Speaker 1: Welcome back to Killer in the Code, solving the Black
Speaker 1: Dahlia and Zodiac cases. I'm your host, Michael Connolly. We
Speaker 1: are calling this Season 2 because we've been gone for
Speaker 1: a few months, but technically it is Chapter 11. And
Speaker 1: we weren't on vacation, I can assure you of that.
Speaker 1: The investigation headed by Alex Faber and backed by a
Speaker 1: team of veteran homicide investigators and codebreakers has continued, and
Speaker 1: we have some interesting updates, and new information and evidence
Speaker 1: to bring you over the next few episodes. First, I
Speaker 1: think we should do a quick recap of the investigation
Speaker 1: and get up to date. This is such a big
Speaker 1: and sprawling story about two of the most infamous crimes
Speaker 1: in California history that it's hard to put it into
Speaker 1: a brief synopsis, but I'm going to try so we
Speaker 1: can get to the new stuff sooner rather than later.
Speaker 1: 51-year-old Alex Baber is a citizen sleuth. He runs an
Speaker 1: organization called Cold Case Consultants of America. He's on the
Speaker 1: autism spectrum, but doesn't consider it any sort of affliction.
Speaker 1: He says it gives him a mindset that brings new
Speaker 1: ideas and fresh angles to cold case investigation. It allows
Speaker 1: him to find the hidden beneath the hidden. It also
Speaker 1: means that when he fixates on a case, he becomes
Speaker 1: relentless in his pursuit of it. An amateur and self-taught cryptanalyst,
Speaker 1: he has long been obsessed with the codes left behind
Speaker 1: by the Zodiac, the serial killer that held Northern California
Speaker 1: in the grip of fear almost 60 years ago. Until now,
Speaker 1: the Zodiac has never been identified. In the wake of
Speaker 1: the five seemingly random murders attributed to him, the Zodiac
Speaker 1: sent four different ciphers to local newspapers. The first was
Speaker 1: partially broken almost immediately. The next three withstood the test
Speaker 1: of time and the best minds in cryptology until very
Speaker 1: recent years. Baber focused on the Z13, so-called because it
Speaker 1: contained a scramble of only 13 letters and symbols. As such,
Speaker 1: it was deemed by many in the field of cryptanalytics
Speaker 1: to be unbreakable because it was so few characters involved.
Speaker 1: it would be impervious to traditional code-breaking methods and tools.
Speaker 1: The Z13 was considered by many to be the holy
Speaker 1: grail of Zodiac ciphers because the killer claimed in his
Speaker 1: note to the media that it contained his name. Three
Speaker 1: years ago, Baber built a database of 71 million names
Speaker 1: that fit the 13-digit cipher and then used a variety
Speaker 1: of screening tools, artificial intelligence, in government databases to whittle
Speaker 1: the list down name by name until he had cut
Speaker 1: it to double digits. A deeper dive ensued, and a
Speaker 1: list of 35 names was knocked down to 14, and
Speaker 1: then 14 became 7, and eventually there was one name
Speaker 1: left standing, Marvin Merrill. It wasn't long before Baber determined
Speaker 1: through social security records that Marvin Merrill was an alias
Speaker 1: used by a man named Marvin Margolis, a known suspect
Speaker 1: in the so-called Black Dahlia case, the infamous killing of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short in Los Angeles in 1947. The name was
Speaker 1: already in a database Baber had accumulated when he had
Speaker 1: previously researched the Black Dahlia case. Baber enlisted a team
Speaker 1: of three veteran homicide investigators to check his work and
Speaker 1: let the chips fall where they may. They included Rick Jackson,
Speaker 1: who worked homicides for the Los Angeles Police Department for
Speaker 1: nearly 30 years and was now investigating cold cases for
Speaker 1: the San Mateo County Sheriff's Office in Northern California. His partner,
Speaker 1: Dave Tresmonton, also joined the BABA review, and the third
Speaker 1: addition was Missy Roberts, a veteran LAPD homicide investigator who
Speaker 1: retired as officer in charge of the cold case unit.
Speaker 1: During the last 15 years of her career with the LAPD,
Speaker 1: Roberts also had custody of the Black Dahlia case. All
Speaker 1: three of these seasoned investigators reviewed Baber's work and arrived
Speaker 1: at the same conclusion. Marvin Margolis, a.k.a. Marvin Merrill, was
Speaker 1: responsible for these murders. Also added to the investigation was
Speaker 1: a team of cryptanalysts led by Ed Giorgio and including
Speaker 1: Patrick Henry and Rich Wisniewski. Together, these men had more
Speaker 1: than 100 years' experience making and breaking codes for the
Speaker 1: National Security Agency. In fact, Giorgio is the only man
Speaker 1: in history to serve as both chief codebreaker and chief
Speaker 1: codemaker for the NSA. The impeccable credentials of the team
Speaker 1: Baber put together are important. If you have listened to
Speaker 1: the earlier episodes of this podcast, you know that there
Speaker 1: has been pushback from some to Baber's work and conclusions.
Speaker 1: The pushback comes from those with vested interests in other
Speaker 1: suspects they have long clinged to. If Baber's team is right,
Speaker 1: then they are wrong, and nobody likes being proved wrong.
Speaker 1: We will get into all that in later episodes of
Speaker 1: the podcast, but suffice it to say that these six
Speaker 1: highly experienced and accomplished professionals have expertise that dwarfs that
Speaker 1: of the critics of this investigation. They have reviewed and
Speaker 1: re-reviewed Babers work and find it convincing. And through their
Speaker 1: own work, they have even added evidence that points to
Speaker 1: Meryl Margolis, and they remain unswayed by the critics. They
Speaker 1: say these crimes are solved. This is Rick Jackson.
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm totally still on this. And as we go,
Speaker 2: the connections between Meryl Margolis to the cases that we've
Speaker 2: connected into get even stronger. And again, I have no
Speaker 2: doubt that this is the guy. The evidence that we've presented,
Speaker 2: the connections we've presented is extraordinary.
Speaker 1: And this is Mitzi Roberts. I am fully committed to
Speaker 1: this suspect.
Speaker 3: I wouldn't be still working so strongly on it if
Speaker 3: I didn't believe that we were on to the right person,
Speaker 3: that this is 100% the lead we should be tracking down.
Speaker 1: I still say that.
Speaker 3: The evidence that we have and the amount of the
Speaker 3: circumstantial evidence is overwhelming.
Speaker 4: We have more evidence in this case.
Speaker 3: I don't like to say we have less evidence in
Speaker 3: my other cases, but we have more evidence in this
Speaker 3: case than I have in several of the cases I
Speaker 3: can think of where they've resulted in prosecutions, like difficult
Speaker 3: cases that have resulted in prosecutions. This case, I believe
Speaker 3: we have more evidence even.
Speaker 1: In those cases. Since we last posted an episode, the
Speaker 1: investigation has continued and we have widened the peer review.
Speaker 1: Ed Giorgio has convened a work group with dozens of
Speaker 1: professional cryptanalysts joining the review. So far, not one has
Speaker 1: punched a hole in Baber and his team's work on this.
Speaker 1: And these are not amateurs or hobbyists. They are pros.
Speaker 1: We have also gone out wider in law enforcement and
Speaker 1: the justice system to peer review the findings. In the
Speaker 1: episodes ahead, you will hear from judges and prosecutors and
Speaker 1: what they think of the evidence the team has put together. Okay,
Speaker 1: so let's get this going. One of the most significant
Speaker 1: advances in the investigation made since you last heard from
Speaker 1: us was the acquiring of Marvin Margolis' 221-page military personnel file.
Speaker 1: It contained several new pieces of the puzzle that was
Speaker 1: Marvin Margolis. new insights into this suspect's damaged psyche, and
Speaker 1: direct connections to the crimes the team is investigating. Finally,
Speaker 1: and most importantly, it allows us to hear from Margolis
Speaker 1: in his own words, a harrowing account of the traumatic
Speaker 1: and life-altering experiences he had while serving in the military
Speaker 1: during World War II. This is Alex Baber.
Speaker 5: All right, so as far as Marvin Margolis' background, what
Speaker 5: we learned from his military file that Rick secured, We
Speaker 5: were able to get the detailed psych evaluations. Now, what
Speaker 5: this does for us, it gives us a deeper dive
Speaker 5: into his psychology.
Speaker 1: And this is Mitzi Roberts.
Speaker 6: It's the closest I think we could get to talking
Speaker 6: to him with him not being here, but being able
Speaker 6: to like have his words and kind of have a
Speaker 6: pretty clear picture when he left the service of his
Speaker 6: mindset and And, you know, with the PTSD and, you know,
Speaker 6: he definitely left the service being in a dark, like
Speaker 6: a dark, dark place, you know, not a healthy mind
Speaker 6: state at all.
Speaker 1: Getting the file was no easy task. As a homicide
Speaker 1: investigator who has worked cases across five decades, Rick Jackson
Speaker 1: has often had to run down the military service of suspects,
Speaker 1: victims and witnesses in cases. The place you start is
Speaker 1: the National Personnel Records Center in St. Louis, Missouri. The
Speaker 1: NPRC is one of the largest federal archives in existence.
Speaker 1: The building alone covers seven acres and holds more than
Speaker 1: 100 million military and civil service personnel files. While digitizing
Speaker 1: began in the 90s, finding a singular hard file dating
Speaker 1: back to the 1940s is not like finding a book
Speaker 1: in a library. It's more like finding a needle in
Speaker 1: a haystack. Military records are divided by branch of service
Speaker 1: and date of enlistment or discharge. Added to that, a
Speaker 1: massive fire in 1973 destroyed millions of military files while
Speaker 1: leaving much of the rest in disarray. But over the
Speaker 1: years as a homicide investigator, Jackson learned who to go
Speaker 1: to and what to ask at the NPRC. After a
Speaker 1: lengthy search, a hard copy of Margolis' full file was
Speaker 1: found and shared with Jackson.
Speaker 2: As a veteran homicide detective, I mean, you always want
Speaker 2: to throw out the biggest net you can to get
Speaker 2: information on where you're going in an investigation, whether it's
Speaker 2: a suspect or whether it's witnesses that you have issues with.
Speaker 2: But with a suspect, you really want to do that
Speaker 2: because you want to learn everything you can about somebody,
Speaker 2: you know, and time and time again, some things may,
Speaker 2: you know, may lead you away from something. In this case,
Speaker 2: it was leading me more and more toward Marvin Margolis
Speaker 2: as a suspect. And that's just what you do. That's
Speaker 2: part of your training. You want to get information no
Speaker 2: matter where it ends up leading. That's part of your
Speaker 2: mandate as a good investigator.
Speaker 1: The file contains a lot to go over and many
Speaker 1: of the documents you can see on our website, KillerInTheCode.com.
Speaker 1: As we established in the first season of the podcast,
Speaker 1: records from early investigations by the Los Angeles police and
Speaker 1: the L.A. County grand jury found that Marvin Margolis knew
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short and even lived with her briefly just three
Speaker 1: months before her tortured and severed body was found in
Speaker 1: a trash-strewn lot the morning of January 15, 1947. Police
Speaker 1: records refer to Margolis as the last known boyfriend of
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short. He was a pre-med student at the University
Speaker 1: of Southern California at the time of the murder and
Speaker 1: had served as a combat medic attached to a Marine
Speaker 1: unit that fought on Ogonalla during World War II. It
Speaker 1: was thought by authorities at the time that whoever killed
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short had to have had a degree of medical
Speaker 1: skill to conduct the bisection of her body. All of
Speaker 1: this made Margolis a key suspect in the early going
Speaker 1: of the case. He was interviewed twice by detectives and
Speaker 1: was deemed deceitful each time, primarily because he first lied
Speaker 1: about even knowing Elizabeth Short. But Margolis was never arrested
Speaker 1: or charged at the time. The lead detective on the
Speaker 1: case would later testify under oath to a grand jury
Speaker 1: that Margolis was a top suspect. He also said Margolis
Speaker 1: couldn't be ruled in or out as the killer. There
Speaker 1: just wasn't enough evidence to charge him or clear him.
Speaker 1: At the time of that detective's testimony, they had lost
Speaker 1: track of Margolis. He had left Los Angeles and returned
Speaker 1: to his native Chicago. Subsequent efforts by the investigators from
Speaker 1: Los Angeles and Chicago to find him there failed. There
Speaker 1: were no computers and digital connectivity back then, and they
Speaker 1: apparently missed their chance when he was arrested and briefly
Speaker 1: detained on a fraud charge. But shortly after that, he
Speaker 1: left Chicago, changed his name to Marvin Merrill, and began
Speaker 1: a series of moves as well as career and name
Speaker 1: changes that took him from one side of the country
Speaker 1: to the other before he landed permanently back in California
Speaker 1: in the early 1960s. He died in Santa Barbara in 1993.
Speaker 1: He was buried in a veteran's cemetery under his birth name,
Speaker 1: Marvin Margolis. Witnesses interviewed during the initial investigation of Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Short's murder, as well as a policewoman who said she
Speaker 1: encountered her the night before her murder, said that she
Speaker 1: was fearful of a former boyfriend who was an ex-Marine.
Speaker 1: The military records we all obtained confirmed that Margolis was
Speaker 1: not a Marine. Though he would claim at times after
Speaker 1: the war to have been a Marine, he was technically
Speaker 1: a Navy corpsman or medic. assigned to the 1st Marines,
Speaker 1: the combat division that made the first landing on the
Speaker 1: Japanese island of Okinawa and engaged in one of the
Speaker 1: bloodiest battles.
Speaker 4: Of the war.
Speaker 1: According to his service file, Margolis walked into a Navy
Speaker 1: recruiting office in Chicago and enlisted on March 11, 1943.
Speaker 1: It was two weeks before his 18th birthday and his father, Isidore,
Speaker 1: had to sign off on his enlistment because he was underage.
Speaker 1: Margolis was then sent off to boot camp at Naval
Speaker 1: Station Great Lakes, located on the Illinois side of Lake Michigan.
Speaker 1: At the Great Lakes base, Margolis requested training as a medic,
Speaker 1: and the request was approved by the base's commanding officer,
Speaker 1: Captain Robert Emmett. This leads us to a potential connection
Speaker 1: to the Zodiac case. The first cipher composed and sent
Speaker 1: to the media by the Zodiac in 1969 was called
Speaker 1: the Z408 because it was 408 characters long. It was
Speaker 1: quickly decoded, for the most part, by a high school
Speaker 1: teacher and his wife who saw it in the local newspapers.
Speaker 1: I say for the most part because the couple decoded
Speaker 1: all but the last 18 digits of the cipher. Those
Speaker 1: last characters, which then became known as Z18, were thought
Speaker 1: to possibly just be gibberish added by the Zodiac to
Speaker 1: fill out the code grid. But other amateur codebreakers and
Speaker 1: professional cryptanalysts at the time reported to police that the
Speaker 1: remaining characters were an anagram for Robert Emmett, the hippie.
