DISGRACELAND - Jim Morrison: Zodiac Killer Qu'est-ce Que C'est

Episode Date: June 25, 2019

This is a bonus episode of Disgraceland that is satire and not true crime. Originally released on April 1, 2019 as an April Fools joke, this episode fooled many. However, it was quickly taken off the Internet. The joke worked too well for some. After editing the episode lightly to protect the identity of the victims, here is the episode as it originally appeared in its entirety along with the original episode description below: A special emergency episode of Disgraceland that hopes to contextualize today’s fast developing story about America’s most mysterious serial killer and his relationship to one of the most infamous musicians of all time. Warning; this story is currently breaking. Information is coming in fast and furious. The episode will be updated periodically throughout the day to reflect new info as we get it.  For a full list of contributors, visit disgracelandpod.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is exactly right. Double Elvis. Disgraceland is a production of Double Elvis. The following episode is satire. It's not true crime. Sorry. It was released on April 1st, 2019, as an April Fool's joke. And the immediate response on social media was pretty overwhelming,

and I freaked out and pulled the episode after it had only been live for a couple of hours. Many of you disgrace land subscribers did not hear it, and you emailed me and tweeted at me asking how you get your ears around it. And for those, Those of you who did hear the episode and wrote me to curse me out or were eager to share a laugh at your own expense as you found yourself pulled over on the side of the road on the subway in a bus or in your bed frantically Googling for breaking news on the identity of the Zodiac Killer. I'm sorry, not sorry. Edited lightly to protect the identity of the victims, here is the episode as it originally appeared in its entirety, including the breathless fake intro that went like this. Yo, quick heads up.

I recorded this episode quickly last night trying to respond to the breaking news and to contextualize a fast-moving story that's just developing and to tell it in a disgrace land way. I want to thank Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright from Tenderfoot TV for quickly making available their source material

for their monster season on the Zodiac Killer and also a special thanks to the Vallejo City Chronicle for their dogged reporting. and for being first to get this news out. Also, David Fincher, I'd be nowhere fast on this had I not watched your film Zodiac a thousand times. Okay, let's get into this special Monday edition release of Disgraceland. Buckle up, it's going to be a wild one.

Singer I'm going to tell you about, and the crimes he committed were insane. He shot a random cabby in the back of the head on a San Francisco street corner. He slashed to death backseat lovers and picnic and couples. and for a brief period in 1969, his legend gripped the nation. You already know him by many names, the lizard king, Mr. Mojo Rising, Jimbo, but never before by his original alternate identity, the Zodiac Killer. Until this morning's news started to break, this alternate identity was the secret. The idea that this worldwide recognizable rock star could also be one of America's most notorious serial killers,

was and still kind of is unfathomable. But we've seen this kind of double life in our culture before. As recently as 2014, when we learned that a star tied end, Aaron Hernandez from history's most successful NFL franchise the New England Patriots, was a gang-banging drug-dealing murderer. And let us not forget O.J. Simpson, America's Prom King, who ended up slashing his way in infamy. It took a while, but the unbelievable nature of these stories eventually set in

and the truth was accepted. It's unclear to me how long it will take for us to accept the truth of this story because right now it just seems ridiculous that the famed Zodiac Killer was one of the most popular musicians of all time. A musician who made great music, and that music I played for you at the top of the show, and that wasn't great music. That was a preset loop from my Melotron called Mellow Fast Waves, BK2.

I played you that loop because I can't afford the rights that it's my party by Leslie Gore. And why would I play you that specific slice of weepy jukebox cheese could I afford it? Because that was the number one song in America on June 4th, 1963. And that was the day that a pent-up small-town teenager, in search of his own identity, with a fire in his eyes and a song in his heart, struck a deal with the devil that would change history forever. On this episode, mellow fast waves, a murderous identity crisis,

weepy cheese, one of the greatest frontmen of all time, and the Zodiac Killer. I'm Jake Vernon, and this is disgrace land. Fuck you. The kid deadpaned to his father. Even in teenage anger, his voice was low and broody. His mother did her best to ignore the latest in a series of daily tensions between her son and her husband by turning up Pat Boone on the transistor radio and busying herself with the dishes. The kid was home in Alameda, California.

after a year of junior college in Florida, and he dared to bring up transferring to art school. Over my dead body was his father's predictable response. His dad was a Navy man, a rear admiral, and wanted something professional for his son, James. If not the military, then law school or an MBA. He'd even settle for a liberal arts degree if his son promised to get a master's later.

