned me at length about the murder of a former student, female. I didn't do it. But there seems to be a young lady, perhaps another. former student, I don't know her name, who is vindictive enough toward me to want to see me in the gas chamber. Maybe I gave her a D. So it seems if there's a lot of interesting things that line up

with Manali on paper in relation to the Zodiac. And he was a murderer suspect in the San Rosa Hitchhiker murders. But there was a lot that didn't line up with Manali. He didn't look at all like the Zodiac sketch. He was about six foot three well over the height descriptions of Zodiac. And there were no confirmed links between him and Arthur Leigh Allen or to the Zodiac case. So now we're going to move on to another suspect mentioned in Robert Gray-Smith sequel Zodiac Unmased, and this is a guy that we're going to refer to as Zod. And we can't name him because he is the only suspect that we're going to be talking about that is still alive.

Here's an excerpt from Zodiac Unmast, which was published in 2002. In 1964, Arthur Lee Allen taught at Watsonville, north of Salinas, and heard a strange story. In the San Bernardino area at Pacific High School, a young student in dark-framed glasses with a black elastic band strode unannounced to the front of the classroom. The teacher had not yet arrived. In very large letters, he wrote Zodiac on the blackboard, said a student there, along with a few code-like symbols, I cannot recall. So that was just the tip of the iceberg with the suspect that would become known as Zod. In 1994, eight years before this was published in Zodiac unmasked,

an odd message popped up on an old Alt-True Crime Group message board. The message was regarding Zod, and the anonymous author claimed that he or she was a schoolmate of Zod, and they had some pretty interesting things to say about him. The post read in part, it is with great reluctance that I post this article, rewritten from a note I wrote in 1985, and sent the several police departments and to the author of Zodiac, all of whom ignored it. I am still concerned for my personal safety and for the possibility that this may not be taken seriously. Hence, I must remain anonymous. I attended Pacific High School in San Bernardino, California, and graduated there in 1964.

Among the students at that time was one the other kids called Big Bad Zod. They called him that because he was puny, weird, and called himself Zodiac. Zod was an extremely odd person. He was seriously disturbed, angry, and violent. He was teased mercilessly and often threatened the students that someday he would kill them all. and that someday he would be a famous person. A typical scene, Hey, Zod, are you going to kill us all?

You are so stupid. Someday we'll be famous and you will all be dead. Oh yeah, how are you going to do it? You'll find out and they'll never catch me. And then when I finally die, you'll all be my slaves. Zodd referred to himself as Zodiac, wrote Zodiac on classroom chalkboards, and told everyone to remember that name.

He said that his victims would become his slaves in the afterlife. He resembled the televised police composite sketch of the San Francisco Nightstocker. He was highly intelligent, made a point of telling everyone how stupid they were, and achieved high scores on the SAT, a fact that one would not have suspected given his odd behavior, dress, and handwriting. He flapped his arms around the schoolyard and called like a chicken and masturbated in the urinals. He preferred to use wide soft pencils and printed rather than wrote in a childish scroll. The handwriting found on the desk at San Bernardino Valley College closely resembled that of Zod, which I saw once in a paper he wrote about one of the girls in the

class, and which outraged the instructor to the point of threatening him that if he ever wrote anything like that again, he was going to call the police. Several other teachers were similarly outraged at the content of his manuscripts, though they never revealed them to the classes. Given his disturbed personality, Zod probably should not have attended public school. In fact, there was speculation that his parents held some sort of powerful political influence and thus were able to keep him in the school. The investigators in charge of the Zodiac investigation in San Francisco at the time received this information, and within a few weeks, the Zodiac crime ceased.

Zod was short of stature and may have had a hunchback. He wore thick glasses, dressed in dark clothing, had dark curly or wavy hair, and may have been from the Middle East. His picture may not have been included in the high school annual at his request. However, Zod was well known to the students, particularly members of the key club and student council. It is certain that his instructors would not have forgotten him. In 1964, Pacific High School graduated over 1,200 seniors, the largest class in California history.

Given Zod's blatant nature, it is surprising that his connection to Zodak was never made public. It seems that he was right in his assessment of our stupidity. Certainly, Zod struck a blow against the society that persecuted him. That was an extremely detailed account of Zod that was shared by this anonymous poster. So here's a young man in 1964 at Pacific High School in San Bernardino, California that is calling himself Zodiac saying he would kill people and that they would would then become his slaves. This is almost five years before the first confirmed Zodiac murders. And if you remember a few episodes back, we told you about a young female student that sent a

letter to the Riverside Press Enterprise regarding the murder of Sherry Joe Bates. The letter writer was a young woman named Patricia Hots. And her letter thought that it might be more worthwhile to hear about the boy turned killer than to hear about Sherry Joe Bates herself. It turns out that Patricia Hots graduated from Pacific High School in 1964 alongside Zod. So I think, Mike, what Zod reportedly said back in 1964 before the Zodak murders ever happened is pretty reminiscent of the accusations by Don Cheney of Arthur Lee Allen. like Allen supposedly laying out his plans to kill people in mail letters to police in advance of the first Zodiac attack.

Zod was in a similar situation here. He was calling himself Zodiac and saying he would kill people years before the Zodiac crimes started. If this stuff about Zod was all true, it's pretty compelling. What are the chances of this guy saying all of this years before the Zodiac murders? and then lo and behold, a killer by the name of Zodiac strikes. And it turned out that a lot of people at Pacific High School remembered Zod after the Zodiac murder started and thought that he might be the killer. A lot of these people contacted police about Zod.

By the time police were looking into Zod as a potential suspect, attorney Melvin Beli had received. a letter from Zodiac that was accompanied by a piece of cab driver Paul Stein's bloody shirt. They knew that Zodiac had some type of fascination with Belli, so they actually arranged for Melvin Belli to go down to Southern California and give a speech to the college class that Zod was taking. Beli recalled this incident in a book that he wrote titled My Life on Trial. And this is one excerpt from that book by Melvin Belli. I went down and gave my lecture and Ashman told me who the kid was.

He sat down right in front, surrounded by a lot of strangers, cops who had come in, ostensibly to hear the great one. When I finished, this kid jumped up and came right over to me, shook my hand, and told me how much he admired me. He didn't sound like the Zodiac to me, but rather than fool around, I said to him, nodding at Ashman, who was standing right there a little behind the kid, Hey, are you the Zodiac killer? Shocked, Ashman literally pissed in his pants.

The kid seemed stunned. What do you mean, sir? He said. I said, are you the Zodiac killer? I hear you used to call yourself Zodiac. The cops all crowded around now, anxious to see and hear the kid's answer. No, he said, I didn't kill anybody. And I believed him.

So did the cops. I thought the Zod guy was too good to be true and felt that if this kid was calling himself Zodiac way back in 1964, that if he wasn't Zodak, then maybe one of his classmates stole Zod's moniker and later used it in the Zodak murders. I decided to reach out the Zod to see if any of this was true. The first thing I did after learning Zod's identity was found a mid-1960s yearbook photo of him. And to my surprise, he had signed his photo in the yearbook with one word, Zodiac. Although I didn't expect I'd ever get a reply, I wrote a letter to Zod asking if he'd like to tell his side of the story.

Within a week and a half, I was surprised to get a letter back from Zod answering some of my questions. He readily admitted that he called himself Zodiac in the mid-1960s. in later phone calls we talked at length about some of the other claims he denied that he ever threatened to kill anybody or he ever masturbated in the urinals he also stated that he hadn't known sherry joe bates but he did tell me that he lived in riverside as a child he also did admit to having a lot of interest in melvin belley and in old movies and tv shows some of the stuff he told me would likely make him sound odd to most people including the fact that despite being in the 60s he had never been on a with a girl. He sent me samples of his writing which looked nothing like Zodiacs.

We talked at great length, and I came to the conclusion that he likely had no connection to the Zodiac case. But I think it's entirely possible that the Zodiac may have gone to Pacific High School with Zod and stolen Zod's nickname for himself when he started his murder spree. I think that if Zod lived in Vallejo as opposed to San Bernardino, then he likely would have been viewed as a more serious Zodiac suspect due to his odd behavior. In the end, there was nothing to connect Zod to the Zodont murders. But for obvious reasons, he's a very interesting suspect. 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 we've discussed the suspects touched on in grace miss books but now we're going to touch on some suspects and persons of interest that are detailed in the confidential police reports the first of these guys is a man named larry kane

and cane was a shady character and a lifelong criminal he was in a bad car accident that caused brain damage and as a result, his accusers felt that he was a dangerous man. He was heavily pursued by an ex-police officer named Harvey Hines who publicly named Kane as a Zodiac suspect. Supposedly, Kane knew missing nurse Donna Las and may have had some connection to the casino where she worked. In 1969, Kane was 45. So he was at the upper range of the Zodiac age description and he didn't look much like the Zodiac sketch.

He may have used different names and different identities and had arrests on his record, but there's never been anything solidly linking him to the Zodiac case. Next in the police reports is a guy named George Saxburg. Saxburg was arrested on a drunken charge in November of 1969, and while being booked, he told the arresting officer that he was the Zodiac. The officer noticed that Saxburg looked a lot like the Zodiac sketched, and he reached out the Vallejo PD. They made arrangements to question Saxburg,

and they did so on November 7, 1969. The police report noted that the 29-year-old Saxburg, had a marked resemblance to the Zodiac sketch, was six foot tall and 160 pounds with thick, dark-rimmed glasses. It went on to detail that Saxburg denied being Zodiac, and then he had read about the case in the newspapers. Saxburg stated that if he said that he was Zodiac, he had done it while he was drunk.

It was also noted that Saxburg had a checkered pass with arrest records for things like receiving stolen property. Vallejo PD took a sample of his writing and fingerprints. Saxburg was free to go since his drunk charge was pretty minor. On the two consecutive days following Saxburg's questioning by Vallejo PD, Zodiac mailed back-to-back letters on November 8th and November 9th, something Zodiac never did before or after. It seemed as if something had set off Zodiac, compelling him to write back-to-back letters.

And if Saxburg was Zodiac, then being hauled in and questioned by Valleop PD may have been the motivation. On November 10th, according to the report, handwriting analysis came back, rolling him out as being Zodiac, but there was no mention of him being rolled out by fingerprints, so hopefully that was also done. Saxburg's daughter in recent years has gone on record as saying that she will be glad to give DNA if it will help clear her father's name, but to date, that hasn't been done.

In one final interesting note, at the same time of the Zodiac murders, his mother lived in Deer Lodge, Montana. and Zodiac had told Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard at Lake Beriasa that he was an escaped convict from Deer Lodge, Montana. Next up, we need to talk about a man named Darwin Jenkins. In 1968, when Zodiac's first confirm attack happened on Lake Herman Road, Jenkins had just turned 39 years old. He was a heavyset guy with glasses,

and what made Darwin Jenkins so interesting was what? was detailed about a crime he had committed in this November 1969 newspaper article mentioning him, although not by name. Fletho police were investigating a man who previously was convicted of accosting lovers lane couples and wore a hood while doing it. While his molestations did not involve shooting or stabbing his victims, he had a streak of violence in him, police said, and his criminal action. activities resembled those of the Zodiac.

So that was taken from the 1969 newspaper article, but the reports don't mention when or if Jinkin was ruled out by fingerprints or any other means. But they had to have taken a hard look at this guy because anyone that was attacking at Lovers' Lanes while wearing a hood in the Vallejo area would certainly be worthy of the full attention of investigators. One thing that may rule him out, though, was that Jenkins' arrest for the hooded attack came sometime in the neighborhood of

1966 to 1967 when Zodiac was down in Riverside writing letters in the Sherry Joe Bates case. Another suspect mentioned in the Zodiac police reports was Aubrey Bailey. Bailey was a San Francisco barber, and he looked similar to the Zodiac sketch. the FBI actually passed him along to the Zodiac investigators

and mentioned that he should be considered as a suspect in this case, although they didn't elaborate on just why. Not much is known about him, but one thing that we do know is that like Zodiac, Aubrey Bailey was a prolific writer of letters to the editor. Aubrey Bailey, who was gay, steadily wrote letters to the editor of the San Francisco area gay newspaper. He did have prints on file,

and although we can't find an outcome, we have to assume he was eliminated in some way. Another interesting suspect mentioned in the reports was a man named Griffin Raymond Franklin. Franklin had been in the Air Force but had to leave after a mental illness he was suffering from came to light. He had spent time in a mental hospital in Napa County but would come home for weekends to live with his parents. and on the weekend of the Lake Beriasa attack, he was out of the hospital. It wasn't long before police were given his name to check out. Franklin's parents provided an alibi for him, and he was apparently ruled out,

but the hospitalization for mental illness was something that police were highly considering when looking into Zodiac suspects. One suspect with a history of mental illness is the guy that has got. gotten a lot of attention in recent years, and that's a guy named Ross Sullivan. And his background is pretty interesting. In the mid-1970s, a Leo Times reporter named Dave Peterson had been digging into his own suspects when he found information on Ross Sullivan that he felt was worth sending to SFPD inspector Dave Toskey.

As mentioned in this memo to Toskey dated March 19, 1977. It read in part, have you heard anything from Bud Kelly and Riverside? or talk to him about a fingerprint comparison of Ross Sullivan and Zodiac's cab prints? Perhaps it's too early. Please let me know when you get the scoop on Ross Sullivan's prints. Dave Peterson was interested in Sullivan as a suspect after he had contacted the Riverside College Library in the mid-1970s. He wanted to see if anybody that worked in the library could shed light on the Bates murder

and find any possible connections to the Zodiac case. And when Peterson contacted the library staff to see what he could find, out. The librarians had their own favorite suspect in the murder of Sherry Joe Bates, and they were only too happy to share it with Peterson in the form of a very long and detailed letter. This letter was so detailed and disturbing that it would lead Dave Peterson to start heavily researching Ross Sullivan as a possible Zodiac suspect. The letter to Peterson read, so you can't forget the Sherry Joe Bates murder either. No doubt, you have your prime suspect, as do the Riverside Police, there are a half dozen or so of us at Riverside

City College that agree on a suspect. But it isn't the one that the police are interested in. A couple of years ago, I called the police to ask about our suspect and was told he had an alibi for that night. Our response to that is his alibi would be too frightened not to agree with the alibi. All of us worked at RCC during this time and knew Ross Sullivan better than we care to know him. The reasons for suspecting are all circumstantial, but we are all convinced enough about his potential for doing harm that even one faculty member doesn't want her name used. She even had me to shut the door completely before she would talk about the incident or Ross. The following information may be garbled because a lot of time has passed since we knew him, and I didn't take notes when I was talking to each person.

