Speaker 1: You are now listening to True Murder the most shocking
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 1: written about them Gaesy, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker DTK. Every week,
Speaker 1: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 1: killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 1: journalist and author Dan Zupanski.
Speaker 2: Good Evening. In Obsessed, My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer,
Speaker 2: doctor Mark Hewitt invites readers into his gripping journey of
Speaker 2: unraveling one of America's most enduring mysteries. Doctor Hewitt, an
Speaker 2: expert on the Zodiac Case an author of the acclaimed
Speaker 2: Zodiac serial Killer trilogy, shares his transformation from a pastor
Speaker 2: to a dedicated true crime investigator. This memoir details doctor
Speaker 2: Hewitt's meticulous research, personal encounters, and the profound impact of
Speaker 2: the Zodiac Case on his life. Moving to California reignited
Speaker 2: his passion, leading him to explore crime scenes and connect
Speaker 2: with other enthusiasts. His relentless pursuit is not only about
Speaker 2: the Zodiac, but also about understanding the complexities of human
Speaker 2: nature and the quest for truth. Obsessed, My Relentless Pursuit
Speaker 2: of the Zodiac Killer provides a unique blend of personal
Speaker 2: narrative and investigative insight, offering readers a compelling look at
Speaker 2: the determination and challenges faced by those who seek to
Speaker 2: solve cold cases. Join doctor Hewitt as he navigates the
Speaker 2: twists and turns of this enigmatic case, shedding light on
Speaker 2: his life's work in his unwavering commitment to uncovering the truth.
Speaker 2: The book that we're featuring this evening is Obsessed My
Speaker 2: Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer, with my special guest,
Speaker 2: Zodiac expert and true crime author Mark Hewitt. Good evening,
Speaker 2: and welcome back to the program, Mark Hewitt, Thank you
Speaker 2: and congratulations on your latest book, Obsessed My Relentless Pursuit
Speaker 2: of the Zodiac Killer. Congratulations, Thank you.
Speaker 3: Dan.
Speaker 2: Now, you have three published books on the case, and
Speaker 2: I've interviewed you each and every time. You were often asked,
Speaker 2: how did you become interested specifically in the Zodiac serial
Speaker 2: killer case.
Speaker 3: That's correct, and that's what was the impetus for writing
Speaker 3: this book. I felt that after releasing my trilogy in
Speaker 3: twenty sixteen, seventeen and eighteen, I hadn't really shared much
Speaker 3: of my backstory, how I got into it, why I
Speaker 3: find the case so fascinating. In talking to people about
Speaker 3: my books, people always say, so, how did you get
Speaker 3: into this? How'd you get into writing? Why are you
Speaker 3: interested in the zodiac that type of thing, And so
Speaker 3: that's kind of a question I've been wrestling with for
Speaker 3: years now, and I decided to sit down and retell
Speaker 3: my story of how I got into it all. So
Speaker 3: in the book Obsessed, I go all the way back
Speaker 3: to my childhood and the first true crime book I
Speaker 3: ever read was about Lizzie Borden, a young woman who
Speaker 3: allegedly killed her father and stepmother with a hatchet back
Speaker 3: in eighteen ninety four in Massachusetts, And it kind of
Speaker 3: opened up a world for me when I read that book,
Speaker 3: because it's such a fascinating story. She was acquitted at trial,
Speaker 3: but the people in the town kind of all knew
Speaker 3: that she was responsible, but they just didn't have the
Speaker 3: gumption or the ability, or the willingness to watch her hang.
Speaker 3: So she was found not guilty and then lived a
Speaker 3: life of obscurity. And that whole story just fascinated me
Speaker 3: and stuck with me over the years. And my younger brother,
Speaker 3: A couple of years ago, said, you know that Lizzie
Speaker 3: Borden book that was your first true crime book, wasn't it?
Speaker 3: And I'd forgotten about that long ago. That's the first
Speaker 3: step of getting me into being interested in true crime.
Speaker 2: How did you get it interested in writing specifically?
Speaker 3: Words and reading have always been important in my family
Speaker 3: since I was young. I recall in first grade, first
Speaker 3: or second grade sitting on my bed reading some children's
Speaker 3: book that I got out of the library and reading
Speaker 3: about Beethoven and reading about Bach and a couple of
Speaker 3: other biographies written for children, and it always impressed me.
Speaker 3: But my parents were very big on encouraging reading. My
Speaker 3: parents helped me to have a broad vocabulary and be
Speaker 3: proud of my knowing how to use the correct tenses
Speaker 3: with different words. My parents were always correcting me when
Speaker 3: I made a mistake. I guess through high school and
Speaker 3: college and grad school, I did a lot of writing.
Speaker 3: I never saw myself as a writer, but the more
Speaker 3: I got into the Zodiac case, the more I realized,
Speaker 3: you know, i'd really like to write, I would really
Speaker 3: like to get out my thoughts and my research. I
Speaker 3: guess that's how I got into it and there's a
Speaker 3: certain amount of permanence. When you write a book, it
Speaker 3: lives long past, it leaves a legacy behind, and so
Speaker 3: that's I find that exciting as well.
Speaker 2: Your first vocation, though, was not writing, and so tell
Speaker 2: us what you gravitated towards and went to college for,
Speaker 2: and then tell us about how you evolved into being
Speaker 2: a writer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, kind of a long story. I attempt to document
Speaker 3: that in my book. I started out college and the
Speaker 3: engineering department. My father was graduated as an engineer, and
Speaker 3: I love my maths and sciences, so that's what I
Speaker 3: enrolled in. But a year and a half later, I
Speaker 3: switched my major to theology to study the Bible and
Speaker 3: the things of God, and I ended up going to
Speaker 3: seminary and being a pastor for eleven years. And you know,
Speaker 3: like every other pastor, I made the career change from
Speaker 3: ministry to true crime writing. I'm joking. Of course, a
Speaker 3: lot of people don't understand the switch I made, but
Speaker 3: true crime writing, I think there are a lot of similarities.
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated with people, I'm fascinated with and particularly with mysteries.
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated with getting it the truth. And how do
Speaker 3: you know what is true, what is not true, who
Speaker 3: is believable, who is not believable, what writings are credible,
Speaker 3: what writings are not credible, and all of that kind
Speaker 3: of fit together in the context of dealing with other
Speaker 3: people with respect to true crime. I'm really fascinated with
Speaker 3: the psychological aberration, the criminally insane, the people who choose
Speaker 3: the life of crime. That as well as a fascination
Speaker 3: with history, and it all kind of drew me into
Speaker 3: true crime.
Speaker 2: You go from Toronto to Michigan to and also have
Speaker 2: an interest in true crime and collection of true crime books.
Speaker 2: Lizzie Bordens burned that interest. But how is it that
Speaker 2: you come to hear for the first time about the
Speaker 2: Zodiac case?
Speaker 3: First heard about it when I was in grad school
Speaker 3: in Michigan. A guy I was living with in my house.
Speaker 3: We were talking about true crime books and he said, well,
Speaker 3: have you heard about the Zodiac? And I had never
Speaker 3: heard of it before night, so I told him and
Speaker 3: he started to tell me a bit about it, and
Speaker 3: I got frustrated because I had just returned from an
Speaker 3: internship in California. I had lived in the Bay Area
Speaker 3: for nine months, and this was in eighty six and
Speaker 3: eighty seven, and nobody mentioned the Zodiac to me, and
Speaker 3: I guess being working for a church, people assumed I
Speaker 3: wasn't interested in it or it was not a hot
Speaker 3: topic in the Bay Area at that time, even though
Speaker 3: I talked to thousands of people over those nine months,
Speaker 3: so I heard absolutely nothing about it. But as I
Speaker 3: read Gracemith's book on it soon after talking to my housemate,
Speaker 3: I just got absolutely fascinated with the story. I knew
Speaker 3: all the places, and it fascinated me that this story
Speaker 3: was never was never resolved. Most of the true crime
Speaker 3: I was reading at the time was all about criminals
Speaker 3: who had been caught, and the books about them included
Speaker 3: a trial and what they were sentenced to. This one,
Speaker 3: the Zodiac case, does not have an ending, and in
Speaker 3: some sense that's very frustrating.
Speaker 2: And you say that this book by Robert Graysmith really
Speaker 2: changed your life in many ways.
Speaker 3: Yeah, not immediately. I didn't realize how much the story
Speaker 3: would stick with me over the years, but the story
Speaker 3: kept re emerging in my life through documentaries on TV
Speaker 3: or individuals on the Internet, including groups of people who
Speaker 3: started studying the case and were fascinated by the case.
Speaker 3: When I bought my first desktop computer back in the
Speaker 3: nineteen nineties. I was looking around the internet and found
Speaker 3: myself on a couple of different Zodiac websites and was
Speaker 3: quite interested that there were people discussing the case, but
Speaker 3: also that most of the people we were discussing the
Speaker 3: case didn't think Arthur Lee Allen was responsible for the killings.
Speaker 3: And if you read Gracemith's book, you kind of come
Speaker 3: to that conclusion that it was Arthur Lee Allen because
Speaker 3: of the way he shapes the material, the way he
Speaker 3: tells the story. And so I began to study it
Speaker 3: myself and find out that, yeah, Arthur Lee Allen really
Speaker 3: does not fit the type of person that we are
Speaker 3: looking for as the Zodiac, and even today a lot
Speaker 3: of people are convinced that he's responsible, but I am not.
Speaker 2: Now, before you become obsessed with the Zodiac you do
Speaker 2: have an interest in John Boney Ramsey case. What did
Speaker 2: you learn from that case? Again, another unsolved case in
Speaker 2: your application later looking at and being a student of Zodiac.
Speaker 3: Right from getting my new desktop computer and getting online
Speaker 3: in nineteen ninety six, that Christmas saw the death of
Speaker 3: John Bine Ramsey, and I was interested in the story.
Speaker 3: So I jumped on the computer and use one of
Speaker 3: the search engines to find out more information, and I
Speaker 3: found a group of people who were meeting I think
Speaker 3: it was a Yah Yahoo chat room, but I'm not positive.
Speaker 3: And I joined about twenty five other people who were
Speaker 3: discussing the case in real time, and that kind of
Speaker 3: blew my mind that we could be all over the
Speaker 3: world and here we were talking to each other. I
Speaker 3: know it sounds silly now because our whole lives are
Speaker 3: connected to the Internet, but at that time it was
Speaker 3: revolutionary and it fascinated me to be talking with other
Speaker 3: people from all over the world and hearing different perspectives
Speaker 3: and disagreeing with people or agreeing with people digging up information.
Speaker 3: And I think that all played a part in my
Speaker 3: interest in the zodiac when that came back into my
Speaker 3: life about a decade later, I started doing the same
Speaker 3: thing with the Zodiac case.
Speaker 2: Now let's talk about you, because I'm a pastor, and
Speaker 2: you go through this seminary, but your passion for that changes,
Speaker 2: and then you get to let's talk about your first
Speaker 2: self published book and what you thought you might achieve
Speaker 2: with this book once it was written. The book was
Speaker 2: called Yes I Can Change. So tell us about this
Speaker 2: publishing of this book and Leaving Your Passion, which was
Speaker 2: a seminary.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, my first book is self help book entitled
Speaker 3: Yes I Can Change, And I would appreciate if you
Speaker 3: wouldn't read it. It's my early work and I'm not
Speaker 3: entirely proud of the level of writing that's in it,
Speaker 3: but it's a fascinating read. It's not that profound. It
Speaker 3: fit in well with my seminary work. Am I being
Speaker 3: a pastor because a lot of the perspectives that I
Speaker 3: bring out in the self help book, I can preach
Speaker 3: on and from the pulpit, and I can talk to
Speaker 3: other people about reality of change. Change is not change
Speaker 3: is inevitable. Our world changes around us, we change our bodies, change,
Speaker 3: technology changes around us. So we can't live a life
Speaker 3: without change. And I think I've been around enough people
Speaker 3: who are very traditional and who are resistant to change,
Speaker 3: and that kind of forced me to tackle that topic.
Speaker 3: How does change happen? How should change happen? And not
Speaker 3: all changes that happen are good changes? So I wrote
Speaker 3: that up relating to interpersonal change and technological change, and
Speaker 3: I published that in What I think two thousand and four,
Speaker 3: and then soon after that I became interested in studying
Speaker 3: true crime, in fact in promoting my self help book.
Speaker 3: Sales were not good and never have been that good
Speaker 3: for that book, but I was looking around for ways
Speaker 3: to promote it. Who would be interested in reading my
Speaker 3: book and who would benefit from a in their life?
Speaker 3: And I came up with this crazy idea, what if
Speaker 3: I write some criminals behind bars and tell them about
Speaker 3: my book and invite them to read it and offer
Speaker 3: to send them a copy. So I wrote to a
Speaker 3: couple dozen high profile killers and criminals behind bars, hoping
Speaker 3: that maybe they would write back to me. I wasn't
Speaker 3: sure that they actually would, but I ended up getting
Speaker 3: a back about a half a dozen responses from these letters,
Speaker 3: and the most startling one was from Charles Manson. Of
Speaker 3: all the people of that I wrote, I was expecting
Speaker 3: I had the least expectation that he would write me back.
Speaker 3: There was one point in his life where he was
Speaker 3: the He received more mail in prison than any other
Speaker 3: prison than any other inmate like he was. His mail
Speaker 3: was delivered to him by the bagful. So I corresponded
Speaker 3: with him for a little bit and ended up collaborating
Speaker 3: with a man who was selled next to him, Willie Mendez,
Speaker 3: Germo Mendez. We wrote Charles Manson Behind Bars.
Speaker 2: That's the crazy antics and the amazing revelations of America's
Speaker 2: icon of evil.
Speaker 3: Yes, and it's one book that I haven't been able
Speaker 3: to preach from the pulpit at this point, but people
Speaker 3: under people know that it fascinates me, and they accept
Speaker 3: me with all my idiosyncrasies. And then that book kind
Speaker 3: of reignited my passion for true crime and fascination with it.
Speaker 3: Around the same time, I started getting more interested in
Speaker 3: the Zodiac case once again. David Fincher's movie came out
Speaker 3: in two thousand and seven. A friend of mine was
Speaker 3: studying true crime, and I was able to say the
Speaker 3: same thing to him that my former housemates said to me.
Speaker 3: I said, have you heard of the Zodiac before? And
Speaker 3: he hadn't. Gain a dialogue with him, and he and
Speaker 3: I began to research together into the Zodiac case, and
Speaker 3: that's how my writing evolved out of it.
Speaker 2: You say, you were a huge fan of the film Zodiac,
Speaker 2: But in the film Zodiac, they still point to Arthur
Speaker 2: Lee Allen, don't they.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, So there's a certain amount of bias. The
Speaker 3: movie is based on Gracemith's book, and Gracemith to this
Speaker 3: day is convinced that Arthur Lee Allen is responsible for
Speaker 3: the Zodiac crimes. But then once in a while he says, well,
Speaker 3: if it isn't him, it could be this, or it
Speaker 3: must be something like this, or somebody like him, something
Speaker 3: like that. So I've always been fascinated. I'll read or
Speaker 3: watch anything about the Zodiac case, even if it's something
Speaker 3: that I disagree with. In fact, there's a Netflix special
Speaker 3: not too long ago that said there was no Zodiac.
Speaker 3: These are all disparate crimes that have nothing to do
Speaker 3: with one another, but some letter writer took credit for them.
Speaker 1: All.
Speaker 3: Oh fascinating, fascinating take don the case. Sure, not one
Speaker 3: that I know agree with, but it's a fascinating way
Speaker 3: to look at the information.
Speaker 2: So you talk about a conversation with a friend named Kevin.
Speaker 2: So let's start where it starts and then tell us
Speaker 2: how it grows from there. I mean, this does not
Speaker 2: happen overnight. Your sense of wanting to do this and
Speaker 2: your obsession with this doesn't happen overnight, So tell us
Speaker 2: how it originally happens, and that you get this spark
Speaker 2: and leads to what you describe as an obsession.
Speaker 3: Sure, Kevin de Weird, it's not his real name. He's
Speaker 3: a friend of mine and he's the one that I
Speaker 3: introduced the case to. And in talking with him, one
Speaker 3: of us said, you know, we got to get together
Speaker 3: over a cup of coffee and just discuss the case.
Speaker 3: It kind of a thirty thousand foot level. Neither of
Speaker 3: us had a good understanding of the case, the details
Speaker 3: of the case, and we thought, well, that's a great idea.
Speaker 3: So we went out had coffee and discussed the case.
Speaker 3: And that one coffee and I don't even remember exactly
Speaker 3: where it was that we went, but that became the
Speaker 3: first of many many coffees that we got together and
Speaker 3: met in different Starbucks, different coffee shops, different restaurants, and
Speaker 3: sometimes for three four hours at a time, we would
Speaker 3: wrestle through the case. We would go through the letters
Speaker 3: line by line, we read the research, the police, the
Speaker 3: police reports that have been released to the public, and
Speaker 3: little by little we just we just ventured down that
Speaker 3: rabbit hole and got absolutely overwhelmed with obsession over the case.
Speaker 2: You say, right from the beginning, you had too, again
Speaker 2: maybe rudimentary, but important insight about the Zodiac, initially one
Speaker 2: about the library, and tell us about these two insights
Speaker 2: that you do have.
Speaker 3: Sure at the end of the first coffee that we had,
Speaker 3: we came away with two insights, and the first was
Speaker 3: that the killer had some relationship with the library. Because
Speaker 3: the first Riverside murder, which not everybody agrees is a
Speaker 3: Zodiac case, it's not even considered it a canonical attack,
Speaker 3: we came to believe that it was part of the
Speaker 3: work of the Zodiac. It took place outside of a library.
Speaker 3: And then you couple that with the fact that the
Speaker 3: letters that the Zodiac wrote make generous use of allusions
Speaker 3: and quotes to a lot of literature. This was not
Speaker 3: a somebody who dropped out a school at the age
Speaker 3: of sixteen. This is somebody who'd had contact with literature
Speaker 3: and a good understanding of it. It makes reference to
Speaker 3: Richard Connolly's Most Dangerous Game, he quotes the Mikado, he
Speaker 3: makes reference to the movie The Exorcist, and there's other potential.
Speaker 3: Joseph Conrad seems to be somebody that he made reference
Speaker 3: to in his letters. So we realized that this guy
Speaker 3: is a connection to a library, whether he knew something
Speaker 3: about the Riverside library where that attack took place, he
Speaker 3: at least was somebody who was familiar with literature and books,
Speaker 3: and somebody who probably had a connection to some library
Speaker 3: or libraries in general, to have this store of knowledge
Speaker 3: and this ease with making quotes and illusions. And then
Speaker 3: the second realization that we had is that this is
Speaker 3: a guy who sits and writes, because a lot of
Speaker 3: his letters took a while to compose, and this isn't
Speaker 3: a guy who pulled out a sheet of paper while
Speaker 3: he was driving and made a couple of notes. It
Speaker 3: looked like his writing was very carefully done, and the
Speaker 3: four ciphers that he included, the four codes that he
Speaker 3: included within his letters, looked like somebody who spent some
Speaker 3: time at it. It doesn't necessarily mean that he was
Speaker 3: brilliant and that he was a code maker and code
Speaker 3: breaker by trade, but this is somebody who had spent
Speaker 3: time working at a desk on his letters and on
Speaker 3: the codes, and maybe for that reason alone, it kind
Speaker 3: of led us to wonder whether Arthur Lee Allen really
Speaker 3: was responsible. Because Arthur Lee Allen is this guy who,
Speaker 3: by all accounts, had a bit of a verbal diarrhea.
Speaker 3: He would talk, talk, talk to anybody about anything, and
Speaker 3: couldn't stop talking. Whereas we came to see from just
Speaker 3: from that first coffee that no, this is a guy
Speaker 3: who's a little bit more cerebral, a little quieter, or
Speaker 3: somebody who has a connection to a library and spends
Speaker 3: time sitting at a desk and writing and thinking or
Speaker 3: whatever he's doing.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, you say, somewhere in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 2: you took off the handbreak, as you write, resign yourself
Speaker 2: to allowing the obsession to overtake you and guide you
Speaker 2: wherever it led, and you realize that there was a
Speaker 2: good place to begin the research. So tell us the
Speaker 2: extent of the research. The thousand pages of FBI files
Speaker 2: available online. Tell us about the research that you endeavored
Speaker 2: in this obsession.
Speaker 3: Wow, I tried to communicate that through the book as
Speaker 3: much as possible. And when you read my book, did
Speaker 3: you have any idea the depth of research that I
Speaker 3: had done in the case, Was it at all surprising
Speaker 3: to you? I wonder? Yes, did because I literally spent
Speaker 3: hours and did a lot of creative tasks, went to places,
Speaker 3: met people, talked to people, read the police reports cover
Speaker 3: to cover, often discussing the police reports. What did the
Speaker 3: officer mean when he wrote this? What did the officer
Speaker 3: was he trying to say this or was he trying
Speaker 3: to say that? All of that came into came into it.
Speaker 3: I even went to the different crime scenes and in
Speaker 3: my mind acted out the attacks as they happened. I
Speaker 3: pictured the zodiac coming upon the scene, and I pictured
Speaker 3: the victims being there and what was taking place during
Speaker 3: that interaction? What were the feelings, What were the attitudes
Speaker 3: that each of the participants brought to the scene, What
Speaker 3: happened minute by minute? How did it end up? Were
Speaker 3: the triggers going on and the different attack scenes, some
Speaker 3: of the we know more about than others. What precisely
Speaker 3: took place? Yeah, the more I thought about it, the
Speaker 3: more I came up with questions. Did it come down
Speaker 3: like this or did it come down like that? Did
Speaker 3: the killer know his victims? Did he meet up with
Speaker 3: them just because they were at the wrong place at
Speaker 3: the wrong time? Was this a targeted attack? Was the
Speaker 3: killer deciding he was going to kill at the time,
Speaker 3: or was it a last second decision that did he
Speaker 3: would pull out a gun? You know what? Exactly all happened,
Speaker 3: And so there came a point where there was nothing
Speaker 3: that I wasn't willing to do to gain an understanding
Speaker 3: of each of the attacks. And I went through the
Speaker 3: same thing with the letters. Kevin and I went through
Speaker 3: the letters line by line, sometimes word by word, and
Speaker 3: we'd have a fifteen minute discussion on one sentence of
Speaker 3: one of the letters, just because what does that line
Speaker 3: say about the person who would say that line, who
Speaker 3: would say it that way? And so we were kind
Speaker 3: of getting into the whole area of profiling. We were
Speaker 3: getting into the area of forensic linguistics, the use of
Speaker 3: language and what that says about the person.
Speaker 2: What were some of the things that you noticed in
Speaker 2: terms what you write about, missing letters, missing words, repeated words,
Speaker 2: and patterns.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a whole science right there, depending on which
Speaker 3: letter you're referring to and which sentence you're referring to.
Speaker 3: I think they express a little bit of the personality
Speaker 3: of the person who writes it. I contend that when
Speaker 3: you find a piece of writing, that writing says something
Speaker 3: about the person who writes it. If you found a
Speaker 3: page of writing that I had done, it would look
Speaker 3: very different than a page of writing that you had done. Dan,
Speaker 3: And I'm not referring to merely the handwriting, but also
Speaker 3: the word choice and the way things are explained. We
Speaker 3: say something about ourselves, whether we realize it or not.
Speaker 3: But with the Zodiac letters, there's kind of a three
Speaker 3: dimensional aspect of that because obviously the killer doesn't want
Speaker 3: to get caught. So the killer is not going to
Speaker 3: say something like I live in such and such place,
Speaker 3: or he's not going to obviously leave a word in
Speaker 3: that directs attention to him. So my contention is that
Speaker 3: the Zodiac rewrote all of his letters before he actually
Speaker 3: sent them. I suspect that he wrote a rough draft
Speaker 3: and then read it over and said, does this say
Speaker 3: anything about me? Does this give an idea of who
Speaker 3: I am, my intelligence, my level of education, where I
Speaker 3: may have come from. And after reading it a second
Speaker 3: time or reading it after writing it, he could cross
Speaker 3: out words and change words. He can mess with the punctuation.
Speaker 3: Some really interesting things going on within the text of
Speaker 3: the letters. In one letter, it appears that the Zodiac
Speaker 3: put a comma where a period should have gone in
Speaker 3: a period where a comma should have gone. Now, why
Speaker 3: why do that? What are you trying to say? He
Speaker 3: spells some words, some difficult words correctly, such as photoelectronic,
Speaker 3: ammonium nitrate, at the same time he misspells firing F
Speaker 3: I R E I ng or having H A V
Speaker 3: E I ng. Well, what's going on there? What does
Speaker 3: this say about the person my contention? What I concluded
Speaker 3: was he's messing with us. He knows we're looking at
Speaker 3: his words and we're trying to figure out who he
Speaker 3: is from his words, and so he's giving us a
Speaker 3: raft of data, some of which is miss leads us
Speaker 3: in the wrong direction. In the more material letter, he
Speaker 3: used three semicolons, and he used them absolutely correctly. And
Speaker 3: this was a real clue to me that this is
Speaker 3: a guy who is far more intellectual and educated than
Speaker 3: he's being given credit for. And I suspect that he
Speaker 3: forgot to take that punctuation out. It would have been
Speaker 3: wise for him to not use that punctuation, because it
Speaker 3: showed he knows how to use a semicolon correctly. In fact,
Speaker 3: it's absolutely correctly. There's nowhere else in the letter or
Speaker 3: any of his other letters where a semicolon should have
Speaker 3: been used, but those were the exact right grammatical marks
Speaker 3: for him to use in those places. So you're dealing
Speaker 3: with the guy who's trying to conceal his his identity
Speaker 3: through his letters. Letters in and of themselves are pieces
Speaker 3: of staging. They're meant to lead the police in the
Speaker 3: wrong direction. But at the same time, things can slip
Speaker 3: through the cracks and he can reveal more about himself
Speaker 3: than he probably wants to.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. Now you talk about that you did ten years
Speaker 2: of research, and in that ten years you had read
Speaker 2: five hundred books and penned one hundred intriguing articles, engaged
Speaker 2: hundreds in conversations and discussions. Now tell us about also
Speaker 2: how important it was in your mind to visit the
Speaker 2: sites of these cribs the Zodiac crimes.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When I first moved to California in two thousand
Speaker 3: and three, I didn't want to go to the sites.
Speaker 3: I knew where they were. I had been in the
Speaker 3: general area and I saw signs for these different sites.
Speaker 3: They didn't want to go to them. But the more
Speaker 3: I discussed the case online, the more I realize, you know,
Speaker 3: I really can't discuss this and learn about it in
Speaker 3: the abstract. It's hard to discuss how an attack went down.
Speaker 3: This is the very beginnings of my research. It's hard
Speaker 3: to discuss the attacks without actually having been to the places.
Speaker 3: So I did make the decision to go and visit
Speaker 3: the four scenes that are in the area here, and
Speaker 3: I became associated with a number of other Zodiac enthusiasts
Speaker 3: or zodeologists as we sometimes call ourselves, and made good
Speaker 3: friends with them, and we began meeting at these crime
Speaker 3: scenes throughout the year. We get together four or five
Speaker 3: times a year, go to the crime scenes and just
Speaker 3: hang out. Sometimes we talk about the case. More often
Speaker 3: we talk about our families, what's going on in our lives.
Speaker 3: These are just good friends of mine. But to really
Speaker 3: understand the attacks, to get a sense of them, you
Speaker 3: really need to visit the crime scenes and visit them
Speaker 3: on anniversaries, and visit them at the specific time during
Speaker 3: the day or night when it actually happened to get
Speaker 3: a sense of what's going on in the scene and
Speaker 3: how whatever was going on comes to bear on the
Speaker 3: attack that took place.
Speaker 2: And Lake barry Essa has a special meaning for you
Speaker 2: besides just being this first attack, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's a very beautiful area. I began going there
Speaker 3: by myself once in a while just to get away
Speaker 3: from it all, whenever I needed a break from life.
Speaker 3: It's a forty five minute drive for me. I'm in
Speaker 3: Santa Rosa, which is about an hour north of San Francisco,
Speaker 3: so I think Lake Barrias is maybe two hours north
Speaker 3: of San Francisco, maybe not quite that far, and I
Speaker 3: would walk around there. I took my notebook and did
Speaker 3: some thinking. I think I did some of the writing
Speaker 3: of my books there, just trying to get an understanding
Speaker 3: of what took place there. That's probably one of the
Speaker 3: most fascinating attacks because of the zodiac, the type of
Speaker 3: gown he wore, the guare black hood that he had,
Speaker 3: on the fact that he used a long knife instead
Speaker 3: of a gun as he did in the other Northern
Speaker 3: California attacks. But it's a really beautiful area.
Speaker 2: Have you been there before, Dan, No, I haven't.
Speaker 3: No, Okay, it's just gorgeous. In fact, it's featured on
Speaker 3: the front of the cover of my current book, Obsessed.
Speaker 3: I'm standing just feet away from where the attack actually
Speaker 3: took place. But that became a very personal place for me,
Speaker 3: a place to get away, be by myself, walk around,
Speaker 3: get some exercise. And then in the year twenty twenty,
Speaker 3: I was there on just an afternoon where it was
Speaker 3: very hot. And you want me to go into that
Speaker 3: story of what took place.
Speaker 2: Well, let's save it for a little bit later. We've
Speaker 2: got to get to basically how it comes to be
Speaker 2: that you officially launch a journal dedicated to the Search
Speaker 2: for the Zodiac and you publish Radians and Inches in
Speaker 2: Search of the Zodiac. That's September twenty seventh, two thousand
Speaker 2: and nine, it debuted. So let's talk about how you
Speaker 2: get to eventually or twenty eighteen to Stephen Booth and
Speaker 2: Leela Booth and Genius Publishing and the beginning of the
Speaker 2: publishing of your trilogy.
Speaker 3: In my reading and research, I watched a documentary one
Speaker 3: time on Jack the Ripper, the serial killer, the first
Speaker 3: famous serial killer from Whitechapel, England, part of London, in
Speaker 3: the year eighteen eighty eight, and somebody made a comment
Speaker 3: that over the years, it's been more than one hundred
Speaker 3: and twenty five years since then, but over the years
Speaker 3: there have been one hundred and fifty journals, newspapers, magazines, publications,
Speaker 3: specific serial publications dedicated to that case. And that just
Speaker 3: astounded me that there would be one hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: newsletters or one hundred and fifty journals. And then I
Speaker 3: realized there wasn't a single journal dedicated to the Zodiac
Speaker 3: serial killer case. And I thought, well, part of that
Speaker 3: is the of the Jack the Ripper case. There's been
Speaker 3: a lot more time to look at that case. But
Speaker 3: also media has done much differently now than it was
Speaker 3: back in eighteen eighty eight. But I made the decision
Speaker 3: to start writing articles, and these articles became compiled into
Speaker 3: a journal that I released four times a year. Did
Speaker 3: that over the course of about nine years, starting on
Speaker 3: the anniversary of the Lake Barriessa attack September twenty seven.
Speaker 3: It was two thousand and nine is the first year
Speaker 3: that I published it. So that was the I believe,
Speaker 3: the fortieth anniversary of the Zodiac attack that took place there.
Speaker 3: And I had a number of friends who helped me
Speaker 3: with that journal. I opened it up to the broader community,
Speaker 3: invited people to write articles for it, and so a
Speaker 3: number of people from around the world sent me articles
Speaker 3: asking if I would publish them, and I would share
Speaker 3: them with my assistant editors and come up with the
Speaker 3: best presentation we could of the article. The different types
Speaker 3: of articles that I got. The whole purpose of it
Speaker 3: was to invite people to join in the hunt for
Speaker 3: the Zodiac. And then I wrapped that up a number
Speaker 3: of years after that, nine years after starting it. But
Speaker 3: I was I was. That was my first baby steps
Speaker 3: into writing about the Zodiac case. And the more I
Speaker 3: researched it and the more I wrote these articles, the
Speaker 3: more I realized, you know, I'm really getting enough material
Speaker 3: to actually write a book on the case. And so
Speaker 3: I began to write a book, and I had so
Speaker 3: much information that one book became two books, which became
Speaker 3: three books. Hunted was released in twenty sixteen, Profiled in
Speaker 3: twenty seventeen, and Exposed in twenty eighteen, and a lot
Speaker 3: of the information from the journal became kind of the
Speaker 3: basis for different pages or different chapters on my books.
Speaker 3: And at the same time I was writing the book,
Speaker 3: some of the portions of the book I used to
Speaker 3: I wrote up some of the detailed research that I
Speaker 3: had been doing, wrote them up as articles for the journal.
Speaker 2: Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to hear
Speaker 2: these messages. Now, let's talk about your You mentioned that
Speaker 2: Hunted and was your first book, but let's talk about
Speaker 2: the relationship with Stephen Booth and Leela Booth and the
Speaker 2: publishing of this trilogy and the idea that a publisher
Speaker 2: and the support needed to be able to do something
Speaker 2: as adventurous as this. And you write some very interesting
Speaker 2: things about Stephen Booth, the publisher, not knowing what you had,
Speaker 2: resolved to write what you had come as a solution inexposed.
Speaker 2: So tell us about this relationship with Genius Publishing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, once I had the book outlined, I wrote the
Speaker 3: first book and had a pretty good draft of it,
Speaker 3: and then the other two books were still in my mind.
Speaker 3: I kind of had a structure of how they were
Speaker 3: going to look, but hadn't actually written them yet. I
Speaker 3: went looking for a publisher and I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: how hard is it to publish a book? Because I've
Speaker 3: read hundreds of books, thousands of books through my life,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's just words on a page, right.
Speaker 3: I found out there's a whole lot more to publishing
Speaker 3: a book than just coming up with words and saying
Speaker 3: make it happen. I got in touch with a number
Speaker 3: of publishing houses and publishing outlets on the internet and
Speaker 3: submitted proposals for my trilogy. Stephen Booth of Genius Book
Speaker 3: Publishing was probably the least the publisher that I had
Speaker 3: the least hope would actually publish my books, because there
Speaker 3: was a note on a website that said closed or submissions.
Speaker 3: Obviously he had received enough submissions and was busy with
Speaker 3: what he was doing, and I thought, well, you know
Speaker 3: what I'm going to submit anyway. I thought, you know,
Speaker 3: maybe I'll be front of the line when he opens
Speaker 3: up for submissions again. Well, a few days later I
Speaker 3: got a message back from him, call me at once.
Speaker 3: He was so impressed with my outline and the sample
Speaker 3: chapters that I sent that he said, I want to
Speaker 3: publish your trilogy. I want to publish all three of them.
Speaker 3: I want a contract to publish all three of them.
Speaker 3: I later found out that he had some contact with
Speaker 3: the topic because he had helped work on another zodiac book,
Speaker 3: so he was a little bit familiar with the with
Speaker 3: the subject matter, but he was also familiar with how
Speaker 3: popular it was and that there were throngs of people
Speaker 3: who were fascinated by the case, even if he himself
Speaker 3: didn't share share in their fascination. So I ended up
Speaker 3: working with him on it and able to help with
Speaker 3: the structure, with the editing, with the layout into the books.
Speaker 3: He was the one who came up with the titles.
Speaker 3: He provided so much made up for how little I
Speaker 3: know about publishing. He was able to put that all together,
Speaker 3: and we were We collaborated in an awful lot. We
Speaker 3: had many many discussions over no, you can't use that word.
Speaker 3: That's too formal of a word, and I would say, yes,
Speaker 3: I need to use that word because that's the exact
Speaker 3: word that I'm trying to explain. So we went back
Speaker 3: and forth on that, and we went back and forth
Speaker 3: on what the cover should look like and whatnot. Through
Speaker 3: it all, he didn't know how I was going to
Speaker 3: end off the trilogy. My research was leading me to
Speaker 3: the conclusion that demand responsible for the Zodiac attacks is
Speaker 3: Theodore Kazinski, the unibomber. Now it's not a really popular conclusion,
Speaker 3: but all of my research that's where it led. So
Speaker 3: I never told Stephen about how it was going to
Speaker 3: end off, but I told him it's going to be okay.
Speaker 3: You know, if you get sued for what I say
Speaker 3: in the final book, we can discuss that, but it
Speaker 3: will probably be more probably be more good attention and
Speaker 3: lead to more sales than any threat that will will
Speaker 3: receive or any problems that we'll have in publishing it.
Speaker 3: And once I submitted to him the final book in
Speaker 3: the trilogy, he read it and said, man, you make
Speaker 3: a good case. And he is as convinced as I am,
Speaker 3: and a number of other people who worked on the
Speaker 3: book have come to the same conclusion that my work
Speaker 3: was very detailed, very accurate, and my conclusions are entirely
Speaker 3: based on data. They're data driven, fact based, and very compelling.
Speaker 2: Let's go back just to this is a short period
Speaker 2: of time I think you say, twenty eight months or
Speaker 2: so that the three books are released in. So let's
Speaker 2: talk about Hunted and what is covered in Hunted specifically,
Speaker 2: before we get to the second book, before we talk
Speaker 2: about Exposed and what that does in terms of the
Speaker 2: community and other people looking at this and zodeologists as well.
Speaker 3: Okay, Hunted has been upheld by many people as the
Speaker 3: most detailed and most accurate culling of the zodiac case.
Speaker 3: I go over each one of the attacks, minute by minute,
Speaker 3: sometimes second by second. I go over each of the
Speaker 3: letters that the Zodiac sent, including some that he may
Speaker 3: have sent or may not have sent. We're not precisely sure,
Speaker 3: and I tell it in great detail. Oftentimes there are
Speaker 3: controversies over specific events. Did the Zodiac do it this
Speaker 3: way or did he do it that way? Frequently in
Speaker 3: the book, I include both sides of the discussions. Did
Speaker 3: the Zodiac stop and talk did the police officers stop
Speaker 3: and talk to the Zodiac on October eleven, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 3: following the murder of Paul Stein Or didn't he or
Speaker 3: didn't or didn't the police officers talk to him? There's
Speaker 3: different there's different views on that, and if I wasn't
Speaker 3: sure one way or the other, I left the controversies
Speaker 3: in and explain why some people believe one side and
Speaker 3: why some people believe in the other side. I include
Speaker 3: the police response to the attacks, and I include the
Speaker 3: community's response, how each family, how each community at large
Speaker 3: dealt with what was taking place in their environment. Various
Speaker 3: times when people say, what's the best book to learn
Speaker 3: about the Zodiac case? Just the case itself, without any suspects,
Speaker 3: without any attempt to resolve the case. What's the best book,
Speaker 3: and people point to Hunted. It's a very good read.
Speaker 3: It moves the story along very quickly. I walked it
Speaker 3: kind of a tightrope when I was writing it because
Speaker 3: I want it to be dramatic, because it's a dramatic story,
Speaker 3: but I don't want it to be overly dramatic. I
Speaker 3: don't want it to read like a case file with
Speaker 3: no drama whatsoever. But I don't want to sensationalize the
Speaker 3: events as they took place, because the events are so
Speaker 3: sensational that they really don't need any elaboration. So I've
Speaker 3: had criticisms on both sides. Some people who say it's
Speaker 3: so it's too dry, it's not as dramatic as it
Speaker 3: could be. Other people say, oh no, you're exaggerating. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't characterize this the way you do. So I feel
Speaker 3: it's in a good place if I'm getting criticism from
Speaker 3: both ends. And so that's a great introduction to the case.
Speaker 3: Somebody said, after having read it, I feel like I
Speaker 3: now have a bachelor's degree in the Zodiac serial killing case.
Speaker 2: Absolutely now.
Speaker 3: Another reviewer said it's a fantastic look at polasture back
Speaker 3: in the nineteen sixties, and I had no idea that
Speaker 3: that would come out in my book. But following the
Speaker 3: police files and that the police reports, and following what
Speaker 3: the police did in their attempt to catch the Zodiac,
Speaker 3: I guess it does show a very good illustration of
Speaker 3: police procedures back in the nineteen sixties.
Speaker 2: Now, what we haven't mentioned is that you corresponded incredibly
Speaker 2: with Ted Kazinski in two thousand and nine. In twenty ten,
Speaker 2: I believe about five letters, and you were you write
Speaker 2: about the excitement and receiving that first envelope in block letters.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Profiled, your second book, which is you
Speaker 2: say is the why of the case. Let's talk about
Speaker 2: what was, if anything, you learned from the correspondence with
Speaker 2: Ted Kazinski.
Speaker 3: Okay, Profiled is, as the name suggests, my efforts at
Speaker 3: putting together a profile, doing the work of a profile,
Speaker 3: or coming up with a profile based on FBI what
Speaker 3: the FBI now knows about serial killers, which is much
Speaker 3: greater today than it was back then. In my study
Speaker 3: of the Zodiac, I came to find that, gee, I
Speaker 3: really don't have a lot of criminological tools in my toolbox.
Speaker 3: I haven't read a whole lot about criminology specifically, so
Speaker 3: that led me into the study of criminology. What do
Speaker 3: police do to capture somebody? What does a profiler do
Speaker 3: to put together a criminal psychological profile or of an offender?
Speaker 3: Procedures that they use is analyzing all the details, all
Speaker 3: the data from an attack, exactly what happened, how it happened,
Speaker 3: where it happened. Once all this information is gathered, the
Speaker 3: profiler attempts to say something about the person who did it.
Speaker 3: What were his motives and what what he was doing,
Speaker 3: Why did he do it the way he did it?
Speaker 3: Is there anything that he did that was strange or unusual?
Speaker 3: And what might that say about that individual? And I'm
Speaker 3: indebted to guys like John Douglas who he put together
Speaker 3: a profile of John Carpenter, the Trailside killer and also
Speaker 3: in Northern California, and John Carpenter, who carried out rapes
Speaker 3: and murders about the same time as the Zodiac was
Speaker 3: eventually captured. But in the profile that Douglas provided, he said,
Speaker 3: this guy, I think he has a speech impediment. People
Speaker 3: thought it was crazy. How can you look at this
Speaker 3: information about what he did, and how can you say
Speaker 3: he's got a speech impediment? And John Douglas explained, well,
Speaker 3: he does a blitz attack with these couples that he
Speaker 3: meets in remote areas, he attacks them in a blitz
Speaker 3: style attack. Why would you do that, Well, the only
Speaker 3: reason that you would do that is because you don't
Speaker 3: feel comfortable walking up and talking to them. You know,
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy, for instance, he would he would never do
Speaker 3: a blitz attack. But David Carpenter did blitz attacks, and
Speaker 3: once he was arrested, many many police officers were astounded
Speaker 3: to see that he had indeed a speech impediment, that
Speaker 3: he had a very strong stutter. And that's an extreme
Speaker 3: example of what a profiler can do. As far as
Speaker 3: looking at the data and figuring out the type of
Speaker 3: person in profile, I came up with about a four
Speaker 3: page list of characteristics that I thought described the zodiac
Speaker 3: based on decisions that he made, odd choices, odd things
Speaker 3: that he did during his attacks. What it said about
Speaker 3: a person who would write letters, write letters to the police.
Speaker 3: What it said about a person who wants notoriety, who
Speaker 3: is looking for attention, Because you know, not a lot
Speaker 3: of serial killers correspond with the police. A lot of
Speaker 3: serial killers pick their own given name. You know, serial
Speaker 3: killers are known by a moniker. The Zodiac had three
Speaker 3: monikers used in the press prior to the Zodiac starting
Speaker 3: a letter saying this is the Zodiac speaking. So he
Speaker 3: gave his own moniker. That's also very rare. So I
Speaker 3: put together several pages of a detailed look of the
Speaker 3: type of person that the Zodiac must be. As well
Speaker 3: as in the book Profile, I go into great detail
Speaker 3: on all of what is known about the Zodiac if
Speaker 3: In Hunted, I tell the story step by step about
Speaker 3: the attacks and the letters and the public and the
Speaker 3: police response. In Profiled, I go into the forensics. What
Speaker 3: forensic information do we have about the killer and how
Speaker 3: can that be used? What's the amount of certainty we
Speaker 3: have with each of the different pieces of We have
Speaker 3: shoe impressions, there exists possible fingerprints, the types of guns
Speaker 3: that were used, the ammunition that we have collected following
Speaker 3: the attacks. We know quite a bit at a forensic level.
Speaker 3: But what does that say about the Zodiac? And then
Speaker 3: I complete that off with a criminal psychological profile of
Speaker 3: the killer without naming any suspects. In either of my
Speaker 3: first two books.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you go back. And in twenty eleven, the
Speaker 2: federal government put up the unibomber's possessions for auction. The
Speaker 2: contents of his cabin could be liquidated. Of course, Ted
Speaker 2: Kazinski fought the auction. You were very interested in these books.
Speaker 2: Tell us about this happenstance that gets you a lion's
Speaker 2: share of all the books in Ted Kazinski's cabin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was fascinated by you know, I'm a reader.
Speaker 3: I'm fascinated with books. Early on, after Ted Kazinsky was
Speaker 3: rested as the unibomber, a list was released of the
Speaker 3: two hundred and forty plus books that were taken from
Speaker 3: his cabin, And I thought, wouldn't it be cool to
Speaker 3: go and buy all of those books, to actually own
Speaker 3: the same books that unibomber owned, and read them and
Speaker 3: understand them and kind of get an idea of his mindset.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 3: In two thousand and eleven, the federal government put all
Speaker 3: of Ted's goods up for sale because he was going
Speaker 3: to be in prison for life and had no more
Speaker 3: use of any of his stuff. All of his appeals
Speaker 3: had been rejected and expired, and he owed millions of
Speaker 3: dollars to his victims and his victims' families that they
Speaker 3: would never receive. So the federal government decided, let's auction
Speaker 3: all of this stuff, and they did over the course
Speaker 3: of about two days. I was really interested in the
Speaker 3: books because instead of actually collecting a library that models
Speaker 3: hid his, wouldn't it be cool to actually own his library.
Speaker 3: I thought, well, I'm sure there are a lot of
Speaker 3: people bidding on it, so there's no way I'm going
Speaker 3: to purchase it, but I attempted anyway. The entire library
Speaker 3: is divided into three very unequal parts. One lot was
Speaker 3: merely the family Bible, the Kasinski family Bible, with names
Speaker 3: and dates and whatnot. A second lot had five books
Speaker 3: in it that were the five that the Unibomber specifically
Speaker 3: quoted in his writing at the manifesto. And then the
Speaker 3: third lot was the rest of the books. Well, fortunately
Speaker 3: for me, it wasn't described very well by the GSA
Speaker 3: who sold the items by auction. The third lot just
Speaker 3: said some books from the Unibomber, and the accompanying photos
Speaker 3: showed about forty different books, and I thought, do I
Speaker 3: want to bid on this? Maybe it's only about forty
Speaker 3: books that I'm bidding on. I realized, if this has
Speaker 3: the bulk of the this has the rest of the books,
Speaker 3: that would be over two hundred and forty books. I
Speaker 3: could be bidding on two hundred and forty books, so
Speaker 3: I did. I set a limit. I actually went one
Speaker 3: dollar over my limit and was absolutely stunned to see
Speaker 3: that nobody out bid me. So I was able to
Speaker 3: purchase Ted Kaczuski's almost his entire library from his cabin
Speaker 3: and I have it now in storage. And I have
Speaker 3: to preserve the books because I don't want them to
Speaker 3: go bad or anything. That when they first arrived they
Speaker 3: smell really, really bad because Ted's hygiene was not very good.
Speaker 3: And then I also bought copies of the other five
Speaker 3: that I don't own, so that now I do have
Speaker 3: his library.
Speaker 2: Incredible. Let's use this as an opportunity to stop to
Speaker 2: hear these messages now before we talk about exposed and
Speaker 2: the public, I guess officially saying that Ted Kazinski was
Speaker 2: a unibomber. The HLN channel reached out to you, the
Speaker 2: Travel channel and HLN also reached out to you. So
Speaker 2: tell us about these video projects or these television projects.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they were spawned in part by the arrest of
Speaker 3: the Golden State Killer Joseph Dangelo. Right, using the new
Speaker 3: technology of genetic what is a genealogical DNA, they were
Speaker 3: able to take the Golden State Killer's DNA compared to
Speaker 3: databases and find people who were somewhat similar in DNA.
Speaker 3: So because they were similar, they must have been a relative.
Speaker 3: And by formulating family trees of four and five generations back,
Speaker 3: they were able to find Joseph Evangelo and arrest him. Well,
Speaker 3: that got a number of TV show TV channels very
Speaker 3: excited about all of the other criminals could now be
Speaker 3: captured by the same means. And they were absolutely right,
Speaker 3: because within a couple of years of Joseph Dangelo's arrest,
Speaker 3: more than two hundred other criminals and cold case criminals
Speaker 3: were arrested or identified or cold cases were brought to
Speaker 3: a close by using the exact same method. Well, people
Speaker 3: began to think, well, how about the Zodiac? Could this
Speaker 3: be used to capture the Zodiac? So I was contacted
Speaker 3: by first the Travel Channel and then by the network HLN,
Speaker 3: which is owned by CNN, and each of them was
Speaker 3: working on a television show on the Zodiac. They wanted
Speaker 3: to get shows out there in case the case there
Speaker 3: was breaking news on the capture of the Zodiac, and
Speaker 3: so I was able to interview with them and film
Speaker 3: with them. The first one the Travel Channel. We actually
Speaker 3: went to the different crime scenes, did an episode of
Speaker 3: Mysteries of the Museum, and then with HLN I was
Speaker 3: part of one of the episodes of Very Scary People
Speaker 3: the Zodiac.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about Exposed. You say that there was a
Speaker 2: lot of pressure releasing this book for you. Tell us
Speaker 2: why and tell us about the publication of Exposed.
Speaker 3: Well, I knew Ted Kazinski was not a popular suspect.
Speaker 3: There were a few people who were advocating that he
Speaker 3: was the Zodiac or could have been the Zodiac. I
Speaker 3: had not publicly come out and said anything about my conclusions.
Speaker 3: Kevin and I were working that angle for a while,
Speaker 3: but during the time that I was publishing my journal
Speaker 3: ratings and inches, I didn't want to come out and
Speaker 3: say this is who I think it is or who
Speaker 3: it probably is, because I didn't want it to sway
Speaker 3: my opinions of articles coming in. I didn't want it
Speaker 3: to detract from the journal in any way, so I
Speaker 3: didn't say anything but I had both of the the
Speaker 3: networks who wanted to interview me, I had them sign
Speaker 3: non disclosure agreements so that they wouldn't talk about my
Speaker 3: conclusions until after I published Exposed, in which I did
Speaker 3: reveal my conclusions about Ted Kazinski, and they didn't. They
Speaker 3: did a very good job of not saying anything. And
Speaker 3: then several months after Exposed came out, these shows were
Speaker 3: aired and I was given the opportunity to share that
Speaker 3: share the conclusions of my research.
Speaker 2: It's interesting you write something I wasn't aware of that
Speaker 2: the esteem doctor Al Carlisle, author and Ted Bundy expert,
Speaker 2: has passed away a few years ago. He believed in
Speaker 2: your work and also your conclusion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that was extremely I was extremely grateful and proud
Speaker 3: to hear that because I shared with him and a
Speaker 3: few other people the conclusions that I had come to
Speaker 3: in the book, and he listened with great attention because
Speaker 3: he knows his work. He passed away, as you said
Speaker 3: a few years back, but he was a lone voice
Speaker 3: saying Ted Bundy should not be released. He interviewed him
Speaker 3: in Utah and said Ted Bundy should not be given parole.
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy is a very dangerous person. Other people said no, no,
Speaker 3: he's just a nice guy. Yeah, maybe he did commit
Speaker 3: a murder or two, but you know, we can trust him,
Speaker 3: he can go and we can give him bail. And
Speaker 3: as we know today, he was a extremely dangerous person
Speaker 3: who never should have been given bail. But when Al
Speaker 3: Carlisle heard my explanation and the details of why I
Speaker 3: concluded that it was Ted Kazinski, he was very impressed
Speaker 3: and he said, yeah, I think you got him. In fact,
Speaker 3: he expressed to me that he was he was jealous
Speaker 3: that he believed that I had identified it serial killer,
Speaker 3: and he wished that he had been able to do
Speaker 3: that over his career.
Speaker 2: Yes, now, I said about I mentioned about the stress
Speaker 2: that you were feeling and the trepidation that the release
Speaker 2: of exposed. You said that you feared a backlash, and
Speaker 2: so I was lucky enough to be able to do
Speaker 2: an interview with you September twenty sixth. Then you read
Speaker 2: about it in the book and we had a ninety
Speaker 2: minute discussion. And so in that interview, what happened afterwards
Speaker 2: in terms of searching online, in terms of responses to
Speaker 2: the claims that you made in that ninety minute interview
Speaker 2: with me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was happy to write about that. Dan, you
Speaker 3: were gracious enough to interview me the night before the
Speaker 3: book launched, so on the occasion of our conversation, that
Speaker 3: was the first time that I released the conclusions of
Speaker 3: my third book, and a lot of people were very,
Speaker 3: very interested because they appreciated my first two books. I
Speaker 3: think you had a large audience that night. You were
Speaker 3: interviewing me live, yes, and people were discussing the case
Speaker 3: and discussing the interview online as we were talking, and
Speaker 3: I wasn't sure how it would my conclusions would be accepted.
Speaker 3: I kind of suspected that there would be some backlash
Speaker 3: because a lot of people thought a really stupid idea
Speaker 3: that Ted Kazinski's the Zodiac. I had the same opinion
Speaker 3: when I first heard that people were looking at Ted
Speaker 3: Kazinski as being the Zodiac. I thought, that's kind of stupid,
Speaker 3: picking one high profile person and just plugging him into
Speaker 3: a high profile mystery. It's not unprecedented, and what I
Speaker 3: knew about Ted Kazinsky at the time just didn't make
Speaker 3: any sense whatsoever that he could have anything to do
Speaker 3: with the Zodiac case. But I have since come to
Speaker 3: realize that a lot of what we know about Ted Kazinsky,
Speaker 3: or what we think we know about Ted Kazinski, simply
Speaker 3: isn't true. Part of that is because the Manifesto was
Speaker 3: published about a year before Ted Kazinsky was arrested, So
Speaker 3: all of us were reading the Manifesto, and the media
Speaker 3: was writing and broadcasting about the Manifesto and what it
Speaker 3: meant and what the motive was behind what Ted Kazinski
Speaker 3: was doing as the unibomber. Well, a lot of it
Speaker 3: simply wasn't true. Once he was arrested, we were given
Speaker 3: the opportunity to actually delve into the life of Ted Kazinsky,
Speaker 3: to find out who he was, what made him, what
Speaker 3: his beliefs were, what he was doing. Turns out a
Speaker 3: lot of what was being said in the media and
Speaker 3: what he published in the Manifesto was simply not true.
Speaker 3: So once I was interviewed, a lot of people who
Speaker 3: went online and started discussing my interview thought I was crazy,
Speaker 3: thought I was nuts, thought I was really stupid. They
Speaker 3: were really shocked because they loved the first two books.
Speaker 3: How could I possibly believe that Ted Kazinsky had anything
Speaker 3: to do with it? And they're perfectly in their right
Speaker 3: to have their own opinions and to express their opinions.
Speaker 3: I support that. I was just kind of kind of perplexed.
Speaker 3: If you loved my first two books, why don't you
Speaker 3: read my third book and see for yourself. And a
Speaker 3: lot of people refuse to read it, so they don't
Speaker 3: know the arguments I made, and they don't know the
Speaker 3: conclusions and how I drew the conclusions.
Speaker 2: You say, a development in late twenty twenty, the Z
Speaker 2: three point forty cipher was cracked, finally yielding its elusive solution.
Speaker 2: How interesting was that to you? And especially why was
Speaker 2: it interesting in terms of Ted Kazinski and his viability
Speaker 2: as the Zodiac.
Speaker 3: It was absolutely incredible to me because it was the
Speaker 3: first time that the zodiac had spoken in about fifty
Speaker 3: fifty in a couple of years, we had all his letters,
Speaker 3: we had cracked the first cipher. The last two ciphers
Speaker 3: weren't that substantial, so they couldn't possibly say an awful lot.
Speaker 3: But it was absolutely astounding to me that suddenly we
Speaker 3: have this new information for the first time in over
Speaker 3: five decades, and I think the information is still being unpacked.
Speaker 3: The code has been cracked and a number of people
Speaker 3: looked at the solution and said, oh, it doesn't say
Speaker 3: that the person's name, and it doesn't say anything new,
Speaker 3: so we don't know anything. There's nothing there for us
Speaker 3: to learn from. But I realized that there is a
Speaker 3: lot to unpack from that. Why again, why did the
Speaker 3: Zodiac use those words? Why did he waste space in
Speaker 3: a cipher to provide this information? And what use of
Speaker 3: words and use of language does it say about the person?
Speaker 3: I think it's still being unpacked for me secifically. I
Speaker 3: noticed a number of ideas that suggested, once again that
Speaker 3: the killer was very intelligent and very cunning and clever
Speaker 3: and cautious. And then I noticed a number of different
Speaker 3: phrases within the solution to the cipher that made me think,
Speaker 3: you know, that's something that Ted Kaczynski could write. One
Speaker 3: of the things that the cipher said is that the
Speaker 3: writer was not afraid of the death penalty. Now, not
Speaker 3: a lot of serial killers aren't afraid. This is what
Speaker 3: the Zodiac wrote, I don't It was in response to
Speaker 3: a television show that somebody purporting to be the Zodiac
Speaker 3: called in and said, I don't want to go to
Speaker 3: the gas chamber. So in response, the Zodiac wrote within
Speaker 3: the cipher, I am not afraid of the gas chamber. Now,
Speaker 3: how many serial killers say it that way, say that
Speaker 3: they're not afraid of the gas chamber? Well, Ted Kazinski,
Speaker 3: upon being arrested, repeatedly said I would rather die than
Speaker 3: face life imprisonment, and I am not afraid of being
Speaker 3: put to death. He fired his own lawyers at one
Speaker 3: point and wanted to represent himself, and a lot of
Speaker 3: people were really concerned about that because they were afraid
Speaker 3: that Ted Kazinski just wanted to get up and grandstand
Speaker 3: and talk about his beliefs and his views and kind
Speaker 3: of end up on death row by representing himself. Kind
Speaker 3: of like death death by court, death by trial, rather
Speaker 3: than death by police, where somebody goes and commits suicide
Speaker 3: by rushing at a police officer to get the police
Speaker 3: officer to shoot him. The idea that he was willing
Speaker 3: to die and he wanted people to know about his
Speaker 3: beliefs and wanted to get his message out. So that
Speaker 3: kind of said something to me about the solution to
Speaker 3: the z three forty.
Speaker 2: You mentioned that Lake Barriessa has an importance in your life,
Speaker 2: but you also have a chapter called Lake Barriessa and
Speaker 2: a tragic accident that happened there, and also its relation
Speaker 2: to something called Zodiac Island, and also that this tragedy
Speaker 2: was three hundred feet from where Brian and Cecilia were
Speaker 2: knifed by Zodiac. Can you tell us briefly about this
Speaker 2: Lake barri Essa chapter.
Speaker 3: Sure, for the full story you need to read it
Speaker 3: in the book, but kind of a thumbnail sketch. I
Speaker 3: went out to Lake Barrissa one day and was wandering
Speaker 3: around in the area, thinking and spending time at a
Speaker 3: picnic table and journaling and thinking about the case. When
Speaker 3: a group of young people came spread out a blanket
Speaker 3: and started having a picnic. And when I was away
Speaker 3: from the water a little bit, I heard some yelling
Speaker 3: and screaming. I went over to an opening in kind
Speaker 3: of a clearing where I could overlook the lake and
Speaker 3: noticed that two of the six people, two guys, were
Speaker 3: swimming out in the lake. They were apparently engaging in
Speaker 3: a race to get to across the lake or whatever,
Speaker 3: and one guy made it across, and the other guy
Speaker 3: started crying out saying I can't, I can't help me,
Speaker 3: help me, And somebody else went out to help them.
Speaker 3: I realized that I was probably the strongest swimmer of
Speaker 3: all of the people present, So I ran down to
Speaker 3: the shore, stripped down and took my shoes and glasses off,
Speaker 3: and dove in the water and went to try to
Speaker 3: help the guy. By the time I got out there,
Speaker 3: he had already slipped under the water, and those of
Speaker 3: us who were in the water frantically looked around for
Speaker 3: him and tried to find him, and we were unable
Speaker 3: to do so. And it wasn't until the news reports
Speaker 3: of the next day said that scuba divers had found
Speaker 3: him at the bottom under twenty two feet of water,
Speaker 3: that he had drowned, and as you mentioned, there was
Speaker 3: only a couple hundred feet away from the exact spot
Speaker 3: where the Zodiac had attacked Brian and Cecilia.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about September twenty seventh, the anniversary of the
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine attacks and the group that still honors
Speaker 2: this anniversary and Lake Barriessa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have half a dozen friends who regularly make
Speaker 3: a point to meet up during the anniversaries of the
Speaker 3: Zodiac attacks. We sometimes add March twenty two, that coincides
Speaker 3: with the curious attack on Kathleen Johns, who may have
Speaker 3: been a victim of the Zodiac, who may have encountered
Speaker 3: the Zodiac but live to tell about it. We're not
Speaker 3: sure if it's a Zodiac attack or not, but that
Speaker 3: gives us every few months the opportunity to get together
Speaker 3: and meet and discuss the case. And so tomorrow today's
Speaker 3: the twenty six So tomorrow I will be gathering with
Speaker 3: these half dozen people and probably another half dozen or
Speaker 3: more others who are friends or family members or other
Speaker 3: people who will gather with us to remember Cecilia Shepherd
Speaker 3: and her death at the hands of the Zodiac, but
Speaker 3: also all of the victims. And we'll probably use some
Speaker 3: time to discuss the case and the latest updates that
Speaker 3: we've heard about and things that we've thought about. But
Speaker 3: mostly we get together to fellowship and to update one
Speaker 3: another what's going on in our lives. So it's kind
Speaker 3: of a kind of a dual purpose. These are friends
Speaker 3: of mine, but we use the opportunity to remember the
Speaker 3: events that took place so much years ago. Tomorrow is
Speaker 3: the fifty to fifth anniversary of the attack that took
Speaker 3: place at Lake Barriessa.
Speaker 2: Incredible you say you were you right that you were
Speaker 2: able to draw upon a myriad of people you've met
Speaker 2: during all this time, many fascinating places You've traveled to,
Speaker 2: physical places, very interestingly psychological ones as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I tried to do as good a job as
Speaker 3: possible of recreating my passion for the Zodiac in a
Speaker 3: way that people can kind of understand it. How I
Speaker 3: got into it, the depths of what I did as
Speaker 3: part of my fascination with it. Realized that it wasn't
Speaker 3: just me. There were so many other people involved in
Speaker 3: in my research. I'm not the first Zodiac researcher, and
Speaker 3: I'm indebted to many many other people who have argued
Speaker 3: with me, disagreed with me, agreed with me, did their
Speaker 3: own research, and provided insights into various aspects of the case.
Speaker 3: All of these people's contributions kind of came together and
Speaker 3: enabled me to put together and share what conclusions I've
Speaker 3: been able to make on the case.
Speaker 2: You've done an incredible and remarkable job. I want to
Speaker 2: thank you so much for coming on and talking about Obsessed,
Speaker 2: my relentless pursuit of the Zodiac killer.
Speaker 3: Thank you, Dan, I appreciate it.
Speaker 2: For those that might want to find out more about
Speaker 2: this and more about your other books. Can you direct
Speaker 2: us to a website or any social media that you do.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you're welcome to check out my website. It's Doctorhewitt
Speaker 3: dot com, doct o r h GWT dot com. But
Speaker 3: all of my books are available at on Amazon or
Speaker 3: anywhere else books are sold. I think that the prices
Speaker 3: are better on Genius Book Publishing. In fact, I think
Speaker 3: you can get the trilogy in kindle version at a
Speaker 3: very low price on Genius Book Publishing. But my books
Speaker 3: are available, as they say, anywhere that sells books, they
Speaker 3: can order it for you.
Speaker 2: This is a fascinating memoir and a fascinating search, your
Speaker 2: relentless search for the Zodiac. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: coming on and talking about Obsessed, my relentless pursuit of
Speaker 2: the Zodiac killer. Thank you so much for this interview,
Speaker 2: and you have a great evening, and good night, good night,
Speaker 2: good night,