Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - Unexplained Mysteries: The Zodiac Killer Pt. 1 (with Greg and Vanessa!)

Episode Date: July 22, 2019

In the summer of 1969, newspapers in Northern California began receiving coded letters from a person who would come to identify themselves as "The Zodiac." The author of the letters taunted the police by giving clues related to a series of unsolved murders, but did the cryptic messages truly come from the mind of the killer? Parcasters - Don’t miss all of our special Summer of ‘69 episodes by subscribing to Parcast Presents: Summer of ‘69, on Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts! Sponsors! Embrace Pet Insurance - Get your FREE quote at EmbracePetInsurance.com/KILLERS right now! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. That's ZipRecruiter. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify. It's the commerce platform that can help you with literally everything, website design, marketing, shipping, and more. So start your business today with the best partner, Shopify, and get that. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash killers. That's Shopify.com slash killers. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, Drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly Big Board Buckslot

machine by Aristocrat Gaming, Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is giving one person a $1.6 million dream package, the biggest prize in Yamava's history. Club Serrano members can earn daily instant prizes and secure a spot in the finale May 29th. Don't pass go and own it all, only at Yamava, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You win? Details at yamava.com must be 21-20. Please gamble responsibly. Monopoly is a trademark of Hasbro. Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. It may be difficult to imagine a time when the term serial killer wasn't a part of the zeitgeist. Our culture seems to be as fascinated with serial killers as it is terrified by them. But in 1969, the idea of a murderer stalking and methodically killing victims seemed more like something out of a nightmare.

But then something unspeakable happened that summer in San Francisco. A series of similar murders were at. initially viewed as unrelated, violent events. Until the letters started arriving. On August 1st, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle, along with the San Francisco Examiner and the Vallejo Times, each received variations of a letter, all seemingly written by the same person. Quote, Dear Editor, This is the murderer of the two teenagers last Christmas 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 which only I and the police know. The letters were accompanied by bizarre cryptograms, square puzzles made up of simple, seemingly undecipherable symbols. In the absence of a given name, the killer bestowed one upon himself. A follow-up letter sent a week later began as such, quote, Dear Editor, this is the Zodiac speaking. And thus began

one of the most famous, unsolved serial killer cases of all time. In life, there's so much we don't know, but in this show, we don't take we don't know for an answer. Every Thursday,

we investigate the greatest mysteries of history and life on earth. Welcome to Unexplained Mysteries, Parkast Original. I'm your host Richard. And I'm your host Molly. This is our first episode on The Zodiac Killer, the serial killer who terrorized San Francisco in the late 1960s and early 1970s. During that time, the Zodiac Killer attacked seven people, five of whom perished from their injuries. And today we have with us our friends Greg and Vanessa, host of another

park has show, Serial Killers. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having us. We asked Greg and Vanessa to join us this week to provide some extra insight on one of the most notorious serial killer mysteries of all time. The Zodiac Killer was one of our first subjects on serial killers, and we're thrilled to die back into this case. It's so intriguing.

In the 50 years since the Zodiac Killer was known to be active, no suspect has ever been arrested. And over a series of bizarre and public. puzzle-coded letters, the Zodiac killer claimed responsibility for at least 30 unconfirmed victims, in addition to the five Molly mentioned. In this episode, we're going to cover the history of the Zodiac's known activity that began in the final days of 1968 and span the summer and fall of 1969. Next week, we'll look into the theories about how the Zodiac managed to evade police, as well as the social and historical context that likely allowed.

him to thrive. Finally, we'll look at the most likely theories as to who the Zodiac Killer could have been. Please note, part two of the Zodiac Killer crossover will only be available on the Unexplained Mysteries feed. To find it, simply search Unexplained Mysteries on Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts. This episode is part of Parcast's Summer of 69 event, July 22nd through August 9th, all your favorite parkast shows are teaming up to commemorate the 50th anniversary of a landmark summer in American history, the summer of 1969. From the Manson murders to the moon landing, we're diving deep into the summer America hit a boiling point, with 23 special episodes across 16 different parkast originals. We'll be digging into the fallout of MLK's assassination, a wide-reaching LSD, cult and rumors of a Kennedy family cover-up. You can find these specials and more, all on our new

Parcast Presents feed on Spotify or anywhere you listen to podcasts. At Parcast, we're grateful for you or listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing. Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. Several of you have asked how to help us. If you enjoy today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. It really does help. It would not be completely outlandish to suggest that the year 1968 was among the most turbulent in American history. Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that year, and the tragedy further underscored the social and racial unrest that permeated the country.