Speaker 1: You have to remember these killings took place in 1969
Speaker 1: and 70, just after the Summer of Love in San
Speaker 1: Francisco and the birth of the hippie movement. Police investigating
Speaker 1: the Zodiac murders at the time started checking out local
Speaker 1: men by that name. One investigator was quoted in the
Speaker 1: newspaper as saying, I am looking for Robert Emmett, hippie
Speaker 1: or otherwise. But the lead went nowhere, perhaps because the
Speaker 1: Robert Emmett they were looking for was far from Northern California.
Speaker 1: So is it just a coincidence that our suspect in
Speaker 1: the Zodiac killings, Marvin Margolis, a.k.a. Marvin Merrill, happened to
Speaker 1: have a commanding officer in the Navy named Robert Emmett?
Speaker 1: I know that the critics of this investigation will dismiss
Speaker 1: it as such. But remember this, Robert Emmett played a
Speaker 1: very important role in Marvin Margolis' life.
Speaker 5: This is the guy that sent him down the road.
Speaker 5: He sent him to medical school.
Speaker 1: And it was that order that ultimately led to the
Speaker 1: traumatic experience that very clearly, and by his own words,
Speaker 1: impacted Margolis for the rest of his life. This is
Speaker 1: veteran homicide investigator Missy Roberts' take on it. Again..
Speaker 7: This is the reason why my mind hasn't changed on
Speaker 7: him as a suspect is because it just, the evidence
Speaker 7: just continues to sort of, the.
Speaker 8: Coincidences continue to grow. And like, we've talked about this before.
Speaker 8: And when is it no longer a coincidence and now
Speaker 8: it's evidence?
Speaker 1: Ed Giorgio, the former NSA co-breaker, is also quick to
Speaker 1: point out to the critics that that this is not
Speaker 1: a connection that could have been manufactured by Baber or
Speaker 1: anyone else on the team. The name Robert Emmett was
Speaker 1: part of the official Zodiac investigation and in Margolis' military
Speaker 1: record before Alex Baber was even born.
Speaker 9: That's a name we're given. We didn't find that name.
Speaker 1: We're given that name.
Speaker 10: And there is a relationship that is very unlikely at random,
Speaker 10: but people will just look at it as a coincidence, right?
Speaker 10: That's the whole nature of this whole set of evidence
Speaker 10: is that you have to say about 40 times, oh,
Speaker 10: that's just a coincidence.
Speaker 9: And if any one of those 40 indicators are true,
Speaker 9: then the whole thing is true.
Speaker 5: Okay.
Speaker 9: And in order to be false, all 40 have to
Speaker 9: be false. So it only takes one to make it true,
Speaker 9: but you got to prove all 40 are false. And
Speaker 9: that's just very unlikely. that you would be able to
Speaker 9: do that. So all of this circumstantial evidence doesn't really
Speaker 9: stand on its own. It's that only when you look
Speaker 9: at all of it together.
Speaker 1: Patrick Henry, another veteran NSA cryptanalyst working with Giorgio, points
Speaker 1: out that the circumstantial or forensic evidence discovered outside of
Speaker 1: the Zodiac ciphers lends significant support to Baber's work and
Speaker 1: his solution to the My Name is cipher. Finding the
Speaker 1: name Robert Emmett in both the Zodiac Cipher and Margolis'
Speaker 1: military record is just one example of how the totality
Speaker 1: of the investigation is convincing.
Speaker 4: There isn't enough in the cryptography to conclusively say, yes,
Speaker 4: this is the right answer. But when you add in
Speaker 4: all the forensic information, and hopefully there will be more
Speaker 4: of that coming out soon, it becomes more and more convincing.
Speaker 4: All we can say from a cryptographic perspective is that
Speaker 4: this is a plausible solution and it doesn't fall apart
Speaker 4: when you poke at it. When you poke at it,
Speaker 4: you find things that seem to reinforce the solution being correct.
Speaker 1: Now, if you listen to the first season of the podcast,
Speaker 1: you'll remember that an amateur codebreaker in Sweden came up
Speaker 1: with a different name when he attempted to crack Z18.
Speaker 1: He found the name Marvin Merrill, matching Baber's solution to
Speaker 1: the Z13 cipher. His work and result were then confirmed
Speaker 1: by Baber as well as Ed Giorgio and his team.
Speaker 1: So what does this mean? Is it Robert Emmett or
Speaker 1: Marvin Merrill in the decrypt? Is one solution right and
Speaker 1: the other one wrong? Well, the truth is they both
Speaker 1: work on different levels. The Robert Emmett name comes from
Speaker 1: a simple anagram, while the Marvin Merrill reference comes from
Speaker 1: a more complicated encryption structure known as the transposition columnar method.
Speaker 1: Employing them both in the same cipher speaks to the
Speaker 1: author's skill as a codemaker. This is Alex Baber.
