Speaker 1: This is Michael Connelly and you're listening to Killer in
Speaker 1: the Code Solving the Black Dalia and Zodiac cases. Today,
Speaker 1: we're going to follow our first six episodes with a
Speaker 1: roundtable discussion with the principal investigators on this these cases
Speaker 1: and answer questions that have come into our podcast website,
Speaker 1: which is Killerinnecode dot Com. With me today is Alex Baber,
Speaker 1: who started this whole thing when he cracked the Z
Speaker 1: thirteen code left behind by the Zodiac Killer fifty some
Speaker 1: years ago. And veteran homicide investigators Mitsi Roberts, who at
Speaker 1: one time before her retirement, ran the cold case unit
Speaker 1: for the Los Angeles Police Department of which the Black
Speaker 1: Dallia case was assigned. It was her case for about
Speaker 1: fifteen sixteen years. And another cold case detective, Rick Jackson,
Speaker 1: who is veteran of the LAPD homicide squads, including the
Speaker 1: cold case squad, and now works as a cold case
Speaker 1: investigator for the San Mateo County share u's office up
Speaker 1: in northern California. So welcome everybody, and we know we
Speaker 1: have limited time here, so we're going to start going
Speaker 1: through the questions and see how many we can get answered.
Speaker 1: So let's start with this first one. This one is
Speaker 1: very germane to what we've been trying to do. But
Speaker 1: probably the question we're getting the most to our website
Speaker 1: is this, Have any law enforcement organizations contacted you about
Speaker 1: the podcast? We've gathered a lot of circumstantial evidence and
Speaker 1: even some physical evidence, and I think it's a good question,
Speaker 1: what's going to happen with all this or is it
Speaker 1: just going to end up in a podcast? Rick, you
Speaker 1: want to start with that one.
Speaker 2: Sure, in reality, we have no control over where this
Speaker 2: goes once we make notifications and communicate with law enforcement.
Speaker 2: I have talked to a detective from LAPD who has
Speaker 2: been assigned to look into it. To what degree, I
Speaker 2: don't know. They've made it known that they're not going
Speaker 2: to provide us with information. They are taking information for
Speaker 2: us to team what is necessary to fall upon and
Speaker 2: make determination whether this is a viable suspect or not.
Speaker 2: I've also talked with the San Francisco Police Department to
Speaker 2: the detective that is technically assigned to the Zodiac case
Speaker 2: that occurred in San Francisco, and basically it was the
Speaker 2: same thing. They are moving their investigation as they feel
Speaker 2: is appropriate. Again, not sharing with us what they are doing,
Speaker 2: which is understandable from you know, we're no longer sworn
Speaker 2: law enforcement officers working under jurisdiction of any place that
Speaker 2: has the jurisdiction over these cases, so we shouldn't be
Speaker 2: given information. So again it's outside of our control. But
Speaker 2: I do think they will look at it and make
Speaker 2: up determination. I think they're sufficient evidence for them to
Speaker 2: look at these cases and move forward to the extent
Speaker 2: where they can either definitely include him as the suspect,
Speaker 2: it can eliminate him if that's what it shows, which
Speaker 2: I don't think will happen, or just combine it with
Speaker 2: all the other theories and not make a determination on
Speaker 2: any of them.
Speaker 1: Anybody want to add anything. I like that the fact
Speaker 1: that I was.
Speaker 3: The first individual in decades to be requested to show
Speaker 3: in NAPA or any jurisdiction in North Bay to do
Speaker 3: a presentation with San Francisco PD, Solano County Sheriff's Department,
Speaker 3: as well as representatives of NAPA Sheriff's Department or office,
Speaker 3: and FBI for me to be requested to fly from
Speaker 3: the East Coast to California to do a presentation between
Speaker 3: four of the five involved jurisdictions from the original case
Speaker 3: makes a statement in itself.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I'd just like to add that the fact
Speaker 4: that you're not hearing a lot about law enforcement being involved.
Speaker 5: Hearing from the law enforcement side is just the nature
Speaker 5: of this case.
Speaker 4: Like I've said many times when I've had it, it's
Speaker 4: an ancillary case.
Speaker 5: Their main duties are more current homicides and cold cases.
Speaker 4: And so just because we're not hearing anything from law
Speaker 4: enforcement doesn't mean that they're not looking into it and
Speaker 4: investigating the evidence that we've given to them and the
Speaker 4: evidence that's in the podcast.
Speaker 2: I should also add that they have asked for contact
Speaker 2: information from certain people that are pertinent people in the
Speaker 2: case as we explain to them the particulars of our investigation.
Speaker 1: And I will add a reminder here the suspect Alex
Speaker 1: has identified died in nineteen ninety three. So while all
Speaker 1: these law enforcement agencies would like to solve these crimes
Speaker 1: and say case closed, they are duty bound to pursue
Speaker 1: cases where there are viable suspects out there, you know,
Speaker 1: live killers who need to be brought to justice. With
Speaker 1: this case and this suspect, that is not going to
Speaker 1: happen as sad and disappointing as that is. So that
Speaker 1: puts this investigation on a level of being worked when
Speaker 1: it can be worked, and when you consider a big
Speaker 1: city like Los Angeles, when is there not a new
Speaker 1: case to be worked and a killer out there somewhere
Speaker 1: on the loose. Okay, let's move on. We hope that
Speaker 1: you've already listened to the first six episodes of this podcast.
Speaker 1: But just very brief Alex broke z thirteen. It's also
Speaker 1: known as my Name Is. It's where the Zodiac claimed
Speaker 1: he had put his name into a cipher And the
Speaker 1: name Alex came up with and which has been verified
Speaker 1: by some of the top cryptographers in the world, was
Speaker 1: Marvin Merrill. Further investigation revealed that was an alias for
Speaker 1: a man named Marvin Margolis, who was one of the
Speaker 1: prime suspects in the Black Dahia case. And that's how
Speaker 1: we we linked these cases. And a question that has
Speaker 1: come in largely because of internet chatter. I don't know
Speaker 1: what else to call it, where people said no Margolis
Speaker 1: was cleared by the LAPD way back in nineteen forty seven,
Speaker 1: the year of the Black Dahia murder. By the way,
Speaker 1: Black Dahlia is the moniker. I guess you call it
Speaker 1: for Elizabeth Short the victim, and so let's have that
Speaker 1: question answered here, hopefully and for all. Was Margo Is
Speaker 1: cleared or not by the LAPD MIXI you had this
Speaker 1: case for a while, You're probably more familiar with it
Speaker 1: than anybody possibly in the world. What's your answer to
Speaker 1: that question?
Speaker 4: Not to my satisfaction, and the there's just a lot
Speaker 4: of conflicting information, a lot of well because of this,
Speaker 4: he was cleared, because of his alibi that his wife supported,
Speaker 4: he was cleared, But the timeline just doesn't it doesn't
Speaker 4: make sense to me with the evidence, with the grand jury,
Speaker 4: with the LAPD still looking for him after the grand jury,
Speaker 4: because the lead investigator had said that he couldn't clear him,
Speaker 4: nor could he include him.
Speaker 5: And that's just more evidence to me of what an.
Speaker 4: Elusive type of suspect Marvin Margolis was and that they
Speaker 4: just there's not enough information that they have or the
Speaker 4: acts to him to make that determination.
Speaker 5: The benefit that I have with maybe a.
Speaker 4: Handful of individuals is I had access to the files
Speaker 4: for fifteen years, and I've scoured through those files, not
Speaker 4: just the DA files, but the entire Black Value files,
Speaker 4: as well as all the stuff that's out on the
Speaker 4: Internet that I have access to. And all I can
Speaker 4: say is, I'm not satisfied that he is cleared.
Speaker 1: And even if you.
Speaker 4: Take all of that into consideration and you say yes,
Speaker 4: the investigators in the you know, in the late forties
Speaker 4: cleared him.
Speaker 5: He had an alibi and they cleared him.
Speaker 4: I've worked many cases where people lie, people live for people.
Speaker 4: You're not really one hundred percent able to verify the alibi,
Speaker 4: and so they take him for his word and they
Speaker 4: move on to the next because that happened a lot
Speaker 4: in this case. Take somebody's you know, check them out
Speaker 4: the list, and move to the next. And it's kind
Speaker 4: of what is so fascinating about these cases all these
Speaker 4: years later is that suspects like Leslie, Dillon and Hodell,
Speaker 4: all these suspects that keep coming out at one point
Speaker 4: were somewhat cleared or had alibised or but they're still there.
Speaker 4: They're still in the files, and there's still, at least
Speaker 4: for the Internet solution and stuff that everybody has a
Speaker 4: theory of.
Speaker 5: Who it could be and why they weren't cleared sufficiently.
Speaker 5: And that's the nature of the beasts of this case.
Speaker 4: All I can say is I've had access to the
Speaker 4: files for fifteen years, all of the files, and I'm
Speaker 4: not convinced that Marvin Merrill was cleared.
Speaker 2: And I will add on to that. And Mitzi briefly
Speaker 2: referred to one of the lead detectives, but Finest Brown
Speaker 2: was a Homicide Division detective, a veteran detective, and he
Speaker 2: was one of the two leads on the Black Dalua
Speaker 2: case and in the grand jury in the nineteen fifty
Speaker 2: time period. He definitively said, as Mitzi referenced that he
Speaker 2: can include him because there was insufficient evidence to move
Speaker 2: forward at that time. But he definitely was not eliminated
Speaker 2: as a suspect. And there are other people that were
Speaker 2: associated with the investigation from either LAPD or the DA's
Speaker 2: office that said he always remained there that person's key
Speaker 2: focus from early on because of their person relationship, he
Speaker 2: should have been a major target of the investigation, not
Speaker 2: just one of twenty one. I mean, he was the
Speaker 2: one that had a relationship with or lived with her.
Speaker 2: And we all know, you know the percentage of times
Speaker 2: that relationships or people known to the other person are
Speaker 2: the killer and the victim. It's just the way it
Speaker 2: goes those to be eliminated. And he definitely wasn't eliminated
Speaker 2: by the detectives then.
Speaker 5: Yes, And he when he was initially interviewed, he lied.
Speaker 5: He lied to the detectives, which they kind of gave
Speaker 5: him a pass on that, and I think it was
Speaker 5: a I think it was a soft pass. I think
Speaker 5: that you have to take that more into consideration and
Speaker 5: to say, well, if he's lying.
Speaker 4: About this, what else is he lying about? And who
Speaker 4: else maybe be a part of that? And so for
Speaker 4: all those reasons, I don't think that he.
Speaker 5: Was eliminated back then and can be eliminated now.
Speaker 2: And we all know alibi is given by people close
Speaker 2: to somebody, specifically a wife, a new wife has to
Speaker 2: be looked at with very close eyes to see if
Speaker 2: that's a legitimate other than just her word. There's nothing
Speaker 2: else other than her word that's got to be looked at.
Speaker 2: And I've handled cases one recently where I work now,
Speaker 2: where the eventual suspect was eliminated based on things that
Speaker 2: happened within days of the murder, and thirty something years later,
Speaker 2: we began looking at it and I just could not
Speaker 2: get past the fact that this is too good of
Speaker 2: a suspect, not only in her visual appearance and the
Speaker 2: likeness to the composite, but in a very unique car
Speaker 2: that she had access to, and eventually, thirty five years later,
Speaker 2: she was definitively identified as a suspect, not only through
Speaker 2: a confession but some of her general writings that she
Speaker 2: had done about shooting the victim.
Speaker 1: It happens all the time, Alex. You want to say something, Yeah,
Speaker 1: I want.
Speaker 3: To put a cherry on top of her. Guys, there's
Speaker 3: this myth of a missing week. If that's true, then
Speaker 3: we can eliminate more than Markles as a suspect based
Speaker 3: on his school attendance and his employment at that time.
Speaker 3: He's given to alibis by dream mate Bill Robinson that
Speaker 3: he lives with and new Elizabeth Short as well as
Speaker 3: his wife will be married approximately a month after Elizabeth
Speaker 3: Short Lefting that being said, we do also know that
Speaker 3: Alficher McBride had an account of Elizabeth Short coming to
Speaker 3: her for protection within hours of her murder, and it's
Speaker 3: verified that she confirmed Elizabeth Short's body, not photographs her
Speaker 3: body as being that of the woman that she spoke to.
Speaker 3: So this surpasses the belief that she saw photographs. A
Speaker 3: few hours later came back and said, look, now I'm
Speaker 3: dubious about my original account. It might be somebody different.
Speaker 3: Because once you go down and you view the body
Speaker 3: and you confirm that that's etchton Stone. So then you
Speaker 3: move forward to the granaduriy inquest and you have one
Speaker 3: suspect and one suspect only that they tried to track
Speaker 3: down outside of California, and that's Marvin Margolis in Chicago.
Speaker 3: We have accounts of letters where they reach out to
Speaker 3: Chicago pet repeatedly. They send him out to his in
Speaker 3: law's house. There's residents. They're trying to hunt this guy down.
Speaker 3: Nobody else of the suspects was ever printed down in
Speaker 3: that manner. Ever, in the closing statement guys, the very
Speaker 3: last document under oath DA or deput DA, Vick says,
Speaker 3: if we allow Marvin Margolis to know outside of these
Speaker 3: four walls that were attempting to locate him, he may
Speaker 3: elude justice forever. So that right there is a statement
Speaker 3: in himself as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I find that very at the very end of
Speaker 1: the grand jury, that kind of instruction. Basically, then nothing
Speaker 1: leaves these four walls about this guy is very telling.
Speaker 1: And there's another thing I just want to throw in.
Speaker 1: I just finished reading a book called Black Dalle It
Speaker 1: just came out by an author named William Mann, and
Speaker 1: he also calls Margolis the last man standing in terms
Speaker 1: he methodically knocks down all the other suspects and says
Speaker 1: Margolis is the last man standing. And one of the
Speaker 1: things he says, which I don't think we've come across,
Speaker 1: or Alex maybe you can confirm, is that the LAPD
Speaker 1: never pulled his military records. It was the grand jury
Speaker 1: that did. And so when they cleared them, they didn't
Speaker 1: know anything about him getting a fifty percent reduced capacity
Speaker 1: situation with him. They didn't know anything about the psychology
Speaker 1: the psychologists who interviewed him and talked about his aggression
Speaker 1: and his mindset. And you know, if I think at
Speaker 1: Finnis Brown and his partner knew this stuff, they would
Speaker 1: have never cleared him in any way because this guy
Speaker 1: just he fit that profile right off the bat.
Speaker 3: May add to that real quick, Michael. Also, and everything
Speaker 3: is when they didn't pull his notary record, they didn't
Speaker 3: realize that he was attached to Marine Division as a
Speaker 3: naval Coreman, and we know that they were looking for
Speaker 3: marine in particular following her murder, and he lies and
Speaker 3: in the files he claims to be in the Army,
Speaker 3: not the Navy, not the Marine Corps, in the Army.
Speaker 3: That's in the report, but that is often overlooked when
Speaker 3: people do their investigation.
Speaker 1: Okay, by the way, I'm going to talk to William
Speaker 1: Mann about his book and his investigation later down the
Speaker 1: line in our podcast.
Speaker 2: And I also want to mention that when we first
Speaker 2: heard about Man's book coming out towards the latter part
Speaker 2: of twenty twenty five, showed that he had paid Margolis
Speaker 2: as the likely suspect or as the suspect, and as
Speaker 2: had Alex in his investigative work. So the fact that
Speaker 2: these two people, Man and Baber, had no connection to
Speaker 2: each other, didn't know what the other was doing, and
Speaker 2: they both came to the same conclusion with well researched
Speaker 2: information kind of supports the fact that even beyond those
Speaker 2: two people's investigations, that he is likely the suspect. And
Speaker 2: that's let alone all the information that we've recovered that
Speaker 2: is great circumstantial evidence linking Merril Margolis.
Speaker 4: I just kind of want to add to that, it's
Speaker 4: it's funny that people are so sort of fast to
Speaker 4: push that narrative that he was cleared during the initial investigation,
Speaker 4: which means that all of this information that Alex has
Speaker 4: come up with today and that we verified with world
Speaker 4: renowned experts, we're just supposed to ignore because he was
Speaker 4: eliminated back in.
Speaker 5: Nineteen forty seven.
Speaker 4: And that just doesn't make sense as an investigator that
Speaker 4: you would ignore compelling evidence on an elimination that we
Speaker 4: really can't improve.
Speaker 1: This is kind of related, so sticking with the black
Speaker 1: value here, especially you two homicide detectives, your view of
Speaker 1: this and I, MITCHI, I know you've like looked through
Speaker 1: the four drawers of the cabinet and we've all seen
Speaker 1: the FBI files and the Grand Jewty flowles. What is
Speaker 1: your view of this investigation? And obviously things are different now,
Speaker 1: technology is way ahead of time and so forth. But
Speaker 1: there's this lure out there that this was a state
Speaker 1: of the art investigation. And I think if it was,
Speaker 1: you know, the police chief would not have called for
Speaker 1: a grand jury to refocus the case. I think if
Speaker 1: it was, they might have at least charged somebody, But
Speaker 1: no one was ever charged. No one was ever convicted
Speaker 1: of this crime. What is there a way to reach
Speaker 1: back almost eighty years and say this was a solid investigation.
Speaker 1: I know it deals with some detectives who are pretty famous,
Speaker 1: But I, as someone who's not a detective and who
Speaker 1: is complete amateur and probably doesn't know what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: I see the string of things that were missed and
Speaker 1: ultimately led to the grand jury kind of taking over
Speaker 1: this case.
Speaker 4: What I can say about that is that, yes, the
Speaker 4: detectives at the time have very good reputations as smart, dedicated,
Speaker 4: hard working detectives. There is an abundance of investigative material.
Speaker 4: There's no doubt that there was heart and that there
Speaker 4: was just heart and soul, and they put everything into
Speaker 4: this investigation. But knowing how cases like this kind of
Speaker 4: get away from an investigator, you're never prepared in a
Speaker 4: case like this that it's a gruesome case and you're
Speaker 4: going to go in with it and give it all
Speaker 4: your investigators and give it everything that you have. But
Speaker 4: you're never prepared for the media to pick up on
Speaker 4: a case like this and just take it and run.
Speaker 4: And that's when a case like this can get away
Speaker 4: from you. And you're so busy and the department is
Speaker 4: so busy chasing down now leads from crank jobs and
Speaker 4: nuts and legitimate people and at the same time trying
Speaker 4: to just work the case that it can get away
Speaker 4: from you quickly and things there can be shortcuts made,
Speaker 4: or things can just get dropped because if anything, and
Speaker 4: just by reading and go and having access to those files,
Speaker 4: I can tell you that it would now if we
Speaker 4: had a murder like that, it would be worked completely different.
Speaker 4: It would be a ginormous task where so there would
Speaker 4: be the entire division in Robert Homicide would be would
Speaker 4: be given some role in that investigation, and it would
Speaker 4: be worked until it was so And I can tell
Speaker 4: you that that didn't happen back then. You know, there
Speaker 4: were a handful of detectives on it, and they pushed
Speaker 4: the case for initially for you know, and then it
Speaker 4: kind of just whittled down to the main investigators assigned
Speaker 4: to the case. And so although I can't fault their investigation,
Speaker 4: because I do think they worked very diligently and hard, it.
Speaker 5: Seems to me that.
Speaker 4: Just the immense amount of attention from the media outside
Speaker 4: from the public, that this case got away from them.
Speaker 2: And what I'll say about it is, you know, the
Speaker 2: new chief of police came in William Wharton in nineteen
Speaker 2: forty nine, and I can guarantee you, other than just
Speaker 2: looking at the overall overall operation of the police department
Speaker 2: as a new chief, one of the first things he
Speaker 2: was going to do would want to do is get
Speaker 2: a briefing on this case that had massive public interest,
Speaker 2: a lot of people working on it.
Speaker 4: UH.
Speaker 2: And obviously what he heard he did not like, because
Speaker 2: there is a whole news article about him saying that
Speaker 2: he felt it was a bungled investigation and it needed
Speaker 2: a new start, and he was the one that initiated
Speaker 2: the call to start a grand jury and kind of
Speaker 2: start from scratch and move forward through the through the
Speaker 2: evidence and through the UH the investigative steps that had
Speaker 2: already been taken, and maybe send it in a new direction.
Speaker 2: So obviously he wasn't happy with it for whatever reason.
Speaker 2: But he did in fact call it a quote unquote
Speaker 2: bungled investigation, So that's that's key.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to mention that that some of these
Speaker 1: documents that we're talking about, they'll they'll be available on
Speaker 1: killeringnecode dot com. I just want to add too.
Speaker 3: Whenever the grand injury closed out, Detective Frank P. Jamison
Speaker 3: for the DA's office, his last comment on his report,
Speaker 3: his personal report was that he advised the incoming grand
Speaker 3: jury to pick up the case again because he felt
Speaker 3: that they were close to identifying and getting some justice
Speaker 3: for Elizabeth Short and in the local newspaper articles, he
Speaker 3: actually dav is quoted as stating that the original investigation
Speaker 3: was subpar by his standards, as well as the other investigators.
Speaker 1: By the way, I'm not giving the names of the
Speaker 1: people who sending these questions because we got many that
Speaker 1: are the same, so I'd have to give a whole
Speaker 1: list of names. So sorry about that if you're not
Speaker 1: getting credit for your question. But here's a one word
Speaker 1: for word that came in. Can you please address the
Speaker 1: elephant in the room that many on the internet are
Speaker 1: firmly convinced Arthur Lee Allen was the zodiacc Alex warning
Speaker 1: to take that one all right.
Speaker 3: So from the moment the movie was released in two
Speaker 3: thousand and seven, I remember the talk show, one of
Speaker 3: the leading talk shows, bringing in Jake Gildenhall as well
Speaker 3: as the individual that played Tashie on screen, which is
Speaker 3: Mark Bruffalo, And they said, are the audience is gonna
Speaker 3: be pissed when they leave the theater, that they're gonna
Speaker 3: believe that Arthur Lee Allen's is Zodiac even though he's not.
Speaker 3: And this interview is on YouTube if you get a
Speaker 3: chance to watch it, and they both chuckle a little
Speaker 3: bit and they're like, we assume. So with that being said,
Speaker 3: the movie two thousand and seven was based on Robert
Speaker 3: Graysmith's book that was released initially nineteen eighty six, revised
Speaker 3: and released in twenty eleven twenty twelve, and it points
Speaker 3: to Arthur Lee Allen, it's about as much fiction as
Speaker 3: it is nonfiction, to be honest with you. And that
Speaker 3: being said, to get down to the legal aspect of this,
Speaker 3: Mark Lee Allen was cleared by three of the top
Speaker 3: five forensic categories, that being handwriting which is the least
Speaker 3: my opinion, fingerprints, and then DNA, So three of the
Speaker 3: top five you you know, eliminate biometrics as being the
Speaker 3: other one as well as audio. This tells you right
Speaker 3: there that you got a guy that if I'm going
Speaker 3: to wager on, I'm not wagering on him as being
Speaker 3: the SDIAC.
Speaker 1: What is the source of the DNA.
Speaker 3: DNA they used was extracted from the stamps little of
Speaker 3: this letter from two thousand and four. They attempted to
Speaker 3: extract more DNA in twenty eighteen. Supposedly there's this individual
Speaker 3: behind the scenes whistleblower that said they were unable to
Speaker 3: distract in the DNA at all in twenty eighteen, so
Speaker 3: they revert back to the partial DNA extraction. And it
Speaker 3: is only partial, mind you, but they were able to
Speaker 3: eliminate him as well as all other suspects to date.
Speaker 1: Rick, were you going to say something?
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I have been told by someone that had
Speaker 2: control of the Zodiac case with the San Francisco Police
Speaker 2: Department from for years and that that person told me
Speaker 2: that Arthur Lee Allen, his connection has is bullshits thet
Speaker 2: the quote he used, and that he has been officially eliminated.
Speaker 1: So repeat itself.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, that's all I can say on that, And
Speaker 2: that's coming from somebody that's in the know of the
Speaker 2: Zodiac San Francisco case. There was also a potential, and
Speaker 2: I've never been able to confirm this, that there was
Speaker 2: some potential DNA extracted from a glove that was left
Speaker 2: at the crime scene inadvertently by the killer of Paul Stein,
Speaker 2: the cab driver.
Speaker 3: There's a question surrounding night glove. Just for the record,
Speaker 3: I'm not sure if it was left by a prior
Speaker 3: affair or if it actually belongs to the perpetrator beating
Speaker 3: the zodiac. It was found in the front floorboard. It
Speaker 3: was it was Dunstan blood, guys, because you had Paul
Speaker 3: Stein's blood that was it filled the floorboard panel if
Speaker 3: you look at the photograph. So they're unsure the origin
Speaker 3: of that as well, but there isn't a DNA that's
Speaker 3: been extracted from that.
Speaker 1: You are correct. This is the perfect time to bring
Speaker 1: up handwriting analysis since you mentioned that Arthur Lee Allen
Speaker 1: was partially one of the clearances was on handwriting comparison.
Speaker 1: That was very important to your investigation, Alex, because it
Speaker 1: was like pursuing handwriting examples from Marvin Margolas Slash, Marvin
Speaker 1: Merrill slash, many other names that you met with his
Speaker 1: son to get handwriting examples, and of course you got
Speaker 1: the sketch which is at the center of our investigation.
Speaker 1: But whatever, what's the latest or where are we on
Speaker 1: handwriting analysis on this case?
Speaker 3: Okay, So we have one confirmation that we had in
Speaker 3: our back pocket and we started this and we had
Speaker 3: one received last nighte from any Great Forensic Services who's
Speaker 3: also confirmed aid that he can't eliminate more Margolis as
Speaker 3: the author of any of the letters, including the Zodiac
Speaker 3: or Black Dalua. The reason being is because there's capital
Speaker 3: box letters that are not personal in description, as well
Speaker 3: as lowercase incursive that we supplied him with. But he
Speaker 3: also said that there was evidence suggesting that Marvin Margoles
Speaker 3: was the author of the Zodiac letters. So we have
Speaker 3: a win win situation. We have not one but two
Speaker 3: experts independently confirming, one be on the side of a
Speaker 3: doubt his opinion, the other one saying that he can't
Speaker 3: be eliminated and that he is in most likelihood the
Speaker 3: author of the zodiac letters.
Speaker 2: Okay, and I just want to also add, and obviously
Speaker 2: I am not an expert and Mitzi is not an
Speaker 2: expert in handwriting, but we both handled cases we're handwriting,
Speaker 2: and so we spent time with question document examiners with
Speaker 2: LAPD who handle hundreds and hundreds of these cases a year,
Speaker 2: and so you pick up some things just from live
Speaker 2: listening to them and they're now learning about their analysis
Speaker 2: on our cases. And just for me looking at some
Speaker 2: of the letters, I'm not saying all of them, but
Speaker 2: some of the letters are so unique that I just
Speaker 2: my gut feeling as wow, this is pretty strong stuff. Again,
Speaker 2: I'm not a court qualified expert, but using common sense
Speaker 2: and the stuff we've learned from question document Zamer's, I
Speaker 2: would say it looks pretty good, and especially in some
Speaker 2: of the cursive lower case cursive things.
Speaker 3: I believe that the general public would have to agree
Speaker 3: with this guy. So I don't think I've read one
Speaker 3: comment that's negative about the handwriting similarities.
Speaker 1: Well, we'll put some of those up on the website
Speaker 1: as well, where you can see the comparison and also
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong or actually say this better
Speaker 1: than me Alex. But in the world of handwriting analysis,
Speaker 1: if you see one thing that doesn't match, you have
Speaker 1: to eliminate. And so when our latest review or analysis
Speaker 1: comes back and says that Margola slash Merrill cannot be eliminated,
Speaker 1: that means they saw nothing that doesn't match. I'm saying
Speaker 1: this wrong, but I'm saying it's a very high standard.
Speaker 3: Correct, You're correct, Michael, if they see one indication or
Speaker 3: a red flag, at that point, they have to acknowledge that,
Speaker 3: meaning that they have to state that this individual either
Speaker 3: there's any probability that he's not the author or that
Speaker 3: he isn't the author.
Speaker 1: Okay, And we had none of that, and either of
Speaker 1: our do analysis made by separate company, separate people. They
Speaker 1: probably know each other because it's a small group, I think.
Speaker 3: But they didn't actually know each other because I didn't
Speaker 3: make it aware to them when we requested that we
Speaker 3: get their independent analysis. I didn't want them to be
Speaker 3: aware one another. I wanted them to come back and
Speaker 3: see if they came to the same conclusion, which they
Speaker 3: both did.
Speaker 1: This is running longer than I thought and planned, so
Speaker 1: we're going to actually break this into two parts, and
Speaker 1: so we'll be back. You can take a break now.
Speaker 1: I'm talking to our listeners, not you three, but we're
Speaker 1: going to end this one this podcast, and there'll be
Speaker 1: a part two. I'm Michael Connolly, and you've been listening
Speaker 1: to Killer in the Code Solving the Black Dahlia and
Speaker 1: Zodiac cases. That concludes the first half of our roundtable discussion,
Speaker 1: where we take in questions from the listening audience. If
Speaker 1: you've enjoyed it, check out chapter eight, where we continue
Speaker 1: the discussion. Thank you for listening.