Speaker 1: Hello on Michael Connolly, and you're listening to Killer in
Speaker 1: the Code Solving the Black Dalia and Zodiac Cases. This
Speaker 1: is chapter ten. And since we began this podcast eight
Speaker 1: weeks ago and exposed the suspect behind two of the
Speaker 1: most infamous crimes of the last century, one man has
Speaker 1: emerged as the villain in the investigation. And it's not
Speaker 1: Marvin Margolis, the suspect we need. It is the investigator
Speaker 1: who first named him. Ironically, it is citizens to lose
Speaker 1: Alex Baber, who is the focus of upset and anger
Speaker 1: in the online communities dedicated to these crimes and the
Speaker 1: many theories about who perpetrated them. We're going to take
Speaker 1: a hard look at Baber and retrace his path to
Speaker 1: what might be the greatest cold case solve of the century.
Speaker 1: Fifty year old Alex Baber is not a law enforced
Speaker 1: an officer, never has been. He's an amateur and never
Speaker 1: denies it. He describes himself as an autistic genius with
Speaker 1: a gift for finding quote the hidden beneath the hidden.
Speaker 1: He has a company called Cold Case Consultants of America
Speaker 1: and offers his skills free of charge to those who
Speaker 1: need answers. In their loved ones cases. He also conducts
Speaker 1: his own investigations into some of the greatest mysteries of
Speaker 1: our time, bringing with him a unique sense of perception, logic,
Speaker 1: and confidence. One of those mysteries was the long unsolved
Speaker 1: Zodiac case. Baber's skill set allowed him to do what
Speaker 1: most claimed was undoable, that is, break the Z thirteen
Speaker 1: cipher left behind by the Zodiac more than fifty years ago.
Speaker 1: The Z thirteen, so named for its thirteen digits, is
Speaker 1: also known as the my name is cipher because then
Speaker 1: the letter sent to the San Francisco Chronicle that contained
Speaker 1: it the Zodiac claimed that the code contained his name.
Speaker 1: With the help of a self written AI program, Baber
Speaker 1: broke the code after a month long project to weed
Speaker 1: through more than seventy million possible names that fit the cipher,
Speaker 1: including the requirement that the solution contained three letters twice
Speaker 1: and won three times. The resulting solution, the name Marvin Merrill,
Speaker 1: turned out to be the alias for Marvin Margolis, a
Speaker 1: prime suspect in the nineteen forty seven murder in Los
Speaker 1: Angeles of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dahlia.
Speaker 1: Baber then enlisted a team of investigators to help carry
Speaker 1: his discovery forward. These were not amateurs. They included Rick
Speaker 1: Jackson and Missy Roberts, both recently retired from the Los
Speaker 1: Angeles Police Department, where they worked commisized for decades. Roberts
Speaker 1: had just retired the supervisor of the cold Case unit,
Speaker 1: where she was custodian of the Black Dalia case for
Speaker 1: fifteen years. Baber's announcement of a solution to the Cipher
Speaker 1: and his linking of the Zodiac and Black Dalia cases
Speaker 1: set off a firestorm of debate and pushedback, most of
Speaker 1: which was aimed personally at Baber. His motives were questioned,
Speaker 1: his honesty was questioned, and despite the independent confirmation by
Speaker 1: three veteran codebreakers formerly with the National Security Agency, his
Speaker 1: Z thirteen solution was questioned as well. Did I say questioned?
Speaker 1: That is probably too polite a word. Baber has been
Speaker 1: attacked by the naysayers, most often with misinformation and no
Speaker 1: shortage of vitriol. So what is it about Alex Baber
Speaker 1: that upsetsed so many people? Obviously, many of his critics
Speaker 1: are well invested in competing theories as to who committed
Speaker 1: these crimes. If Baber is right, then they're wrong, but
Speaker 1: there's more to it than that. And even Baber knows.
Speaker 2: That I'm easy to dislike, and I think it's my
Speaker 2: personality and it's non intentional. I come across sometimes arrogant
Speaker 2: and conceited. It's confidence to me, but there's also a
Speaker 2: degree that I don't necessarily show the public of me
Speaker 2: being humble behind the scenes. If people could see me
Speaker 2: at two in the morning when I get frustrated because
Speaker 2: you know, I'm I've almost I'm almost there or I'm
Speaker 2: almost identified. I feel it and I know it's there,
Speaker 2: but I'm just not able to reach it yet. And
Speaker 2: you know, while I have to represent the agency and
Speaker 2: my people as being you know, strong and good at
Speaker 2: what we do, we're still human and they make mistakes,
Speaker 2: and you know, it's it's hard for me to sometimes
Speaker 2: admit that because I feel like I failed, but I've
Speaker 2: also learned it failures what got me where I'm at today.
Speaker 2: I not failed at Z eighteen. I would have never
Speaker 2: approached thirteen the way that I did. And you know,
Speaker 2: that's one of the things that I'm grateful for is
Speaker 2: that with age, I've learned to allow myself to be
Speaker 2: more human and not not so insensitive to people or
Speaker 2: to what they see me as or what they want
Speaker 2: to see me ask I should say.
Speaker 1: Rick Jackson has worked closely with Baber for almost a year.
Speaker 1: I point blank asked him what the deal was with Baber?
Speaker 1: How come so many people line up again? Instant?
Speaker 3: His personality can come off sometimes very impatient, It can
Speaker 3: come off arrogant, and I think part of that is
Speaker 3: the way he's described how his autism has affected his
Speaker 3: personality style, his directness at times, sometimes his maybe moodiness
Speaker 3: a little bit. But with all that being said, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I've been working criminal investigations for you know,
Speaker 3: four decades now, thirty six in homicide, and you work
Speaker 3: with all different types of people. We as investigators look
Speaker 3: at evidence, and when Alex presented this, despite him coming
Speaker 3: off a little bit cocky at times, I couldn't just
Speaker 3: kind of walk away from this. I was compelled with
Speaker 3: the evidence to move forward. And AMIDSTI, Roberts, when I
Speaker 3: explained my interest in having her come on board, has
Speaker 3: told me the same thing.
Speaker 1: I have to add.
Speaker 3: Another thing is when he has met with other law enforcement,
Speaker 3: some of the feedback I've gotten is he's so arrogant,
Speaker 3: and again I explain about his background and such, and
Speaker 3: I said, he's just so driven and determined. When he
Speaker 3: gets on something, he does not let it go. And
Speaker 3: that's part of his personality and part of his autistic nature.
Speaker 3: And it's also given him the drive to put together
Speaker 3: what he's put together, which to me, again is very,
Speaker 3: very very compelling evidence. I don't care what anybody says.
Speaker 3: I'm compelled by it.
Speaker 1: Babers a high school dropout. He grew up in rural Florida.
Speaker 1: People online like to claim he grew up in Ohio
Speaker 1: and finished high school there got the wrong, Baber. Imagine
Speaker 1: having to defend yourself as a high school dropout. Even further,
Speaker 1: imagine having to defend yourself against allegations that there weren't
Speaker 1: killers in your family as you have claimed. That's how
Speaker 1: weupside down the internet can get. But unfortunately for Baber,
Speaker 1: it is true. And Christmas Eve nineteen sixty nine, his
Speaker 1: uncle murdered his aunt and her husband, a double killing
Speaker 1: witness by a sheriff's deputy. Family laure also held that
Speaker 1: his grandfather was a killer as well, a man who
Speaker 1: went unprosecuted because of his standing in the community and
Speaker 1: the lack of standing of the migrant workers. You may
Speaker 1: disappear diagnose with autism. As a teenager, Baber retreated from
Speaker 1: school and disappeared into reading. The fictional hero that inspired
Speaker 1: it was named Sherlock Holmes.
Speaker 2: That some across a Sherlock Holmes book one time and
Speaker 2: had no interest in it at first, But once I
Speaker 2: started reading it, you know, out chapter or two in
Speaker 2: it kind of you know, had my attention to the
Speaker 2: point to where I couldn't put the book down. So
Speaker 2: I ended up reading the book straight through. And I
Speaker 2: kind of related to him having, you know, this desire
Speaker 2: to want to to help people and to believe that
Speaker 2: no cases is unsolvable. And you know his books, there's
Speaker 2: no matter how difficult, how complex they murder may be
Speaker 2: or disappearance, he always figures it out.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 2: He never never gives up. He believes in himself, he
Speaker 2: believes his abilities, and he always finds a way. He was,
Speaker 2: in all likely that probably autistic long before the term
Speaker 2: ember existed. He was definitely a CD, and I think
Speaker 2: that his brain was not wired the way that your
Speaker 2: average individuals would be or or as mine. As you know,
Speaker 2: I've been told many times by my doctors as well
Speaker 2: as people who know me that I don't necessarily think
Speaker 2: the same way everybody else does in it ring.
Speaker 1: The next hero that captured Baber's unsettled mind wasn't a
Speaker 1: fictional character. It was Alan Turing, the English mathematician and
Speaker 1: cryptanalyst known as the father of computer science and who
Speaker 1: played a crucial role in decrypting intercepted messages from the
Speaker 1: Germans during World War Two and helped the Allies defeat
Speaker 1: the access power.
Speaker 2: Allan's more of a hero to me that he is
Speaker 2: an inspiration alone. You know what he did for Darrel
Speaker 2: Worth two, taking the Enigma machine which was to be uncrackable,
Speaker 2: right believed to be. And he would take no financier either.
Speaker 2: You know he when everybody resisted his vision, they literally,
Speaker 2: I mean the guy went through a degree of abatists.
Speaker 2: To be honest with you, if you ever watched the
Speaker 2: documentary and reached some of the literature, and he never wavered.
Speaker 2: Just the idea of tackling a problem of that magnitude
Speaker 2: and then achieving the objective to where they say he
Speaker 2: shortened the war by two years, and I believe that
Speaker 2: he saved on probably millions of lives. His way of
Speaker 2: thought was just not your traditional meanings. Whenever he looked
Speaker 2: at things, he looked at you like he was the
Speaker 2: father of Ai. You know, on zero one he was
Speaker 2: the beginning of what we have today.
Speaker 1: Dabor said he became fixated on the Zodiac killer ciphers,
Speaker 1: including disease thirteen, nearly twenty years ago, from the moment
Speaker 1: he walked out of a movie theater where he had
Speaker 1: seen the David Fincher directed film Zodiac. It led him
Speaker 1: down a path that was fraught with amateur missteps and
Speaker 1: false moves he would later regret, and that would provide
Speaker 1: misunderstood fodder for his detractors today. Like the boy who
Speaker 1: cried Wolf, Baber had been crying I solved it for years,
Speaker 1: only it hasn't been the same suspect each time. Though
Speaker 1: it was a trial and error process. The Internet has
Speaker 1: been unforgiving. In this era of Internet saluting, where expert
Speaker 1: status is granted the people who have never investigated a
Speaker 1: single crime, let alone a cold case murder, Baber ironically
Speaker 1: finds himself facing Internet denizens defending the man he is
Speaker 1: accused and whose own family has worked with Baber and
Speaker 1: turned over the most compelling evidence gathered in his investigation.
Speaker 1: He has faced the scorn of amateur cryptanalysts who say
Speaker 1: Baber and the independent team of cryptanalysts with more than
Speaker 1: one hundred years of combined code breaking for the NSA
Speaker 1: are wrong. To me. This is the flip side of
Speaker 1: the Golden State Killer case, where the work of an
Speaker 1: amateur saluth inspired law enforcement to identify a serial killer
Speaker 1: who had escaped justice for decades. This time it is
Speaker 1: the amateur sleuth who's the villain. I sat down to
Speaker 1: talk to Baber about all this and discussed the crooked
Speaker 1: paths he took to the Z thirteen solution, and Marvin
Speaker 1: Margol was ak Marvin Merrill.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In beginning, having no understanding of cryptography outside of the
Speaker 2: average individual, I attacked the or attempted to decrypt the
Speaker 2: Z eighteen, which is the final eighteen symbols of the
Speaker 2: Z four oh eight that the artists weren't able to
Speaker 2: to identify the key for it. And I tried to
Speaker 2: make a suspect fit a letter frequency or character account,
Speaker 2: and I used anagrammy and while the name fit it,
Speaker 2: later I realized that that's not how cryptography works, you know,
Speaker 2: if you go in with a suspect in mind, you
Speaker 2: can make just not anybody's name fit if you've been
Speaker 2: the rules and you don't stick to the methodologies that
Speaker 2: you need. And it took me over a decade to
Speaker 2: realize that, you know, to me, almost fifteen years he
Speaker 2: realized it.
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, the suspect he pursued all
Speaker 1: those years was Lawrence Klein, who many to this day
Speaker 1: believed was the Zodiac Killer. Like Margolis, he moved around
Speaker 1: often and employed several aliases, including variations of the last
Speaker 1: name Kane. Maybe fixated on him because this high intellect
Speaker 1: in training made him the perfect author the Zodiac ciphers.
Speaker 1: Going down this rabbit hole allowed Baber to put him
Speaker 1: in proximity to other infamous unsolved cases, and Baber wasn't
Speaker 1: shy about going to the Internet with his findings. Klein
Speaker 1: died in twenty ten in Nevada, but before that, Baber
Speaker 1: reported that a man had called him on a phone
Speaker 1: with a Nevada area code to discuss that case just
Speaker 1: two days after he posted his z eighteen solution online.
Speaker 1: Baber believed at the time it was the Zodiac Lawrence Klein.
Speaker 1: There are many Baber detractors on the Internet who conflate
Speaker 1: his activities regarding Klein with his more recent findings and
Speaker 1: point out inconsistencies, for example, asking how could Marvin Margolis
Speaker 1: have called Baber in two thousand and seven when he
Speaker 1: died in nineteen ninety three. Well, the short answer to
Speaker 1: that is that he didn't, and Baber has not claimed so.
Speaker 1: Baber continued to name Klein as the zodiac into his
Speaker 1: late as twenty twenty two, before coming to terms with
Speaker 1: having gone down the wrong path.
Speaker 2: I realized that there's no way he was a zombiac.
Speaker 2: I was able to eliminate him as a suspect.
Speaker 1: All the while, Baber was refining his knowledge of cryptology,
Speaker 1: being self taught in most of his life skills. He
Speaker 1: started over.
Speaker 2: Once I understood how pryotography worked from a scientific point,
Speaker 2: it was a different journey for me, because then I
Speaker 2: had to get back to square one, and I tackled
Speaker 2: the z thirteen believing that he did in fact provide
Speaker 2: his name. And in order to do that to a
Speaker 2: different perspective anybody before me in history, I wanted to
Speaker 2: get every possible solution and eliminate them into ail. They
Speaker 2: had one man standing and that was a very long,
Speaker 2: difficult road. It's hard for people to grasp that or
Speaker 2: comprehend that. You know, they say what they will, but
Speaker 2: they weren't there with me, working, you know, eighteen twenty
Speaker 2: hour days, six seventies a week, and I failed many
Speaker 2: at times before I got to where I was at.
Speaker 2: It wasn't just you know, all go and butterflies and lollipops.
Speaker 2: There was times that I thought I'd give it up.
Speaker 1: To be honest with you, We've tried to explain this,
Speaker 1: or I think we have, but as you just said,
Speaker 1: it doesn't register with a lot of people. Can you talk.
Speaker 4: About how you created a list of seventy one million
Speaker 4: possible names that would fit that site for that thirteen
Speaker 4: digit cipher, and people must keep in mind.
Speaker 1: There were some rules to those thirteen digits where I
Speaker 1: think three symbols were repeated twice and one was repeated
Speaker 1: three times, and that creates rules for what names can
Speaker 1: fit in there.
Speaker 2: Well, we had to have some assumptions in order to
Speaker 2: even consider tackling it the way that I had envisioned.
Speaker 2: We had to assume that the key to the Z
Speaker 2: thirteen would be a monolphabetical meaning one letter to one character,
Speaker 2: not a homophonic. You add in a homophonic, then the
Speaker 2: Z thirteen would be impossible to crack because you could
Speaker 2: have multiple aathdical letters representing one symbol. So that cut
Speaker 2: down considerably the potential candidates as I referred to them. Secondly,
Speaker 2: I had to identify an establish methodology. We couldn't use antagrammy,
Speaker 2: and I learned that from two thousand and seven, you know,
Speaker 2: with the Lawrence kleient Kane solution that I developed from
Speaker 2: the Z eighteen. So taking that into consideration and realizing
Speaker 2: that we couldn't go down that road again, I had
Speaker 2: to approach it with every possible solution based on the
Speaker 2: number of characters and letter frequency possibilities. So I had
Speaker 2: to go and get every possible name that was out there,
Speaker 2: and the best route to do that was the Ssassays
Speaker 2: Treaty administration. If I get every male first and middle
Speaker 2: name and then every documented surname and upload those and
Speaker 2: start pairing them together, whether it be a first name only,
Speaker 2: that's thirteen characters first name, middle name combination first name,
Speaker 2: middle initial, last name, first initial, middle name, last name.
Speaker 2: I had to have every possibility in order to be
Speaker 2: sure that I covered because I couldn't leave any open
Speaker 2: doors because I knew that when we shared this with
Speaker 2: the public, they become a pitchforks and torches, and I
Speaker 2: wanted to make sure that I at least had every
Speaker 2: possible variable covered.
Speaker 1: Baby used an AI program to weigh through the massive
Speaker 1: database and whittle it down.
Speaker 2: Once I had the grouping of the names, meaning the
Speaker 2: possible quote unquote candidates, at that point I had to
Speaker 2: eliminate them, and that's where AI came in. AI allowed
Speaker 2: me to crawl the web.
Speaker 1: The program eliminated candidates based on parameters of race, gender, age, geography,
Speaker 1: and many other factors. When the database was reduced to
Speaker 1: double digits, a more intense forensic examination of each candidate occurred.
Speaker 1: The last man standing was Marvin Merrill. The digital pitchforks
Speaker 1: and tortures Baber mentioned did indeed come and continue to come,
Speaker 1: but Baby remained undaunted. He says the mistakes of the
Speaker 1: past have made him a better and smarter investigator, smart
Speaker 1: enough to bring in professional homicide investigators like Jackson and
Speaker 1: Roberts to backcheck his work, and honest enough to turn
Speaker 1: his work over without hesitation to the team of NSA
Speaker 1: code breakers led by Ed Georgio, the only man in
Speaker 1: NSA history to serve as the agency's chief code breaker
Speaker 1: and code maker. Georgio put together a team with more
Speaker 1: than one hundred years experience in code breaking for the
Speaker 1: government agency. They backchecked Baber's work and came up with
Speaker 1: the same result. They also attacked the cipher from the
Speaker 1: standpoint of the author with the Zodiac and discovered keywords
Speaker 1: that further confirmed the work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, there's vanishingly small odds that Martin Merrow is not
Speaker 5: the guy.
Speaker 1: Georgio told me that Baber belongs on the Mount Rushmore
Speaker 1: of Zodiac codebreakers. He added that his team's conclusions withstand
Speaker 1: the popular Internet claim that a cipher as short as
Speaker 1: thirteen digits is unbreakable.
Speaker 5: So a short cipher about which nothing is known often
Speaker 5: cannot be broken. But the fact that such a cipher
Speaker 5: sometimes cannot be broken is not the same as saying
Speaker 5: it can never be broken, especially when real world's constraints
Speaker 5: are involved, and for some ciphers, under sufficient conditions, a
Speaker 5: solution can nearly always be found.
Speaker 1: Paper is continuing his investigation of Marvin Merrill and with
Speaker 1: the backing of professionals like Giorgio and others who have
Speaker 1: actually done the work, he remains undaunted by the Pitchfords
Speaker 1: and Torches. These days, he is often reminded of his
Speaker 1: hero Alan Torrey.
Speaker 2: He's here today, He's present every day I can help
Speaker 2: my log into my computer. He's here because without him,
Speaker 2: I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing. I wouldn't be
Speaker 2: able to achieve what I've achieved with their team.
Speaker 1: And you have the.
Speaker 2: World telling you that you can't do something, and you
Speaker 2: believe in your heart of arts that you can, and
Speaker 2: that you refuse to take no for an answer. It
Speaker 2: does ring on whenever you look at somebody like him,
Speaker 2: who saved so many lives and did what he was
Speaker 2: able to do at the time. You know, I just
Speaker 2: I would. I'm inspired by him.
Speaker 1: You have been listening to Killer in the Code Solving
Speaker 1: the Black Dahia and Zodiac cases. This episode was written
Speaker 1: and produced by me Michael Connolly and was edited by
Speaker 1: Teroll Lee Langford, with music and post production services by
Speaker 1: Mark Henry Phillips. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast
Speaker 1: so you can be informed the future episodes when they
Speaker 1: come out. Many thanks for listening,