To James, his parents' life was a lie. raised a military brat, all the moving in the new schools. James had seen the military industrial borders of suburbia, and he had no place there. Without friends and with parents he didn't understand, he was thoroughly alienated. And so he turned inward and became an artist. His curiosity was bottomless.

He read European philosophers Nietzsche and William Blake by 16. Sixteen. Have you read Nietzsche and Blake? I've tried as an adult. And let's just say I'm a little more comfortable with the musings of the great American philosophers, Daffy Duck and Bill Murray. They're more my speed. But by the time James was a senior, his English teacher made a habit of researching his student bibliographies to make sure James wasn't just inventing titles to support his papers.

The joke was on teach. The citations were real. Medieval pamphlets about demonology. Only available from the Library of Congress. James was an occasional D-student, but only because of the students. school was a drag. He found it to be crushingly bourgeois, just like his family. There's no future in the arts. You don't have the talent, the rear admiral shouted. Why couldn't they recognize the brilliance inside him? He stormed up to his bedroom, slammed the door, fucked them. They didn't realize

their picket fence was a cage. The grand mysteries, the dark depths of the universe. James knew that's where the truth was. His parents would never look beyond the veil, but he would. He'd already started. James grabbed Alistair Crowley's magic and theory and practice from his bookshelf. He was that deep now. The Satanist Crowley, the occultist, Elena Blavatsky. James wanted to get high, but any smell would tip off the rear admiral and lead to a good old corporal punishment ass kicking, so James had to hang his head out of the window to smoke the joint he just rolled. His version of howling at the moon, like his hero, bluesman, Howland Wolf. He leaned backwards over the sill, sparked the J and thought about Wolf's great and terrifying song, Evil.

Once high, James ducked back inside and started a new Crowley chapter entitled Of the Bloody Sacrifice Matters Cognate. He read, The first ethical lesson in the Bible is that the only sacrifice pleasing to the Lord is the sacrifice of blood. For the highest spiritual working, one must choose that victim, which contains the greatest and purest force. hanging outside of the window he took another hit. The OG Mendocino Weeb crossed James soft palate.

The poetry of dark ritual passed his lips. He had a moment of clarity, pins and needles all around his head. Like a hand rising from his throat to grab his brain, his crown chakra was on fire with the dark spirit energy. That was it. He knew who he was and what he had to do. In that instant, he understood the cheat codes written into morality by God. for those willing to play about the devil's rules.

James wandered over to his record player and put Holland Wolf on the turntable. Wolf's raspy, demonic voice and raptured the very stoned young James. But his mom would never forgive him for what he was about to do. Neither would his father. It didn't matter.

He was nobody's son. He was no longer their James. He was simply Jim. It was June 3rd, 1963, and Jim Morrison had broke on through to the other side and blown the doors of his perception wide open. The next day, he took off. Before he split, he lifted the 22 pistol from the family gun cabinet.

It was a woman's weapon, a historical piece. The rear admiral would never miss it. There was a chance he'd miss the rope and the jackknife from the garage, where the pair of old military-issue wing-walker boots that Jim took. But Jim didn't care. He bought a ticket on the first thing smoking, a greyhound-headed south. The driver parked at a rest area overlooked. in the beach. Ten minutes, he hollered. Next stop, Lompoc. Jim looked at his window and laughed dryly

at his luck. It was senior skip day for the local high school kids. And there they were, down on the dunes, free-range hunting season, Jim thought, all the lush beauty of pure American youth. He honed in on a flirty couple walking away from the crowd somewhere private, Jim presumed. He shouldered his knapsack and slipped off the bus before he lost them. George Hernandez and Melinda Johnson were straight out of central casting. American is apple pie. High school seniors already engaged to be married. Good kids. Pure.

At least for a while. Like all kids, they wanted to do what comes natural. That's why it's called what comes natural. They were engaged now, and it was senior skip day. One thing was indeed going to lead to another thing. And that thing made Jim's chest swell with excitement. That thing is why Jim's. Jim stalked George and Melinda like prey.

George and Melinda's pent-up urges made them the most alive, and Alistair Crowley had told Jim that if he stole the life from them, through sacrificial rights he could steal their life energy, bottle it into his own being, make their souls work for him from the other side. And with this unnatural power, Jim knew he could escape his family's cage and one day achieve greatness. He caught George and Melinda in the act.

Cherry is half popped. He pulled out the dainty 22. Jim had the drop on them. When he emerged from the dunes, they saw the gun and pissed themselves in fear. Jim held him at gunpoint, warned them to shut the fuck up. He instructed them to get on their feet,

go sit on the driftwood a few steps to the right. He then clumsily tied them up with rope. It was Jim's first time, just like it would have been theirs. And because he was nervous, he got sloppy. George and Melinda slipped their bonds, ran for it. Jim saw his dream slipping away with every footfall. Shit.

He planted his father's old wing walker boots in the sand. There were ten and a halfs, a little tight on Jim's size 11 feet, but they anchored him to the ground like they were supposed to. Just like the elegant pistol, the boots did what the stolen rope didn't. Got the job done. If these kids were via Kong, dad would be proud, Jim thought. But no ritual bloodletting, he couldn't let the kills be for nothing. He took a beat, collected himself.

There was no time to wallow in the mire. Jim dragged George and Melinda into a rotting bead shack on the other side of the nearest dune. Inside, their young love would become a funeral pyre. Jim at a stake acclaim to this flame, fire magic, transfer the energy of the recently departed to him, their killer. He took the jackknife, the last of his stolen tools, and carved a spell of his own into the soft wood. He took the M and the R from his last name, Morrison, and brought them to the front to spell Mr. He took the M and the J from his first name, Jim, and added the two O's for Morrison to spell Mojo.

Finally, he took the remaining letters, R-I-S-I-N, and bunched them together to spell Risen. And there you had it, plain as the red on the devil's dick, Mr. Mojo-Risen. In the summer of 66, Jim hid in his bedroom, again, but this bedroom was different

from his old digs back at the rear. Admiral's house. He was living in a Venice Beach studio apartment. He blocked out the windows, listened to the blues, and did so much LSD it could reasonably qualify as a main source of his bodily fluids. While there, he poured psychedelic truth into a small notebook, feverishly drafting poem after poem for what he didn't know, but it kept his mind off of killing. After the night he disappeared from the family house to make his first kill, he returned home, miraculously, the rear admiral gave in and allowed Jim to transfer into UCLA as a film student. He made exactly one film while at school, but he did graduate.

After graduation, his brain scrambled by too much acid and too much Alistair Crowley, still a slave to the dark arts, looking to make his way in the world and to establish his own identity. While now on his own, he quietly disowned his family and fully embraced the bohemian lifestyle. He ran into a college buddy on the beach, a keyboard player named Ray Manzarek. He shared his poems with him,

and Ray recognized them as nothing short of magical. Soon, Jim found himself in Ray's little rock and roll combo, alongside two other inspired musicians, Robbie Krieger on guitar and John Densmore on drums. They called themselves, The Dors. Ray had met Robbie and John at a meditation retreat, which Jim thought was lame. Jim wasn't into the self-care bullshit.

He wanted sensory overload. at all times. We want the world and we want it now. Jim took to the mic and imagined what Howling Wolf would sound like reciting the evil musings of Alistair Crowley. What came out was dark, mystical, poetic, and powerful. Jim's musical inexperience was no obstacle. In no time, the Doors became the house band

at the Whiskey-a-Gogo nightclub on L.A.'s sunset strip, opening for every headliner between May 23rd and August 21st. They released their first single in November, break on through. Jim had broken through years earlier, and he'd tried to hide, but that was impossible now that he had a stage. The door's notoriety spread,

and their popularity exploded. Still, Jim found it impossible to get from music what he got for murder. That feeling from killing Bob and Linda, he couldn't shake it. It was stronger than the feeling he felt on stage or in the studio. He loved playing music,

but the payoff was different. Maybe because he wasn't as confident a performer as one would think. If he had more faith in himself as a musician, lives might have been saved, but the rear admiral's words rang out in his drug-addled head constantly. You don't have the talent, son. It fucked with Jim, even though he's making a name for himself, but for how long?

Jim's goal was in making due on Alistair Crowley's promise, eternal life, not pop-stardom, real greatness, transcendence. The music just wasn't enough. So just weeks before the door's first single release, Jim felt the need to kill again. He drove to Riverside, an L.A. suburb. His victim would be Marianne Cates, another poster child for American Beauty, a 20th century fox. She caught his eye at the whiskey one night, and ever since, in his then-still anonymous downtime, he followed her, learned her routines.

She was up late at her college library, and Jim Morrison was waiting. Ray's keys played in Jim's mind like the organ at a pagan church. The demonic voice spoke out in Latin and whispered into his ear. James, do you renounce the Lord of Christendom, God of colonial pigs, imperialist dogs, and capitalist pomp? I do. Jim whispered back. Do you believe this God must be overthrown? I do.

Jim said as he removed the distributor cap from Marianne's car, ensuring that her car wouldn't start. He crouched down out of sight and waited. Somewhere nearby, a baby cried from an open window. Marianne exited the library, and Mr. Mojo-Risen hid quietly behind her car, coiled in attack mode. Marianne stepped into her driver's seat. Her car would start.

She realized something was wrong and stepped out. Jim sprang from behind, tackled her, beat, her perfect body, bloody. To Jim in his manic fury, his memory wires had crossed. This murder brought on the total recall of the Lompoc kill from three years before. His brain's synaps is firing off like the familiar sound of those 22 shots from years earlier, replaced by the sound of his fist pounding Marianne's flesh. All he heard were gunshots. Gunshots and the voice of the devil whispering in his ear.

James Douglas, Morrison, do you renounce Jesus? A Sherry Joe screamed, but nobody came. And in the chaos, his fists on her flesh sounded like a flurry of gunshots. I do renounce him. And all his works? His knuckles to her ribs made a loud crack. And all his promises, more punches, more cracks, and she still hadn't gone limp. James Douglas, will you pledge your soul to Satan?

I will. It nominate diablo and feely, a spirit is Satan. James Douglas, go in evil, and may Lucifer be with you. Hail Satan. With those words whispered, Hail Satan. Jim's transformation was complete. His soul had been sold. For what?

It wasn't entirely clear. Fame? Transcendence beyond the bourgeois status quo? Eternal life? Any combination of those things Jim didn't know. But he was certain of one thing. The power that raged through him at the moment was like an electric coil pulled tight

from the tips of his toes to the crown of his skull. It surged and provided a powerful, manic, high-voltage confidence. It made him feel as though he could do anything. Jim thought to himself that that was it. This was what all the poets raved about, that feeling. The one that the scientists and astrologists could never figure out, but that the wordsmiths had on lock. That thing that inspired countless artists, painters, songwriters, and directors

to keep going back to the well for, to try and to capture, to express that feeling. This was it. Love. Jim dropped Marianne to asphalt and slipped. himself down the side of the car to take a seat on the ground next to his kill. He was exhausted. He rifled through Marianne's purse for her smokes, found one, lit it with her lighter, took a deep, cleansing drag, tilted his head back against the car and exhaled. He then pulled the small

notepad and pencil he carried with him everywhere and began writing. That was it. There were no stars, and they were empty, hollow, like him. But unlike his words, the stars were small, Words were bigger, they could be anything. Which is what the scientists and the astrologists never understood about love. With words, the possibilities for love were limitless. Science was fixed, limiting. Compared to poetry, science was bullshit. Poetry gave wings to our desires.

Astrology, the zodiac signs of compatibility. It was all bunk made up to sell newspapers to boards suburban housewives like his mom. Could the zodiac science have predicted how Jim now felt about Marianne? What she meant to him now? Now that she'd become his kill? Was the goddamn Sunday morning horoscope going to read, Ares is a fellow fire sign for you, Jim Morris and the Sagittarius? You'll find a worthy partner mentally and physically.

The chemistry between you is awesome. And when you pierce her skull with the sharp end of your knife, you'll know you've found your soulmate. Jim had no idea when Marianne was born, but he knew it didn't matter for shit. He knew that she was for him, his girl. And he knew that their chemistry was great. quote unquote, awesome.

He pulled her dead body over closer to him and placed her bloody skull on his lap. He felt for her. He really did. Something deep, a connection. It was different than the feeling he had for George and Melinda. That was more bloodlust, craven, clumsy,

like it is when you lose your virginity. With Marianna was different. The kill had a rhythm to it, like great sex with an experienced partner. Was it because they'd hooked up after Jim had formerly sealed the deal in his mind with the devil. Before he'd gotten high on Satan, stoned immaculate into a deeper understanding of the cosmos

and the power of his poetry, before he fully understood the futility of God, science, and the stars? And what did the astrologists know that the poets didn't? Nothing. Jim was in love and Satan had his back. Fuck what the horoscope said. Marianne was his first love, and no disrespect to George and Melinda.

Under the empty stars that night, Mary Ann was Jim Morrison's first Zodiac kill. We'll be right back after this word, word, word. Like the Mr. Mojo Rising carving he'd made after the Georgia Melinda murders in Lompoc, Marianne's death wasn't tied to the killer who would become known as the Zodiac for years. When Georgia Melinda's bodies were eventually discovered, the Mr. Mojo Rising carving went unnoticed because it had no significance, because at the time the doors weren't yet aband.

The song wasn't yet a hit. It was just a line in Jim Morrison's head that he would later write into the lyrics for the song, L.A. Woman. So at the time, it just looked like some teenage graffiti and so the clue was missed. Until now. And for Jim Morrison, a young man who craved recognition, whose goal it was was to be infamous,

whose prime motivation for killing in the first place was to build an army of souls to fight for him in perpetuity, to achieve his twisted notion of greatness, The fact that authorities were too stupid to connect him to those first few kills, it really pissed him off. It wasn't until 1970 that authorities even began to piece together the murders. San Francisco police believed the killer racked up five confirmed kills between December, 1968, and October 1969. A couple on Lake Herman Road in Benicia, one in Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo, one more in Napa County, and a cabbie in the Presidio Heights neighborhood of San Francisco.

And they didn't even know about George and Melinda and Marianne. This infuriated Jim. He wanted the credit, for all those kills and then some. He later claimed to the public that he was responsible for a total of 37 murders. Jim couldn't deal with the slowness of the San Francisco detectives, so he did what he did best, turned to words, poetry, a twisted poetry, but poetry nonetheless. He started to write letters to the press to claim responsibility for the murders,

so the poetry needed to be twisted to conceal his identity. Jim Morrison, the fame horror, couldn't resist the rush of notoriety. These claims came in letters called cryptograms, sent to the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers, word games like Mr. Mojo-Risen, albeit a hell of a lot more complex. Basic cryptograms are substitution codes. Each letter replaces another. A's become bees, bees become C's, and so on. Jim, digging on the Marianne kill,

the ironic astrological poetry he penned while she laid dead on his lap. Her soul lovingly transferred to his for eternity as an homage signed his letter with a Z for Zodiac, and he peppered his cryptograms with pages full of zodiac occult symbols as a subversive fuck you to the astrologist from Jim the poet. Jim hinted at his cryptogram fascination in the doors-toon's soul kitchen. His psychotic PR made the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle, as well as other local papers,

taunting the nation into an obsession with a maniac. He sent the first cryptogram in three pieces to three separate California papers, demanding they be published or he would drive around the state committing random drive-by shootings. And it worked like gangbusters. All three papers printed the cipher. When finally cracked, it read, I like killing people.

It is more fun than killing people. wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all. The best part is that when I die I will be reborn in paradise and all that I have killed will become my slaves. When he went out as the Zodiac, Jim would alter his appearance as best he could. Witness descriptions vary in hair color and length, maybe because he had his famous locks tied back or under a net or a wig. Zodiac sketches include eyeglasses, but this was to help preserve his anonymity as his fame rose. More tellingly, testimony puts the Zodiac's height at around 510, and Jim was 511. Weight estimates for the zodiac range from 180 pounds to 200 pounds. Jim was 180, and more when he was drinking heavily,

which was more often than not. But the clue that always tied Jim and the Zodiac together, the one we can now fully appreciate, was his dad, the rear admiral, and his wingwalker boot. the big ten and a halfs, the ones that left the boot prints that were found at several of the murder scenes, and that led investigators to suspect that the Zodiac had a military background. The Zodiac didn't, but his dad did. And the boots were the last thing connecting James Morrison, aka Jim Morrison, aka the Zodiac killer, from his old life to his new one. He was a killer just like dear old dad.

Jim Morrison's father, George, had been the military commander at the Gulf of Tonkin, the shady 1964 false flag operation by the U.S. government to justify escalating the Vietnam War. Yes, Jim Morrison's dad basically started the Vietnam War. This is a fact. Look it up. And it was a fact that drove Jim crazy. He literally sold his soul for his art. But even when it came to spilling blood, he was stuck in his father's shadow. His new zodiac persona could never approach that body count, but he could try. How did he manage this double life? It was easier than you'd think. When you're a notoriously unreliable rock star,

nobody questions it when you disappear for a couple days between gigs. One hand washes the other. Let's lay out the timeline. In December 68, the Doors played a local show at the Forum in Inglewood. Afterward, Jim was on his own with no gigs for two weeks. That's opportunity. The band had started recording their next album, Soft Parade, and the sessions were not going well.

Jim needed a fix. motive. One week later, the Lake Herman Road murders happened with the killing of Annie Mae Jackson and William Holiday. Then, on July 1st, 1969, the doors returned to California from a stint in Mexico City for too much-needed days off. The excruciating half-million dollar eight-month production of soft parade was finally wrapped, and Jim had a break, and he needed it because he was an insecure wreck. He had no idea if the album was good or not and feared, like most sense, sensitive artists, that the critics would tear him apart. So Jim needed something soothing again before the upcoming release, and nothing soothed him more or gave him more satisfaction or

sense of purpose than killing, than adding to his soul bank. So after the recording of soft parade, he was motivated to kill, and with time off, he had the opportunity to go out and quench his bloodthirst, which led to the murder of Diane Marin on July 4, 1969 in Blue Rock Springs. After this, the Zodiac placed a phone call to the cops, another classic element of the serial killer profile, a desire to get caught. In that recording, when played now, the cadence of the voice,

the thinly veiled hidden speech pattern, sounds a lot like the spoken word poetry of one Jim Morrison on his album of poems in American Prayer. And with that phone call, a line was crossed. The Zodiac, the serial killer, inside Jim, was done watching Jim Morrison the rock, star inside Jim get the credit. The Zodiac was more than that.

A poet, a soul shepherd, a killer's killer. And as far as he was concerned, Jim Morrison the rock star was a phony, a charlatan. Whatever he was, Jim was lost in a never-ending identity crisis. It was coming to a boiling point. And this body wasn't big enough for the both of them.

At a show in Boston, Jimbo waxed poetic with the crowd. Hey, listen, listen, listen, listen. Listen, man, listen, man. I don't know how many of you people believe in astrology. Yeah, that's right. That's right, baby. I'm a Sagittarius. The most philosophical of all the science.

But anyway, I don't believe in it. I think it's a bunch of bullshit itself. But I'll tell you this, man. I'll tell you this. I don't know what's going to happen, man. But I want to have my kicks before the whole shit house goes up in flames. All right. All right. In the fall of 1969, the doors were deciding that a hiatus was needed,

ironically for the sake of Jim's health. During that hiatus, the Zodiac notched two more attacks in under a month, by far as flashiest tour. For the first, he dressed in a hood, with a zodiac symbol on it. Then, hog-tied and stabbed a couple on a picnic. Nostalgia, perhaps, for his first time, was Georgia Melinda. And the hood was needed now because Jim's face was just too damn famous.

And for the second attack, he blew the brains out of a cabby in Presidio Heights. Tore off the dead man's shirt tails and mailed them with a chronicle as a sick souvenir, fame horror that he was. Both murders preceded the recording of the doors out in Morrison Hotel by just a few weeks. Jim knew he needed to fill the soul bank, his soul kitchen, before the grueling studio sessions were to start and inevitably end with Jim once again landing face down in the critic's den of soul-crushing jackals.

Ever since Morris and Hotel came out, however, it was the Zodiac and not Jim who became all talk and no action. Sure, he'd teased the squares through the cryptograms he'd lay out on the newspapers with threats of blowing up buses and attacking children, but he never did. Jim even leaked a little more Zodiac, into his lyrics. Blood stains the roof in the palm trees of Venice.

Blood and my love in the terrible summer. But it was clear the magic was fading and the art was winning. Now was Jim's chance to free himself of this demon, the zodiac, once and for all. Of Jim's many friends and lovers, the only one he trusted was Pamela Corson. She had been the first to suggest he should quit the doors. Get away. Focus on his poetry. In other words, get into something. real, some semblance of a real life, beyond the madness of being a rock star and a serial killer.

Jim didn't tell Pam he was the zodiac, of course. He didn't have to. Even without knowing the truth, it was obvious to Pam as it was to everyone else that Jim needed help. The two made plans to Lamet in France. And it was the escape from the madness of rock and roll. And it was the escape from the madness of murder. But before splitting, Jim reunited with Ray, Robbie, and John to record the album, L.A. Woman. They must have known this was the band's last hurrah, even if they didn't say it. When the album was done, Jim flew to Paris. He'd had it with the stress of it all.

His crisis of identity. Was he a killer or a poet? The music, the murders, it was all too much. No more souls to claim. He'd claimed enough. The only soul left up for grabs? His own. The official take is that Jim Morrison died in a Paris bathtub on July 3, 1971.

but there's a lot that officials in the public never knew. In fact, what Jim was really doing in that bath was an exorcism. Paris was the last-ditch attempt to save him from his demons, literally. Cafes, accordions, all the cliches, since Pam couldn't know the extent of his depravity. Even in Paris, he had to play a cool and wait. He drank less, wrote more poems, chilled. But all the while, the zodiac was screaming out from inside,

threatening to burst through Jim and grab the world by its shoulders and violently shake it into an early grave. It's no coincidence that the final Zodiac letter received during the killer's active period reached the Chronicle Mailroom around the same time Jim Morrison fled the United States. It was the Zodiac's last gasp. After months, the night finally came. Jim saw his chance to exercise his demons and to escape the madness of living as a serial killer to get himself whatever that was, James, he assumed, back. Pam would be out with friends.

Jim could do one last occult ritual undisturbed. He would submerge himself in the cloth-foot bathtub, like the sensory deprivation tank. Get fully under the surface. Chant an entire original Jim Morrison's spell without drowning while he did it. It was dangerous stuff, forming an exorcism on yourself.

But Jim didn't see it that way. He didn't want to be the Zodiac, so he decided he wasn't. He made a deal with the devil long ago for his fame, but he had always felt like a fraud because of it. He wasn't a rock star. He was a poet. All those crimes,

and that was someone else entirely, a split personality. So he wasn't exercising himself. He was casting out it, that thing, the monster. Jim closed his eyes and slipped underwater. He sang, forcefully, enough that the water didn't flood his face,

softly enough that he'd have breath for all the lyrics. He wished Pam was there with him now, but he hadn't shared this with her. It would have been too cruel and it was too late. And the loan came due. No more performance, just a final judgment. Wake up time. Who the fuck are you, Jim Morrison?

That was for him to know and for the rest of us to just find out now. In Paris, he broke on through to the other side one last time. In a trance, passed out, submerged. Mr. Mojo Rising went under. The lizard king shed his skin. The bathwater slipped streamed into his nostrils, then his lungs, and just like that, he was gone. Within hours, Pam found the body.

No autopsy was ever performed. Some old-timers liked to think he faked it, that he slipped the bonds of fame and wandered the earth like king. But someone died in that tub. The question is, who? Was it Jim Morrison? Or was it the zodiac? Freeing the real man and leaving the real Jim Morrison to wander on.

After the mysterious events of his death or perhaps his rebirth, Jim Morrison would have been surprised to learn at how popular his music and words would remain throughout the years and he'd likely also be fascinated that some crazy bullshitter with a podcast would someday accuse him of being the fucking Zodiac killer as an April Fool's joke, which of course is what yours truly just did.

So pour one out for the real Jim Morrison and happy April Fool's Day. I'm Jake Brennan and this is Disgraceland. Disgraceland was created by yours truly and is produced in partnership with Double Elvis. Credits for this episode can be found on the show notes page at disgracelandpod.com. If you're listening as a Disgraceland All Access member, thank you for supporting the show.

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