I suppose we do wish someone would reassure us that Ross is safely tucked away in some mental institution, so we don't have to worry about his returning to this area. I gather that after Ross's mother died, that the father no longer had anything to do with Ross and his younger brother. I assume they came from the Glendale area. The younger brother's foster father was supposedly the pastor of Sherry Joe Bates Church. Ross lived at the Y part of the time. He remarked to one staff member about his feelings on being cooped up in the tiny room at the Y and that he had to write continually to keep from doing harm to himself or others.

It was either prior to his entering RCC in 9-1161 or during his absence from 11161 to 2164 that he bragged to more than one staff member that he had been at Patton State Mental Hospital in San Bernardino but had climbed over the wall and escaped. He really took pride in being threateningly offbeat and capable of anything. Another faculty member remembers his being in her English class when his term paper was about handwriting and the different styles. You will note from his transcript that he liked to enroll in the literary and psychology type courses, although his spelling and grammatical skills were sometimes limited. I can remember his writing a poem for one of the, the school publications that was hardly inspiring. I wish I could remember the poem that he wrote about the cataloging boss he and I both had. Ross was her pet. As a lonely, unsocial old maid,

she often talked with him. As particular and exacting as she was, she tolerated from him what she would not from anyone else. I remember that she did not understand the poem that he wrote. I didn't either, but was frightened by it. None of us wanted to be left alone with Ross, and we probably saw to it that we weren't. We also couldn't take his smell and would leave the windows open on a cold day to let in some fresh air when he was around. He wore the same clothes winter and summer, a long-sleeved wool or flannel-type shirt. He was a huge guy, but very quiet in the cataloging area because we were hardly allowed to look up from our work and could only quietly talk about a matter of work. He would work an hour or so a day lettering the books with white

ink or an electric stylus. It would have to have been lettered exactly as required. A good portion of the time, even during the fall of 66 when he was not officially enrolled at RCC, Ross set on the low wall that lined the pit where the students' congregated when they were not in class. We could see him from the cataloging department. He was like a statue, always there. He was there late that Friday afternoon before Halloween in 1966, talking to a cute young girl not unlike Sherry Joe.

It was always difficult for us to comprehend how the cute girls would waste their time on Ross. At the time all this happened, our head librarian was a big, leader in the local ACLU, and as a result, those of us who worked at the library, knew we supposedly had our jobs to do, and that job did not include playing amateur detective or even helping the police. I regretted then, as many of us still do today, that we somehow can't help resolve this mystery, so we, too, can feel a little safer. When the murder happened, I stated to my fellow co-workers that when Ross reappeared on campus and if he had on different clothes, then he would be guilty in my mind until someone proved him innocent. Sure enough, it was a few weeks before he

reappeared at his spot on the pit wall and he had on a totally new set of clothes. One rainy night after he was back in Riverside, I stopped at a liquor store on Market Street. I pulled up alongside a car that was parked just in front of the store doors. I ran inside but left the doors unlocked as I always do. When I ran back to my car, something told me to do a very strange thing. I ran around to the passenger side and in a flash I had the door open and was inside and the door locked behind me. Just at that instant, Ross came from out of the large hedge in front of my car and walked between the two cars and on out into the parking lot. He did not look at me.

Needless to say, I drove out of there as quickly as possible. Ross apparently parked a motorbike close to one of the faculty member's car each day during the fall of 1966. That faculty member also put Ross at the top of his list as a suspect in the murder. Didn't apartment residents near the murder site recall hearing a motorbike start up just after the screams. You can see from his transcript that Ross went north after this as he had his record sent to UC Santa Cruz in 11-967. He was supposedly in a mental institution somewhere in that area after that and we are hoping he is still there without the possibility of ever getting out.

