Historically High - The Zodiac Killer

Episode Date: March 20, 2024

The Bay Area in the late 1960's was a wild place to be. Free love that flooded the streets was replaced with fear. Murder has never been uncommon in a big city. Unsolved murders weren't rare either. The terror started when a man called into the local police department to report a murder and then take the credit. The Zodiac Killer as he would come to be known, took the lives of 5 people. Writing letters, sending ciphers, and leaving notes at crime scenes spread fear around the area. As the murders he took credit for stopped, his letters continued. Then one day the Zodiac seems to have disappeared. Listen in as we get Historically High while solving the Zodiac Killer mystery. Support the show Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There's that bell once again. We've got some fun shit today. Being a serial killer aficionado, such as myself, your podcast host, Adam, and... What do they call that? That's got to have, like, a weird kink name to it.

Like, autoerotic exfixiation and that, like, being choked, or that's the jerking off with a belt around your neck? There's got to be something that... And serial killers are hot right now, And I don't mean like physically attractive. I mean like... No, literally.

When they're remade, they're made with horror people. Yeah, well, I guess some of them. But, yeah, like, everyone seems to love hearing about serial killers. So why don't we do a little talking about them? Yeah. Yeah, that silky, smooth voice that you just heard, that guy over to my right, to my stage left, he is the verbal Patrick Ewing to my John Starks.

he puts his podcast gravy onto my mashed potatoes and he's actually in the he's in the running for the 24 cold ass white boy the year in podcasting that's Professor Chris Hey everyone how's it going That was bad Hey everyone how's it going

That's what every podcast host says We're supposed to be different Yo yo yo yo That's why we're talking about the Zodiac Killer Because we want to be different Because there's a lot of history podcast That'll do special wars and shit like that, World War II.

We do a lot of World War II. We also got to let her hair down and start talking about some people that are just killing folks at random. And in this case, I think just to get attention. Yeah, based on kind of what we're going to talk about today, like, definitely a weird progression to how this one went down. And in kind of the same vein,

I think isn't the Zodiac kind of known as, like, America's Jack the Ripper. Isn't that what they call it or something? Yeah, something along those lines, but he is Jack the Ripper 2.0. But like Jack, never, never solved as far as this goes. So someone got away, like, no one was even put in jail like wrongly. Like, they didn't even get like the wrong guy. Yeah. Like no one got, got copper doing this.

We're going to talk about essentially like the prime suspects. We're going to cover it all, you know, nuts to butts. And I guess without any further bullshit, remember guys, rate, review, subscribe, comment, follow, absorb. Yeah, just love us. Love us as much as we love you. All that good shit. And without further ado,

getting into the Zodiac. Okay, set the stage for me. Where is this all taking place? We're in the Bay Area. Right around San Francisco, we're going to just kind of be bouncing around the Bay Area. As far as that goes, we're going to go up into Napa Valley a little bit. But it's the late 60s. And I don't know if everybody knows this, but the peace and love movement of the 60s

was just basically like home centered around San Francisco. Yeah, this is also, was San Francisco also where, like, Hayd Ashbury and where Manson was, kind of in the early parts. Manson spent some time up there. He spent a lot more time down. on Hollywood, but yeah, like you mentioned,

Hayton Ashbury. Ken Kesey, the acid tests are going on at this point in time. What was it called? Uh, operate, fuck. Oh, God damn it.

The Midnight climax was part of it. Yes. Midnight climax. Cointel pro. There you go. But it was an area of change.

It was an area of revolution. Hippies ruled the world, or at least San Francisco, sort of, to an extent. I find myself falling on two different sides with hippies. I don't really

mind the stuff that they do but I also like to shower so it's sort of a... I think that name is kind of... I don't think that name really imply. Actually, yes, that name still does apply but I feel like it's kind of like using hipster. Hipster kind of took the place of that

didn't it? Yeah, except for hipsters, I don't know if they do a whole lot of cool stuff. But it was sort of ripe for a situation where terror could really cause a big kerfuffle among the people because

I like how you refer to like a string of serial murders as a curfuffle. They had a slight kerfuffle down in Northern California. Well, and I'm not saying that this was something that was just a throwaway, but I probably would think in the hustle

and bustle of San Francisco in the 60s there was going to be a lot more murder going on and there was going to be people dying every day of a shooting, something like, that just because it was a wild place to be. I mean, there was still crime within the city and everything. Yeah. So I don't know if these incidences would have, like, stood out in everybody's minds,

had the Zodiac not put his little stank on it and started doing some crazy shit along with the murders to really put them in the front page. Because even this first one... Yeah, even this first one that we're going to talk about, um, takes place on Lake Herman Road in Benicia, California. Yeah, so essentially out of kind of, kind of give you the Cliff Notes version before we get into the details. So this takes place between December, 1968 and October 1969. So it's a period of, what, 10 months? And during that time, there are five known victims, but essentially seven, like eight to nine attempts of people that could have been possibly victims. So there were a few survivors regarding this.

unfortunately that really didn't help him get found out or anything like that which is kind of weird but yeah so going back to what was it you said December 20th 1968 benicia california on lake herman road just a couple kids wanted to fuck trying to make it honest david arthur ferriday and betty lu jensen age 17 and 16 just a couple horny kids trying to find some alone time out on lover's lane well and the it's a story as old as time. Betty Lou and David had kind of started canoodling at school a little bit. Got to know each other.

Huh? Jack and die. Yeah. Betty Lou wasn't allowed to date yet. Her sister had had a very bad experience. Prior to that, so her parents were a little wary. She would go out with friends. When she would say she was going out with friends, she'd go out and meet David.

Finally, they said, you guys can hang out. You're allowed to have a boyfriend now. I don't know if it was turning 16 or anything like that. Um, so this was like their first official date. And their first official date, they were supposed to go to some diner or something like that. I don't know if they ever ended up there. There's not really a record of it. But at 10.15 p.m., which seems pretty late.

I was just thinking about that. Yeah. So like she's still 16. He's 17. Even if you're just starting to allow her to date and everything, that sounds, unless they were just like, fuck it. Yeah. Because we, yeah, I guess we don't know technically, but it still seems very,

very late. asking for fucking trouble. And you got to think, your first official date and you're going to push the limits of time. But regardless of that situation, 1015,

they pulled off the road onto Lake Herman Road and they called it a lover's lane. It's like a little turnout along the side of the road and there's like some sort of an access road behind it. Not very big.

Not something that you would be thinking of where it's like a big horseshoe and you can park back in. From the road, you're very visible. Which... Yeah, it was just a... place literally to pull off and park. Like if you've ever watched like

that 70's 70 show, it's literally just you know, at the point, it's literally just an area to park. But there's probably dirt road like 20 feet off the road and that's it. Like it's, there's no big parking area. It's just basically like a turnout. Yeah. Which I, in my head before I really saw pictures of it. You're looking for places

that aren't, the whole point with Lover's Lanes is they were not like a designated spot and the town was like yeah, if you're gonna fuck in your car, go out and do it here. They were secret places because cops would drive to all those other places. That's where you see like the thing when cops were walking up with their

flashlights and knocking on the window and being like, hey, and you see the kids trying to get dressed to their car. Lover's lanes were secretive places that they could go out. So yeah, it was just out off these isolated roads, little turnoffs. They weren't secretive. I'm telling you, you could see from the road, you can see this turnoff. You can see the car there. I know you could, but what I'm saying

is the whole point is every night or every couple nights. Cops aren't driving down every single street, especially if it's out of town a little bit. So yes, they were taking a chance that it could be found out. But if someone is just driving by like John Jane Smith,

they're just going to keep driving. They're not going to come up and cause problems for like a bunch of kids making out or anything like that. I see the windows fogged up. I think that that's a... You're a fucking bus kill. If you're driving by and you've got no fucking get the fuck out of here. You're what's wrong with this goddamn world.

So, mom's Nash Rambler that Faraday drives Jensen off this little lover's lane in. There were passers-by that said at 10.15 at night on an unusually cold night in December where the ground was frozen. Every time they drove by, there wasn't any frost on the car. Probably because they're making it hot on the inside. I think that's what's going on. Why are you so against this? I'm just saying, I'm not against it. What I'm saying is it's something where like there's some activity going.

on, but this takes place in such a fast amount of time that in a matter of like 10 minutes, this whole event takes place to the point where somebody could drive by and see the car and see that there was no frost on it, so it hadn't been sitting there for very long, to the point of somebody else driving by after the murders had occurred, and it's still the exact same. Correct. I think it's an isolated road, though. I think you're maybe thinking this is like a busy thoroughfare. They're isolated roads. All right. I guess we're never going to know. No. So there's no way of knowing either.

Between that time of 10.15 and 11 p.m., this is when they were actually found. So how they were found was David was shot in the head, still in the car, like halfway. It kind of might have looked like he was trying to get in or out. Betty was shot five times in the back and found 28 feet from the car. So obviously you're thinking shot in the back, you're away from the car, you're running away and you just get shot in the back a bunch of times. they said I'm trying to remember if this is where they may have found some type of like tire tracks

Okay that was the next one They said there was no tire tracks Because the ground was frozen So they didn't have any footprints Footprints will actually come in later In a way where it sounds like we're going to have a break in the case And then it just turns into no fucking Yeah no fucking break in the case

But yeah It was a very cold night This happened very quickly Faraday, the shot actually went in and I said, I think it was below his lower ear and then traveled up into his brain. She was shot in the back left side, like you said, 28 feet away from the car. So he must have had got the jump. Or she. Well, the fact that she had time to run away.

No, no, no. It was a fuck joke. I get it. Oh, I thought you were referring to a killer. I was just making a joke. Like, yeah, they're never really women. But he took out the mail first with one clean. shot as Darleen's getting away

he fires five shots into her back they said that they found 10 casings so that would say give or take three casings if it was five in her back one in his four casings because they found 10 so there were four bullets that were unaccounted for okay uh there was a bullet that were two bullets that were found

lodged in the car so that means that there were two shots that were either to scare them out of the car or to miss when he was firing her I think he just was firing into the car the way it is because it's so it seems so chaotic that if he's just firing and getting

recoil, he could just hit the car twice. The other two, if you're firing, he's firing a fucking pistol. So they're not that, like, despite like seen in fucking movies and stuff, pistols are not accurate that far away. A shore barrel makes for an inaccurate shot. That's why they're used

for like close up shit. So as someone is running away from you, he's probably just fire. And the fact that he hit her five times and only found 10, that's he must have tagged her like pretty early on and she kept trying to go had he missed her off to one side of the other they're not finding those fucking bullets they're way past but they found the 10 casings i know so there would have had to have been two bullets unaccounted correct so yeah how so he apparently goes up to the passenger side because was he driving or no no he was driving so he goes up to the driver's side shoots there she gets out of the passenger side and just takes off that way it's not like she's running around the car or anything she's heading away I have an alternate theory, and we'll get to it here in a second. I believe that he fired a couple rounds into the car to try to scare them out,

and for reasons that we'll find out later on, I think he wanted to hunt these people from the start, and then he realized that a handgun this way probably wasn't the best way to hunt somebody. Did they say anything about where the shell casings were found? Because if they would have found them all over on her side, or no, no, sorry, all over on his side, If I'm thinking about it correctly, it's going to, if it's a traditional pistol, it's going to eject the shell casings over to his right.

Away from the shooter? Yeah, kind of. Not like a big distance, but if he shot at them from behind to scare them at all, then they would have found shell casings over more to the right from even that direction. So over toward like the right rear of the car. I didn't hear where they found him. Okay. Just the fact that she got 29 feet away before she started getting shot at makes me think that she had a lot.

No, no, that's not what that's saying. She was found 28. That doesn't count the time that she first got hit. She could have kept running. She could have kept running if they were shots. I didn't see where behind. Back into the left is where she got hit. So she got shot in the back.

Okay, so a couple hit you up in the upper. What I'm saying is you have forward momentum. 28 feet is not very far. Okay. So you're saying that she just got shot and instantly went down right there. at 28 feet. I think she was running away from the car. She was able to escape the car to get going.

Yes, but what I'm saying is it's very easy for her to get shot 15 feet into that and being able to continue traveling another 10 feet being at 25 and then get shot four more times and then literally like she could have crawled. Like you're just trying to get out of that situation in any way you can. If you're still mobile, then you're trying to get there. I think she was shot probably closer and she could. kept going and he just said, because had she been shot, you can't fire off, you can be like and be accurate like that. So he probably tags her. She's still moving. He shoots her again.

She's still kind of moving. You wouldn't just pull out five shots like that. He would have been firing at her as she was still traveling because he couldn't put five shots into her. And they would have also stated in the information that she was executed because they would have been able to determine that from the entry wounds and the closeness of it. So I believe she was hit. She may have gotten a running start and then he turns to fire on her, but she was definitely hit before the 28 feet.

28 feet is where she got shot the fifth time at the least. Okay. Just the way you said, for some reason, I'm just like... She was trying to escape and she got shot. Correct. The way you phrased it just sounded wrong to me. That's what I said was she was trying to escape and she got shot. Correct, but you made it sound like you said she got shot

28 feet away from the car and that's where she went down for like the first shot. No, she made it 28 feet. Okay. So, a lady named Stella Borgeois, Borges, I don't know how to pronounce it. I don't think that's Californian.