Robert Kennedy, brother of slain President John F. Kennedy, was also assassinated. that year. That, combined with then-President Lyndon B. Johnson's decision to not seek re-election, essentially guaranteed that Richard Nixon would win the presidency. The Vietnam War saw its most devastating year to date in 1968, after the Tet Offensive proved that, despite what the U.S. government claimed, America was losing the war. College protests raged across the country as young people turned to the hippie movement, seeking out drugs and free love and rejecting the traditional values of the older generation. It was a period of unmistakable change, where every day it seemed like the world was a little bit more unrecognizable.

And from the chaos came shocking acts of anonymous violence. On December 20, 1968, 17-year-old David Faraday pulled up to the house of his girlfriend, 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen. It was supposed to be their first date together. David promised Betty's parents that he'd have her home by 11 p.m. The young couple drove off in David's Rambler station wagon. David and Betty had told their parents that they would be attending a school Christmas concert, but they never arrived. Instead, they had dinner and then went driving.

At around 11 p.m., they pulled off of Lake Herman Road and stopped at a lookout that was known to be a popular spot among teenage couples. No one actually witnessed what happened next, but decades of research into the Zodiac killings have provided an approximate account of the incident. Shortly after David parked, another car pulled off the road and parked right behind the Rambler, blocking it in. The driver exited his vehicle and approached the Rambler. A stranger raised a pistol and fired through the window.

The teenagers scrambled to get out of the car. The shooter moved around the car, firing in through windows, hurting the two young victims out through the passenger side door. Betty Lou made it out first. She screamed as she sprinted away from the vehicle. David stumbled as he pushed the car door open. It was too late. The attacker shot David in the head.

Betty Lou made it nearly 30 feet before the killer shot her five times in the back. A passer-by found the body shortly after the attack. Police arrived and found that David was still breathing. An ambulance was called, but David Faraday was pronounced dead on arrival just after midnight on December 21st. The crime was treated like a normal murder investigation, though there were no suspects. No one could fathom why anyone would want to hurt the two teenagers. The only noteworthy pieces of evidence were the 22-caliber wind-shed. Chester Western Super X shell casings on the ground around the crime scene, which likely came from the gun.

Betty Lou's body was 28 feet away from the car, and the gunshot wounds in her back were tightly grouped. This would have been significantly difficult given how dark it was when the attack happened. The shooter seemed to be a skilled marksman. But nothing else came from the investigation. Police investigated both victims' families and friends looking for anyone who might have had a grudge against them. They came up with nothing. One thing that really astounded the investigators was the lack of a clear motive. If the killer wasn't someone who knew David or Betty Lou,

then conventional wisdom would say his intent was to rob them or rape them, and the murder was just a way to cover his tracks. But nothing was stolen from the car. There was no sign that anyone had laid hands on either victim. The only evident motive for the murder was the act of murder itself. The bullets and shell casings would do little to lead police to the murder weapon. It seemed the shooter had used a common kind of handgun that didn't leave much behind in terms of unique ballistics. Without a suspect gun to try to match with the bullets found at the scene, there wasn't much police could do to identify the weapon.

As the families of the victims mourned and the world moved on into 1969, the murders of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen seemed like they were isolated, We're isolated, albeit senseless and tragic incidents. Until the killer struck again. On July 4th, 1969, close to midnight, 22-year-old Darlene Farron and 19-year-old Mike Mejou pulled into Blue Rock Springs Park, just four miles from the spot off Lake Herman Road, where Faraday and Jensen had been murdered seven months prior.

Darlene and Mike had been followed by another car that neither of them recognized. Darlene had pulled into the park, hoping that the other driver would pass. The other car followed them into the lot and pulled up alongside Darlene's car. Darlene and Mike both watched, confused and concerned, as the car idled for a few seconds and then pulled back onto the road and sped off. Finally, they were alone for about five minutes. The car returned. This time, parking right behind Darlene's car and,

blocking her in. She and Mike both squinted as the mysterious vehicle turned on a bright beam spotlight. Based on the bright spotlight, Mike assumed that it must be a police car, but he couldn't see past the blinding light to be sure. The other driver got out and slowly approached the car, coming up on the right side where Mike had the passenger door window rolled down. But even now, Mike couldn't see the man clearly. He had a flashlight which he shined directly at Mike's face as he approached the open window. It was so bright that they both heard the gunshots before they ever saw the gun. The attacker fired five times. The bullets flew through Mike and Darlene's bodies. Both victims were still, seemingly dead, and the shooter returned to his car.

