Speaker 1: You're listening to Killer in the Code Solving the Black
Speaker 1: Dalia and Zodiac Cases. I'm Michael Connolly and this is
Speaker 1: chapter six. I want to begin today with a mini
Speaker 1: profile the killer this podcast is focused on. This is
Speaker 1: taken from the official records of the investigation. The crime
Speaker 1: would indicate a person, to my estimation, who had a
Speaker 1: mania for publicity. They wanted to gloat over the fact
Speaker 1: that they have been successful in their crime and got
Speaker 1: a kick out of it. Okay, so I think I
Speaker 1: know what you were thinking. That's got to come from
Speaker 1: the Zodiac case files, right, He's the one who wrote
Speaker 1: all the letters to the newspapers and authored the tantalizing ciphers, etc.
Speaker 2: Etc.
Speaker 1: Well, yes, and no, you could call it an early
Speaker 1: profile of the Zodiac, but it's actually from the sworn
Speaker 1: testimony of the lead detective in the Black Dahlia case,
Speaker 1: spoken to a grand jury in nineteen fifty, almost twenty
Speaker 1: years before the Zodiac killings took place, and the self
Speaker 1: proclaimed Zodiac began using publicity to gloat and taunt the
Speaker 1: public and to hold it in the grip of fear.
Speaker 1: A mania for publicity. That detective certainly got that right there.
Speaker 1: Are people who think these cases are so dramatically different
Speaker 1: they could never be linked, but on a psychological level
Speaker 1: they are much more the same than not. And today
Speaker 1: we are going to reveal as best we can, the
Speaker 1: man who is behind all these crimes. Marvin Margolis aka
Speaker 1: Marvin Merrill, among many other names, the man who wrote
Speaker 1: the letters and constructed the ciphers, the man who was
Speaker 1: a cipher himself. A quick recap here Alex Baber, Citizen Slewice,
Speaker 1: an amateur cryptologist, broke Disease thirteen code, the thirteen characters
Speaker 1: said to reveal the name of the Zodiac Killer, but
Speaker 1: also thought to be unbreakable for more than a half
Speaker 1: a century. The name hidden in the code was Marvin Merrill,
Speaker 1: the primary alias adopted by Marvin Margolis after he was
Speaker 1: identified more than twenty years earlier as a suspect in
Speaker 1: the murder of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dallion.
Speaker 1: Baber's methodology and solution to Z thirteen has been independently
Speaker 1: confirmed by some of the top cryptanalysts in the world.
Speaker 1: Other evidence gathered by Baber and a team of veteran
Speaker 1: cold case detectives has been documented in the previous episodes
Speaker 1: of this podcast. The bottom line is Margolis, who died
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety three, checked all the boxes, and now
Speaker 1: we want to attempt to track his movement across time
Speaker 1: and geography. It's not an easy task. Margolis at times
Speaker 1: is a bit of a ghost. He changed names and
Speaker 1: moved about like a man looking over his shoulder to
Speaker 1: see who might be on his trail.
Speaker 2: This is Alex Baber.
Speaker 3: His own family would call him Skippy because he would
Speaker 3: skip out for long periods of time that he'd be
Speaker 3: unaccounted for. The Skippy nickname was obviously a player on
Speaker 3: his middle name, skip Day.
Speaker 1: He also changed occupations and careers as often as he
Speaker 1: moved geographically. At various times, he was an artist, an
Speaker 1: auto mechanic, an engineer, an insurance salesman, a car racing promoter,
Speaker 1: a computer programmer, and an urban planner. His son called
Speaker 1: him a serial entrepreneur, with most of his endeavors seeing
Speaker 1: very little success.
Speaker 3: It appears that he did many things, but he wasn't
Speaker 3: good at any of thom Throughout the years, in decades,
Speaker 3: he would often change his expertise or field of employment.
Speaker 3: Some of them. Members told me that you know a
Speaker 3: lot of stuff that he did, He taught himself, and
Speaker 3: he wouldn't stay long within that field of expertise.
Speaker 1: This is veteran homicide detective of Rick Jackson.
Speaker 4: My initial thoughts on his moving around a lot as
Speaker 4: well as the changing of names. The first of all,
Speaker 4: the moving around the lot. There are people that do that.
Speaker 4: There are people that are lost, they can't find jobs,
Speaker 4: they go from one place to another. That's one thing,
Speaker 4: but when you couple that with constantly changing names, then
Speaker 4: it brings it to a higher level of concern about
Speaker 4: why that's being done. That's a quick patty answer, but
Speaker 4: that's that's my reaction to what we see with Margolis
Speaker 4: slash meow.