Can't you or some other official subpoena his records at Patton or the other state member Hospital, Evan Vale, head counselor at RCC, tried calling Detective G.D. Kelly about our strong feelings, but apparently the Riverside Police Department feels stronger about their suspect. You may be the reporter I talked to a few years ago that came by our new library to inquire about the Sherry Joe Bates murder. If you have concrete evidence of why the murder couldn't have been done by Ross, we'd appreciate hearing from you. We'd also like to be reassured that Ross Sullivan will not be returning here. Sincerely, Joe Ann Bailey, Associate Professor of Library Services. So we know that was a very long letter to listen to, but we wanted to give you an idea of just how scared the library

staff was of Ross Sullivan. Dave Peterson was able to verify that Ross Sullivan had indeed moved up to Santa Cruz in 1967, and he found an arrest for Ross Sullivan in 1968. Sullivan, after having a bout of mental illness, was arrested and put in Santa Cruz area hospital for 72 hours for evaluation after he trapped the man in a phone booth. After Peterson's letter to Toskey, we don't know what else Peterson found regarding Sullivan or if Toski was ever able to get Sullivan's prints looked at. In early 2014, a tipster came forward with information about Ross Sullivan that would reignite the quest to find out more about him. This tipster was a good friend of Ross's brother, Tim Sullivan, and as it turns out, Tim Sullivan wound up marrying a woman named Bonnie Bartlett, who had been good friends with Sherry Joe Bates.

Tim and Bonnie Sullivan moved from Riverside to the San Francisco Bay Area before heading to Kansas. to avoid Tim being dragged into the Vietnam War. This tipster also revealed that Ross Sullivan bounced between San Francisco and Santa Cruz. He recounted that Ross battled schizophrenia and was in and out of mental hospitals. The tipster also stated during the mid-1960s that Ross Sullivan was a big guy over six feet tall and well over 200 pounds. Ross had done things that frightened the tipster, including skinning and hanging sheep. Sometime in the late 1970s, the tipster met up with Tim Sullivan and found out that Ross had died in 1977. Tim confided to the tipster that he felt that his brother Ross was the zodiac.

The info provided by this tipster enabled online researchers to track down material about Ross, and this included photographs. and there's no other way to say it other than Ross Sullivan is the spitting image of the Zodiac sketch put out after the murder of Paul Stein, right down to the Widows Peak hairline. So there's some really compelling stuff about Sullivan that makes him a very interesting suspect. He's a dead ringer for the sketch. He's connected to the Riverside Library where Sherry Joe Bates was murdered. In fact, he's the only Zodiac suspect that has.

has ever been placed in that library where Zodiac's writing was discovered. But there are some things that may rule out Ross Sullivan as being Zodiac. Because although Ross matched the sketch, he was a solid guy, probably over 200 pounds, but he was also about 6 foot 2. And most of the descriptions of Zodiac put him under 6 foot tall. Research has also failed to connect Ross Sullivan to the town of Vallejo during the Zodak murders. We know he was in Santa Cruz in 1968 because of his arrest there and because of an eyewitness that came forward detailing a run in he had with Ross and Santa Cruz around the same time. We also know that Sullivan died in Santa Cruz in 1977, and on the death report, it mentioned that Sullivan was a Santa Cruz resident for three years.

So back to 1974, which coincidentally is the last year's last year's. Zodiac mail to confirm letter. There's nothing in between 1968 and 1974 for Ross Sullivan as to his whereabouts. And that time period is the same time period. Zodiac was killing and writing letters. Ross Sullivan's brother Tim died of cancer shortly after he revealed to the tipster that he suspected his own brother of being the Zodiac. So we've never been able to learn any further details about why it was that Tim

suspected Ross of being the Zodiac. But one thing's for sure. The information about Ross Sullivan has led to a lot of online investigation of him in recent years. Another suspect who has been heavily investigated by online Zodiac researchers in recent years is a man named Richard Gikowsky. Richard Gikowski had been a newspaper reporter and from 1969 to 1971 was involved with the sort of hippie anti-establishment pro-violence newspaper in San Francisco called Good Times.

Gikowski came on the police radar when a friend of his started to suspect that he might be the Zodiac, and he came forward to police with his suspicions. Gikowski has been a favorite suspect of Tom Voigt who runs Zodiackiller.com. Tom, along with a bunch of others who think Gikowski could have been Zodiac, have put a lot of time and resources. into proving their theory. And there are a lot of interesting things that come up when looking at Richard Gikowski. One thing that jumps out right away was the seemingly mirroring timeline of Gikowski's movements

with Zodiac victim Darlene Fierens. She got married in 1966 and moved with her husband to Albany, New York, where her husband wound up working for a short time at the Albany Times Union. Guykowski moved to Albany, New York from his home in Martinez, California, and started working in the same building as Farron's husband at the rival Albany-Nickerbocker newspaper. However, both Farron and her husband, as well as Gikowski, all moved back to the San Francisco Bay Area before the Zodiac murder started. In July of 1969, Darlene Farron was murdered by Zodiac, and four years later, in 1973, the Albany Times Union-Turray. paper in New York received a threatening letter and cipher that was possibly mailed by the Zodiac. So the comings and goings of Farron and Gikowski to and from Albany, New York, seems pretty compelling

when coupled with the fact that there was a possible Zodiac letter that was mailed from there in 1973. As far as San Francisco clues, there are a lot of those that stand out as well. cab driver Paul Stein, who was murdered by Zodiac in October of 69, lived at 1842 Fell Street in San Francisco. The Good Times newspaper was associated with an address at 1830 Fell Street only 72 feet away. So there are definitely some interesting things when looking at Guy Kowski as a suspect. But like other suspects, there are also some things that tend to cast doubt on him. One of those things is that handwriting apparently didn't match between Gikowski and Zodiac.

Tom Boyt has also written that the late Napa detective Ken Narlow investigated Gikowski years ago, but that it didn't lead anywhere. This was something Ken Narlow confirmed for me when I spoke to him back in 2010. Guykowski was a big part of the Zodiac material that this show Mystery Quest covered several years ago. And at the conclusion of the episode, they stated that they were going to be attempting to link Gikowski's DNA to the Zodiacs, but would need the cooperation from law enforcement handling the Zodiac case. Apparently nothing came from this. So Richard Gikowski is another case of a suspect that checked a lot of the boxes

as far as good suspects go. But there is nothing that has linked him definitively to being the Zodiac. Now, one thing's for sure. Tom Voigt and his team planned to see the investigation through to the end until Guy Kowski can either be ruled in or out accurately. Tom Voigt will be joining us on an upcoming episode to discuss his experiences with this case and the crazy and compelling stuff that he's experienced over the last 20 plus years of his Zodiac research. So here's a little audio clip of Richard Gikowski talking.

We just thought it would be interesting for you to be able to hear his voice. He's a cop. I mean, I haven't thought much about it because I've never been that interested in it. You know, it's one of those things I never think about much. I never paid much attention to when this happening. And I don't, you know, one of those. We wanted to sneak in a group of guys that as a whole are a pretty interesting bunch, and we're going to call them the Deer Lodge gang.

These consisted of a group of men that were serving time together at Deer Lodge Prison and Deer Lodge, Montana. And as we've said a few times, Deer Lodge Prison was mentioned by Zodiac at Lake Beresa. The group consisted of Donald Buyak, Frank Drayman, aka Frank Valentine, and Edward Wayne Edwards. The last guy is a guy that many of you may have heard of because he was a pretty well-known criminal associated or linked with crimes all over the U.S. Donald Lee Bouyak was serving time for the murder of our police officer in Montana.

He was paroled literally two days before the first confirmed Zodiac murders on Lee Kerman Road. Later, he would have many of his letters to the editor of a newspaper on Montana published. His cohort, Dryman, aka Valentine, was also at Deer Lodge Prison, but was paroled in 1969 after the Zodiac crimes had begun. upon his parole he went to live with family in Napa County where Zodiac struck at Lake Beriasa. Edwards was in Deer Lodge prison for robbery. When he got out of Deer Lodge, he wound up in Northern California as well. Edward was a suspect in multiple states in murders of couples parked on lover's lanes.

But in most of these cases, there was no physical evidence to link him to the crimes. After his release, Edwards wrote a book about his time as a criminal. The book released in 1972 was called Metamorphosis of a Criminal. In this book, Edwards claimed that he had done time with a prisoner at Deer Lodge that said the people that he killed would become his slaves. Edwards didn't mention this fellow prisoner by name, but if it was true, it was pretty compelling. The three-man Deer Lodge gang has it all. A guy who loves to write letters to the editor, gets out of prison a couple days before the Zodiac murder started, a second that is paroled and moved back to Napa where Zodiac struck,

and a third that is a suspected serial killer of couples on lover's lanes. But all of these men were likely behind bars when Zodiac's Riverside writings were mailed. So it seems unlikely that they were part of a Zodiac team of some sort. But their movements, time frame, and criminal histories certainly make them interesting, especially since Zodiac claimed to have been an escaped prisoner from Deer Lodge Prison. And more, if we have to talk about a group of suspects called My Daddy was the Zodiac suspects. They're all a bunch of pretty bad suspects when we compare them to the others that we've talked about. But we have to mention these guys because their relatives have made wild claims that their fathers were the Zodiac.

After San Francisco's notorious Zodiac killings began, a Los Angeles area woman has come forward. saying she can solve the case. As Ben Tracy tells us, she claims to be the Zodiac's daughter. I had no knowledge of the Zodiac Killer. Upon seeing the composite, I recognized the individual as my father. They called him the Zodiac Killer. Forty years ago, the mystery killer terrorized the San Francisco Bay Area, possibly killing as many as 40 people.