He was just about to drive away when he heard Mike moaning in pain. The shooter returned to the car and shot Mike and Darlene two more times each. Then he got in his car and left. At 1240 a.m., around half an hour after the shootings, the Vallejo PD switchboard operator received a call. The caller didn't give his name. He simply said, quote, I want to report a double murder.

If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find kids in a brown car. They were shot with a 9-millimeter luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye. The bodies were found by a group of teenagers who were passing through the park on their way home from a Fourth of July party. Darlene was dead by the time she arrived at the hospital, but the doctors managed to save Mike. After Mike recovered, he described the attacker as a heavy-set man with curly brown hair between 26 and 30 years old. Darlene was married. Her husband, Dean, then 25, was initially a suspect in the shootings,

but police quickly confirmed his alibi. There were no other suspects. Neither Darlene nor Mike had any enemies to consider, not counting Dean. The day after the attacks, police traced the anonymous phone call to a phone booth near the Vallejo Police Station. Beyond that, there was no trail to speak of. As had been the case with Faraday and Jensen, There was no clear motive in the attack on Darlene and Mike beyond the violence of the attack itself. The shooter didn't take anything.

He didn't try to kidnap anyone, at least according to Mike, the sole survivor at this point. He didn't even communicate with the victims before he opened fire. It was noteworthy that the killer had used a different gun than what he had used to kill Faraday and Jensen. Methodical killers like this tend to stick to the same set of tools. The second gun indicated that the shooter both knew how to cover his tracks and that he had something of an arsenal. The manner of Jensen's shooting had already indicated that the killer was a marksman.

Now, the evidence of at least one additional gun might indicate that he was some kind of gun collector. But again, without any suspects, it would be nearly impossible for investigators to trace the bullets used in the crime to a specific weapon. The only link police had between the two attacks was a similar MO and a lack of any suspects. With so little to go on, even when you consider Mike's description of the attacker, it seemed that neither case would come close to being solved. Until, that is, the killer confessed to all of it in his own handwriting. We'll discuss the infamous Zodiac letters after this. is Euphoria Calvin Klein, the new elixir collection, featuring three perfume intense scents,

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There were four victims, three of whom had perished as a result of the shootings. Nothing seemed to connect the incidents to each other, other than the fact that murder seemed to be the primary motivation, and police had no solid suspects. The concept of a serial killer was still a few years. years away from being publicly adopted. In 1969, the idea of some monster murdering people for the sake of it felt like something out of a novel. It had been over 80 years since Jack the Ripper had famously terrorized London's East End, and there were few in America who would conceive

of a single serial killer. But that all changed with the letters. On August 1st, 1969, the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times Herald, each received a copy of a letter that seemed to be written by the killer. The writer of the letters claimed credit for the murders of Faraday and Jensen and the attack on Farron and Majo. Furthermore, the letter offered a list of evidence about the attacks that the killer provided to prove he was telling the truth. In his own words, the killer.

The caller listed details that only he and the police who examined the crime scenes would know. The letters listed the kind of ammo used in the shootings, described the gunshot wounds of the victims, and accurately identified the clothes that the victims were wearing. This was not the raving of a madman who sought attention for crimes he did not commit. These letters came from the killer, or someone who knew exactly what the killer had done. The letters also included a request. Quote, I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper.

In this cipher is my identity. If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon of Frye 1st of Aug 69, I will go on a killing rampage, Frye Night. I will cruise around all weekend killing lone people in the night, then move on to kill again, until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend. Each of the letters received by the separate newspapers contained a different third of a cipher. The ciphers were naturally a jumble of various symbols,

including Morse code and the Greek alphabet that didn't seem to mean anything. The Chronicle and the Vallejo Times Herald published their ciphers the next day, with the latter also featuring a statement from Vallejo's police chief Jack Still, in which he expressed doubt that the letter was written by the killer and asked for a follow-up letter. Though the letters were an exciting and confounding development, police still had no solid leads on suspects. They would have wanted as many handwriting samples as possible to help track down whoever was sending the letters. The Examiner published its third of the cipher on Sunday, August 3rd. This would have been the first time that all three parts of the cipher were publicly available.

The code was cracked by Monday, August 4th. The story of how the Zodiac cipher was cracked would almost be funny if it didn't relate to a murderer who killed several people and never faced justice. By the end of the day on Saturday, August 2nd, 1969, copies of the cipher had been sent to government codebreakers at the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and Naval Intelligence. After 24 hours, there had been no progress. in deciphering the code. The government would have had more luck if they had just thought to check the living room of Donald and Betty Harden in Salinas, California. Donald was a school teacher with an interest in puzzles.

When the papers first published all three ciphers together on Sunday, August 3rd, Donald got to work in trying to decode the cipher. After a few hours of trying to determine how to even begin breaking down the various, seemingly random symbols, symbols, Donald made a realization. There was a clue in the letters that the killer had sent, specifically in his spelling or lack thereof. The letter misspelled simple words like Rampage and Cruz. Donald realized that whatever code he was looking at may contain similar errors. More specifically, Donald began to suspect that the killer may have used the wrong symbols at certain points in his own cipher.

He'd either made a mistake in his own puzzle or had done so deliberately in order to make the cipher harder to crack. In the decades since the Zodiac saga, forensic professionals and amateur sleuths have determined that the misspellings in the Zodiac letters were more than likely an intentional effort by the killer to prevent investigators from tracking him by his handwriting. Handwriting analysis focuses on the muscle memory of how the hand crafts certain letters. The cliche of the note written and letters cut out from magazines stems from this method of tracking a person's writing. The zodiac letters were all handwritten. It's likely the killer intentionally misspelled at points to distance the letters from any handwriting he might have created in his personal life or to avoid repeated usage of certain letters. And the same inconsistency ended up applying to the cipher, which was a big part of why major government agencies couldn't crack it.

There's a general assumption in code cracking that individual symbols stand for single corresponding letters, but Donald wasn't going by the general assumptions of professional codebreakers. By the morning of Monday, August 4th, Donald and Betty had cracked the code. By their count, the cipher read, Quote, I like killing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all. The decoded message goes on, quote,

The best part of it is that when I die, I will be reborn in paradise, and they I have killed will become my slaves. I will not give you my name because you will try to slow down or stop my collection of slaves for my afterlife. The Hardens called the San Francisco Chronicle to let the paper know they'd cracked the code.

Their solution wouldn't be published for over a week, and at that time, the killer kept busy. On Thursday, August 7, 1969, the San Francisco Examiner received a second correspondence. In the opening, the killer christened himself with his now famous name. Quote, Dear Editor, This is the Zodium.

speaking. The three-page-long letter went on to provide graphic details of the attacks on Darline, Mike, Faraday, and Jensen. Again, the writer-named details that had not been made public. One interesting thing about this second letter is how the killer mocks the police for not being able to crack his cipher. He didn't know that the Hardens had actually already solved the puzzle. This second letter reemphasized that the police would be able to identify the killer if they could crack the cipher. But the translated cipher specifically stated, quote, I will not give you my name. The contradictions between the letters and the decoded cipher made the killer out to be some kind of rambling madman. But this may have actually been intentional.

The killer could have been playing the role of a lunatic in order to lead investigators on a snipe hunt. On Saturday, August 9th, on the same day that she was, Sharon Tate's body would be discovered by her housekeeper in Beverly Hills, California. The newspapers published The Hardin's Decoded Message. Naturally, the Decoded Message was a major national story. As more than one historian has said, the zodiac is, for all intents and purposes, America's own Jack the Ripper. The reference to the afterlife in the killer's message indicated that he may be driven

by some kind of religious motivation. Perhaps he was even in some kind of death cult. Despite all the frenzy caused by the letters and their subsequent decoding, nothing in these correspondences helped police come any closer to catching the killer, or even making a list of possible suspects. As the newspapers and law enforcement tried to make sense of this bizarre figure with his codes and his letters, the killer struck again, in broad daylight, and this time he dressed up for the occasion. Coming up, we'll discuss the Zoccur.

Zodiac's most famous attacks and the mysterious outfit that would come to define his image. Now back to the story. The series of letters that the Zodiac killer sent to a number of San Francisco newspapers in the late summer of 1969 did little to help police get any closer to catching him. Then, almost two months after the killer sent his first cipher, he struck again. On September 27, 1969, Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard went to have a picnic near Twin Oak Ridge, overlooking Lake Beriesa. It had been almost three months since the last known Zodiac attack. Though the investigation remained open, the public interest in the case had waned in the absence of new clues. It was a sunny, beautiful day. Cecilia and Brian were both content to lay out and watch the peaceful lapping of the lake's waves.

but then Cecilia realized they weren't alone. There was a man nearby watching them. Cecilia spotted him first, but when she and Brian realized he was just staring at them, they weren't sure what to do. When they looked back a few minutes later, they saw that the man had moved behind a nearby tree. He was trying to hide.