Speaker 1: In addition to changing names as he moved, Margolis also
Speaker 1: appropriated the histories of others will embellishing his own. The
Speaker 1: biggest task here was trying to determine what was real
Speaker 1: about Marvin Margolis.
Speaker 2: And what was not.
Speaker 1: One thing we know for sure is that he was
Speaker 1: born in Chicago to immigrant parents. In nineteen twenty five,
Speaker 1: his own father changed his name from Isaac Margolands to
Speaker 1: is A we Are Margolis, something that many immigrants do,
Speaker 1: but it early on exposed Marvin Margolis to the idea
Speaker 1: that identity was malleable. Before we go on here, let
Speaker 1: me say that the timeline and the biographic details we
Speaker 1: have put together here come from official records, newspaper articles,
Speaker 1: and interviews with members of Margolis's family. We have agreed
Speaker 1: not to name members of the family in exchange for
Speaker 1: their cooperation. Margolis enrolled at the University of Illinois in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two, but left after one semester with failing grades.
Speaker 1: At the time, the country is in the middle of
Speaker 1: a world war, and in nineteen forty three, Margolis walked
Speaker 1: into a Navy recruiting office in Chicago and joined up.
Speaker 1: He was trained as a corpsman and sent overseas to
Speaker 1: the battle in the Pacific. He was attached as a
Speaker 1: medic to the marine battalion that made the first landing
Speaker 1: on the island of Okinawa. What ensued was one of
Speaker 1: the bloodiest and costliest battles of the war. Over ten
Speaker 1: thousand American soldiers died on Oakanalwa. We documented Margois's time
Speaker 1: there in chapter one of the podcast, but suffice it
Speaker 1: to say his experiences there, including one near death experience
Speaker 1: in particular, was harrowing. Upon returning from the war. He
Speaker 1: was given a fifty percent disability for mental neurosis what
Speaker 1: would now be diagnosed as post traumatic stress disorder. Family
Speaker 1: members have told us he was treated for this the
Speaker 1: rest of his life and.
Speaker 2: He was put on medication.
Speaker 3: And we discovered through the family members that when he
Speaker 3: would disappear for these lengthy periods of time, they would
Speaker 3: reach out to his younger brother, Milton, who lived in Chicago,
Speaker 3: who had a connection at the local BA and what
Speaker 3: he would do, apparently was contact this connection and he
Speaker 3: would look up where the last description was filled, and
Speaker 3: then Milton would hunt Marvin Dowell and ask him, what
Speaker 3: are you doing. You have a family about legations, You
Speaker 3: needed needed to get back to where you belong.
Speaker 1: This is MITCHI. Roberts, veteran homicide detective and former supervisor
Speaker 1: of the LAPD cold case unit.
Speaker 5: All you have to really do is review the testimony
Speaker 5: at the grand jury as well as a review, you know,
Speaker 5: any of his documents that came out of his time
Speaker 5: at the war to know that you know, what he
Speaker 5: saw over Okinawa was the worst of the worst, and
Speaker 5: I think they've been mentioned mingled bodies, and you know
Speaker 5: he was working in the medical.
Speaker 3: Field, so he saw them up.
Speaker 5: It wasn't just seen your buddy, you know here get
Speaker 5: you know, severely injured. He's actually trying to save lives.
Speaker 5: And from everything I've read, he came back from that
Speaker 5: war just a damaged man, for sure, mentally just damaged.
Speaker 1: Margos landed in Los Angeles after the war, and in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty six enrolled at the University of Southern California
Speaker 1: as a pre med student. During a grand jury investigation
Speaker 1: that would delve into the Black Value case. Four years later,
Speaker 1: it was revealed by the deputy district attorney who led
Speaker 1: the probe that Margois had taken part in a body
Speaker 1: dissection just months before Elizabeth Short's bisective body was found.
Speaker 1: We could find no independent confirmation of this. While it
Speaker 1: was unlikely that a pre med student would have a
Speaker 1: class in which cadavers were dissected, Margolis's wartime experiences may
Speaker 1: have opened doors at USC for him to take part
Speaker 1: in what was likely something reserved for more advanced to
Speaker 1: med students. As one of his veterans, administration evaluators reported
Speaker 1: in giving him the mental disability, he had dealt with
Speaker 1: many quote mangled.
Speaker 2: Bodies on Okinawa.
Speaker 1: Either way, Margolis was attending classes at the time he
Speaker 1: had a res relationship with Elizabeth Short, and subsequently when
Speaker 1: she was found murdered on January fifteenth, nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 1: At some point Margous changed his focus and started pursuing
Speaker 1: a pharmacy degree. Records show that in nineteen forty eight
Speaker 1: he was elected as an officer in the Pharmacy School's
Speaker 1: service organization. A transcript of his grades from that year
Speaker 1: showed him to have been a good student, getting mostly
Speaker 1: a's in pre med and pharmacy classes and only won
Speaker 1: C in piochemistry. Curiously, he had registered at the school
Speaker 1: under the name Marvin Henry Margolis. His actual middle name
Speaker 1: was Skipton, and this is the earliest point where we
Speaker 1: see him.
Speaker 2: Engage in identity deception.
Speaker 1: Margolis was in the class of forty nine, but he
Speaker 1: apparently didn't finish at USC. Instead, he left town and
Speaker 1: picked up a degree in commerce from Roosevelt College in
Speaker 1: his hometown of Chicago. Why did he leave town and
Speaker 1: change schools? At the time, it had been two and
Speaker 1: a half years since the murder of Elizabeth Short, and
Speaker 1: no arrests had been made in the case. Early on
Speaker 1: in that investigation, Margois had been interviewed twice by the police,
Speaker 1: and though he initially lied about his relationship with Elizabeth Short,
Speaker 1: he offered an alibi that his new wife confirmed. Phinnis Brown,
Speaker 1: the lead detective on the case, would later testify that
Speaker 1: it was impossible to throw him out as a suspect,
Speaker 1: it was impossible to tie him in. But nineteen forty
Speaker 1: nine was also when a new police chief took the
Speaker 1: reins at the Los Angeles Police Department. William Morton was
Speaker 1: a hard charging former marine who declared in a widely
Speaker 1: publicized media statement that the Black Dalley investigation had been
Speaker 1: run poorly and been bungled by the original team on it.
Speaker 1: He called for a grand jury investigation of the murder
Speaker 1: to refocus the case, but by the time that grand
Speaker 1: jury was impaneled that year, Margolis was gone. Investigators with
Speaker 1: the grand jury tried to find him and enlisted the
Speaker 1: help of the Chicago Police Department, but to no avail.
Speaker 1: Dennis Brown was left to testify that Margolis was quote
Speaker 1: possibly a very good suspect. How diligently authorities searched for
Speaker 1: Margolis in Chicago is not clear, but they missed their chance.
Speaker 1: Three years later, when he was working in Chicago as
Speaker 1: a used car salesman and was charged with defrauding customers
Speaker 1: by tricking them into paying higher prices than agreed to
Speaker 1: for their car. Margois avoided jail time and the apparent
Speaker 1: notice of the LAPD by paying a fine and restitution
Speaker 1: to several customers. But it was at this point that
Speaker 1: he left town once again, and when he re emerged,
Speaker 1: he had a new profession and.
Speaker 2: A new name.
Speaker 1: He was now in Atlanta and he set up shop
Speaker 1: as Marvin Merrill, insurance salesman. Merrill spent at least three
Speaker 1: years in Atlanta and even started a side gig, which
Speaker 1: was an auto club for teenagers. He corded membership and
Speaker 1: publicity with the inclusion of a NASCAR racing champion named
Speaker 1: Tim Flock as a partner. But eventually Merrill moved on
Speaker 1: from Georgia and made even shorter stops in Ohio and
Speaker 1: Arizona before landing in Kansas. By this time, his first
Speaker 1: marriage was over and he reinvented himself once again, this
Speaker 1: time as an artist and an art dealer in the
Speaker 1: small town of Wellington, thirty eight miles south of Wichita.
Speaker 1: He was now known as Skip Meryll, and a profile
Speaker 1: of the artists that ran in the local newspaper offered
Speaker 1: some insight into how Meryll blended fact and fiction into
Speaker 1: a new PERSONA paper reported that he had studied under
Speaker 1: Salvador Dolly, the master of surrealism at USC. I learned
Speaker 1: a lot of realism from Dolly. Merrill was quoted as saying,
Speaker 1: he paints the clock. It may be distorted, but it
Speaker 1: looks like a clock. The Baber team found no evidence
Speaker 1: that Dolly ever taught painting or lectured at USC, so
Speaker 1: the record is clear that Dolly was in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: at the time Merrill, as Margolis, attended USC. Perhaps what
Speaker 1: is most intriguing about the profile in the Wellington Daily
Speaker 1: News is Merrill's embellishment of his war record. Here was
Speaker 1: a man who could truthfully say he was with the
Speaker 1: Marines on Okinawa, one of the bloodiest and most important
Speaker 1: battles of World War Two. He could talk about building
Speaker 1: a field hospital in a cave on that island, but
Speaker 1: apparently that wasn't good enough for him. Instead, he told
Speaker 1: the newspaper that he had been a member of the
Speaker 1: Flying Tigers, the legendary group of pilots who flew missions
Speaker 1: over China during the war. Why did he lie? It
Speaker 1: almost seems to me as though Merrill used the newspaper
Speaker 1: profile to leave hands or clues about the Black Dahlia case.
Speaker 1: He told the newspaper that he had been a newspaper correspondent,
Speaker 1: but the truth was the only correspondence was his courting
Speaker 1: the media in Atlanta and his letters and phone calls
Speaker 1: to the Los Angeles newspapers as the Black Dahlia Avenger.
Speaker 1: Then the mentions of the Flying Tigers and Salvador Dali.
Speaker 1: The reference to the legendary air squadron seemed to be
Speaker 1: a direct reference to Elizabeth Short and her lost fiance.
Speaker 1: During the war, she was engaged to pilot Matt Gordon,
Speaker 1: who flew missions over China and was credited with shooting
Speaker 1: down five Japanese planes in aerial dogfights. Those plans tragically
Speaker 1: changed when Gordon was killed in a plane crash in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five. Was it Gealousy that made merilynbellish his
Speaker 1: record or was he intentionally dropping a clue into the story.
Speaker 3: He was indeed a war hero in his own account right.
Speaker 3: He's on the front lines as a naval corman. He's
Speaker 3: out there attempting to rescue people. You know, he's tending
Speaker 3: to be wounded, and he comes back and then you
Speaker 3: have this fourteen year gap between the time the murder
Speaker 3: of Elizabeth Swore took place in the time he did
Speaker 3: this interview in well it was in Kansas, and instead
Speaker 3: of just saying I was a naval corman on the
Speaker 3: front line and said, you know, held a medical unit
Speaker 3: and took care of my comrades, you know, under fire,
Speaker 3: he injects this stolen valor as we call it, where
Speaker 3: he's a Flying Tiger, which is a very unique unit
Speaker 3: during World War Two. There's no reason for him to
Speaker 3: claim to be a Flying Tiger as rare as that
Speaker 3: you know unit was, and for it to be directly
Speaker 3: connected to Elizabeth Short through her only fiance, Matt Gordon,
Speaker 3: is a very unique and obvious connection that he's making
Speaker 3: to Elizabeth and himself. In my opinion, that's a dirty deed.
Speaker 3: That's something, you know, that's him being jealous. That's him
Speaker 3: and having some kind of envy towards towards Matt, you know,
Speaker 3: and his relationship with Elizabeth long before he knew her.
Speaker 3: That's obsession.
Speaker 1: And Dolly was a surrealistic painter, while Merrill said he
Speaker 1: was a realistic painter. His work was even described as
Speaker 1: being closer to the impressionist master of Benson van God
Speaker 1: than Dolly. But Dolly created several paintings that depicted women
Speaker 1: in ways similar to the Black Dahalia crime scene. Was
Speaker 1: Merrill hinting that he was influenced by Dolly as a
Speaker 1: killer or a painter? These are a questions that obviously
Speaker 1: can't be answered. You can take a look at some
Speaker 1: of Dolly's work on the Killer and the Code website.
Speaker 1: Though in the newspaper profile, Meryll said he was so
Speaker 1: inspired by Kansas that he could paint there forever. Things
Speaker 1: soured for him when a local art association he had
Speaker 1: created split into two factions and voted in new leadership.
Speaker 1: Merrill once again packed his bags. This time he headed west,
Speaker 1: back to California. Merrill landed in the town of Oceanside
Speaker 1: in San Diego County in early nineteen sixty two. On
Speaker 1: an evening, shortly after his arrival, a man called the
Speaker 1: police department anonymously and said he was about to commit
Speaker 1: a crime that would baffle the police and never be solved.
Speaker 1: The next night, a taxi cab driver named Raymond Davis
Speaker 1: was shot to death in his cab and his body
Speaker 1: was dumped in an alley behind the mayor's house. The
Speaker 1: cab was later found abandoned fifteen blocks away. The next night,
Speaker 1: the anonymous man called the police again. He took credit
Speaker 1: for the murder of Davis and said he was going
Speaker 1: to shoot a bus driver next. This, in turn gripped
Speaker 1: the community and fear, and marines from a nearby military
Speaker 1: base were used to ride in buses and taxis for
Speaker 1: added security. The murder of Davis, the dumping of his
Speaker 1: body behind the mayor's house, and the subsequent threat to
Speaker 1: kill a bus driver drew massive media attention, seemingly underlying
Speaker 1: the unknown killer's mania for publicity. To use a phrase
Speaker 1: from the Black Dahia Killer's profile. Eight years after the
Speaker 1: Davis murder, the killing of San Francisco cab driver Paul
Speaker 1: Stein by the Zodiac would draw comparisons, but like the
Speaker 1: Sherry Joe Bates case in Riverside, that Davis killing was
Speaker 1: never formally declared a Zodiac case. Perhaps it was because
Speaker 1: authorities did not know what we can now reveal. On
Speaker 1: the night Davis was murdered in Oceanside. His killer abandoned
Speaker 1: his cab in the four hundred block of Pacific Street,
Speaker 1: which was an eight hundred foot walk to the house
Speaker 1: on Elm Street where Marvin Merrill was living following his
Speaker 1: recent move from Kansas.
Speaker 3: I do believe that paul Stein was, in a likelihood
Speaker 3: a piece of a puzzle to connect him back to
Speaker 3: his earlier letter of Ray Davis.
Speaker 4: It does make sense paul Stein was the first.
Speaker 6: It was such a brazen attack because it was done
Speaker 6: right in the middle of a major city in front
Speaker 6: of people.
Speaker 2: He walked away.
Speaker 6: It was a brazen attack, and I think that was
Speaker 6: done intentionally to shake things up a little bit. And
Speaker 6: why not shake things up a little bit by doing
Speaker 6: something that you've done before in nineteen sixty two with
Speaker 6: the cab driver or in ocean Side. Why not do
Speaker 6: the same thing again. It could be part of the
Speaker 6: game wondering, Okay, are they're gonna be able to put
Speaker 6: this all together? That it's need the Zodiac working before
Speaker 6: I became the Zodiac, and then seven years later you
Speaker 6: do the paul Stein case to bring it right back
Speaker 6: into your new hunting grounds, if you will.
Speaker 5: It just kind of proves that this guy evolves in
Speaker 5: his emma.
Speaker 4: I mean he doesn't.
Speaker 5: It doesn't fit quite exactly with of course, the Black
Speaker 5: Dadia and the Zodiac, but it's just an evolution, and
Speaker 5: it's the two.
Speaker 1: Are the same. Baber notes that the investigation has established
Speaker 1: that Margolis Merrill wasn't either close or close enough proximity
Speaker 1: to the murders of Elizabeth Short, Ray Davis, Sherry, Joe Bates,
Speaker 1: and the five Zodiac victims, all of which remain cases
Speaker 1: officially unsolved, all of which involved a perpetrator who showed
Speaker 1: a mania for publicity.
Speaker 3: He's either most I'm not guy on the planet, or
Speaker 3: he's the killer. He's the perpetrator of these crops.
Speaker 1: Marvin Merrill's professional apex may have come briefly in the
Speaker 1: middle sixties, when he had left the art world for
Speaker 1: the business world and was president and chief engineer of
Speaker 1: Pacific Project's Consultants, a company planning the construction of a
Speaker 1: ten story hotel on the beach in Oceanside. Merrill called
Speaker 1: a press conference to announce his plans and got a
Speaker 1: good run from it, but the project never came to fruition,
Speaker 1: and Meryll was eventually sued by his investors, who wanted
Speaker 1: their money back. According to members of Merrill's family, other
Speaker 1: real estate ventures and development plans followed, but none led
Speaker 1: to success, like the speculative purchase of land near a
Speaker 1: projected freeway interchange that never came to be. Meryl's son
Speaker 1: described home life at this time as always being tense,
Speaker 1: with the family living hand to mouth and his father
Speaker 1: often moody and physically abused, even though money was sure.
Speaker 1: During these times, Merrill kept a second residence in San Jose,
Speaker 1: where he did work for Intel, the microchip company. Efforts
Speaker 1: to confirm this through Intel were unsuccessful, but in documents
Speaker 1: turned over to the Baber team by Meryll's son, there
Speaker 1: are Intel business cards and W two tax forms issued
Speaker 1: by the company to Merrill. It's unclear whether this was
Speaker 1: a side job or another career change, but by the
Speaker 1: early seventies, Merrill was back in the car business, operating
Speaker 1: an auto repair and tire shop called Buck Savers. He
Speaker 1: was also back in trouble with the law. Four days
Speaker 1: before Christmas nineteen seventy one, Merrill was jailed on multiple
Speaker 1: charges of defrauding his customers at the shop. Two months later,
Speaker 1: he was found guilty in court and sentenced to thirty
Speaker 1: days in jail and three years probation. Those three years
Speaker 1: coincided with three years of silence from the Zodiac, a
Speaker 1: period of time when no letters and no ciphers were
Speaker 1: sent to the media.
Speaker 3: During this investigation. From the time it starts to the
Speaker 3: time he's arrested, to the time he's given probation to
Speaker 3: the time probation ends, the Zodiac doesn't appear again. There's
Speaker 3: no letters, no phone calls.
Speaker 2: No attacks.
Speaker 3: As soon as Marvin Merrill's probation ends early, all of
Speaker 3: a sudden, that same month he reappears, and then we
Speaker 3: have this first letter in thirty four months.
Speaker 1: Merril's second marriage came to an end in nineteen seventy
Speaker 1: eight after what family members told us was a physical
Speaker 1: altercation with a teenage child. After that, the family began
Speaker 1: to lose track of Merrill. His son told us he
Speaker 1: had lost touch with his father for nearly a decade.
Speaker 1: After the divorce, records show that Merrill eventually moved north
Speaker 1: toward the middle of California, with the addresses in Ascadero
Speaker 1: and Creston, before finally landing in Santa Barbara. Copies of
Speaker 1: tax returns from these years show him making very little
Speaker 1: money and alternately listing his occupation as engineer, ex engineer,
Speaker 1: and shopkeeper. During his last decade, it appears, at least
Speaker 1: through banking records, that he used all variations of his
Speaker 1: aliases and kept separate checking.
Speaker 2: Accounts under each name.
Speaker 1: In nineteen ninety two, while he was facing a terminal
Speaker 1: cancer diagnosis, Margos rented an art studio in Santa Barbara
Speaker 1: for seven hundred dollars a month. He used the name
Speaker 1: Marty Merrill and signed a five year lease commencing on
Speaker 1: April first. Perhaps that was an April fool's joke from
Speaker 1: a man who had little.
Speaker 2: More than a year to live. It was likely in.
Speaker 1: That rented studio on Monticito Street that Marty Merrill created
Speaker 1: a sketch titled Elizabeth and depicting the upper half of
Speaker 1: nude woman with dark hair and the word Zodiac hidden
Speaker 1: in the shading. It would be the last of the
Speaker 1: many clues left behind by a human cipher.
Speaker 3: I believe that his final days, knowing that his life
Speaker 3: was coming to an end, and I have to say
Speaker 3: this for Marvin having an understanding of him that I
Speaker 3: believe he may have had some some regret for what
Speaker 3: he did to Elizabeth. And the reason I say that
Speaker 3: is that that sketch of particular isn't one that I
Speaker 3: think is him bragging. I think it's his calling card
Speaker 3: so that some days someone would come along and discover
Speaker 3: it and put the pieces together, maybe for his own reason,
Speaker 3: for some reasons, meaning that he would get he finally
Speaker 3: have his name and face attached to these crimes officially,
Speaker 3: so he can go down, you know, in history as
Speaker 3: being the Zodiac and the Black Avenger. But I also
Speaker 3: believe that he wanted he wanted the world to know
Speaker 3: that he hadn't forgotten Elizabeth.
Speaker 1: I'm Michael Conley, and you have been listening to Killer
Speaker 1: in the Code Solving the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases.
Speaker 1: This chapter was written and produced by Michael Conley. It
Speaker 1: was edited by Teroll Lee Langford, with sound design, music
Speaker 1: and post production services by Mark Henry Phillips. Go to
Speaker 1: our website killerindecode dot com for more information on the investigation.
Speaker 1: Send us questions and we will try to answer them
Speaker 1: in an upcoming roundtable discussion, and be sure to subscribe
Speaker 1: to the podcast so you will know when new chapters
Speaker 1: are available. We'll be back soon of chapter seven.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening.