Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - Unexplained Mysteries: The Zodiac Killer Pt. 2 (with Greg and Vanessa!)

Episode Date: July 23, 2019

Following the string of brutal murders throughout the 1960s, the masked man known as the Zodiac Killer continued to write letters to the press and police, while capturing the imaginations of terrified onlookers across the country. Fifty years later, there is still no confirmed suspect as to the identity of the murderer.  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.com slash killers. 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. Blood Trails is a true crime podcast born in the

outdoors. Where the terrain is unforgiving, the evidence is scarce, and the truth gets buried under brush and silence. I've seen something in the road. I instantly thought it was a sleeping bed, and there was a full of blood. Somebody somewhere knows something. I'm Jordan Sillers. Season two is out now with new episodes every Thursday. Listen on the IHart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A serial killer creates a specific kind of terror. Knowing that someone is out there, preying on the unsuspecting, fulfilling no motive beyond his own desire to kill, could make you think twice about leaving

home. When a serial killer is at large, he could be anywhere, around the corner of the street, behind the nearest tree, in the back seat of your own car. He's proven himself capable of killing and eager to kill again. and anyone could be his next victim. This was the mood in the city of San Francisco at the start of the 1970s, amidst a saga in which a hooded man stalked and killed innocent victims, leaving behind no clues as to his real identity. Fifty years later, no one has ever been arrested for the Zodiac killings.

For all anyone knows, he could still be out there, carrying the memories of his life. dark deeds, waiting to relive his glory days and kill again. 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, a Pardast Original. I'm your host Richard. And I'm your host, Molly. And today, we have with us our friends Greg and Vanessa, hosts of Parcast Show, Serial Killers. Hi, everyone. Thanks for having us. We asked Greg and Vanessa to join us again this week to provide

some extra insight on one of the most notorious serial killer mysteries of all time. Thank you both for joining us. Of course. We're excited to continue our discussion of the Zodiac Killer. Last week, we covered the official crimes of the Zodiac Killer. In this episode, we covered, We're going to look at these unconfirmed murders and determine which, if any, were actually committed by the Zodiac killer. We'll also look at the investigation into this enigmatic murderer and the factors that allowed him to kill five people and maimed two more without leaving enough evidence to make an arrest. Finally, we'll look at the man's Zodiac theorist consider the most likely suspect and examine the evidence pointing to him. This episode is part of Parcast's Summer of 69 event. July 22nd through August 9th, all your favorite parcast 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 Parcast originals. We'll be digging into the fallout of Emmercats. K'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, our 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 Parkast Network. Several of you have asked how to help us. If you enjoyed today's episode, the best way to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you're listening. It really does help. From late 1968 through the end of 1969, the Zodiac Killer attacked seven people in the San Francisco Bay Area, killing five. Throughout his violent spree, the Zodiac sent cryptic letters to a number of San Francisco-based newspapers, primarily the San Francisco Chronicle, taunting police for their inability to capture him.

These letters also initially featured bizarre cyphers that promised to reveal the killer's identity if they could be solved, although this proved to be a lie. There are only seven victims that have been confirmed to be Zodiac attacks. But throughout the early 1970s, the Zodiac, or someone pretending to be him, continued to send taunting letters to police

in which he took credit for a number of a dozen. grisly murders throughout California. However, due to lack of concrete evidence, these murders have never been 100% confirmed as Zodiac attacks. There's a possibility that these were simply unsolved murders the Zodiac claimed credit for. In doing so, he muddled his own legacy, creating a grand mystery full of questions

about what the Zodiac did and what he simply claimed to do. In one of the final letters that the Zodiac Killer sent, he claimed to have killed a total of 37 people. But at least one victim got away. There's never a good time to be accosted by a stranger on the road. Especially when it's close to midnight, and you're a pregnant woman alone, save for your 10-month-old baby in the back seat.

But that was the case for Kathleen Johns, a woman who is believed to have encountered the Zodiac Killer and lived to tell about it. On the night of March 22nd, 1970, Kathleen was driving to visit a relative. She was seven months pregnant, and with her 10-month-old daughter. Just after 11, a car behind her began honking and flashing its lights at her. Kathleen tried to ignore the other driver, but he pulled up beside her in the adjacent lane. Through his passenger window, he yelled at Kathleen that her car's wheel was wobbling.

Kathleen didn't like the idea of pulling over on the side of a dark road for a strange man. That's a good instinct. But once she got on the freeway, she ended up pulling over. The man parked behind her and approached her. She described him as a clean-cut, tall man, who seemed to be around 30 years old. The man told Kathleen that her left wheel was wobbling and offered to tighten her lug nuts. She consented. The man worked on the car, and then both parties got back in their car.

and drove off. It seemed like Kathleen had just been the beneficiary of a Good Samaritan for a few seconds. She barely made it a few feet before the wheel of her car completely came off. The man returned and offered to give her and her daughter a lift. If Kathleen was suspicious that her wheel had come off, right after this same man had fixed it, she didn't act on it. There was an Arco station just a quarter mile away, visible from where they were on the freeway. She bundled up her daughter and got in the car.

The Arco station came and went. The man didn't stop. Now, the police reports and Kathleen's accounts of what happened in the car have varied. But here's an amalgamation of what is suspected to have occurred. Kathleen started to panic as soon as she realized the man wasn't stopping at the Arco station. She tried to be sly, asking him questions about himself, but he only responded with a cold promise that he was going to kill her. He sped up, going faster and faster, as Kathleen clutched her daughter to her chest and tried to think of a way out. Finally, after minutes of tense silence in the speeding car, the kidnapper slowed down.

Kathleen saw that it may be her only chance. As the car approached an intersection, She pushed open the door and jumped out, cradling her daughter in her arms. The man went after her with a flashlight. Kathleen kept low to the ground in the dark fields near the highway, and eventually the man gave up his search. After he was gone, Kathleen flagged down a passing car. She hitched a ride to a police station. Now, this is where the story ties in with the Zodiac mystery.

In our last episode, we discussed the last confirmed Zodiac. Zodiac murder, Paul Stein, which had occurred in October of 1969. Police had compiled a rough sketch of the killer based on the witnesses who were around Stein's cab when he was murdered. Though over six months had passed, the rough sketch of the Zodiac's likeness was still on the wall of the police station where Kathleen went to report her abduction. When she saw it, she pointed it out and claimed that it looked like the man who had threatened to kill her.

Police went to the approximate location where Kathleen said she'd been picked up, but they didn't find her car until they widened the scope of their search and discovered a blackened husk of a vehicle. It was the remains of Kathleen's car. It had been gutted and torched. Police never found the man who tried to abduct Kathleen and her daughter. Ironically, the fact that both Kathleen and her daughter survived is probably why this case. was never definitively linked to the Zodiac.

Additionally, the police reports from the initial responding officers and the San Francisco PD are inconsistent with certain details of the case, such as where Kathleen actually managed to escape. Furthermore, Kathleen's own story has changed in the years since the incident occurred. However, there was a Zodiac letter to the San Francisco Chronicle claiming credit for the abduction. July 24th, 1970, quote, This is the Zodiac speaking. I'm rather unhappy because you people will not wear some nice buttons, so I now have a little list.

Starting with the woman and her baby, that I gave a rather interesting ride for a couple of hours one evening, a few months back, that ended in my burning her car where I found them. The buttons are in reference to an earlier letter where the Zodiac requested the people of San Francisco, wear buttons that displayed his signature symbol, the circle with a crossover it. He'd threatened to kill children if the buttons weren't worn.

They weren't, but he never made good on his threat. Buttons aside, that seems like a fairly damning confession. So why was Kathleen not considered among the confirmed victims? The most obvious reason is that there was no murder, nor was there a physical attack. The abductor threatened Kathleen and likely would have harmed her, but she escaped before that could happen. Kathleen didn't see a weapon, so there's no telling what the man was planning to do. The police report from the night of the abduction, and Kathleen's later descriptions of the event, don't entirely line up. There are discrepancies regarding where she was picked up and where she escaped.

Recall that her burned-out car wasn't found where she led police. It seemed at first that the man may have moved it before setting it on fire, but it also could be possible that Kathleen, shocked as she was, didn't remember a lot of the key details. Still, the letter seemed to be genuine as Kathleen's ordeal hadn't been covered by the local news, which meant that only the killer would know some of the details mentioned in the letter. All the evidence available would seem to indicate that she was an honest-to-god survivor of the Zodians.

But could it be possible that the writer of the letters was getting his information some other way, from some source that only few had access to? Before we answer that, we must look into the first potential victim of the Zodiac killer. Coming next, an eerily similar unsolved murder. Now back to the story. David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, both murdered December 20th, 1968. were the first two confirmed victims of the Zodiac. The detached precision with which they were killed definitely raised the question of whether or not the killer

had murdered in the past. In late 1970, reporter Paul Avery received a complicated answer to that question. Avery was a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle who had been covering the Zodiac case since the paper received its first letter. Avery had reason to be thinking about the Zodiac in October of 1970.

Just a few days before Halloween, the Chronicle had received a greeting card addressed to Avery personally that said, among a barrage of bizarre drawings, Peekaboo, you are doomed. It seemed that the Zodiac was threatening Avery personally, though Avery never ended up as the victim of an attack. A few days later, Avery received an anonymous letter.

The letter instructed him, to look into a murder that had occurred in 1966 in Riverside, California. The victim's name was Sherry Joe Bates. The letter hadn't been signed by the Zodiac, but Avery wondered if it was from him, trying to claim a murder that police had overlooked. And rightfully so. Bates' murder occurred three years before the first official's Zodiac murder and 400 miles south, but Avery looked into it anyway. On the evening of October 30th, 1966, Bates went to the library, while inside someone disabled the engine of her car. When she left later that evening and found that her car wouldn't start,

she took up a stranger's offer to give her a ride. The stranger then drove her to a secluded spot, beat her, and stabbed her to death. Bates fought back, as evidenced by the broken wristwatch that was found at the scene. There was nothing at the scene to indicate who the killer might be and no solid suspects. A month later, police received a letter taking credit for the murder. As the original Zodiac letters had done, this letter provided explicit details of the murder, which lent an air of authenticity. But interestingly, the first letter also gave something resembling a real motive,

while the previous Zodiac letters had described bizarre theories about calling slaves for the afterlife, the Riverside letter frankly stated that the writer murdered Bates for brushing him off. This naturally raises the possibility that the killer new Bates, which also may explain why she got into his car in the first place. Avery published an article in November of 1970 that explained the possible link between the Zodiac and the murder of Sherry Joe Bates. Five months later, in March of 1971, the Zodiac sent a letter to the Los Angeles Times, based much closer to Riverside, congratulating the police for uncovering his Riverside activity, but also warning them that there were many more bodies in that area. What can we make of this? The Zodiac seemed to confirm his connection to the murder, but only after nearly half a year had passed. Not that there's much use in trying to determine the reason behind his ramblings,

but the behavior here seems odd. Did he really murder Sherry Joe Bates? Was she his first murder? Or could it be possible that by this point in history, the Zodiac had resolved to simply take credit for murders he had nothing to do with? Maybe even murders he knew to be unsolved. Is it possible he had access to this information? Because the Zodiac Killer was really a police officer.

There is a possibility, though it was never confirmed that the Zodiac Killer was able to claim credit for murders he didn't commit because he had inside information about unsolved killings. Let's consider some of the other cases that the Zodiac was suspected of being involved in, or claimed to have had a hand in. On March 22nd, 1971, the Chronicle received a letter addressed to one Paul Avery. This letter was different from the others, which had all been handwritten. The March 1971 letter featured a collage of newspapers that included the phrases, sought

victim 12, and past Lake Tahoe areas. The cryptic note was linked to Donna Lass, a nurse who had gone missing in September of 1970, near a Sierra Club in Northern California, near the Nevada border. To this day, Donna Lass's body has never been found. An image included in the news collage was revealed to be a rendering of a condominium development that was being built at a time near where Lass disappeared. It is suspected that the killer might have buried her body somewhere in the construction site to ensure it would never be found.

The last disappearance is something of a stretch, but investigators at the time didn't totally rule out the Zodiac Killer, given that there were no other suspects. This, of course, leads us to the broader issues in any potential victims. Whenever a serial killer of the Zodiac's level of fame is at large, it's easy to attribute any unsolved murder in the area to him without any definite proof. Without a body to examine,

it's impossible to compare Lass's likely murder to those of the confirmed Zodiac victims. She likely never would have been linked to the killer, at all had he not sent the collage letter. Interestingly, there is one unsolved murder from earlier in the 1960s that the Zodiac never claimed credit for, yet it bears several damning similarities to his work. In June of 1963, three years before Sherry Joe Bates' murder and five and a half years before the first confirmed Zodiac killing, that of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, a young

couple was murdered on a beach in Santa Barbara County near Los Angeles. High school seniors Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards had traveled to a secluded part of the beach for a senior skip day. The reconstruction of the crime scene concluded that the teens had been approached by an assailant, armed with a gum that was likely a 22-caliber rifle. He tried to force Edwards to tie Domingos up, but both victims tried to flee. The killer shot Domingo's 11 times and Edward, eight times before dragging their bodies to a nearby shack and attempting unsuccessfully to burn the shack and their corpses.

Nine years later, in 1972, the Vallejo Times Herald ran a story about the still-unsolved murder of Domingos and Edwards and proposed that it may have been an early attack by the Zodiac killer. Despite the 300-plus miles between San Francisco and Santa Barbara, there are a number of of similarities between this double murder and the attack on Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shepard in 1969. In both cases, the killer planned to constrain his victims by forcing the woman to tie up the man. Additionally, the 22-caliber rifle would line up with the 22-cali shell casings found at the crime scene of the Faraday and Jensen murders in 1968.

And as was the case for all of the Zodiac's confirmed kills, murder in itself seems to be the main and only objective. Nothing was stolen from the victims, and neither of them were physically assaulted in any way, though some bruising on Domingo's face may indicate that he tried to fight off the killer before ultimately attempting to run. Of all the crimes that are possibly linked to the Zodiac, this one lines up with his MO much more than the others. and yet he never claimed credit for it in any of his letters. Well, not explicitly. The January 1971 letter that applauded the police for connecting the Zodiac to the murder of Sherry Joe Bates did state, quote, they are only finding the easy ones, and there are a hell of a lot more down there.

Read literally, down there, would seem to mean Riverside where Bates was murdered. But assuming that the Zodiac lived near Sanferens, a given since all of his confirmed kills occurred in the Bay Area, down there could simply be taken to mean all of Southern California, which would include Santa Barbara County. Of course, there's another possible reason the Zodiac didn't explicitly take credit for the Domingo's Edwards double murder. It may be one of the few murders beyond the confirmed five that he actually committed, and thus he intentionally didn't mention it because it was the one unsolved case that. that may link back to him. There's not a specific source that outlines the theory that the Zodiac Killer may have been an active

or former police officer during the time when he was actively killing. But let's look at the evidence. In all cases, the killer's actions indicated that he had no previous connection to his victims. None of the victims had acquaintances or enemies that panned out as real suspects. Since most murders are committed by people who knew their victims,

This made catching the Zodiac Killer extremely difficult. In all cases, except for the murder of Paul Stein, the killer sought out locations that were secluded, but also known to occasionally serve as spots for couples to have some privacy. In doing so, he essentially ensured that he'd encounter his victims when no one else would be around. The killer used multiple cars. There's not an exact count of how many different cars. were used over the different killings, but we're sure of at least two. A light tan car described by Mike Majot and a blue or silver Chevrolet

described by witnesses who had been nearby when Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Ann Shepherd were killed. There was no one vehicle that may have helped police narrow down the list of suspects, and the case was the same with the weapons used in the attacks. The killer had a variety of guns. he used a 22-caliber weapon to murder Faraday and Jensen, then a 9-millimeter in his attack on Megeau and Farron. He may have used the same 9-millimeter gun to murder Paul Stein. He stabbed Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Ann Shepard with a knife,

though Hartnell stated that the killer had a gun, which he thought was some kind of cult-model revolver. All of these weapons used common, easy-to-purchase and were nearly impossible to trace in the absence of an existing suspect base. He also knew how to use those weapons, as evidenced by the marksmanship required to shoot Betty Lou Jensen from such a distance at night.

In fact, in the August 4th, 1969 letter, the second letter the Zodiac ever sent to newspapers, he addressed the publicized police question as to how he managed to shoot Jensen with five grouped shots from such a distance. In his own words, quote, 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 it on a wall or ceiling,

you will see a black or dark spot in the center of the circle of light, about three to six inches across. When taped to a gun barrel, the bullet will strike exactly in the center of the black dot in the light. He was clearly impressed with his modification. A knowledge of firearms that would lead the killer to experiment with such an attachment, indicates professional familiarity, the kind gained by members of the military, bodyguards, or police. If the Zodiac killer was somehow involved in law enforcement, he would have had access to databases of unsolved murders in his community and in the country at large.

He could have scoured for unsolved cases with bizarre details and then turned around and taken credit for them in his letters to the police. He was such a media sensation by 1970. that any murder he mentioned became associated with his legend. Hundreds of Zodiac conspiracy sites that still run today have extensive writings on Sherry Joe Bates, Donna Lass, and Kathleen Johns, despite never being confirmed Zodiac attacks. Regardless of the lack of clear evidence,

they're all permanently linked to the Zodiac case. The Sherry Joe Bates murder may have even given the killer his signature move, As we said earlier, the letter sent to police after the killing indicated that Sherry Joe was murdered by someone who knew her. None of the other Zodiac letters indicated such a connection between the writer and the victim. It's a stretch, but it's possible that the killer knew of the letter from Sherry Joe's case file and repurposed the letter method to gain his own sense of infamy. The disputed cases certainly muddled the investigation into the Zodiac killer.

And if he really was law enforcement, the lack of suspects may be due to a certain reluctance for the police to investigate one of their own. But without any real evidence, this all amounts to little more than speculation, as do many of the frustrating aspects of this case. And it's not like the police never had a single serious suspect. In fact, the only man that was ever served with a warrant on suspicion of being the Zodiac is someone many believe may have been the killer. after all. Up next, we'll discuss the man considered by many to be the Zodiac, Arthur Lee Allen. Now back to the story. Since his first confirmed kills in 1968, there has never been an arrest in the Zodiac Killer

case, but it's possible police came close. Very, very close. It's unclear how Arthur Lee Allen, born in 1933, first, came on the police's radar. After the Lake Beriesa attack in September of 1969, the San Francisco Police Department cast a wide net of people to interview about what had happened that day. In early October, 1969, a week after the attacks, Detective Sergeant John Lynch was dispatched to interview Arthur Lee Allen, then known as simply Lee Allen. Brian Hartnell's description of the attacker had gone wide, and someone had reported that Alan matched the description of the killer.

But Lynch dismissed Alan as a suspect almost immediately. Remember, the Zodiac had worn a hood when he attacked Hartnellan Shepard, so the only physical description they could provide was that he was a young man on the heavier side. But Mike Mijot had described him as having curly hair. Alan was a big man and approximately the right age, but he was balding. in 1969, so Lynch rooted Alan out as a suspect. Plus, Alan had an alibi. He'd been scuba diving the day before the attack, spent the night on the lake shore, and returned home at around the time that the attack had occurred.

Police didn't make much note of the fact that 18 days after Alan was interviewed, his neighbor, who backed up his alibi, died of heart failure. Allen came back onto the police's radar in 1971, based on the statement given by Don Cheney. Cheney was a friend of Allen's, and his statement was, well, incredibly damning. Actually, Cheney's statement is the key piece of evidence that people point to when discussing the likelihood that Alan really was the Zodiac. According to Cheney, he and Alan once had a conversation wherein the topic of murder came up. Alan allegedly claimed that it would be incredibly easy to get away with murder, with a little advanced planning.

He would go to lover's lanes and seek out secluded couples. He'd use a common revolver that would be difficult to trace. To emphasize the ease with which Alan thought he could pull off the murders, he also said he would send taunting letters to the police to mock them for not being able to catch him. According to Cheney, Alan then motioned to the Zodiac brand wristwatch he wore. and said that he would take on the name, Zodiac. In this conversation, Alan also allegedly spoke about how easy it would be to shoot out the tires of a school bus and gun down the children as they exited,

something the Zodiac explicitly threatened to do in one of his later letters. After speaking with Cheney, police obtained a warrant for Allen's home. Alan wasn't living in the best circumstances in 1971. He'd been an elementary school teacher for most of the 1960s, but was fired in 1968 due to a repeated pattern of sexual misconduct with and harassment of students. When police visited him again, he was living in a broken down trailer. According to one account, inside the trailer was a substantial collection of masochistic pornography. Police had Alan write out a series of words and phrases so that they could compare his, writing to the known zodiac letters.

They realized, as Alan wrote, that he was ambidextrous, which naturally would make matching the zodiac handwriting a difficult affair. The Zodiac could have written every word in a different hand to throw investigators off. Regardless, the detectives compared the letters and determined at the time that Alan couldn't be the writer of the Zodiac letters. The handwriting didn't line up. In 1972, Alan was arrested for molesting a 12-year-old and went to jail for two years. Some looked to his status as a sex offender as proof that he wasn't the Zodiac. As we've said, none of the Zodiac's victims were known to have been assaulted. However, one recurring note in the years and years of psychological profiles police compiled on the Zodiac

indicated that he was likely driven by some kind of need for sexual gratification tied to the murders. The key piece of evidence here were the two double attacks in 1969. In the Farin-Majot attack and the Hartnell Shepherd attack, the killer became so preoccupied with killing the woman that he failed to ensure that the man was actually dead. This indicated a kind of fixated hatred toward women. Though the victims were never assaulted, the focus on the women indicated a certain kind of sexual gratification that came from killing. Still, it's odd that a man who method killed five people without ever being caught would end up going to jail for a different graphic crime.

Alan came back onto the police's radar a number of times over the next 20 years, though each time a new development seemed to exonerate him. The biggest physical evidence against Alan's identity as the Zodiac came from the palm print. Recall from our last episode that after the attacks on Brian and Cecilia, the Vallejo Police Department received a call from an unidentified caller at a payphone just blocks away. After police traced the call to the payphone, they were able to pull a palm print off of the phone. The print didn't match Allen's. Alan died in 1992. Sometime after that, police were able to compare the DNA of his that they had on file

with DNA recovered from the stamps on the original Zodiac letters. Again, there was no match. However, Robert Graysmith, a political cartoonist for the San Francisco Chronicle, who became obsessed with the Zodiac case and ultimately wrote two definitive books on the subject, has posited that neither of the DNAs, tests can be considered conclusive. And Graysmith today is considered to be one of the foremost authorities on the Zodiac Killer, so his theories go a long way.

Storage of potential DNA evidence wasn't exactly secure in the 1970s, and Graysmith proposes that both samples could have easily been contaminated. Graysmith may be the world's foremost authority on the Zodiac, and to this day he contends that Arthur Lee Allen was the Zodiac. Zodiac Killer. As every year passes, it becomes more likely that we will only ever know the Zodiac Killer by his legacy and his name that he gave himself. And his legacy has cast a dark shadow across the country in the 50 years since he operated. Beyond inspiring numerous crime movies and novels, all lifted from the bizarre Zodiac legend, the most notable being Dirty Harry,

the Zodiac also inspired at least one direct copycat killer. From 1990 to 1993, a man named Ariberto Seda attacked eight people, killing three of them. He wrote taunting letters to the police that featured codes which, when cracked, revealed that Seda was killing people based on their actual Zodiac signs. Before he was caught, it was suspected that Seda may have been. in the original Zodiac returned after more than a decade of silence. Seda was finally caught in 1996 after a domestic disturbance. Once he was identified as the killer, it became evident that he couldn't have been the first Zodiac since he was born in 1967.

Seda is the most famous case to take inspiration from the Zodiac killer, and as long as the mystery remains unsolved, it seems unlikely he'll be the last. So what can we make of all this? A mystery with this level of fame and five decades of theories behind it provides a lot of information to sort through. While Arthur Lee Allen certainly seems like the most likely suspect that we know of, it's incredibly damning that he was never outright arrested or convicted for the crimes. But the 2007 movie Zodiac, based on one of Robert Graysmith's books on the subject, named Alan as the killer, fairly explicitly.

And it seems that Alan will be the prime suspect in the eyes of the public so long as people continue to take interest in the Zodiac case. Like so many factors in this bizarre mystery, the perception of the truth overshadows the known truth. Fifty years of theorizing, speculation, and revisiting the crimes have led to a hodgepodge of explanations on the motivations and psychological makeup of the Zodiac killer. Obviously, he was driven to kill.

But there was another compulsion, one that is the main reason we're discussing him today. The Zodiac Killer wanted to be famous, and in that, he succeeded. With all the clues and codes and taunting letters, how could anyone not fixate on the crimes or the mysterious person who committed them? It's entirely possible that most of the Zodiac's behavior, the letters, the letters, the codes, the executioner's costume, were all shrewd ploys intended to craft a character who would live on in the cultural consciousness long after the killer himself had perished. And if that's the case, the strategy worked.

Thanks again for tuning in to our unexplained mysteries and serial killers' Summer of 69 crossover special. 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 serial killers and unexplained mysteries 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 us is to leave a five-star review.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. See you next Thursday. Have a killer week. And remember, never take We Don't Know for an answer. Unexplained Mysteries and Serial Killers were created by Max Cutler, are a production of Cutler Media and are part of the Parcast Network. They're produced by Max and Ron Cutler,

sound designed by Carrie Murphy, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro and Paul Liebeskind. Additional production assistance by Maggie Admiere and Carly Madden. This episode was written by Colin McLaughlin and stars Molly Brandenberg, Greg Paulson, Vanessa Richardson, and Richard Rosner. 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 Hixed. 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, of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession. Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves.

Something very snake-like 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.