Now Deborah Perez, a 47-year-old. real estate agent thinks her adoptive and long-dead father was the killer. I researched the zodiac killer, and to my surprise, I found cards and letters in evidence held by the police, which were written by my father or by me. Perez says her father took her along on some of his killings. I would hear shots, and he would state that they were firecrackers. She was just seven at the time. All I wanted to do was help my dad.

Kept telling me he was sick, that he had killed many, many people. He would bring back souvenirs, like glasses he took from a cab driver he killed. I have those glasses. Police say they'll investigate. That was a woman named Deborah Perez, who claimed that her stepfather, Guy Ward Henriksen, was the Zodiac. And they had actually taken her along on some of the attacks. She also claims that he even had her write the Zodiac letters. It turned out that this went nowhere real fast.

And we're only mentioning Hendrickson here as a suspect loosely. Police quickly rolled out Hendrickson as Zodiac. In fact, during the Zodiac murders, he lived more than six hours away in Southern California. We can't speak as to what the motives are for somebody like Deborah Perez coming forward to accuse her stepfather of being Zodiac, but she isn't alone. The next guy on the list is a man by the first. the name of Jack Terrence. And Terrence was a guy that was turned in as a suspect by his stepson Dennis Kaufman over a decade ago. Kaufman actually got a pretty good amount of media attention

over the years regarding his accusations. But a lot of it has been for the wrong reasons. Some have accused him as going as far as to fabricate evidence, including a hood that he supposedly found hidden in a speaker that he has claimed might be the one used by Zodiac at Lake Beriasa. He also commissioned a questioned Doc's examiner to examine Jack's writing and that examiner concluded that Terrence's writing matched Zodiac. But their findings have been doubted for various reasons. So overall, Jack Terrence has been widely dismissed as a suspect in the Zodiac case. He had a background in the military, and he had come from the Texas area close to where the phantom killer struck near Texarkana.

It's been alleged that Terrence was inspired by the Texarkana Phantom, and some people have insinuated that Terrence may have even been the Phantom. But there's nothing to link Terrence to the Phantom or Zodiac murders. And although Terrence looks similar to the Zodiac. sketch, that's about the end of it as far as he goes as a suspect. And more, if you know I'm also fascinated by the Texarkana Phantom, you know, Gibby and I did a two-parter on that on our True Crime All the Time Unsolved podcast. It's just another fascinating unsolved case. And now we get to retired detective and author Steve Hodel.

He has accused his father of not only being the Zodiac killer, but also of being the murderer of the black Dahlia as well. His accusations of his father, George Hodel, are very well documented. But Hodel was born in 1907, which would have made him 62 when Zodiac was witnessed leaving the cab in San Francisco. after murdering Paul Stein. And as we talked about, Zodiac was described as being mid-40s tops. So you have to do the math. And when you do, you see where we're going here. Really not much to this guy, George Hodel, as a viable Zodiac suspect.

One guy that's really stood out in recent years being mentioned as a Zodiac suspect is a guy named Earl Van Best Jr. and that's because his biological son claimed in a book released in 2014 that Van Best was the Zodiac. The book's title is The Most Dangerous Animal of All, Searching for My Father and Finding the Zodiac Killer. Earl Van Best Jr's biological son, Gary Stewart, is the author of this book. And it's a pretty interesting story. His father, Earl Van Best, had run off with Stewart's underage mom from the San Francisco Bay Area. Earl Van Best was an adult, so the relationship between Stewart's mother and Van Best wasn't legal. While on the run, Stewart was conceded and after being born was put up for adoption.

Eventually, the law caught up with Earl Van Best and his legal trouble started for the inappropriate relationship. San Francisco reporter Paul Avery actually had written a series of articles about the case that made headlines and was dubbed the Ice Cream Romance. It was after searching for his birth father that Stewart started to believe that Earl Van Best was the Zodiac. There's a lot of speculation and reasoning that was done to somehow connect Vambest to the Zodiac case, but there's not much to it. He had the general look of the Zodiac sketch

as thousands of men in California did, short-haired glasses. But he was very thin and very light. I mean, we're talking somebody that was maybe 150 pounds, whereas Zodiac was described as stocky and well over 200 pounds. Van Best was the complete opposite. Zodak was described as having a widow's peak hairline,

and Van Best had male pattern baldness. For purposes of the book, Stewart obtained the services of a question documents examiner to strengthen the case against his father. Using samples of handwriting from marriage paperwork from the wedding of Van Best and his underage bride, this examiner came to the conclusion that the writing in question matched the Zer

Zodak's writing. But it was discovered that the writing in question that this examiner linked to Zodiac wasn't even writing belonging to Earl Van Bess Jr. It was the writing from the Reverend who performed the ceremony and filled out his part of the paperwork. Van Best was quickly written off as a suspect by many in the Zodiac community. Stuart has publicly made claims that the SFPD has tried to cover up Van Bess being connected to the Zodiac case. In an odd twist, Stewart's birth mother as an adult went on to marry an SFPD detective. And this was one part of the cover-up theory. The bottom line is that Earl Van Best Jr. falls short as a serious suspect.

But Stewart has gotten a lot of attention about his book and father due to having a major publishing company and an aggressive media campaign. And that's allowed him to bring his claims to a broader audience. Not long after the book was published, Stewart's birth mother contact. me at my website, Zodiac killer site.com, and basically said that much of what was written in the book was fiction. Although the story about Stuart's birth parents was an interesting one, Van Best as the Zodiac killer doesn't seem to hold weight. And it's not just people accusing their fathers of being Zodiac. People over the years have accused their siblings and their friends. In 2014, a man named Randy Kenny made headlines when he came out

that a friend of his confessed to him that he was the Zodiac. Kenny claimed that this friend, Louis Myers, who died in 2002, had confessed to being the Zodiac just before he died. Myers was only 17 years old when Zodiac started killing in 1968, and we know that Zodiac was described at the very low, into the age range as being in his mid-20s. And Lewis Myers did not look like the Zodiac sketch. So in the end, police looked into it, but pretty quickly wrote Myers off as a suspect. So we see a pattern emerging here. People coming forward and claiming that their father, their

sibling, or their friend was the infamous Zodiac killer. The police had to be the famous Zodiac killer. The police have to look into these claims. They have to do their jobs, but police have been able to write these claims off as baseless in very short order. So whether intentional or not, these wild claims have allowed these accusers to have their 15 minutes of fame. And who knows, maybe some of these accusers actually really believe what they're claiming. But all of these claims have proven fruitless. So there's a ton of other suspects out there mentioned across the net and in the police reports, but we just don't have time to cover all of them. If you Google Zodiac suspects, you might come across Bruce Davis, who was henchman for the Manson family, or even the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski,

or you might find a rich businessman from San Francisco referred to as Mr. X. There's a suspect around every corner, good ones and bad. All right, Morf, that is it for Episode 10 of Criminology, part two of the Zodiac case suspects. And we hope that everybody enjoyed it. And hopefully you found some suspects that really piqued your interest. If you like the show, make sure you go out, subscribe, rate and review us on iTunes or your favorite Android app. Just remember, you can always find us on social media. We're on Twitter at Criminology Pod.

And you can also get news and updates about criminology on our Facebook page by searching for criminology podcast. If you want to join our Facebook discussion group to talk about the case or the podcast, then search for criminology podcast discussion and fans. And remember, we're doing a wrap-up show at the end of the season where we answer your questions and share your theories. So be sure to email or leave a voicemail. You can contact us by email in criminology podcast at gmail.com or you can contact us by email and

can leave us a voicemail at 6-6-1-77 crime. And before we go, we'd like to leave you with a promo for our friend Cambo's show, the True Crime podcast called True Crime Island. Cambo is awesome. He has an awesome show. So take a listen. We think you'll really enjoy it. Do you get mad when listening to True Crime?

Well, so do I. If you want a weekly true crime podcast that says what you're thinking, then grab a beer and pull up a deck chair. This is Cambo from True Crime Island, another true crime podcast, and maintain the rage with me. Visit Truecrimireland.com where you can download or stream each episode, plus there's links to iTunes and social media. Don't forget to delete your browser history. This is True Crime Island. And also let us know if you found that Easter egg. It's a good one.

So you're done recording? Did you push stop? Yeah. Yeah. No, I hit stop. Okay, cool. So Morf, I mean, you know, in all seriousness, not for the podcast. Just for me, who's your favorite suspect?

Okay, so off the record, Mike, it's a guy who calls himself Kbar. I've got some audio recordings of them we could listen to. I recently had a Skype. discussion with this guy, and he didn't want this audio on the podcast, but I want to play it for you because you've got to hear it, Mike. Well, it was terrifying. You know, I mean, that's some scary stuff to put your family through. I mean, you can imagine the public outcry and, you know, to think that your family thought could that be. So what makes it really bad is I was only two years old when the first Zodiac murderer occurred. So how people think that I could be the Zodiac killer? That's, beyond me. I believe a lot of it comes down from the perspective of the public with my unbelievable proficiency with my K-bar. So I know I get associated with a lot of murders because of my travel, because of my K-bar, other unique abilities of mine. But I'm not sure how I could be associated to this one

since it was in California and I was only two years old. And the K-bar would be about the same height as I was as a two-year-old. Just putting that out there. So once and for all, I just like to get it cleared and get a lot of these Zodiac researchers, believers, that it was not me. I was not in California that I'm aware of. At that time, I was only two years old. Yes, I was a big baby, but not that big. Abnormal strength, so of course I could lift the K-bar off the floor. But did I do this? I think not.