Bourgeois? Bourgeois could be. She found them shortly after 11, called the Solano County Sheriff's Department to come out and investigate. He came out and investigated. They talked to a kid who maybe it had an argument with Faraday

earlier on about trying to date Betty Lou he was cleared they just chalked it up to like just a murder that was just what they called it they said that it was a they were still going to go through and investigate it but it was just an

unsolved murder at that point with no motivation one thing like I have to like kind of remind myself to think about this you think about stuff in terms of when you're reading this what technology might have been like today or even a little bit more modern So you're like, okay, well, if they were found at 11 o'clock, that means that the police were out there or the person that found him called the police right away.

No, no, no. Someone has to be found shortly after 11. She then has to either get back into town, go to the police station, try to find a pay phone, get back to her house to call, and then tell the police what happens for them to then get out to that site. And they're probably not sending the full investigative unit at that point as probably an officer and maybe an ambulance to go see. I think they did say that when they pulled up on the scene, Faraday still had a heartbeat, but he didn't live to see the next day. That's what I'm saying. It's like think of it then versus now. Oh yeah.

Now it would have been pretty immediate. And depending on how far out into the country, like you were talking about where the isolated road was, it could take them an extra 20 minutes to get out there with anything. Yeah. So it's back 20 minutes. Yeah. It could be an hour, two hours at least before they get out there. But this just gets changed.

chalked up as like, hey, it's California out here. Sometimes this shit happens. The crumb passion. Yeah. It could have really been anything. It could have just been somebody firing indiscriminately in the car. Then they look at the scene. They're like, well, this looks like more of an intentional thing, but I guess we'll see.

And this is December 20th, 1986. We're going to fast forward all the way to July 4th, 1969, which don't like crediting serial killers for what they do. Brilliant strategy to do this on the 4th of July. because what's one thing that Americans love to do on the 4th of July? Well, fireworks.

And fire guns sometimes to celebrate. So? Well, and the other thing, if you're thinking about it, he, this isn't a string. Jack the Ripper was like

course of four months. Yeah, three, four months. Three, four months. And it was like, boom, boom, at least once every couple weeks. And then a couple of them were like a week apart, right? Yeah.

So there's a space here of, fuck, what, almost six and a half seven months, seven and a half months? Yeah, right in there. It would have been about six and a half months. So, I mean, this allows time, essentially, for this case to

kind of probably have some attention or focus off of it. And also, this is still chalked up to just like you said, a regular murder. Yeah, there's no motivation behind it. No reason to think that this could ever be an intentional serial killer in the making. And actually,

these two sites weren't too far apart. We're going to talk about the Blue Rock Springs murders now. It was only four miles from the first murder site. Six point four kilometers for European fans. I'm sure they have murders over there too, but not very far away in this situation, which seems pretty surprising that they wouldn't, I guess there wasn't enough time to really link them before they find out what goes on. Yeah. But as far as that goes, in Vallejo, California, July 4th, 1969, Michael Mijot was 19, 19, 19, was 19, Darlene Ferris was 22, Ferrin or Ferris

Ferrin? Ferrin's right you were right She has herself a little kid She has herself a husband at home She goes out on a jaunt with Michael Mijot I'm sure they were probably just going to probably Play like I don't know

Dice in the car Yeah could be something like that Either that He listens to me Maybe they were going to work on the first time They did the pile driver position Probably I'm going to lean on that one Farrin picks up

Michael Mijot They drive out to Blue Rock Springs. Like I say, it's four miles away from the first murder site. It's a park, right? I think it's... Some place that has a parking lot-ish. Probably. Somewhere like that.

Maybe just a dirt lot. There's a second car that pulls in. It parks right next to them, drives away, returns 10 minutes later, pulls up right behind him. There's a man that exits the car and approaches the passenger door, which is Mejo's door because she came and picked him up. They said that there was a flashlight that shined in

their eyes at night, basically blinding them. As soon as he does that, he blindfires five times inside the vehicle with a nine millimeter luger. He hits both victims. He then walks away. I don't know if it was Mijot trying to scramble into the back seat, but then returns and fires two additional shots into each victim. They said he heard him.

So, and I think one of the things that they kind of thought may have happened because the windows were, I think, down a little bit, because you can tell because they're obviously not going to move up or down once that happens. And also if there's broken glass, you know. And it's a hand crank, so it'd be a real bitch to try to pull up. So I think they said the windows were down. So there may have been, either they were already down or someone coming out of the car with a flashlight like that. What's your instant thought? Cops. So you're rolling the window down to try to explain what's going on and everything. It's coming up to his side. And then, yeah, literally, flashlight right in his eye and the guy just starts firing.

These two shots would be kind of, I don't know, I would say sort of a little entry piece into what we're going to get later. One of the shots hits Megeau in the foot. They couldn't really figure that out. It gets explained later. As far as this goes, there was a, I don't remember if it was an officer. It could have been a ranger or something because I think it was near a park. Did he, he shot both of them twice when he came back? He came back and double tapped him both.

Yeah, so I think he got in the back seat. He made a noise like he was calling out for her to see because he thought he was walking away or something like that. And of course, you're fucking hysterical. You don't know what the fuck is going on at that point. And yeah, he heard that and he came back and shot him both twice. Crazily enough, this guy that got shot, I don't know how many times ends up surviving. Yeah. As the killer leaves, there was an officer or somebody that was a couple miles away.

he heard the first few shots and he's like that sounded like fireworks whatever it's the fourth of july then he hears two more and he's like well those sounded like gunshots and then he hears two more he's like those were definitely gunshots then he said that he was close enough to hear tires squealing as somebody was leaving the parking lot at a high rate of speed goes down um ends up finding the two victims far and dies uh i think at the scene i don't think she made it to the hospital mezot ends up surviving he describes a male 26 to 30, 195 to 200 pounds, 5 foot 9, white, short light brown curly hair. Pretty good description, I would assume for somebody to try to write up. Crazy enough, all basing it off of just the time

you had the flashlight. I'm not saying it's a, you know, a bad account or anything like that. Even more impressive to the fact that you somehow in all of that could actually see and try to make things out. Yeah, it's crazy just how much information he was able to pull from probably just maybe a five second glance at what's going on. Because, you know, when you get that flashlight in your eyes, there's not a whole lot that you're going to be able to see. No, your eyes are used to nothing but dark and then all of a sudden they're getting hit with light. And that was totally intentional, I'm sure. We didn't have to wait to figure out who actually did that because there's a call that comes into the police station at 1240 a.m.

So about, give or take, 40 minutes, 30 minutes after this happens. It's to dispatch at the police station and the claim responsibility for the shooting. This call, I just, this call is not verbatim, and we'll explain it after. So the Zodiac call on July 5th. I want to report a double murder. Ah, shit. I want to report. Port a double murder.

If you go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9mm luger. I killed those kids last year as well. Goodbye. Probably a pretty scary call to get. You like that? A little voice work this time. Let's see how it goes.

I can't do impressions of people from other countries. I do okay murderers, though. Okay. You probably studied murders a lot more than you have other people. a whole lot more. Talking from other countries. And this is probably fairly scary for this lady. And also back

at this time, you would think, well, this guy called in. So we're going to be able to record this. We're going to blast this guy's voice, his cadence, everything that he sound like on the news everywhere. Yeah, we got him. Every radio station. He's got this guy. He's going to be caught. This guy made the ultimate mistake.

One of two things. First off, back in these days, they didn't have the recording equipment to record phone calls coming in on 911 lines. So, big, big issue number one. Was this still the switchboard pulling it out? Probably, man. I don't know when that all changed over,

but I'm assuming if it wasn't that, it was something very close. Number two, she was trying to get more details out of him, so instead of writing down exactly what he told her, she was trying to ask questions over the top of him. So there's no even like full written account of what he said. This is just her... Stop interrupting me. I'm trying to tell you about these murders.

Shut up, woman. But we have our first contacts between this serial killer that just took credit for this murder and the murders back in December. So along with that, things get really, really scary. But the scarier thing about it was this call that came in was actually three blocks from police headquarters made from a pay phone. So by the time they figured out where it could have come from, they realized, oh shit, this guy was very, very close to the police station. almost in like a taunting fashion. Because the instant priority is like get everyone out there to the scene. And it's not like either probably like someone trace the call.

Yeah. But that information comes back. How long does it fucking take for you to like trace a call at that point back then? Even if it's five, 10, 15 minutes, how many miles down the road? Which way did the guy go? Yeah. And it's probably not a quick process. It depends.

Is it a balzy move because he did it so close? Or is it not a balzy move because he could be. living two blocks away. So by the time he hangs up, he could be back in his flat. You're none the wiser. I don't think you're killing that close to home. We're going to find out. Like, obviously, if this guy didn't get caught,

there's a method to the madness. Yeah, there absolutely is. And I think that he did this during a time when you could really get away with shit like this. So that's a very scary incident that happens. July 31st, so this exact same month, kind of like... Are you talking about the murder being a scary incident

or the call coming in? I would say the call coming in, taking credit for both of them, to then link them. Because like we talked about the first one, all that was until that call came in was, this is an isolated incident that we don't know what happens. Now you're putting these two murders together and you're thinking, holy shit, does this guy have a third plan? Does he have a fourth plan? Where is he going to strike next? So that puts a lot of fear, I'm sure, into the police department, but also anybody that finds out about it.

So on August 1st and 69, just, what would this be, like, 25 days later? Yeah, July 31st is when the letters come in. Gotcha. So three letters are sent to the, is it, how do you pronounce it? Vallejo Times Herald. Sorry. The Vallejo, San Francisco Chronicle and San Francisco Examiner. Now, they're pretty much sent the same letters, but they are sent also along with

that these basically like cipher grids. And it's basically just a coded message is what it is. and the ciphers were all different between the three newspapers. They were supposed to somehow like work together like each one would share a different piece of the information. And the letter, do you have the letter actually?

Yeah. Okay. So the letter starts out, Dear Editor, this is the murder of the two teenagers last Christmas, spelled with two S's at Lake Herman and the girl on the 4th of July near the golf course in Vallejo. To prove I killed them,

I shall state some facts. that I, or only I and the police know. Christmas, two S's again. Number one, brand name of ammo, Super X. Number two, ten shots were fired. Number three, the boy was on his back with his feet to the car. Number four, the girl was on her right side feet to the west. Fourth of July, number one, girl was wearing patterned slacks.

The boy was also shot in the knee. Number three, the brand name of ammo was Western. And then it says, here is a part of a cipher, or here is a part of a cipher. The other two parts of this cipher are being mailed to the editors at the Vallejo Times and the San Francisco Examiner. The Chronicle would be who got this letter. I want to print this cipher on the first page of your paper. In this cipher is my identity. If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Friday, August 1st, or August 69,

I will go on a killing Rampage Frye Night I will cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night then move to kill or move on to kill again until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend

And then it's signed Not with a name But with What is essentially It's a cross With a circle around it If you're a rap fan Public Enemy's logo

Mine is a silhouette A crosshair Yeah it's a crosshair reticle Or whatever you want to say do you have what the cipher said yeah so well actually I want to get to how the cipher was broken because they didn't find out what it said until it was broken well yeah okay so we have to actually

after that they talk about it I'm forgetting which one said I think it must have been the San Francisco examiner The Chronicle ran it on page four Was it the chronicle one on page four? The chronicle ran it on page four and they also asked for

more information to, because it included like the cipher and everything, and then they did like some dialogue or some text next to it. Yeah, editor's note next to it. Asking him for more info to prove his identity of who he was, he was claiming to be the guy that committed these murders. So we didn't have to wait long because August 4th, 1969, again, we start out, Dear Editor. Oh, do I do the murder voice for this? I would do it. This is going to be a long one. Dear editor,

this is the Zodiac speaking. And this is the first time that he ever refers to himself as a Zodiac. So this is where the whole idea of the Zodiac Killer comes from. This is August 7th. Was it?

Yeah. Oh, it was postmarked August 4th. Yeah. This is the Zodiac speaking. An answer to you're asking for more details about the good times I had in Vallejo.

I'm sure there's a ha when he wrote that line. I shall be very happy to supply even more material. By the way, are the police having a good time with the code? If not, tell them to cheer up. When they do crack it,

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

he leapt backwards at the same time, thus spoiling my aim and hitting him in the league. He ended up in the back seat Then the floor in the back Thrashing out very violently with his legs That's how I shot him in the knee I did not leave the scene

C-E-E-N-E Of the killing with squealing tires And a racing engine as described In the Vallejo paper I drove away quite slowly So as to not draw attention to my car The man who told I'm not going to keep doing that

The man who told the police That my car was brown was a negro. I gave it my best shot. Thank you for keeping up as long as you did. Was a negro about 40 to 45 rather shabbily dressed.

I was at the phone booth having some fun with the Vallejo cops when he was walking by. When I hung the phone up the damn something something cipher thing to ring that drew his attention to me in my car. Oh, it was when they called back.

Last Christmas, again two S's in that episode, the police were wondering as to how I could shoot and hit my victims in the dark. They did not openly state this, but implied this by saying it was a well-lit night and I could see the silhouettes on the horizon. Bullshit! That area is surrounded by high hills and trees.

What I did was tape a small pencil flashlight to the barrel of my gun. If you notice in the center of the beam of light, if you aim at the wall or the ceiling, you will see a black or dark spot in the center of the circle of light about three to six inches across. When I taped the...

or when taped to the gun, when taped to the gun barrel, the bullet will strike exactly in the center of the black dot of the light. All I had to do was spray them as if it was a water hose. There was no need to use gun sites. I was not happy to see

that I did not get my front page coverage. Then, again, the Zodiac sign, there was no address. For return. Sounds like an angry man. Yes. Sounds like a guy who wants to start to control the narrative

of how his murders are going on. And the way that the letters are sent, because they haven't solved the cipher at this point, so it could actually be just like nonsensical fucking doodles. It could make no sense whatsoever. It could be something to burn up time and resources. The way that it does seem kind of reckless, the way he's going about things, the letters and stuff like that,

it kind of makes you think like, oh, he's going to fuck up here, Sue. This is definitely someone that the police are going to keep getting clues and they're eventually going to get something on him. they're going to get a fingerprint left on a letter or like a piece of hair or some shit like that because he does seem kind of like the craziness kind of equals recklessness to me but it's like a controlled fucking chaos like it's a really like devious fucking mind

well and also the fact that he's not corresponding directly with the police he's intentionally going to the media who he knows will publish the shit a lot faster than the police telling the newspapers to publish. And not only that, but I think also by going through them, like you're saying, it's getting out to the public first. It's also having to pass through a series of hands, even if it's a direct recording or the letter and everything like that. It's still getting open there.

There's still possible contamination. And so it's also forcing the police to spend more resources instead of just having them be like, oh, this just got sent to the precinct. Well, not to mention this is a time when DNA is not a thing. Fingerprinting is a thing, but the deal with fingerprinting is that you need to lift a pretty good print, and you also need to have another set of prints to be able to compare it to. So you're not...

You're not in the system. Yeah, unless you're already in the system, if they pull a print and they're trying to look through a database, which again is just a binder full of fingerprints, it's not on a computer or anything like that. If they don't have that already, they don't know what to do with your prints. The best that they can hope for is to catch you or investigate you and then match your prints that way. How would you even do that? I know this is going to take us on a tangent, but thinking about it from that perspective, you are looking essentially at pictures of fingerprints or the fingerprints in a notebook like you said.

And looking to match it with this one, are you just to have a guy all day that just sits fucking up against just married to a magnifying glass or like a fucking, what do they call those things that used to project on like, in libraries for periodicals. Projectors? There's something special about them. I can't remember what's sold. But you would essentially put the two fingerprints together and you would literally just

swap out the ones to your left with different pages and just be like, does it look the same? Does it look the same? Oh, this one, nope, it looks the same. And then like how the fuck do you even know where to begin? Well, even present day, just my rudimentary understanding of how they do fingerprints

is they compare a certain area of a print and look at your dermal ridge design. So you'll pinpoint like the left hand side of a thumb. And you'll look at that left hand side of a thumb with your magnifying glass. You'll see if there's a swoop in the dermal ridge, your fingerprint. Like you're literal, the skin that raises up. Then they'll compare it to another one.

They'll see if those start to overlap or look similar. So it's a pretty easy process of elimination because they're so distinct and different that like people are going to have curves in much different places. Yeah, but you also have to get a very good print. because if you don't have a solid print, it's going to be really, really hard to tell. This is probably the most high thing I've ever actually selling this podcast,

but fingerprints are fucking crazy. They are. Just the concept as creatures that we have these completely individual identifying markers, or at least like, there's probably more than one individual that has these,

but the simple fact that we have just such customized shit on our bodies. You want me to leave you with just a little tidbit that's going to fuck with you? Sure. I believe that it's an evolutionary adaption that our fingerprints used to be much larger ridges. So we were able to grip and walk or climb things.

Oh, yeah. So over time, as we've had to do that less, those dermal ridges have recessed just into fingerprints instead of gripping. So you're saying some many generations down the road, it'll just be smooth. Yeah. It makes sense. I would assume so. And that's, by then, you won't be able to commit a crime without getting caught. By then we'll have minority report.

It'll be the fucking precogs that can just. see the fucking crimes before they happen. Yeah, so how did this 408 cipher? The Z-48 is what they called the Zodiac 408 cypher. Because it contained 408 symbols. Who solved it? Okay, so because they posted these things out in newspapers, you had all these people that were essentially trying to crack it. There were two people, they were from California, right?

Yep. Donald and Betty Hardin. Donald, Donald and Betty Hardin are like two former teachers? He is a teacher. She's a stay-at-home mom. before Donald and Betty cracked this, it sent to every governmental agency to crack it, anyone and everyone.

For like cryptanalysis and all this kind of stuff. Navy cryptanalysis army, like anything and everything they have, they're sending this out. Well, they really enjoyed fucking puzzles and brain teasers. And they end up solving

and breaking the cipher of this code. And I think how they did it. They said it took about 20 hours. 20 straight hours doing it. And how they did it. And how they did it is they were trying to figure out based on what they knew about him, what would probably be most likely in the cipher. And so they found a double letter.

And they just were like, okay, we're going to assume this word is kill because it's got two letters. Right. And L is the most common double letter, double consonant in the English language. So they would then put the L's and then they would have an I and a K because they know what would come before the I and the K. And from there, they would fill it in. It was like a game of goddamn, what do you call it, hangman? Yeah.

Where you're just trying anything and everything of all, like, what do you think this sentence says? E's are the most common letter in the English language, so they looked for the most common symbol because they knew that that would be E. And tried that and saw it and made sense. So what they came up with was this. I'm not going to even try the voice, sorry. Before you read this. I'm just doing it in a happy time. Before you read this, this is the most bullshit.

This man, to me, sounds like he's never touched a woman before. Yeah I like killing people Because it is so much fun It is more fun than killing a wild game in the forest Because man is the most dangerous animal of all To kill something gives me the most thrilling experience It is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl

The best part of it is So there's mis spellings too Like T-H-A-E They will Oh They will I die I will... Were there that many misspellings in it?

Yeah. Okay. Sorry. I'm just going to kind of read it how it was conveyed. They will die. I will be reborn in paradise and all those I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collecting of slaves for my afterlife.

That's a lot there. We want to start with the first line because it sounds like a fourth grader wrote it. I like killing people because it is so much fun. That's like, I like my dog because he loves me and I get to take him on walks. Just the most simple shit in the world.

They also said one thing about the cipher compared to the letters. The letters were a little bit more scattered than their writing, whereas these ciphers were lined up so as to think that he probably put like a piece of grid paper below the paper who's making the cipher on so they could be pretty well spaced out. That does two things,

because if you have spaces between your letters and you have four letters in a row, you can assume that that's a break for words. So you also, the fact that this was so evenly spaced, the words were very hard, and that's why there were other letters that was running towards. It just looked like it was letters.

So then you had to dictate where the separate words were. Yeah. This goes back to the first murder that I believe, well, that he said that he committed the female that was found 29 feet away from the vehicle. He says... Was that Betty? Yeah, Betty.

because man is the most dangerous animal of all. Killing is a wild game. Yeah, it's from that book the most dangerous game. Yeah, but I feel like there was a little desire to hunt, and maybe that's why he let Betty try to get away before he fired on her, to see the sport of actually hunting a human, rather than just rolling up and shooting him. I think he realized how hard it was,

and that's why his second set of murders, he just popped him in the car and didn't let them get out. That's where I think the two fire, the two shots that were fired into the car in the beginning? I can see seeing that based on that. I think it was more of him saying, man, is the most dangerous game that just like, the simple act of trying to hunt and kill a human while you also have other humans than hunting to get you, I think he meant it in that way.

I think the simple fact that, like, he ended up having to shoot her from such a distance. I think he learned from that definitely. I don't think it was intended to let her get that far even start running. But then he was like, oh, I need to just do this a little bit different next time. So then I don't even have to attempt someone getting away. There's no chance that this happens. Because at that point, man, he already intended for no one to be living. So there's already one person at this point.

Any chance that person has to get away is time it takes to then try to kill them. And his window of not being caught by someone driving past or hearing this noise shrinks that much more. Yeah. And I think that we'll talk about it with this next set of kill. I think that's a huge part of why he changes methods. Yeah. His next line, it is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl.

Comparing a murder to sex is something that a lot of people who are a lot of serial killers will do because it's a different, it's the same kind of gratification. You're not coming in your pants when you're shooting. Maybe you are. I don't know. I've never shot and killed somebody and enjoyed it. I'm coming and then I can get the home and I'm coming now.

but to compare that to a sexual experience means that it's in a different like pleasure receptor area of his brain buddy you're trying to make fucking sense out of spaghetti against the wall here this person is just going around killing people they are not in their right mind they're not gonna fucking be crafting Shakespeare but just to to say that and to make the comparison between sex and killing there's some sort of gratification that oh 100 no no i definitely get the comparison um his next part is the best part is that when i die, I will be reborn in paradise, and all the lone or stray people, in quotations, they added that, I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give my name because you will try to slow down or stop me from collecting

my slaves from my afterlife. This line, out of anything in this whole entire episode, perplex me the most, because people that do things for religious reasons usually have like a baseline of where it came from. and this line to me feels like almost a religious belief or something that he's kind of crafted his life in this whole mission around. So I searched this phrase a million times because I had heard it before.

I realized that I had heard it before because I told you it's what Denzel says to Ethan Hawk on Training Day about killing people on duty. They become your slaves in the afterlife. Turns out Denzel and Training Day weren't out when this happened, so that was immediately ruled out. Upon much further review, there's an 18th century French writer named Marcus de Sade.

And in his 1799 Juliet novel that he writes, there's a line in it that says, it is an article of faith on the island of Borneo that all those persons a man kills will be his slaves in the next world. As a result, the better a man wishes to be served in his death, the more he kills during his life. And this Desaude is actually the reason that we have the word sadist and sadism. So he's, he was a man who enjoyed the colonel.

Okay, so I'm making, you told me that before we started recording, and I just now made the connection, which if this guy, sadism is already an established thing, or at least a known thing. If he's into sadism, he's obviously then going to go back and study this guy and find this information. Gotcha. So to study an 18th century French writer, you have to be a very learned man, which also contrasts. I mean, unless you're just getting into sadism, which. then you, like, this is your David Koresh. If David Koresh would have written a book or something, I don't think you have to be, I think there are aspects of this that are very smart,

but so much of it also seems kind of chaotic with the risk being taken for contacting and everything like that. I just think it's this weird storm of like weird genius, but also complete crazy. But also if he just is like, oh, well, I'm going to get into safety, It's it's directly gonna put him in the front of this guy. Yeah, I just feel like to be able to read and comprehend and understand a 17th century or an 18th century French writer or to create a cipher. I'm not saying he's to have a lot of have something. Yeah. Yeah. Which again, the way that he writes these things and the way that we've read them, he spells things incorrectly. I don't think that that's either he's Charlie Day and he's he knows he's he only writes in symbols. He could have a symbol for. comma, he could have anything.

It could have been just, but the gist of the message ended up getting, getting there. I think that it was intentional, though. I think the misspelling was certainly to make them pay attention to all the details, extraneous details, you know, muddy the water with enough bullshit and they can't find what they're looking for. Well, yeah, go ahead. Murder number three. No, before that, we almost forgot this. Oh, yeah. Also on August 8th is when the Tate La Bianca murders occurred by the Manson family.

Now, I'm not going to go into really. any details on this because we're definitely going to cover Charles Manson, the Manson family, so I don't want to talk about it here. The Tate La Bianca murders ended up taking place in Los Angeles, Hollywood. Yep, like... Hollywood Hills, I believe. And up to this point,

because now the Zodiac has a name, I'm sure that, especially with all the other agencies working on this with the cipher and everything, I think the Zodiac hadn't made nationwide news at this point, just because of how strange it was with the letters and all that shit. Well, this takes a lot of the fucking wind.

of the Zodiac fucking sales. Everyone is now completely focused on the Manson family. The Tate La Bianca murders where essentially three members of the Manson family broke into Sharon Tate's house and killed everybody like in a party.

I think it was five. Five members. So all of a sudden, all the focus now goes over from San Francisco and now definitely nationwide news. Oh yeah.

It's taking over everything. Well, and the question becomes was Manson is Manson the Zodiac or is the Zodiac member of the Manson family are these two things connected I don't know

I think San Francisco and Los Angeles are like four hours apart it yeah even if they were you know a fucking state apart just from the dates and everything and how high profile it is did this guy go from just killing couples

to now trying to kill someone famous there was so much stuff going on between these cases and everything that there had to be some spillover. You got to imagine everybody in Los Angeles

is helping out the guys in San Francisco like God, I'm so glad we're not to point running point on a case like this and then all of a sudden the tape murders happen and you're like,

oh, we got something too? Who fucking said it? Who fucking jinxed us? You don't get to wear jeans on Friday, Brad. Well, not to be out, you know, outdone or retired or anything like that.

September 7th, 1969 rolls around. 27th. 27th, right? Yeah, 27th. Okay. I thought you said 7th. Lake Beriasa in Napa County.

We have Brian Hartwell, or, sorry, Hartnell. Hartnell, age 20, and Cecilia Shepherd, age 22. Now, they are out at, essentially just kind of like a little, they said it was kind of almost like a little island type area, but you could still get around to it.

It was almost like a peninsula. Yeah. When the water was higher, I guess it would, be off on an island. Well, and this whole thing between Brian and Cecilia, where they were exes, who had rekindled and met back on college campus, decided that they wanted to go somewhere and talk.

I'm sure it wasn't just talking. They needed a quiet place to do it. So what better place to go to than Lake Baranessa in this state park where you can have a beautiful little picnic? You can enjoy each other's company in the outdoors. I'm sure California's beautiful in September right around the lake. It seems like a really picturesque setting. for something great to happen.

Well, they see this guy creeping around the woods wearing a, kind of a weird, like, weird clothing and everything, and they're kind of seeing him, like, stop and kind of look at him, and, you know, they're kind of, like, looking back at him and everything. He's being just weird. He ends up kind of, like, even after they'd seen him, they lost sight of him, he ends up kind of sneaking up on him and coming out from behind the trees. He's still 100 to 75 feet away from them and everything.

and ends up pulling a 45 out of his fucking jacket. But what's he wearing now? What was he wearing? I'm getting to it. Did he mean, did he make this happen himself based on what he was wearing? Okay. He's wearing just like a black.

What I would describe as like the style of like an executioner's hood from the middle ages. Yeah. Like a black. I don't know if it was a sweatshirt or something like that. Like a baby. It was like a bib. It was a. Okay.

And then on it was drawn the fucking. logo of the zodiac, the fucking circle with the cross through it. Now, here's the other thing, buddy, that we didn't talk about when we were just kind of like going back and forth on this. Okay. You think that that would be something kind of like, I get your point that it seems almost like humorous in its ridiculousness for someone just to come out. My thought on it and just talking about what was also on the bib is right now around this time, you have had some murders kind of in. this area. They're just,

the Tate La Bianca murders just happened like the month before. And you've probably seen, if you've been paying any attention in the news, you've probably seen that symbol. I don't know if they connected the dots on that. I mean, you're probably panicked as fuck

when someone's pulled a gun on you anyway. So this guy talking under his fucking hood claims to be an escape convict from either fucking Montana or Colorado or something like that. And basically is there to rob them. And so the, guy, Brian.

Brian was basically like, okay man, he's like, here's all the money we have on us, offered a fucking, like, write him a check, just trying to placate the guy. Here's my car keys. You can go ahead and take the car if you need to try to get to Mexico or do anything like that. Well, he ends up having Cecilia tie up Brian, hands behind his back, and then also his feet. And then he- Hog ties him. Huh?

Hog ties him, which is a very demeaning way to tie somebody up. Yes. I don't know if he actually, I know he tied their feet and their hands behind their back and then had them go on their knee. So I don't know if he hog tied him. Well, it would just be connecting the feet to the hands at that point. I know, but there's still, when we talk about the movement and what ends up happening, I don't believe he actually hog tied him.

So he ends up like securing, he has her tie him first, then secures his, like checks her knot and everything, then ties up Cecilia, then proceeds to pull out a knife, They said it was a 10 to 12 inch blade and stabs him six times in the back, forces them first down onto the ground, under their stomachs, and then begins stabbing him, stabs her 10 times, and then leaves the scene. Now, the direct scene. The direct scene. Now, they're both alive.

And apparently they have enough life in them, even after being stabbed this many times by this fucking huge-ass knife, she is able to get him free. It had to be by biting his fucking the knots and everything like that. And ends up getting him free while they're there. Boaters are fucking passing by. This is up a little ways from like the main waterway. People aren't really coming that.

Two boats passing by. A third one kind of comes by. And then that one ends up leaving. Well, that one ends up going to get fucking help. Because you come upon that. I don't know what you're going to do. drive up there, you're probably fucking panic. Like, what the fuck is going on here?

He goes to get help. He doesn't tell him he's going to get help, and so they're just like, fuck, we're no one's here. So, he ends up getting free. I'm trying to remember what he's doing if he's trying to get help or anything like that. Yep. He starts trying to crawl up to a road.

He says the last thing that he sees before he passes out is a motorist pullover and somebody walking towards him. It happens to be the park ranger that had been alerted by the guys in the boat. And wraps him in a blanket or something like that, which, I mean, you've got all these knife wounds you think you try to like put pressure

on that shit, but apparently yeah, just wraps him in a blanket and he ends up surviving. She ends up dying on the way to the hospital. She goes into a coma on the way to the hospital and then dies. That's right. Later on when he's interviewed, he says that

he, by probably the fifth stab wound, realizes that the only way he's going to be able to try to survive this to play dead. So that's when he lays flat and stops moving. If that was after the six, maybe, I don't know. He surmises that the reason why she got stabbed 10 times

was because he could hear her fighting. So her will to live was so great. I don't want to talk about that. I'm just saying it's a, it's sort of the idea of like... I put myself instantly in that position, anything like that. And so, yeah, I don't want to think about that. I guess your point.

It's such a fighter-fut. slight response that she kept doing it, but she still survived enough. This is where I kind of find a multitude of things here. Going back to the hood and the executioner's mask, ridiculous get up. It's like his villain, he wants a villain suit to wear, I feel like. And like you were talking about with the crosshairs. But he's not expecting them to live. They're not supposed to survive.

So he just did it for him. Correct. There's not supposed to be anything. It's, okay, well, actually, yeah, that makes sense. I think the other thing, though, too, is I don't think the mask was necessarily, well, maybe at this point because he's like, oh shit, maybe they do have my description. He's like, I need to cover up. So he knows that he might not be fully successful in killing them because one of them with a gun has already. The other thing, too, is because this completely breaks from his previous MO of couples at night in cars with a gun.

it's during the fucking daytime and now he's using a knife so we and you were kind of talking about was there's something about the Tate La Bianca murders where they were getting so much attention that he felt that he had to make it more sensational

I guess and more risky that he did it during the day and everything that he wanted to get that fucking attention back on him I will say my theory on it was where they were in this park, there were other people that they'd interviewed in the park saying that they had seen a man walking around kind of surveying the area. I think he knew in order for him to get away because

he was so much further from his car because the first two, his car was literally feet away. So he needs a quieter way to do it. Whereas if you're firing gunshots and a park and everything echoes, there's going to be more people to hear and draw attention to. He also had an alibi that would explain why he was at that. Okay, sorry, that's getting ahead of ourselves. Yeah. Because when we talk about the suspects, there's one that fuck, I don't know how this guy did not get fucking taken him for this. But it fucking ties directly to this fucking day. Yeah. This exact same fucking spot.

But I do think that the by knife was by design, so it was almost a little bit quieter. So he did have time to get back to his getaway car. Yeah. Because if you're shooting in there and you know that there's other people around in the area, there's going to be more of a rush to where the gunshots came from. But if you're stabbing people, unless they're screaming, you're not going to be able to hear what's going on. Well, to make sure that the message is not lost in case, you know, everyone does go ahead and die during it, he actually sends his next what they consider a letter on the side of their car. It's on the board. Oh, there we go.

So what he writes is he writes, Vallejo 10, 2068, then 7-469. 12-2068. Oh, sorry, 12-2068. then September 27th what does that say? 69 69 to 630 69 and then it said 630 by knife

so it was the time of the murder and then the weapon used okay gotcha he scrolls that with a felt tip pen on the side of Brian Hartnell's white Carmen Gia so he leaves

for certain and the crosshairs were underneath it So he leaves a for certain note to let them know when they come and investigate the scene That it was the same guy, but the mode of murder was different Which I don't know if like you were talking about with the tape murders writing by knife If that was to try to make it sound more fantastical But obviously they're gonna find the people and see that it was knife wounds be like oh shit

Maybe it's like it wasn't doing the same for anymore So he needed to try to like get that next fucking take it up a notch Just for his own fucking grunt I don't fucking I don't fucking no. It really can be, or it could be. We go a little bit later on in the night, 7.40 p.m. There's a call to the Nampa County Sheriff's Department by Payphone again. This time it's in downtown Napa and it was again a few blocks away from the sheriff's office. It was 27 miles away from the crime scene. So there's where your difference in time is and why the call was later because it was further away from the crime scene. Was it the same kind of call where he was

taking credit for it? So he calls and he actually sort of pats himself on the the back, voice again. I want to report a murder. No, a double murder. There are two miles north of Park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen Carmen Gia. Hangs up the phone. Or he doesn't hang up the phone

this time because last time he hung up the phone, the automatic callback drew attention to the pay phone. Oh, got so he leaves the receiver up to hook, yeah. So, and then leaves. So we have another call where he's not only if they didn't get the letter, now they

know, again, same guy, because it's the same M.O. Just the fact that Hartnell survived this is, they said if it was a couple inches to the right, I believe, it would hit his heart, one of the stab wounds that he sustained. To be stabbed six times and to be able to make a full recovery, I listened to an interview with him from his hospital bed, and the amount of grace that he shows this guy that just stabbed the fuck out of him is pretty incredible. He talks about how he's a deeply troubled man and he needs help. If somebody just stabbed me six times and I survived it.

Not only that, man. He just fucking killed someone that at the very least you fucking did. Yeah, I don't get that. He showed a remarkable side to him in this interview. I don't have that in new. No, no, not at all. All right, before we get to the next one, let's take a bathroom

break. Okay. Well, hey there, all you sexy historians, how you guys doing? It is time for socials. Where can they find us on Instagram? If they want to follow us, they can find us at Historically High Pod on Instagram. That goes the same for threads as well.

You can also find us on Twitter. Tell them about Twitter. Historically high. That's historically H.I. on Twitter. And if you want to email any of your comments or suggestions, where can they find us at, Adam? at Historically High Podcast at gmail.com J-J-G-mail. All right, and back to the show.

All right. We now come to the Presidio Heights murder. And again, this is kind of a big break from his normal MO. I would say almost a complete break, because everywhere else that this happened, it's happened out in the country. So it's happening kind of in the surrounding areas of San Francisco whereas this one's like dead in the heart of San Francisco.

The most risky place that you could commit a murder. Also along those same lines, there's more than a few shootings probably happening in San Francisco in a day. This is happening, yeah, middle of San Francisco, Presidio Heights. The victim's name is Paul Lee Stein. He was 29. He was a cabbie that was paying for, I thought it was medical school,

until I read up on it. He was actually studying for his doctorate in English, I believe. So again, I said this to Chris earlier on in a research. 1969, you're going for your doctorate in English and your cabby to pay for school and to pay for your family? That seems like an odd job that you would do to pay for school. But again, school back then could have been $1,000. Well, yeah, but at the same time, like, if he's doing this during night and doing it, it's a job that is available for him to do at night when he's not going to school during the day.

It just seems like such an odd profession to do to pay your way through doctor school. You got to do what you got to do? So he ends up having a white male passenger into his cab at Washington or Maple. Washington to go to Maple. Oh, sorry. Washington to go to Maple. So it was very specific where the cross streets were. And in those days, cabbies would actually have a ledger,

and they would write down their fares because they're not having all the digital shit in front of them. So he wrote down, you know, where he picked up his fare, where they're going. And then that also helps them calculate essentially how much it's going to cost, the time they picked up. There's a log of this shit. So at 955, the passenger ends up shooting Stein in the back of the head and has to then get, because there's the divider.

and all that kind of stuff, he then goes into the front seat because of the way that he was positioned in the car and takes a piece of his shirt with blood on it. And this was also done with a 9mm. There were three kids that were across the street, like in a house, like up on the third floor, second third floor of a house. And they don't know if they heard the gunshot

because they had noticed the cab before. I don't know if they just happened to be looking out the window at the time. they noticed they looked like they were arguing at first. But they weren't able to really provide that much of a description on the guy. Obviously, because what ended up getting called out on the APB? Yeah. 1969 is a different time, I'd like to say. And I believe that good old-fashioned racism was what really fucked this thing up.

Because these three teens from across the street that witnessed the incident, they call the police, they witnessed the white male passenger. I don't know if they explained it this way, but after the shooting happens, they see him get out, and as he's getting out, he's wiping down fingerprints on the outside of the vehicle and on the inside of the vehicle with the piece of cloth

that he just tore off the guy's shirt. So he's cleaning up the crime scene, and as he leaves, they call the police, they say we just witnessed a shooting at these cross streets, and again, this is all just based on what we know. There were two officers that were traveling to the call that saw a white male, 35 to 45, 510, a crew cut walking away from the scene. Now, you'd think in any other situation, holy shit, holy shit, they just saw this white guy, shoot this guy, and then get out of a car and start walking away. He's going to walk right by the police and they're going to catch him.

There was some sort of a miscommunication where the call went out for a black male suspect. So I don't know if it was like he's wearing a black shirt and they're like, okay, there's a black male wearing a black shirt. They're like, no, a white male. It's like, okay, a black male wearing a white shirt. They're like, no, a white male. And the police are like, I can't hear him. Blackmail. Just look for a blackmail.

Someone's stealing Sony's mail? Just a concoffiny of issues. And so they get to the scene and they are not finding anybody because until they can get it clear that their suspect was actually a white male that they were looking for, more than likely they drove right past the murderer, the Zodiac killer and did not pay many attention. because the information they got was a blackmail. Yeah. He also took, I think, his keys in his wallet as well. Yeah. So a little bit like a robbery look type scenario.

I mean, that was kind of what they thought. They had no idea that they were going to go ahead and put it together that this was a Zodiac until October 13th. October 13th, the Chronicle, again, gets a letter from Zodiac claiming credit. And along with that credit for the murder, he sends part of the... the bloody t-shirt that he had stolen from Stein's body. Yeah. One thing, too, I've kind of been curious about is, with the exception of the, you know, Zodiac, like I am Zodiac, when he first identifies himself going to the examiner,

it kind of seems like a lot of the big stuff goes to the Chronicle. I mean, yeah, he does probably spread it out a little bit. But to send essentially, like, the piece of shirt with that, Do you think that had, we'll talk about him in a second, but there was this guy, I can't, Paul Avery? Yeah. So Paul Avery was a, I guess, like, crime beat writer at The Chronicle and had been writing a lot about the Zodiac. So I wonder if there was something, because he made some not very nice comments regarding his like sexual proclivities and shit like that, possibilities. I wonder if there was almost, even at that point, because we're going to get to something a little bit later, where he was taking that personal.

and so it was like, I'm sending it here because I know who's going to get it. Well, and I'm sure Avery, this was a tactic that Avery probably used in order to get the attention from the Zodiac, because they know that the Zodiac's reading is press clippings. Oh, yeah, 100%. He wanted shit in the front page of the fucking newspaper. So if he's like this, stupid pussy that keeps running away from these crime scenes, as soon as he starts using derogatory terms, the Zodiac's like, that motherf. And I think Avery said at some point he was trying to draw him out or make him make a mistake.

or some shit like that. Well, and in this letter that came with the part of the T-shirt, it reads, This is the Zodiac speaking. I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington Street and Maple Street last night. To prove this, here's a bloodstained piece of his shirt. I'm the same man who did in the people in the North Bay Area.

The SF police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcycles seeing who could make the most noise. The car drivers should have just parked their cars and sat quietly waiting for me to come out of cover. School children make nice targets. I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning.

Just shoot out the front tire, then pick off the kitties as they come bouncing out. Nope. We reach a new threat level, because now we've gone from couples to just random murders of cabbies in the street. Now he's starting to threaten school children, and this scared the ever-living shit.

out of everybody in the San Francisco area. They said, I don't even know how this is possible and how it would work. They said that there were planes that were flying low enough to keep eyes on school buses. That has to be a helicopter, right? No, I mean, they could have planes flying, like if you have a path of school buses, because the whole point was that he was going to shoot out the tire, and then as they came out, he was going to pick him off. Be picking him off.

their thought process on that. And again, this is crazy fucking psycho shit to even fucking say this, like about what he's planning to do. So in addition to the planes, and I'll get back to that, they had like unmarked cars that were following school buses and everything.

The whole city was fucking thrown into a panic. It was fucking pandemonium. And I think the reason that they would have the planes is they would be looking, because at that point, I think they even were arming some bus drivers or I can't remember if it got to that point. If something happened,

They were going to have everybody get fucking down on the floor and stay on the bus. If at any point a plane saw a bus with its lights not working that was looked like it had been off the road or something like that, they're calling that in. So I think they're just flying a pattern above, not specific buses, but just on the lookout for anything. Just like a general area. Yeah, because then if they called it in, the kids are in there, the cops get there and, you know, at least they're protected inside the bus to as much of a degree as they could be as someone starts trying to fire on it. To a certain extent, I can definitely see that. It makes a lot of sense. But as far as murders go, you can't really rank them because it's always a loss of life.

I'm going to rank a bus full of children much higher than a couple out in the woods. A cabby who had a family, not trying to diminish his death, but this is a, you ratchet this bitch up to 11. It's a completely different thing. October 22nd, there's a 2 a.m. call to the Oakland Police Department. Hold on. the teens that did the witness testimony about the guy getting out of the cab

he's not wearing his fucking little mask at this point so they were able to actually put together through talking to all of them a composite sketch and it's kind of an infamous sketch if you just pull up Zodiac killer

it's usually one of the ones that'll pull up weirdly enough doesn't it kind of look like Dwight Shrut in glasses yeah well Dwight Shute Shrewd did wear glasses

but there were he never wore sunglasses, did he? Oh, I guess that's true. And I'm sure, well, because even then, this is a weird thing that we forgot to mention about his executioner's hood cosplay that he was doing. There was actually a pair of sunglasses

that were stitched onto the hood. I guess he looks more like Dale from King of the Hill. A little bit, yeah. Kind of a Dwight Dale mashup. He looks like he could be a blues brother. Yeah. But, but this famous composite sketch that comes up now is something that's used,

It'll be used later on to kind of show suspects to get some different understanding. Obviously, they couldn't go show the gentleman that survived the murders at the lake because he was wearing the hood. Yeah. But this is just kind of all we have to go on. And at this point, too, didn't Michael, they were trying to get a hold of Michael. How did you pronounce his last name? Mado. They were trying to get a hold of Michael Madoe because he was the one that provided.

this description of what the guy looked like so if they could match this up, they couldn't find Michael Majot. He'd essentially like left town and everything, which I don't fucking blame him. Get the fuck away from that area and don't tell anyone where you're going. I think that that's a completely normal thing. It didn't

look at all suspicious because he had been fucking shot so it's not like he has to worry about being a fucking suspect in it. But yeah, getting the fuck out of Dodge and getting away somewhere, tropical, warm, and peaceful would be the only place I'm fucking head for this point. I would go somewhere

with no guns. That is yeah. On October 22nd, oh and also the piece of shirt, of course, they did forensic testing and everything and found that the blood did match, so they knew that it was legitimate. Also, at this point, they're also getting a ton of like fucking false tips,

all that kind of crazy stuff. I think my neighbor might be the zodiac. All this kind of, the crazy shit that you would think of, like, you think about shit nowadays, about how crazy people get. People, were sending in copycat letters, all this kind of stuff. So sorting out, they definitely had to have something to tie it directly to these activities. This is going to be a hot take.

I believe the people that call in and just to fuck with the police when a murder like this happens are actually more deranged than the actual killers themselves. I don't know if more. I think there's a level of derangement that's required for that. There's a certain part of your brain that has to be really, really wrong to want to try to capitalize on. something so sadistic and terrible. There is. There is 100%. But I think, I don't think those are the same parts of the brain. I think the part of the brain where you murder

people has got to be separate from that. I'm sure they're bedfellows. They're going to next to neighborhood. But they're not crossing that fence. There's a fence big enough there that's not letting them across. There's some rose bushes there. It's just the saddest thing. I guess, okay, second saddest thing that you can do besides the murder, but it's just sick to be able to take

advantage of people like that. Well, October 22nd at 2nd, at 2nd, a. There was a call to the Oakland Police Department demanding that either Mr. F. Lee, fuck face. F stands for fuck and fuck Lee Bailey.

Flee Bailey, we talked about him during the OJ Simpson episode, go back and listen to that one. He, so Flee Bailey has defended some of the worst people. Oh yeah. That's why he got hired for the fucking OJ. Yeah.

But OJ compared to the rest of him, it's like, this is more of a step down. Like, for the bad shit that OJ did, he's like a JV to some of the murderers that Effley Bailey is. That's why I think this guy's requesting him.

And this was again, all previous to OJ and everything. So we either request Effley Bailey or this guy named Melvin Belly. Belli, I think. Belly. B-E-L-L-I to appear on this show called A.M. San Francisco,

basically like what you would have for your local news in the morning. This was Danny Tanner's show in Full House. This wasn't wake up. of San Francisco. Same thing. Same idea. I can't even imagine if this happened, Bob Saggin's right into interview this guy. So they end up finding Melvin to do this and they go on the show, it's him and the host, and they're keeping the phone lines open. They're asking people not to

call in or anything like that, and someone ends up calling in. And the Zodiac, I'm doing air quotes here, called in multiple times talking with Belli before agreeing to meet him. And he would, the reason he had to call in multiple times is, of course, they're trying to fucking trace the call. They're recording everything. But he obviously had some knowledge to their ability to trace a call and wasn't taking any chances. So he would just literally hang up the phone, then call back.

Hang up the phone, call back. And it's not like where it's like, we're at 70%. And he calls back in. They're like 80%. Make him call again. It was, if you didn't fucking get it all, you didn't really get any of it, I don't think. So you're having to start over each time.

So you're not getting enough time to get this. The number that I heard and it could be very wrong, so I'm just going to throw it like a dart with my eyes closed. I think they said he called it 55 times. Just over the course of the interview because he was so concerned, they decided to go by the name Sam. Yeah, he was like, that name is very ominous. He's like, is there something else we can call you?

And he's like, Sam. But along with that, there were parts where he would just go into rants about killing children. I want to just drill. the fucking headaches. Yeah, the headaches that were causing him. I want to drill down on this children thing because it's going to lay a suspect pretty bare. But he keeps referencing children. And I say all this to say that this whole thing doesn't really matter.

Because like Chris said, before the hang up, he agreed to meet with Belly. They had, I guess, figured out a place to meet. I don't remember if it was the next day or the coming days. Belly shows up. Of course, they're in a public place. so there's a million paparazzi just waiting. And a ton of cops. Oh, yeah.

So it doesn't show up. Then on November 8th, the Zodiac males a card and something called the Z340 Cipher. Before we get into that, because you had Zodiac in quotes, were you saying that you don't think that is the zodiac or you do think it was the zodiac? Because usually that would indicate you don't. So they traced the calls. They were able to get like a partial. trace and figure out where it came from.

And it actually led to a mental institution where there was a phone that had made the calls and they actually found the, not prisoner, but one of the people in the mental institution that was watching, patient, yes, the better word, much better word than prisoner. He admitted to doing it. He admitted to being Sam. So he was just some dude that was in the day room that had a phone and a TV and was just fucking with him. Okay, so here's my question on that.

because you would think with all the information that the Zodiac provides and wants credit for all this stuff, this was on TV in San Francisco. Do you think he saw that? And I'm thinking in my head, if that was him, him writing into being like, that wasn't me that called in. I don't have, like, this is, I don't suffer headaches. I'm not sick. All that kind of stuff. Or do you think he saw that?

And he was like, fucking awesome. They're going to be chasing their tails because he loved in his letters making fun of the cops and, and making it known how much smarter than him he was. So part of this makes me think the reason he never denied it in a letter is that he was like, these guys are going to be chasing this guy down and trying to find where this is coming from and it's going to take the heat off me,

while still making the name famous. That's a fairly interesting point that I didn't really think of. Keep that in mind for about the next five minutes, because I think it comes back around in a very weird way. Okay. So November 8th, the Zodiac mails a card. Oh, hold on. Sorry, one more things.

I'm sorry to keep you in a row. No, you're good. October 27th is when the letter to Paul Avery is sent. Okay. So Paul Avery, the guy that I was talking about, the criminal beat writer that had been writing about the Zodiac, he actually gets a letter from the Zodiac directly to him. I am going to try to find it real quick.

Yeah. So while you're finding that This is such a fucking weird thing This November 8th letter that he sends is just a pen Or it's like a card, like a greeting card Oh, I got it. Okay I can, sorry

So it was a fucking Halloween card And what it said on it is From your secret, it had a fucking skeleton wearing like a fucking pumpkin like a fucking diaper and the skeleton looks like a dancing and it's holding up like the A-O-K symbol like the three fingers and the index finger

of the thumb circled and it says from your secret pal I fill it in my bones you ache to know my name and so I'll clue you in but then why

spoil the game and then wrote boo and put like some cryptic symbols, signed it Z with the Zodiac symbol on it and then wrote on it, it says by fire, by knife, by guns, by

rope, slaves and paradise. And the way this is written, I'm going to try to describe it. So if you're looking at a page, it says by and then fire is spelled going down. Then start slaves in larger text going across the middle.

Slaves in paradise are done as a cross, sharing the A, in slaves and then the A after the R in Paradise. So it's a cross, Paradise coming top to bottom, slaves going left to right. Then under that it says by knife, then in the other quadrant by gun, then in the other quadrant by rope. What's the odd thing about Paradise? Oh, it's spelled with C. Yeah.

It's odd how he starts doing this with Paradise. Yeah, that's for a newspaper got to get that after you're writing these negative stories. sorry, you got a fucking card. Yeah. Like a creepy fucking card. This isn't just a fucking letter. This is a creepy fucking card. Well, I'd be getting the fuck out.

I'd definitely stop writing those articles. I know that. That would scare me enough. I'd be getting, he knows my name. Oh, and what's fucking hilarious about that is around the San Francisco Chronicle Office. They all made pens or badges that said not Paul Avery on it to like identify themselves as not Paul Avery. he was fucking hilarious.

It's so mean. It's so mean to him. Just, ah, that would be terrible. Those people are supposed to be your battery mates in the office.

You can't be doing that to the guy. So it's November 8th. The dripping pen card gets sent. The dripping pen card was a card just like your Halloween card.

And on the front of it said, sorry I haven't written in a while. My pen was wet. Just some goofy shit that doesn't even matter. It says, this is the zodiac speaking.

I though, probably thought, You would need a good laugh before you hear the bad news. You won't get the news for a while yet, and I can't do a thing with it. P.S., could you print this new cipher on your front with a you page? I get awfully lonely when I'm ignored, so lonely I could do my thing. I don't like that. No, little ominous.

So this is what I was talking about when you were saying that did he like what was going on with the AM San Francisco call or not. So this 340 Z340 cipher has 340 characters in it. And in these 340 characters, he had rigged it a completely different way to where they couldn't use the same coating that the married couple did with the cipher to figure it out. You'd think it took them a fairly long time to break it, but they still needed to break it. My friend, it took until, I believe it was 2021 for it to be broken by, three guys that had used a computer system

to put it in order and they said that this new cipher was so complicated that there were lines in it that were going diagonal through the cipher instead of crossword puzzle up and down or left yeah so this new cyphor word search cracked in 2021

probably the least effective time that you could ever crack this cipher it says and I don't mean to not give these guys credit because it's it took them that long to figure out how to do it and the fact that they were able to put together the technology to do it is nothing short of incredible.

This cipher is believed to be said, I hope you were having lots of fun and trying to catch me. That wasn't me on the TV show, which brings up a point about me. I'm not afraid of the gas chamber because it will send me to my paradise, all the sooner, because I now have enough slaves

to work for me where everyone else has nothing when they reach paradise. So they will be afraid of death, and I am not afraid because I know that I put my life, or I know that my new life is life will be an easy one in paradise death. So to answer your question, I think that he did enjoy the San Francisco thing, or the radio show, or call in show, whatever you want to call it, because he didn't mention it in the card that he sent, but he sent it in the cipher that he made extremely difficult to crack.

Yeah. So I think that he hit it in the cipher because he was happy about it, but he always, also wanted them to know that that wasn't him. Yeah, that's true. He didn't like something in that call, but he liked that the call happened. Like, he liked the idea of it, but he didn't like how it all went. And just kind of correct myself on the fly. So the letter to Paul Avery didn't take place until August 27th of the next year.

So we're still in 69 right now. The letter for Paul Avery didn't get sent until, yeah, the 70s. Okay. 70. We got a little bit longer after that. The very next day a seven-page letter shows up And it claims that he was stopped by two officers And then he hid in the park until the search stopped

During the cabby shooting Yeah during cabby shooting So seven-page letter There was probably a lot of rambling and some other things in it But he said he hid in the park Whether he did or not There's no way of knowing One of the officers that I guess thought that he was referencing him

Came out that exact same day It was like we didn't stop anybody on the street or question anybody like to cover his ass. Excuse me, his panic makes me think that there's a chance that they might have stopped somebody that was a Zodiac killer. But that bad intel that they had may have led them away from him.

So the cops don't want to look like they were idiots and talk to the guy and then let him go. So he comes out and he's like, no, we didn't talk to anybody that day. He was never referenced as one of the officers, but he just came out and wanted to say it. So, December 20th

of that year, Belly, the guy that was on the AM radio San Francisco or the AM TV San Francisco is mail the letter and the other part of the shirt from the cabby shooting. So again, we have the same guy because he has the other part of the bloody shirt that he had ripped off. In the letter, he asked for help. He is concerned about the demons, some other very weird cryptic shit, but he wants some help from this lawyer to try to get out of what he's done. So DeCypher said that he wasn't scared of the gas chamber, but he's asking Belly for help to try to figure out what to do.

These don't have return addresses, so Belly can't really do anything about it because he does no way of getting in contact with him. That's sort of the break from this timeline. We'll talk about some other possible victims that happen because this sort of goes to show that, for as much as they knew about the Zodiac killer, there were so many other things that happened.

And playing into Chris's point, too, about the letters that were coming in after a certain point. I do believe that this belly letter was him because who else would have a bloody shirt that matched up. But there were other letters that continued on, and some of them, we'll talk about it, but the first possible victim,

we're going to throw it all the way back to 1966. A woman named Sherry Joe Bates that was murdered October 30th, 1966 at Riverside City College. That would have been roughly two years before the first actual confirmed Zodiac killer. Correct, yeah. She was found beaten and stabbed to death by the library in between two abandoned houses by campus. And, I mean, you can't really tie it together until we get to November 29th of that same year.

There were letters that were sent to the Riverside Press and the Riverside Police saying that Sherry Joe had to die. And letters that felt very similar to the Zodiac letters, except for there was a typewriter that was used to send these. April 30th of 1967, there's three more letters sent out both the Riverside Police and the press, but also to Bates' father. And the reason why they think these are connected is because one of the first letters had a Z scribbled on the bottom of it that could have been Zodiac. interesting. Trying it out. Yeah. It could have been trying it out.

Could have been just a scribble on the bottom of a page. Nobody really knows. The three letters, including Bates' father, that were sent, were very similar to the first one, kind of taking credit for what it happened, except for Bates' father didn't have the Z on it. I believe one of the other ones didn't have a Z on the bottom of these. But his M.O. doesn't really seem to

fit for me on this one because she was stabbed to death and the others were shootings and then into stabbing. Yeah. It was also just a solitary female. Um, they'd found some other things on the campus. There was a, scared to die to die scared, scrawled under. It was like a library table on campus. So there were some other things that they maybe thought could be connected to the whole idea of it. Um, another one is Kathleen Johns. So Kathleen Johns, this was on Mark. This was on March 22nd, 1970. She was driving from San Bernardino to, is it, Pentaluma? Petaluma, yeah.

To visit her mother. So she's seven months pregnant, and she also has her 10-month-old daughter at this time. I had to do the math on that one. To see when she would have. Three months after giving birth, she's pregnant again. That's a fucking rough setup, man. You don't even have your guts back together, right? Well, she's heading on the highway, and the car behind her starts honking its horn, flashing its headlights.

Well, she pulls off, because I don't know if she thought it might have been a cop or something like that, she pulls off the road and stops, and this man in the car, parks behind her, comes up to her car and basically tells her that her right rear wheel, so the passenger rear that she can't see or anything, even if she sticks her out of the window, looks like it's wobbling and then it's loose. He's like, I got a kit in the car, I can go ahead and tighten up the lug nuts for it if you want. She's like, oh, okay, yeah, go ahead. Well, after doing that, he drives off, and when she gets back onto the freeway, he loosened the nuts.

Yes. So instead of tightening them, like he said, he loosened the perfectly fine nuts. Yes. That's... Well, that's what I'm getting to, is the wheel almost immediately falls off the car. Well, lo and behold, guess who ends up showing back up? Somehow, like, behind and pulling back up is the same guy, despite having gone ahead of her. I'm not blaming her for this or anything like that, but that's definitely fucking crazy.

That you're just like, well, you drove ahead of me. Why are you still here? like, well, I guess it was more damage than I thought, and those things must be stripped or something. I'll go ahead and drive you to the gas station for help. Well, she gets with her daughter into the car. Well, during the ride, they end up passing a few different gas stations, and she's not stopping. For about 90 minutes, he just drove back and forth around the back roads. And when she was asking, she's like, why aren't you stopping? He would just change the subject. He finally has to stop at an intersection, and she jumps out with her daughter and runs into a field and hides.

And he kind of like searches for her. She's got a fucking 10-month-old that's like she's trying not to make noise or anything like that. He tells her on the car ride that he's going to kill her and then throw her child out the moving car. So panic's high when she jumps out. Yeah. That's a very, very tense situation. Her running into a field feels brilliant like you're talking about. I don't know how you keep a 10-month-old quiet in that whole.

whole episode of events. I don't know, man. But it's fucking crazy. Luck has to be on your side. He jumps out and starts searching the field, looking all over. The only reason that he's scared off is because it must have been dark at this point, because there was a truck that stopped and flashed its high beams into the field to see what was going on with the car that was pulled over at the intersection and then the doors

open, some guy looking through there. the abductor sees that turns around jumps back in the car and takes off John's ends up escaping and gets taken to the police station where she tells the story these things all sound like they could be possible victims and part of the reason that is is because there's subsequent letters that go to the police later on that are just kind of like hey just checking in I'm going to write some pretty weird shit on here But there's a I don't know if we talk about it later on

The letter referencing Kathleen John's comes out after Kathleen John's story hits the news And the reference that he puts in was He says I took a wild trip with that lady in the car So he's making vague references to it which he's acknowledging that happens The reason why I don't think he's connected and he makes a reference to Sherry Joe Bates in one of his other letters. The reason I don't think it happened

was because every other letter that he wrote had very detailed statements that really like only him and the police would know. So you're saying that the letter, he didn't write the letter? No, I think that he did, but I think that he was trying to take credit because he's, I believe

for all intents and purposes, stop killing at this point. I don't know if it was because things were getting too hot or what. But he needs to keep up that public of scaring people. So he's writing in taking credit for other unsolved crimes to try to keep himself

in the mind's eye of the public. Because again, we're in the hippie mecca in San Francisco during the 70s now. At this point in time, there's a lot of other shit going on. And you can only be under the hold of a psychopath for so long before you're just like, fuck it, I have

to live my life still. We have to continue on with life. This guy can't just grip us in fear. So I think these little comments that he's making about these other murders were to try to keep the mind's eye on him. Try to keep that 15 minutes of fame going. Exactly. Yeah. I think he was trying to take credit for other shit that was going on. Which, again, I could be completely wrong, but his MO doesn't make any sense because if he had abducted Johns, everybody else he just shot and killed immediately or stabbed and killed.

Why would you drive around for hours with this woman? When she pulls over the second time, why don't you just walk up, pop her, pop her daughter, get back in your car and leave? I have mixed feelings regarding that letter. Just kind of looking at it from a perspective of because everything else had come from him before really the news got out, like at least the details. All the details in this letter where I think you were able to grasp them and pull them out of the article and what was being reported and her interview and all that kind of stuff. So I'm not sure if, especially considering that it was a failure, I don't know if this guy is the kind of guy that would like, write in and be like, yeah, I'm losing my touch.

Like I felt, so I think it can go either way on that one. I didn't want to kill this one. I just wanted to scare her. Like, it doesn't, yeah, there's, he almost frames it as if he did it intentionally instead of if he did it failed or if he didn't do it, he didn't have enough information. Well, he decides to go a little bit bigger. So 420 of 1970. Crazy how we get in April 20th in this episode.

We always get a 420 in every episode we do what feels like back in these dates. He sends a 13-letter cipher. Doesn't it start out with my name is Zodiac? It's my name is and then it's blank. Oh, that's right, because he's trying to have them the whole point of the cipher is to actually discover his real name. And in that he also includes a diagram of how to build a bomb. To blow up a bus.

Yeah. So the tricky thing about this, and again, this last cipher that he sent to Z340 wasn't found until about, or wasn't figured out until about three years ago. So the Z340 is still. completely flabbergasting everybody. The issue is, as the ciphers get smaller, there's less of a sample size to pull letters from. And a 13-letter cipher,

I'm going to get this wrong, almost undoubtedly. There's 28 letters in the alphabet? Sure. Okay. There's no way of knowing if there is 28 or not, and I'm not going to try to figure it out if there's no way. I'm over here to count on my fingers. But a 13-letter cipher doesn't give you enough of a sample size

for an entire alphabet. So there's really no way to try. try to break the cipher and like you were talking about with the light symbols next to each other 26 okay uh yeah i'll take 26 literally actually i'm impressed that i was that close but a 13 letter cipher you don't have a way to really start dissecting it and figure it out so to this day you just start putting together 13 letter names or is there yeah space in there and what do you yeah what are you trying to figure out and there's some weird shit that i don't think really pulls in with the suspects and about the 13 letters because it's just sort of

of there's a lot of reaches to get to where you need to be with that theory. But again, it also includes this diagram of a bomb to blow up a bus. What was his last threat about a bus? Yeah, shooting the kids off of it. So you're starting to bring more attention. We're taking the goddamn back to the bus. April 28th, this is the most interesting letter, I believe, a serial killer could ever send. And I got to read this one because it's...

it's truly amazing and just the weirdness that this brings what is the date April 28th this is like zodiac running for fucking

the school fucking what do they call ASB? Yeah the all student body or whatever so it's written on a card it says sorry to the front of the card

is a woman who's sitting on what looks like a dragon and a man who's sitting on a donkey in the front of the says, sorry to hear your ass as a dragon. Is that just a, like your dragon ass, like you're tired? Fun play on words? Yeah.

It's a dumbest shit I've ever seen on a card. I can't believe they wrote cards like that. On the inside of the card, it says... I wonder if he made it. Because if you think of the one that he sent to Paul Avery, I don't know if you could really get a Halloween card that was specific and saying, I'm not going to tell you my name because it'll ruin the game. That's true.

Like what kind of fucking card? What occasion is that... You're over the Hallmark Isle and you're like, um, letters for aspiring murderers or letters for serial killers, do you guys have that section? So the inside of the card says, if you don't want me to have this blast,

you must do two things. Tell everyone about the bus bomb with all the details. And two, this is very important too, so we've got to listen in tight here. I would like to see some nice zodiac buttons, one T, wandering about town.

Everyone else has these buttons. like the piece, black power, Melvin needs blubber, whatever the fuck that means, etc. Well, it would cheer me up considerably if I saw a lot of people wearing my button, one T again. Please know nasty ones like Melvins.

Thank you. What was he wanting? Was he wanting one that said Zodiac, Z, have the logo on it. He wasn't even specific in this. Like, what kind of fucking buttons do you want from this guy? Here's my plan. You guys do with it what you want.

I don't want them to be nasty. though, no Zodiac eats dick or anything like that. I just, I want this to be a very nice button. That's a crazy thought that I could go a million different directions with. The buttons don't happen. No, no, they don't happen.

For obvious fucking reason. But what, what do you think his thought process behind wanting that is? He wants to know that people know about him? He wants his name still, he still wants to be talked about. What's going to be the conversation with, fuck man, you know what?

as weird as this is going to even comparison, it's the fucking mask thing or everything like that. Like not taking whatever. But what I'm saying is it was always a talking point. And that's what I mean in, in the sense of you would see someone come in, they would be wearing that button.

That would be your conversation. Like, why the fuck you were in that button? Whether your reasoning had those buttons somehow got distributed or people started wearing him, it's like, well, if I figure if I wear the button and do what he says, he's not going to murder me if he ends up finding me. but at the same time you're like

but you're still keeping your name essentially in this you know essentially on people's tongues I will say if this was in the height of when the murders were happening like the one that happened in San Francisco if I saw one of those buttons and I thought for a half a second if this guy wasn't going to

shoot me out on the street if I was wearing it I'd consider putting the button on it. The other thing that he's doing is this weird scorecard on the bottom of these last two the first April 20th the 420 letter the bottom had his crosshair symbol, uh, equals 10 SFPD equals zero. So is this his victim score card? Is he claiming now that he's gone from five victims that we know about to 10 victims and the

SFPD hasn't been able to catch him so they're still got a goose egg on the board? I, I think it's his, um, his score of them not being able to catch him for certain things. You think it is? Whether it be letters, whether it be all this kind of stuff. It could be at this point, April 28th, is this possibly months. Yeah, well, from April 20th to April 28th, it jumps from him 10, police department zero to him 12, police department zero. So in a matter of eight days, it's jumped two somehow. Yeah, I think it's essentially just maybe wins, like things that he thinks he's

getting over on them. I don't know if it's necessarily murder. Because, again, they're having murders that are happening at this time, shootings, things like that in the city, but I don't know if he's necessarily saying, like, oh, I just killed two more. True, yeah. We wait all the way until June 26th for another follow-up letter. Again, this just shows how fucking crazy this dude is.

This is the Zodiac speaking. I love how he starts off everything like that. Like, we don't already know. Like, he's... Motherfucker, you're not even speaking. You're writing a letter. This is the Zodiac writing. Like, there's 15 other serial killers that are writing the police letters.

Like, if one of these shows up, I think we're going to know who it is. It's up, guys. It's Z. I have become very upset with the... the people of San Fran Bay Area. They have not, underlined, complied with my wishes for them to wear some nice buttons.

I promise, with a sea again, just like Paradise, to punish them if they did not comply by annihilating a full bus, two S's. But now school is out for the summer. So I punish them in another way. I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a 38.

Crosshair is 12 SFPD Zero. So this must have been the 12th. So June 26th. Okay. the 12. The map was coupled to it, and this map was a map of something called Mount Diablo. There was a weird kind of setup. Devil?

Yeah, California, man. I don't know. Maybe it... Yeah, Diablo is devil. Yeah, I can't really say a mountain gets you closer to the devil, so that doesn't really work. But this map... It's a bitch to hike up. This map gets coupled with a code where this bomb is supposed to...

to be set. Since you can't do buses, you've got to do something else. So he shoots the guy, he plants this bomb, and it says you have until next fall to dig up the bomb, and then you get another cipher.

Did they find a victim? No. I'm sure there was something in the news about a shooting that happened like that, but again, the only thing that he gives is I shot a man sitting in a parked car

with a 38. There was no descriptors or anything like he gave about the checkered pants. About any of the other ones to prove it was him. Yeah. So this map goes unsolved. Just doesn't happen.

But again, he goes back to the buttons and he's angry that the people won't wear some nice cross-hair buttons. Just fucking the weirdest thing in the world. To hope to reach for it. This is where we get and I believe it's his final letter.

It's not the final letter that they get, but his final letter comes January 29th, 1974 to the Chronicle. And his Chronicle letter is just super duper odd because it starts out. It's like talking to a friend. Yeah. That you have a regular correspondence with.

And maybe he was a loner. So maybe this was his way of communicating with anybody. I would assume he'd have to be a loner with as weird as his personality seems to be. But it says, I saw and think the Exorcist was the best satirical comedy with an eye that I have ever seen. I give it two thumbs up. Signed yours truly. EY

Nothing Just blank He plunged himself Into a billowy wave And an echo arose From the suicides grave Titwillow Titwillow

It's a passage From something called the Macado I think it was like a play or something I don't know Then it says P.S. If I don't see this note in your paper I will do something nasty

Which you know I'm capable of doing Me 37 SF PD Serro. Pretty shocking. Pretty scary. After this, there is another letter that comes in all the way

April 24th, 1978. They believe that this was... So like four years later, over four years later. Yeah. They believed that this was a hoax letter that had been written by one of the homicide detectives named David Tochi, and they believed that he did it because he started it on the case after the cabbie murder, and he felt like things were getting cold,

and they weren't getting funding, and they weren't trying to continue to look for it. So they think that he wrote this letter in order to try to bolster some more support for it. Which, again, a four-year absence is pretty heavy. Along with the June 26, 1971 to 1974, these letters are coming so much more infrequently that you have to drum up support somehow.

I don't think it was ever proved that it was him or was it him that actually wrote it. That's just what they believe was written by him. I'm not saying that if he did. that's fucking dumb as shit. But I'm trying to put my mind into like someone that is around murder all the time and is responsible like for trying to get families some peace of mind and everything like that. And with how long this went on and everything,

you just got to wonder if it gets to the point where you get so obsessed about it that you feel like this is your your fucking Captain Ahab and this is your white whale. Like you got to do this for the people that. that aren't alive or you're just obsessed. So I could kind of see reasoning if he did write that, if he felt that was the only way that he could go about it. I don't condone it, but I could see where a friend of mine would be. In true, poor podcasting fashion, I forgot to read the letter.

Oh, okay. It says, Dear Editor, this is the Zodiac speaking, I am back with you. Tell Herb Kane, I am here. I have always been here. That city pig Toshi is good, but I am smarter. There's BU crossed out and then, smarter and better.

He will get tired than leave me alone. I'm waiting for a good movie about me. Who will play me? I'm now in control of all things. Yours truly blank. Crosshairs equals guess. SFPD still equals zero. So, again, just a weird...

The fact that it's referencing these detectives, I think may have given him away because I don't know if he would know about all of the detectives. I think with as much stuff as in the news and with the detectives being lead on that that there would probably be something because detectives I think at some point maybe do have to talk to the press.

Oh yeah, if he was the one most mentioned or that talked to the press the most, he would have to assume that he was probably the lead detective on the case. Okay, yeah, I can go with that. So now we've got to figure out who did this. We're going to solve it?

I think we're going to solve it. We're going to start with a gentleman named Lawrence Kane. A guy with a long rap sheet, he actually stalked Darlene Farron. He would go into a restaurant. When he was interviewed, he said that he would give her rides home that she would ask for often. When Darlene's friends and family were interviewed, she said, and her husband, she said, or she had told them that he had harassed her a lot. He had threatened her multiple times.

I don't know who to believe in that situation, because if you're asking for a ride home, you're probably not too concerned about the threatening nature. This guy matches a description to a T. If you see a picture of him and you see the drawing, like, holy shit, they just drew this picture of this guy sitting there. Like, he matches up completely. And Kathleen Johns had identified him as his abductor, or as her abductor. So, if she identifies him as the abductor,

and we believe that since the Zodiac took credit for it, he must be the Zodiac. it's a bit of a stretch for me. I also think that there is a world where somebody in Darlene's orbit may have committed the murders. It's odd that he didn't start with her, but maybe he got jealous and followed her. And that was just the second murder. Like he did a test run, and then he decided to stalk Darlene. He sees some shit that he doesn't like with her going and picking the dude up.

But even as much as you watch these serial killer things, I don't think you have the mind for this. why the mind of a serial killer because like you're sitting here and be like I think this is why he did it this is like there's so many different reasons like it's just like you said it could have been like he was so fixated on Darlene

he's like if I'm gonna do it I want to do it right and I can't mess it up so I should probably do it first have a trial run to make sure that I can do it properly and then once I figure out if I can do it then I'll actually I'll get onto the main event but then how do you explain the rest of them afterwards yeah you got a taste for it I don't know

Yeah, it's an odd kind of thought process. It's when you accidentally scroll across to porn that you maybe didn't think you were interested in and all of a sudden that little thumbnail plays in all, or like, I did not know that I was attracted to this. One of his main drawbacks was he was just too short. He wasn't, he didn't quite fit that. I'm sure that wasn't the only way to get rid of him. He probably had alibis for other events that had happened that were attributed to the Zodiac.

Yeah. Our second guy, Rick Marshall. I think that this could be Dr. Rick Marshall. I think this could be Dr. Rick Marshall because as soon as I heard him. Yeah. Rick Marshall. He might add Chaka do this. Rick Marshall.

And he could have hidden all the weapons in the land of the lost. If we need, we will kill and eat chaka. And then roast him on a fire. A little roast chaka served with a nice polenta. In full disclosure, one of the reasons that I put Rick Marshall in here was just so we could make the jokes about Rick Marshall and land of the lost. and the fact that I didn't have to tell you proves that we're just same wavelength. As soon as I heard Rick Marshall, I knew,

I was like, okay, listen to this guy. This guy, there could be some shit. And truly, there could be. Because again, in true historically high fashion, we fucked up and forgot to mention that at the Lake Murders, they found footprints. Oh, that's right.

Footprints came from a specific boot that was called a Wingwalker boot that was distributed amongst the military. Not just the military, because it was specific because they were made for, like they're called wing walkers, walking and getting grip on the wings of airplanes.

Now you would think about that and you'd be like, well, that should primarily be the Air Force or Navy, and so they thought they could somehow kind of narrowed down who it was because they were thinking they were only distributed like essentially through the Navy or you could buy them through there. Well, turns out that is not to be the case because you can get Wing Walkers sold at any Army Navy surplus store nationwide. It sucks.

There was like a million pairs of wingwalkers out there. Fuck! It really sucks. Learning that little tidbit, it made me realize just how much extra shit we probably make for the military that just ends up in surplus stores because we don't use it. And it's shocking that we actually have military surplus stores because we overmake so much shit. Not just one. Not just an online military surplus store. Every town has a fucking military.

I grew up in a town of 8,000 people. We had a military surplus store. I'm not even shitting you. We didn't have a McDonald's, but we had a military surplus store. I'm not fucking kidding. That's awesome. So Dr. Rick Marshall served in the Navy. Not a real doctor.

Not a real doctor, no. He served at the Navy at 18. There's a little connection. Could have got him some Wing Walker boots at the age of 18. He lived in the Bay Area during the 60s and beyond. He actually lived in an apartment that was in the basement. And the reason that that's sort of interesting was in one of his letters before. He said that he had made the bomb already that he was going to plan on.

the school bus and it was in his basement. And there aren't that many basements apparently in California. Well, in San Francisco. Yeah. Sea level's right there, so you can't really dig down far enough to put a basement in there. So the fact that he lived in a basement's a little bit surprising. Again, this is the 60s, so this feels fucking real foreign today, but it's not. I guess he had some ham radio buddies that he had made some very suspicious comments over the airways.

Yeah. What is ham? Isn't it just shortwave radio? What is ham? It's a CB radio. Okay. Yeah. Oh, okay.

I thought it was like one of those guys who had like a setup in his house and the 30-foot antenna. Yes. Oh. Those are C-Bs. It all operates the same. Ooh. Okay. So a C-B almost makes more sense because it's like a little handheld deal.

Yeah. But he made some very disturbing suspicious. Well, it's not the handheld thing attached to the cord and attached to the big thing. Yeah. That's right. These comments that he made about the Zodiac murders led some of his friends to believe that he might have had a hand in some of these things. This guy's fucking weird. well, nowadays, if you're on a ham radio, it's like, that guy's fucking weird.

Yeah. It gets a little otter. In 2008, there was a woman that was working at Marshall's care facility who had documented comments and then gotten in touch with reporters saying that she believed that he was ready to confess to the Zodiac murders. And he was in the care facility because he had Parkinson's. I'm not 100% sure what Parkinson's does to your mind. but it's a deteriorating disease and everything. Isn't it muscular though more than mental? I think it is but I think a lot of those things can also,

because it's a degenerative, degenerative disease, I think maybe in its later stages or without proper care and everything that it could definitely lead to probably mental degeneration. Not a doctor. No, but I'm like Rick Marshall. Yeah.

I just think, yeah, that might be the case. I just, I'm trying to figure out if this was just like him being obsessed with the zodiac murders and then trying to say some shit that gets misconstrued by his caretaker. But either way. He had a hot nurse and he was like, what could make me seem dangerous to this lady before I die? I want her to quit getting in here and stealing my shit,

so I'm going to try to scare her away. Either way, it was enough to where she thought that he would be ready to confess to the Zodiac murder. So probably something pretty serious. Again, this is 2008, so this was a really long time off. 2017, oh, so that's sort of the ending of Rick Marshall. There's smoke, but there's not really fire. There's some different things. There were a ton of suspects.

Yeah. This guy should have been suspect number one. He should have been arrested. I think he was suspect number one for a while. Was he? Yeah. I don't understand how, just like Chris said at the beginning, this guy should have been arrested very, very quickly after he was found out. His name's Arthur Lee Allen.

L-E-I-G-H is his middle name. Sometimes he went by Lee, L-E-E. The only reason that I bring that up is being. because of the 13-letter cipher, the My Name is. Hmm. So if you're trying to fit it in, A-R-T-H-U-R is... Six. Six?

Mm-hmm. L-E-E would be three if you went L-E-E for Allen, and then five letters for Allen. Yeah, nine. And then, oh, actually... Well, it's close. Okay. And the reason that I say that it's close is because it's what...

It might lead to some people. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, if it's 6, 3, that's 9. I think as far as that letter, it's all the other stuff that is the daunting piece of evidence, just because that doesn't match up, doesn't, yeah. Well, in total it's 14

letters. If you go L-E-E, but he had a way... 13-letter cipher, though, so it'll only be in 13 letters. He had a way of dropping letters or changing letters in most of his shit. So was this another one where it was just L-E? Is there a chance that that could be the 13 letters? Not sure.

It's very suspicious. I don't know if there's anything there because, again, you have to make some leaps to make it work. But he was tied to a number of the crime scenes. The 2007 film that all the hot men are in. Now Jake Gyllen, all he's so hot. Yeah. It's basically about Arthur Lee Allen. It's shot in a way where Arthur Lee Allen's sort of the main suspect.

Again, he's tied to a number of crime scenes. He lived near Darlene Farron. So he knew Darlene Farron. He also lived near her. There was some scuttlebutt about he may have been over at one of the painting parties. He was said this Lee that came over. And again, he went by Lee sometimes. The man referenced the painting parties was Lee.

One of his, her sisters said that he would always bring her gifts from travels down to Mexico. So there was a little bit of an attraction there, obviously. He was a frequent visitor to Lake Beriasa. Not just a frequent visitor. but on September 27th, when the actual murder at that happened, he was actually at Lake Basque, or Beressa. Yeah, September 27th, he was actually at Lake Beresa saying he was scuba diving.

He was in the vicinity. And I think that that comes back to play of saying, because he wasn't just walking around with his fucking mask on and everything like that, couldn't do that. So at some point with him walking around, he had to figure that, he was going to be identified there. Or at least people would be able to match a description.

Yes. And he needed to have some type of alibi. He also admitted that he had knives with blood on them. He said that the knives that had the blood on them came from a chicken. I guess when he came home from Lake Beriasa, there were reports that he had blood on him. Yeah, like his neighbor had reported seeing blood or like seeing blood on knives or something like that. So in the most logical sense when he admits to him,

it. He says that he butchered a chicken for somebody that was grilling down at Lake Berries. Just a normal thing that you take a live chicken to the park and then slaughter it there. There's no other way that you would describe it. What was his favorite piece of jewelry?

He wore a very fancy watch which bared a really strange name. It was actually a Zodiac brand watch and the symbol for the Zodiac watch was the circle with the cross through it. He said

he got to as a gift from his mother or something. Yeah. What, uh, when you're trying to come up with your killer moniker and you're looking around to try to figure it out, you could probably look down at a watch, be like, I really like this watch. It's a zodiac. What are the fucking chances, though? I don't know if it was that popular of a watch or anything,

but like, the simple fact that you are wearing that, you've had that for a while is a gift from your mother, which means that. Or you're lying about it and you got it yourself. Not only that, what I'm trying to say is if you've had it for an extended period of time, it would have been an inspiration for an extended period of time, which comes into play on the next bit, is that he told a friend he was writing a novel called Zodiac about a murderer who kills couples at random.

That's pretty on the nose. It appears so. Pretty on the nose. This friend, or forgetting his name, Chris brought up an interesting theory prior to the interview that this guy could be trying to frame Arthur Lee. Allen with as much bad shit as he said, but there's a, I believe the show or the documentary on YouTube is, I think it's called My Name Is or the Zodiac Killer or something like that. But he does this very long interview just pointing out all these little weird things as far

as the Zodiac watch. He talks about this book. There's just so many things, I guess, that they just had conversations about that seemed really, really weird. He had a dishonorable naval charge or dishonorable discharge from the Navy. So there again, the wing walker boots, probably not because they came from a surplus store or could have come from a surplus store. Well, they could have, but they could have been a pair of boots that someone had had for a while that they got from the Navy. It doesn't mean that they didn't come from there. And maybe the Navy boots matched the hood. Maybe he was going for a vibe.

Could have been. A seal thing? Yeah, we don't know. Also, he was fired from teaching in 19. 1968 for potential sexual misconduct with students. The only reason that I pointed that out is because this happened a year before. Interesting theory you pitched me earlier in preparation. 1968, he may have had some sexual desires that could be tied into needing to fulfill an urge. Much like we talked about with the first cipher and him comparing murder to getting your rocks off with a girl. could the sexual misconduct have scared him away from that?

Maybe he didn't have access to children. So he started trying to fulfill his fantasies by committing murders that would then start that same year. Just pivoted the fucked-upness of his brain to another endeavor. Yeah. It all seems very convenient. He was interviewed in 1971 by police. And again, coincidentally, in 1971 is when we see the first gap in letter writing that happens, because we don't get another letter until 1974.

1972, there's a search warrant for his house. And when they go inside. His trailer, not his house. Okay, excuse me, his trailer. His house, but a trailer. No, the reason I brought that up is because he had a house. Oh, got a trailer. They only got the search warrant for his trailer.

They weren't able to get enough to search. And I don't know. I think it was because it might have been in a different county. Also, what happened during this whole thing is because you actually have these murders happening in different places. You have different local law enforcement that are trying to communicate, but also keeping information, trying to be the ones that crack the case and everything. So you essentially had different counties where this stuff was happening. Well, his trailer house or his trailer was in one area that they were able to get a search warrant for. Oh, okay.

And so when they went there, they uncover, was it bomb diagrams? bomb diagrams. They also recovered a very considerable amount of newspaper clippings about the Zodiac killings. So he was keeping record of everybody that was writing different things, including probably he had a full section of Avery, I would assume. Yeah, still not enough to get a search warrant at the other, any of the other places for his realm. Or that made him, even if they would have got that, by the time they get this one and are working on a search warrant, he now knows he's going back to his other house and getting rid of videos. He's cleaning evidence, yeah. Well, in 1974, after he hasn't killed for a little while,

I'm just going to speak as if it was this guy because I believe it was this guy. Yeah. In 1974, because he can't kill anymore, he gets arrested for child molestation. He just goes back to his tried and true method of touching kids. And weirdly enough, after that happened, no letters sent by the Zodiac. So what had been received in 74 before this happened, he then gets arrested. No more letters happening. I also think he gets out in 77.

So just a little stand alone there. Molesting a child gets you three years in jail. That seems a bit light, especially taking in the prior misconduct that he had had to get him fired from the school that he worked at before. But this sort of goes along the lines of we see the stopping of the letters after 71 until 74.

There's a few letters written in 74. Then there's arrest for this child molestation. Did the first interview that he had by police and 71 scare him enough to realize that he should probably quit writing letters. And then once the heat got off of him by 74, he's like, I'll probably go back to writing these. Then once he starts writing them again, he ends up getting pop for banging a kid. He's replaced the murder that he hasn't done in a very, very, very. long time back with a child molestation that may have launched him into the murders.

I know I said that very quickly. I hope that it made as much sense to everybody else as it does to me. There were some other things that happened kind of later on with the case. This one, I want to throw some credit behind, but just knowing how the mind works, I just don't

really know if it was. 1992, Mijot positively identifies Allen as the Zodiac killer, the one that attacked him, and is special lady. The reason why I don't put a whole lot into this is we're talking from 1969 to 1992.

You're being brought back in to look at a lineup and you positively identify a guy who, again, you've had so many years and you're doing this one thing to try to identify a killer in 1992. So they're coming to you because they think that they have somebody. Yeah. Your mind could probably fool you into picking out a guy. guy pretty easily if you really want the case to end, right?

On the opposite side of that, if someone had such an impact on your life negatively, I'm guessing you have had some pretty, you've had to be in a lot of therapy, and I'm guessing you see this person in your nightmares on a regular basis. I don't think you forget what this person looks like. And how many different lineups had this guy identified? Why didn't he just feel like he could have tried to get someone at those? The fact that he, even in 92, identified him, the, you know, when lineups do occur, I would like to think that there's nothing that occurs up to that point of showing him pictures or anything like that to try to make him biased toward one person or another because it's all at random except for the suspect.

But the fact that he identified this guy says to me that it probably was most likely this guy, regardless of the time that had passed, just because of how much that was probably just seared into your fucking brain, knowing that that was almost one of the last things you saw. Yeah. Yeah, I definitely think that there's credence to what you're saying. I could go 50-50 between that and him just wanting to find me into it. At the same time, if it was just that, then maybe on the fence a little bit, but because of everything else.

So 50-50 on that aspect of it. But overall, definitely the guy that did it. Well, and then in 2002. And he's not alive, so we can't get in trouble. Ha-ha-ha. Oh, actually, he was still alive at this point Because they were writing up the arrest warrant to go get him And then like two weeks before they had that arrest warrant

He has a heart attack and dies in his house Yeah Very odd timing for him to have a heart attack Maybe he was worked up in a panic Because he could have just been told that he could have forced himself to have a heart attack Yeah, yeah uh-huh There's always a chance of this stuff So at that point Alan's dead

Just eating nothing but bacon He's just dipping the bacon back in the grease and then eating it that way. In 2002, there was a plan because there had been some letters that had been saved just through evidence. They pulled off the stamps off of the letters and they took the sticky side of the envelopes. They swabbed them and they were able to get a partial DNA composite of who it may have been. Uh, they then, through the autopsy, had taken some DNA from Allen's body so they could compare it to some things. And they compared it. It was inconclusive. I would say that it would most definitely be inconclusive because the deterioration and the fact that it was only a partial DNA sample that they got, let alone. The saliva off a stamp that had been placed on there with other adhesive materials.

In 1969. In 1969. Not knowing what some of those. chemicals probably did to actual like DNA and everything like that. Well, and there's a chance that he didn't lick him. There's a chance that he ran them underwater or anything like that. I mean, I know people today that still, you don't have to lick stamps anymore, obviously,

but people don't like licking the back of the envelope. You've seen the sponge that people run around. They have an envelope moistener. Oh, do they? Moistener. Yeah, that's nice. Yeah, they do. It's just, it looks like a fucking glue stick,

except it has somewhat sticky, like liquid adhesive, and you just put on envelopes and it seals them. Yeah, so were you accidentally pulling DNA from somebody that had handled the letter? I just, I don't see that going the same way. I had someone lick the stamp form. He could have sent him from when he was at work and been like, these things make me say. I heard a thing where they were like, it's as simple as like he could have told someone,

hey, these make me kind of nauseous and the chemicals on him. Can you just like put these on here for me? Yeah, just something super simple. Not even written anything on there. He could have been, he could have gone to one person, got a whole bunch of envelopes and said, hey, I'm getting ready to send out invitations or some kind of bullshit. And be like, can you go ahead and just put a, a whole bunch of stamps on here for me,

and then I'll fill them out later and get them sent out. Yeah, there's a number of reasons that could have come back in conclusive. The handwriting, I found fairly interesting. They did handwriting samples of Allen that came back that didn't match. They didn't just do one handwriting sample. They did two handwriting samples for his right and his left

because he was ampedexterous. So he could write with both hands. His friend that dropped the dime about the wall, and then about the murder novel had said that he always remembers him writing with his right hand, but he believed that he could make his left hand right almost as eloquently. I don't throw a whole lot of weight behind any of this stuff, because I don't think a handwriting analysis, I believe you could fake a handwriting analysis very easily.

There's also a theory that says, I don't know how much study has been done behind it between like serial colors and stuff like that, but people with dual personalities or a split in their personalities, can actually develop things that manifest as a physical effect, and the style in which you're writing can actually be impacted by that if that other personality has either taken over or is influencing you, or you're in a certain frame of mind. Yeah.

Well, and I'm sure schizophrenia probably would do that to you as well. You're a sadist. That too, yeah. So these not matching really don't seem like a big shock to me. Everything else matches up too much. It's got to be. Yeah. It has to be him.

There's been other suspects that have been brought forward by family members. Like, oh, my stepdad did this. Or my, my, uh. Yeah, there's been books written about that shit. Just tons of different things. But Alan just hits so perfectly well for me. And I don't see that there was anything else. And this is another thing just like Jack, where we still to this day, don't know who Jack was.

Yeah, definitely. 1800s. And now, fast forward. to this, just like there's people that are riparologists, there's people that study the Zodiac the exact same way, just to try to figure it out and to crack the code. I'd like to think that it's still for good reasons. I also think that there's probably a lot of people out there that just like puzzles and want to figure it out. Like, they don't understand the impact that this guy had. And who knows, maybe that last cipher, or only two of them have been solved up to this point.

So maybe somewhere in the other two, if they ever get solved, if there has even anything to solve them, that actually provides the identity of it. Judging by the amount of times that he lied about telling them who he was, like the first cipher, when he said if you crack the first cipher, you'd be able to figure it out. I don't think that he would have been that dumb. But also, if he knew that it was going to be... You're telling me that a serial killer is going to be dishonest.

Yeah. I don't know. I feel like he sort of beat the system. I think that this was just a perfect mix. I think I said it at the beginning of the podcast. I don't think that this guy was a serial killer because he liked killing. I think he was a serial killer because he wanted the fame. I think he wanted people to know who he was and he wanted people to fear him.

And his means of doing it wasn't like robbing banks or anything. He went straight to the worst thing that he could think of. I think it's a combination of the two. I think he got enjoyment out of both, that rush out of both the act of it. And then also what he considered the accolades or the fame that accompanied it. Yeah. But hey, yeah, guess what? Case closed. We solved it.

Yeah. Hey, if anybody ever asked you about the Zodiac Killer or says, I wonder if they ever caught that guy. Just telling me, died in 1994. In 82. All right, man. Got anything else? Besides just how happy I was that you decided we'd do a serial killer again.

They're just so much fun. They're not fun. You get that twinkle in your eyes. This, I think, is sort of a perfect serial killer to do. I still want to do BTK and different things like that. Unfortunately, those, the amount of gore and blood. in them kind of gets tough, I think, to listen and take. I sort of forget sometimes that other people get really weirded out by this stuff,

and I don't blame them. I think that that's a perfectly healthy reaction to hear somebody getting disembald. But we're going to do more. You guys seem to like these. You guys really, really like the Jack episode. I hope you like this one just as much. We're probably not going to be doing these super frequently, but it's always good to throw it in the rotation because they're just...

They're fun. Yeah, they are fun to do. All right, guys. Well, thanks for joining us on another episode. We will catch next week. Take it easy. Thanks for joining us for another episode. If you like what you heard, hit that subscribe and like button.

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