Both of the young people thought it was odd, but neither of them wanted to confront them. man and ask what he was doing. They turned their attention back to each other. They didn't see the man, put on his costume. Cecilia screamed when she saw the man again. He was approaching them fast. He'd covered his head with some kind of black executioner's hood that went down nearly to

his waist. Slits for his eyes and mouth had been cut into the hood, though he still covered his eyes with clip-on sun glasses. On the chest of the costume was a white circle with a cross over it. He had a long knife on his belt and a gun in his hand. Neither Cecilia nor Brian had time to run before the man reached them. Gun raised. He ordered them both not to move.

The hooded man warned them not to try anything and assured them he wasn't going to hurt them. All he wanted was their money and their car keys. Brian was cooperative, though he confessed he only had less than a dollar on him at that time. He offered to write the man a check. He even offered to give his phone number. Brian was a self-admitted sociology major. Despite the obvious peril of the situation, he couldn't help but be a little curious. The hooded man reiterated that he only wanted what they had on them. He claimed to have recently escaped from a prison in Deer Lodge, Montana. He was on his way to Mexico, but he needed money and a car.

After Brian tossed the hooded figure his keys and wallet, the man tossed back a pre-cut length of clothesline. Still brandishing the gun, the hooded man ordered Brian to lie in his stomach and told Cecilia to tie Brian up. Cecilia complied, though Brian kept his hands apart from one another and indicated that Cecilia should make the knots loose so that he could escape. But the killer didn't fall for it. Once Brian was bound, the hooded man approached him and tightened the knots.

He ordered Cecilia to lie down as well and tied her in a similar fashion. The assailant finally put away his gun and pulled out his knife. He stabbed Brian six times until Brian passed out. He stabbed Cecilia ten times before he ran off. A fisherman on the lake was the first to discover the bodies and send for help. Police arrived with an ambulance and rushed the two victims to a nearby hospital. That night, at approximately 7.40 p.m., someone placed a call to the Napa County Sheriff's Office, which was handling the investigation. The man on the phone said, quote, I want to report a murder. No, a double murder. They are two miles north of park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen, Carmen Gia.

When the answering desk sergeant asked the caller for his name, he only got this response, quote, I'm the one who did it. The call was traced to a payphone. Like before, the payphone was mere blocks from the police station and almost 30 miles from the crime scene. Now, it's unclear if any of the investigating officers had considered the possibility that this was a Zodiac killing at this point. Yes, there were obvious similarities. The victims were a young couple. The killer called the police via payphone to confess his crimes. But there were other notable differences. The attack had happened in broad daylight,

and though the killer had a gun, he'd used a knife for the actual attack. It was Detective Sergeant Kenneth Narlow, who found the first definitive clue that linked this attack to the zodiac. There was a message written on the door of Brian's Volkswagen. It read, quote, Vallejo, December 20th, 1968, July 4th, 1969, September 27th, 1969, 630 by knife. It was the dates of the other two confirmed attacks added to this one.

Cecilia Shepard succumbed to her wounds and died two days after the attack on September 29th, but Brian survived. It is because of Brian's testimony. that we have presumptive transcripts of the conversations between him and the attacker, as well as a physical description. Though obviously the attacker's hood prevented Brian from assuming his race or hair color, Brian did corroborate Mike Mischo's earlier account that described the Zodiac as a heavy-set man. But beyond that, there wasn't much more for police to learn from the crime. The only major update in the growing profile of the Zodiac was that he may be driven by a hatred.

of women. The reason for this presented theory was that twice now, the killer had attacked a young couple in which the woman died, but the man survived. After the attack, police and reporters wondered if they would receive yet another letter from the zodiac. They didn't at that point. They did receive something only after the killer struck again. On the night of October 11, 1969, 28-year-old cab driver, Paul Stein, picked up a passenger in San Francisco's Union Square. Stein took the passenger to the requested destination on Maple Street in Presidio Heights. At the passenger's urging, Paul drove a block past to the original destination. The passenger then leaned forward and shot Paul point-blank in the back of the head.

A group of teenagers across the street saw the murderer in the car after the attack. From their perspective, the killer had Stein's head in his lap, and he was wiping down the cab for prints. They called the police. The responding officers arrived within minutes, and it's very likely that they walked right past the murderer as he was walking away from the cab. The teenagers who called had reported a white man between 25 and 30. But the radio dispatch had informed the officers to look out for a black suspect. The stocky man described by the teenagers managed to get away, Scott Free. The next letter came on October 14th.

Quote, 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 is a blood-stained piece of his shirt. Included with the letter was a bloody swatch torn from Paul Stein's shirt. The letter went on to taunt the police. for failing to catch him yet again. He even said that he had stuck around the area after the attack. The letter also came with another threat.

The killer threatened to attack a school bus and shoot the children on board. The threat was taken seriously, and bulletins were issued across San Francisco to school drivers, warning them of what to do in the event of an attack. No school buses were ever attacked, but on October 22nd, 196. the Zodiac took his communications another step forward.

The Oakland Police Department received a phone call early in the morning on the 20th from someone who claimed to be the Zodiac. The caller demanded that the police arranged for Boston lawyer F. Lee Bailey to appear on the Channel 7 talk show. Bailey was a nationally famous lawyer who had handled the defense in a number of high-profile cases at that time. He would go on to defend both Patty Hurst, and O.J. Simpson.

Bailey was unavailable, but the caller had stipulated that he'd accept San Francisco attorney Mel Belli, the man who defended Jack Ruby in his trial for shooting Lee Harvey Oswald. Belli went on the show that same morning with host Jim Dunbar. They got the first call at 710, but the man on the phone hung up immediately. He called back at 7.20 and got through to Dunbar. Belli and the caller, who named himself Sam, had a conversation on live television. Sam confessed to having mental problems. He had headaches and blackouts.

Sam hung up quickly, stating that he didn't want the call to be traced. Sam called back and stated that he was afraid of the gas chamber. He was also afraid he was going to kill children. He had a soft spokeness to him, which stood in stark contrast to the things he was saying. Dunbar and Belli maintained a fairly stoic composure, asking Sam repeated questions about his blackouts and his mental health. Sam finally asked for Belli to meet him in person that day. The police naturally followed Belli to the meeting place. 45 minutes passed.

No one showed up. Belli eventually went home. Paul Stein was the last confirmed victim of the Zodiac Killer. In total, during the last few days of 19, 1968 and the bulk of 1969, the Zodiac killer attacked seven people and killed five of them. As far as the official account goes, the Zodiac spree ended with 1969. But his saga was far from over. Police and press continued to receive letters at irregular intervals from Zodiac.

Though not all of these letters were confirmed to be from the same killer who wrote the letters from 1969. These follow-up letters continued until 1974 and took credit for several murders that occurred in the Bay Area. However, none of these murders were ever definitively proven to be Zodiac killings. In one of the final letters sent in 1974, the Zodiac signed off with a tally. Quote, me 37, SFPD, zero, end quote. The implication was that the Zodiac was claiming he had killed 37 people and that the San Francisco Police Department had come

no closer to catching him. More letters came after 1974, though they're all considered to be potential hoaxes. The Zodiac Killer is one of the most famous serial killer mysteries in all of American history, in no small part because of the fact that he was never caught. In our next episode, we will cover the legacy of the Zodiac Killer, beyond 1969, and the mystery of his identity. We'll look at the numerous murders that occurred before and after 1969 that he was linked to, but never proven to have been involved in. Finally, we'll examine the few actual suspects that may have been the man under the hood. Thanks again for tuning into our unexplained mysteries and serial killers Summer of 69 crossover special.

Next week, we'll be back with part two of the Zodiac Killer, only available on the Unexplained Mysteries feed. To find it, simply search Unexplained Mysteries on Spotify or anywhere else you listen to podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, check out Parcast's continued retrospective into the summer of 69. From July 22nd through August 9th, the summer of 69 will feature 23 special episodes across 16 different podcasts, covering everything from Vietnam War protests to the Zodiac Killer. We'll be back with new episodes of unexplained mysteries and serial killers next week. If you're interested in learning more about the summer of 69,

be sure to check out our new Parcast Presents Feed on Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts. Several of you have asked how to help us. If you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave us. five-star review. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast. And Twitter at Parcast Network. We'll see you next time.

Remember, never take We don't know for an answer. And have a killer week. Unexplained Mysteries was created by Max Cutler, is a production of Cutler Media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler, sound designed by Kerry Murphy, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, and Paul Liebeskind.

Additional production assistance by Maggie Admeyer and Freddie Beckley. This episode was written by Colin McLaughlin and stars Molly Brandenberg, Greg Poulson, Vanessa Richardson, and Richard Rossner. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Do you want to hear something spooky?

Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snakelight lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.