Speaker 5: I think the important thing about the Z18 having two
Speaker 5: possible solutions, one being the initial solution of Robert Emmett,
Speaker 5: the hippie, which was presented by crypto experts back in 1969,
Speaker 5: August of 69. And then it was followed up by
Speaker 5: Detective Lynch of Leia PD seeking out any suspects that
Speaker 5: would fit that name, Decipher. And then us discovering that
Speaker 5: later on within the military files. So what we do
Speaker 5: know is that if this is in fact the case
Speaker 5: that Marvin was thinking on another level, He was able
Speaker 5: to encrypt not one, but two names, and both of
Speaker 5: them had a different purpose. One being his identity, as
Speaker 5: he called it, was in the 408 letter to the Chronicle.
Speaker 5: He says within this cipher, meaning that section of it,
Speaker 5: his identity existed. And then for him to come back
Speaker 5: and layer his actual name or alias at that time
Speaker 5: beneath the Robert Emmett was on another level. I've never
Speaker 5: witnessed anything like that previously in any of the texts
Speaker 5: that I've read or any of the documents I've researched.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's go back to the military records. On Robert
Speaker 1: Emmett's order, Marvin Margolis received medical training and was then
Speaker 1: transferred to a Navy base on Puget Sound, Washington, where
Speaker 1: he was assigned to work in a hospital dispensary. By
Speaker 1: his own account, Margolis, who was Jewish, faced systemic anti-Semitism
Speaker 1: at the base. His military file contains an eight-page letter
Speaker 1: he wrote many years later to the Department of the
Speaker 1: Navy as well as the President of the United States.
Speaker 1: As Alex Baber says, the letter gives us a window
Speaker 1: into Margolis' mindset following the war.
Speaker 5: So we're able to hear him from beyond the grave.
Speaker 1: Parts of the letter will be read here by actor
Speaker 1: Scott Clace.
Speaker 11: At the dispensary when I was assigned to it, I
Speaker 11: was the most eager hospital corpsman they had. I mean,
Speaker 11: I took anything they dished out. Night emergency duty, surgery,
Speaker 11: VD duty, prisoner duty, hospital duty. marine target range duty, etc.
Speaker 1: Etc.
Speaker 11: I wanted to be a good Navy man, a regular.
Speaker 11: But a Jew in that environment, amidst some of the
Speaker 11: most bigoted young men I have ever known, I was
Speaker 11: a target for deprivations and subordinations. I took them, but
Speaker 11: they weren't enough for.
Speaker 1: The bigots in power.
Speaker 11: They were adverse to my passing the examination for third-class
Speaker 11: petty officer and discussed right in front of me that
Speaker 11: a Jew in the office, would not be tolerated.
Speaker 1: Then they conceived a plan. Margoison went on in the
Speaker 1: letter to explain that the plan was to saddle him
Speaker 1: with false deficiencies to the point that he would be
Speaker 1: transferred elsewhere. That eventually happened when he was transferred to
Speaker 1: Camp Pendleton in Southern California and attached as a corpsman
Speaker 1: to the 1st Marines, a combat division heading to the
Speaker 1: war in the Pacific. In his letter... Margoas called it
Speaker 1: a raw deal that placed him in one of the
Speaker 1: bloodiest battlefields in the war. What Margoas encountered during the
Speaker 1: battle for control of Okinawa was indeed traumatic. It was
Speaker 1: the largest amphibious assault of the war in the Pacific.
Speaker 1: It was also one of the costliest. The casualties were staggering.
Speaker 1: More than 14,000 American soldiers died on the island during
Speaker 1: the battle. Scores more were wounded, and Margoas was in
Speaker 1: the thick of it. In the letter he later wrote,
Speaker 1: he described one night and day of the fight.
Speaker 11: On or about May 17, 1945, at a point position
Speaker 11: along the front line, my squad encountered a lengthy mortar
Speaker 11: barrage from the enemy position, which was in the visible distance.
Speaker 11: It began at dusk and lasted into the darkness of night.
Speaker 11: As the squad's Navy combat medical corpsman, it was my
Speaker 11: job to answer the calls for first aid, remove wounded
Speaker 11: personnel from harm's way, and to establish means for instantaneous
Speaker 11: evacuation of the injured from the line. On that day,
Speaker 11: my work seemed endless. From moments after the onset of
Speaker 11: the barrage, I was called to leave my foxhole and
Speaker 11: rush through the saturation of explosions, often being knocked down
Speaker 11: while answering to the screams for my help. And when
Speaker 11: I arrived at the site of each hurt man, There
Speaker 11: was no room for me to hide from the blasts
Speaker 11: and the whirls of shrapnel. I kneeled to help the men,
Speaker 11: and I prayed to survive.
Speaker 1: That was one night in a battle that lasted 82
Speaker 1: days before the Allied forces finally emerged victorious. But Margolis
Speaker 1: didn't make it to the finish line. Service records show
Speaker 1: that 63 days into the battle, he was shipped back
Speaker 1: to the United States where he was diagnosed as, quote, unable...
Speaker 1: to adjust further to the demands of service. I'm reading
Speaker 1: now from the medical records filed during Margos' stay at
Speaker 1: a military hospital in San Francisco. The onset of his
Speaker 1: complaints began when an enemy shell struck the top of
Speaker 1: a cave that he was in, burying all but his head.
Speaker 1: Several hours later, he extricated himself and was evacuated from
Speaker 1: the island because of amnesia, headache, tenseness, and confusions. Within
Speaker 1: two or three days after admission, his confusion cleared, but
Speaker 1: the patient continued to complain of tension, headaches, and combat dreams.
Speaker 1: The past history reveals this patient was always quick-tempered, had nightmares,
Speaker 1: and walked in his sleep until the age of 14 years.
Speaker 1: There was present a fear of the dark and easy excitability.
Speaker 1: Psychiatric examination reveals a calm, quiet, resentful individual who shows
Speaker 1: ample evidence of open aggression. The content of thought shows
Speaker 1: a beginning hypochondria and self-seated resentment. The mood is one
Speaker 1: of unhappiness. This report mirrors the summaries of other psychological
Speaker 1: examinations discussed in earlier episodes of the podcast. After he
Speaker 1: was treated at the hospital in San Francisco, Margolis received
Speaker 1: a general discharge from the Navy with a mental disability pension.
Speaker 1: but he also received a presidential unit citation given to
Speaker 1: the 1st Marines Division that reads, quote, for extraordinary heroism
Speaker 1: in action against enemy Japanese forces during the invasion and
Speaker 1: capture of Okinawa. Margolis would later claim that he had
Speaker 1: been wounded in the battle for Okinawa. He said while
Speaker 1: treating an injured soldier, he was hit by shrapnel splitting
Speaker 1: open one of his thumbs. But because he was needed
Speaker 1: on the battlefield, He dressed the wound himself and continued
Speaker 1: to help others. He never filed any paperwork detailing how
Speaker 1: he was wounded. The letter he would write in 1987
Speaker 1: to the president and the Department of Navy was a
Speaker 1: request that he receive a Purple Heart Medal given to
Speaker 1: those wounded in battle.
Speaker 11: I do want my Purple Heart. I feel that I
Speaker 11: want to die without the innuendo of any sort of cowardice.
Speaker 11: I bled and fought and rebelled. rose in the fields
Speaker 11: of battle when Marines, brave as they certainly were, clawed
Speaker 11: the earth to reach another inch of depth in their holes.
Speaker 11: My soul deserves the recognition. My heirs should be proud.
Speaker 11: With all due respect, I request my medal.
Speaker 1: It seems clear in the letter why Margolis believed there
Speaker 1: was innuendo of cowardice to his service. It was because
Speaker 1: he was withdrawn from the island before the battle was over.
Speaker 1: He also wrote the following about his experiences on Okinawa
Speaker 1: and after.
Speaker 11: I am proud to have served there with the brave
Speaker 11: men whose knees twitched like mine and who shared the
Speaker 11: horrors of fear, blood, and daily deaths. I have been
Speaker 11: ashamed all these years for the name the Navy gave
Speaker 11: my ailment, nervous condition. which I cannot relate to, except
Speaker 11: that I am and have been suffering with intense anxiousness
Speaker 11: since I left the service. It is my firm belief
Speaker 11: that my failure to become tuned to the social world's
Speaker 11: requisite for success all these years can only be attributed
Speaker 11: to the destruction of my pride by your Navy.
Speaker 1: It is interesting to note Margolis' use of the word twitch.
Speaker 1: It's not all that common of a word, and yet
Speaker 1: it was used by both the Zodiac in his letters
Speaker 1: and by the killer of Sherry Jo Bates in Riverside,
Speaker 1: a case which we drew links to, Marvin Merrill, in
Speaker 1: Season 1 of the podcast. In the following episodes, we
Speaker 1: will have more on the linguistic analysis conducted during this investigation.
Speaker 1: Twitch is not the only commonality that has been found.
Speaker 1: There are many. Margolis's request that he be awarded a
Speaker 1: Purple Heart was denied by the Navy. The last document
Speaker 1: in his military file carries the rejection based on there
Speaker 1: being no evidence to support his claim of being wounded
Speaker 1: during battle. After his separation from the military, Mark Willis
Speaker 1: moved to Los Angeles, where he enrolled as a pre-med
Speaker 1: student at the University of Southern California. It was while
Speaker 1: he was a student there that he briefly shared an
Speaker 1: apartment in Hollywood with a young woman named Elizabeth Short.
Speaker 1: It is unknown if she was aware that she was
Speaker 1: spending time with a man who had been diagnosed as
Speaker 1: dangerously aggressive and was collecting a mental disability pension while
Speaker 1: pursuing a medical degree he would never receive.
Speaker 5: As far as him post-World War II, he was a
Speaker 5: ticking time bomb. We know from his two psych evaluations,
Speaker 5: which are full reports within the military file, before we
Speaker 5: just had the summary that was in the 1949-1950 Manchuria Inquest,
Speaker 5: which covered a great deal of the diagnosis, but it
Speaker 5: didn't give a full read. Now we can see beyond
Speaker 5: that and realize that You know, you have this young
Speaker 5: man who suffered trauma, overseas specific theater. He comes back.
Speaker 5: He's not getting the treatment that he needs from the VA.
Speaker 5: They give him a 50% disability, mental. And then they
Speaker 5: start to reduce that over the next five years. But
Speaker 5: he's on the street in Hollywood, as you have said.
Speaker 5: You know, he's walking around. He's interacting with other individuals,
Speaker 5: most of them being civilian women. And he meets Elizabeth Short,
Speaker 5: and he started a personal relationship. And knowing Elizabeth Short
Speaker 5: and her background and being a free spirit, it was
Speaker 5: just a perfect storm. It was a matter of time
Speaker 5: before this came to an apex for her head.
Speaker 1: Baber's investigation has determined that Elizabeth Short first met Margolis
Speaker 1: in July of 1946. That was barely a year from
Speaker 1: his experiences on Okinawa. and less than a year after
Speaker 1: his discharge from the Navy on a mental disability. This
Speaker 1: is Rick Jackson.
Speaker 2: Getting Margolis' military files was huge. What you get from
Speaker 2: that is really a keen understanding of where he was
Speaker 2: psychologically when he left the military, when he left the
Speaker 2: island of Okinawa and all the trauma that he went
Speaker 2: through and suffered. obviously what it did to him cycle
Speaker 2: from a psychological perspective. And, and what you have in
Speaker 2: these military files is a showing of just how psychologically
Speaker 2: troubled and damaged he was and the danger that was
Speaker 2: part of his background now. And yet it's only a
Speaker 2: short time, like about a year later that he meets
Speaker 2: Elizabeth short. So it's, train going out of control really
Speaker 2: and she's in the path of it a short time
Speaker 2: later and it just gives us such an awareness of
Speaker 2: where this could potentially lead not just with Elizabeth Short
Speaker 2: but anybody he might have met back in those days
Speaker 2: right after he went through all this stuff in the military.
Speaker 1: There's information in Margolis' military file that may connect him
Speaker 1: to another murder of a young woman in Los Angeles
Speaker 1: more than a year before the Black Dahlia murder. We
Speaker 1: will get into that later in this season's podcast. Perhaps
Speaker 1: what could be the most important finding in the military
Speaker 1: file is a complete set of Margolis' fingerprints taken upon
Speaker 1: his enlistment in 1943. I'm not talking about the AI-generated
Speaker 1: image of fingerprints floating around on the internet. These are
Speaker 1: the real fingerprints, and as far as the investigative team
Speaker 1: has been able to determine, these are the only prints
Speaker 1: belonging to Margolis that are known to exist. The Baber
Speaker 1: team has provided the fingerprints to all law enforcement agencies
Speaker 1: charged with investigating these crimes. Now it is a waiting
Speaker 1: game to see what they will do with them. Mitzi Roberts,
Speaker 1: who retired after a 30-year career with the LAPD, says
Speaker 1: police departments often look upon help or evidence from outsiders
Speaker 1: with a hesitant eye.
Speaker 8: There is a reluctancy in law enforcement to accept information,
Speaker 8: especially when it's somebody solving a case from somebody that's
Speaker 8: not law enforcement. There is sort of a reluctance and
Speaker 8: a wall that you have to break through.
Speaker 1: Added to that, Marvin Margolis is long dead, and with
Speaker 1: there being no chance of a prosecution of a living suspect,
Speaker 1: these agencies prioritized active cases with live suspects over those
Speaker 1: where there can be no prosecution. But should the wall
Speaker 1: be broken through, are there prints to be compared in
Speaker 1: these cases? Alex Baber says there are prints, but they
Speaker 1: are not conclusively believed to be those of the suspect
Speaker 1: in each case.
Speaker 5: All the fingerprints are... are vital to our investigation. We've
Speaker 5: been waiting for these. I sought them out myself. VA,
Speaker 5: not once but twice, told me they were unable to
Speaker 5: locate his records. They believed they were misplaced and so
Speaker 5: I went out to file. I was able to get
Speaker 5: his WD-54, which is his withdrawal paperwork, so I knew
Speaker 5: where he was stationed. I didn't know how long, but
Speaker 5: I was able to get the muster rolls right, which
Speaker 5: was separate documentation. So I was able to piece this together,
Speaker 5: but once Rick got his hands on the 221-page document,
Speaker 5: complete file it opened up the door and the fingerprints
Speaker 5: themselves allows us to either confirm um or eliminate him
Speaker 5: as a suspect in some of these crimes there's still
Speaker 5: questions based on the fingerprints surrounding the black dahlia investigation
Speaker 5: there's two they identified on the package they were um
Speaker 5: on the back of the clippings that would be the
Speaker 5: primary focus um and then the zodiac there's numerous fingerprints
Speaker 5: there's ones off paul stein's cabs the bloody ones they
Speaker 5: they believed to be from the perpetrator, which makes sense.
Speaker 5: But there's a lot of them that are blurred. They're
Speaker 5: just partials or distorted. Then you have the fingerprints from
Speaker 5: the window of Brian Hartnell's vehicle at Lake Berryessa. We
Speaker 5: can compare those. And we also have the multiple prints
Speaker 5: that are overlaid on the Napa phone booth's receiver where
Speaker 5: he made the phone call after he left Lake Berryessa.
Speaker 5: So there's plenty out there.
Speaker 1: Back in 1947, a Los Angeles newspaper published on the
Speaker 1: front page a photo of fingerprints it claimed were the
Speaker 1: Black Dahlia Avengers prints. But the prints reproduced in the
Speaker 1: newspaper are not clear, and our efforts through a private
Speaker 1: forensic service and an online fingerprint program used by law
Speaker 1: enforcement agencies have been unable to confirm a match. The
Speaker 1: military prints need to be analyzed and compared by forensic
Speaker 1: experts at these agencies. Nevertheless, think about this move. Alex
Speaker 1: Baber has given these agencies the evidence he has collected.
Speaker 1: If you were a hoaxer, a charlatan, a liar, and
Speaker 1: you held in your hand the very thing that could
Speaker 1: reveal you as such, would you offer it to law
Speaker 1: enforcement and say, let the chips fall where they may?
Speaker 1: These fingerprints were acquired by Rick Jackson, not Alex Baber.
Speaker 1: Yet it is Baber who said we must get these
Speaker 1: to law enforcement to have them officially examined and compared.
Speaker 1: Who knows if they will match, but I think it
Speaker 1: says a lot about the integrity of this investigation.
Speaker 5: Instead of running from the evidence, we're hitting it head on.
Speaker 1: Before we wrap this episode up, I should note that
Speaker 1: there is hope that we will be able to break
Speaker 1: through the wall that separates the police and outside investigators.
Speaker 1: We have learned that because of this investigation headed by Babert,
Speaker 1: the LAPD is currently attempting to extract DNA from some
Speaker 1: of the evidence in the Elizabeth Short case. This is
Speaker 1: the first active investigative move made in the Black Dahlia
Speaker 1: case in two decades. It follows an unsuccessful effort made
Speaker 1: in 2005 to extract DNA from letters written by the
Speaker 1: killer to the media and police. At the time, the
Speaker 1: police lab could not extract a DNA profile for comparison. However,
Speaker 1: the science of DNA extraction and comparison has vastly improved
Speaker 1: in the intervening decades. It's gotten smaller, meaning less material
Speaker 1: is needed for analysis. So-called touch DNA can lead to
Speaker 1: successful analysis. That wasn't the case in 2005, and this
Speaker 1: new effort may get different results. If a profile can
Speaker 1: be obtained, it could be compared to DNA from Marvin
Speaker 1: Merrill's descendants. When we know results, we will report them
Speaker 1: and let the chips fall where they may. We are
Speaker 1: going to finish this episode with more words direct from
Speaker 1: Marvin Margolis and his 1987 letter to the Navy as
Speaker 1: well as President Ronald Reagan. Again, these are his own words,
Speaker 1: written 40 years after the wartime experiences that shaped his world.
Speaker 1: They perhaps offer the best insight into his longstanding anguish.
Speaker 1: This is the entire postscript he added at the end
Speaker 1: of his letter. Freedom.
Speaker 5: Freedom.
Speaker 11: Is to be free of a fear to be free.
Speaker 11: My brave friends who fought and valiantly died shall never
Speaker 11: know that they gave their lives in vain, shall never
Speaker 11: know that they could not rest their heads on soils
Speaker 11: of home and peace, though they were free to rest
Speaker 11: in fields of war. They shall never know that they
Speaker 11: are forgotten, as leaves beneath a mulch of adverse laws
Speaker 11: and beneath the living layers of vermicular veins of bureaucracy
Speaker 11: so vast and yet so interlocked, who have in fact
Speaker 11: become another singular ruling tyrant and have destroyed the free
Speaker 11: man's pride for which he fought and died. They will
Speaker 11: never know the anguish of their comrade who bled with
Speaker 11: them and lived to see that they died in vain,
Speaker 11: to see our loss of liberty, to see us fear
Speaker 11: to be free.
Speaker 1: Alex Baber, for one, has empathy for Marvin Merrill.
Speaker 5: He developed a clear, what I believe to be animosity
Speaker 5: towards the system. You know, and there's a part of
Speaker 5: me that feels for Marvin. I hate to say it,
Speaker 5: you know, with the crimes he's committed and the people,
Speaker 5: the lives he's taken. But again, I mean, this was
Speaker 5: a kid. He was young. He was sent off overseas
Speaker 5: and put on the front lines of one of the
Speaker 5: most brutal battles in World War II. And his job
Speaker 5: is to run out into active fire and assist other soldiers,
Speaker 5: his comrades, that are wounded. A lot of them are
Speaker 5: in pieces. You know, he's having to do field surgery.
Speaker 5: And there's just this part of this that's sad about
Speaker 5: this entire story.
Speaker 12: And I think that, you know, Marvin, had he had
Speaker 12: today's medical treatment, there may never have been a Black
Speaker 12: Dahlia Avenger.
Speaker 9: There may never have been a Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to Killer in the Code, solving the
Speaker 1: Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases. We will be back next
Speaker 1: with Chapter 12. This podcast was written and produced by me,
Speaker 1: Michael Connolly. It was edited by Terrell Lee Lankford with
Speaker 1: music and post-production services provided by Mark Henry Phillips. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening.