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Speaker 3: You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 3: written about them, Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker, DTK every week,
Speaker 3: another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous
Speaker 3: killers in true crime history True Murder with your host
Speaker 3: journalist and author Dan Zufanski, good Evening.
Speaker 9: The Zodiac occupies a special place among serial killers, claiming
Speaker 9: the lives of at least five young victims and taunting
Speaker 9: the police and telephone calls and cryptic letters, he terrorized
Speaker 9: northern California from nineteen sixty six to nineteen seventy four
Speaker 9: and beyond. Despite his appalling acts of violence, he was
Speaker 9: never arrested. He has never even been identified. Thousands of
Speaker 9: men have been accused, nearly twenty five hundred have been investigated.
Speaker 9: The police lack only the name of the perpetrator. Never
Speaker 9: has there been more passionate interest in the Zodiac serial killer.
Speaker 9: Never has there been more Freedom of Information Act released
Speaker 9: information on his crime spree and the subsequent law enforcement investigation.
Speaker 9: Yet never before has a carefully researched, scholarly treatment of
Speaker 9: this otherwise eminently solvable riddle been attempted, that is until now.
Speaker 9: In this painstakingly researched and meticulously detailed account by true
Speaker 9: crime author Mark g. Hewitt, the reader has offered unprecedented
Speaker 9: access to the case, reveals recent interviews, some of which
Speaker 9: have been never before made public, as well as all
Speaker 9: available FBI and local police reports, and contemporary press accounts
Speaker 9: of the day, to create a comprehensive narration of the facts,
Speaker 9: including various sides of the many disputed issues within the case.
Speaker 9: In three volumes, Mark Hewitt will recount the murders, examine
Speaker 9: the evidence, and narrow down the possibilities of the suspects
Speaker 9: who could have possibly been the Zodiac serial killer. The
Speaker 9: book that we're featuring this evening is Hunted the Zodiac Murders,
Speaker 9: Book one, with my special guest, journalist and author, Mark G. Hewitt.
Speaker 9: Welcome back to the program, and thank you for a
Speaker 9: greened in this interview.
Speaker 10: Mark Hewitt, Thanks Dan, thank you for having me.
Speaker 9: Thank you very much. Very exciting and interesting series of
Speaker 9: books you've partake embarked on, and so congratulations on this
Speaker 9: first book. Very exciting. Let's talk about again. Let's not
Speaker 9: go too far into because we have so much to
Speaker 9: cover in this very very comprehensive book. Like you said,
Speaker 9: we've talked about in the introduction, there's a lot to cover,
Speaker 9: a lot of new information. Just give us briefly, what
Speaker 9: is the What was your intention in bringing to this case,
Speaker 9: what new or what you're going to What is your
Speaker 9: intention to bring to this already very covered case.
Speaker 10: For having me, Dan, I appreciate it. First, I want
Speaker 10: to commend you on your early bird status. This is
Speaker 10: the first interview I've given on the first book of
Speaker 10: my trilogy, so I thank you pretty fresh. Over the
Speaker 10: next couple of months, I'm going to be doing book
Speaker 10: signings and various interviews. So thank you for getting a
Speaker 10: hold of me early. The The book is not yet
Speaker 10: within a week, it's going to be pre orders available
Speaker 10: on Amazon dot com. But the Zodiac serial killing case
Speaker 10: is very personal to me because it absolutely fascinates me.
Speaker 10: It's the greatest American criminal mystery is as far as
Speaker 10: I'm concerned. There are a lot of mysteries in the
Speaker 10: United States criminal files, John Benet Ramsey, the Black Dahlia,
Speaker 10: the disappearance of Jimmy Haffa, But I think the Zodiac
Speaker 10: serial killer is the biggest of them all because it
Speaker 10: was a series of murders, and it was the perpetrator
Speaker 10: was never found, and the case has got to be
Speaker 10: solvable because the killer left behind so many clues, wrote letters,
Speaker 10: sent codes left behind, tire tracks, boot prints, possibly some fingerprints,
Speaker 10: and a whole bunch of eyewitnesses. So part of the
Speaker 10: mystery is why didn't he get caught because of that,
Speaker 10: he has stopped at some point and disappeared from history,
Speaker 10: and why was he never identified. This first book is
Speaker 10: personal to me because I kind of wrote it for myself.
Speaker 10: It was the book that didn't exist when I began
Speaker 10: to study the case. I was looking for somebody to
Speaker 10: look at the case as a historian and lay out
Speaker 10: all the facts of the case, and I didn't find
Speaker 10: a book of that nature. There are a lot of
Speaker 10: books on the market right now. The majority, if not all,
Speaker 10: of them say I know who the criminal is, and
Speaker 10: here's why I think that my father, or my uncle
Speaker 10: or this suspect is responsible. The problem is, when you
Speaker 10: put together a book in that fashion, you tend to
Speaker 10: emphasize the information that supports your theory and kind of
Speaker 10: forget about or minimize anything that detracts from your suspect.
Speaker 10: So there are a lot of books on the market,
Speaker 10: but there are none that provide an overview of the
Speaker 10: case without a suspect. So that's what this first book is.
Speaker 9: What I found The most fascinating is the complete letters
Speaker 9: that you include from the zodiac in your book, and
Speaker 9: we will I think it's going to be a real
Speaker 9: treat for the audience for us to read the details
Speaker 9: of those letters, because it's very important and is such
Speaker 9: an important part of the investigation are those letters and
Speaker 9: the follow up and the verification from the information that
Speaker 9: it gets from those letters. So if you don't mind,
Speaker 9: I'll get you to read them. And if you don't
Speaker 9: want to, then I'm ready to read them myself because
Speaker 9: they're just profound. So let's start mark with Riverside, California.
Speaker 9: Tell us a little bit about Riverside, California at that time,
Speaker 9: because we have a lot of people that we have
Speaker 9: to go back in history. That's a long time in history,
Speaker 9: nineteen sixty nine. As you talk about, there's not even
Speaker 9: the term serial killer. And we'd be jumping ahead if
Speaker 9: we were to talk about how the police, the media,
Speaker 9: and the community looked at this first as you include anyway,
Speaker 9: and there's some dispute as well whether this murder is
Speaker 9: to be always included, but anyway, this is the first
Speaker 9: murder you start with with Sherry Josephine Bates. So she's
Speaker 9: eighteen years old and Riverside, California. So tell us just
Speaker 9: a little bit about Riverside, California and how apt are
Speaker 9: they to have a crime like this? What's the nation
Speaker 9: like at that time? We'll talk about this as well.
Speaker 9: This is a little bit before we get accustomed to
Speaker 9: some things. And the Zodiac is truly a unique killer,
Speaker 9: as everyone knows. Tell us about Riverside, California, Cherry, Josephine
Speaker 9: Bates and her father Joseph take us back.
Speaker 10: Okay, thank you. I'm glad you pointed out that not
Speaker 10: everybody accepts shared Joe Bates as a Zodiac victim, and
Speaker 10: I had to bring that out in the book. Some
Speaker 10: people believe that the Zodiac did kill her. Some people
Speaker 10: believe that the Zodiac wrote letters following her death following
Speaker 10: her murder, taking credit for it without actually being the
Speaker 10: one who killed her. Other people believe that has absolutely
Speaker 10: nothing to do with the Zodiac case whatsoever. I started
Speaker 10: there because a very strong case can be made. I
Speaker 10: believe that she was not only killed by the Zodiac
Speaker 10: and the letters followed up by her by the Zodiac.
Speaker 10: The date was October thirtieth, nineteen sixty six, Riverside, California.
Speaker 10: At the time, it was the one unsolved murder in
Speaker 10: Riverside's history. This young co ed was brutally stabbed to
Speaker 10: death outside of a library, and every lead that they
Speaker 10: followed into nothing, and the case started to go cold.
Speaker 10: And suddenly, a month after the murder, a letter arrived
Speaker 10: in the mail, actually a couple of letters addressed to
Speaker 10: the police and to the press taking credit for it.
Speaker 10: The letter was entitled the Confession, and in the letter
Speaker 10: that typed in all caps, the killer narrated what exactly
Speaker 10: happened and said that not only was he going to
Speaker 10: kill again, but this wasn't his first murder, and so
Speaker 10: suddenly the police in the community knew that there was
Speaker 10: a crazy person on the loose, somebody who claims to
Speaker 10: have killed before murdered and claimed he was going to
Speaker 10: kill again. Within the letter, he said that the reason
Speaker 10: he killed Cherry Joe was because of a brush off
Speaker 10: that he had received in the past, that apparently he'd
Speaker 10: wanted to date her and that she didn't she didn't
Speaker 10: take him seriously. Whether this is a ruse or not
Speaker 10: remains to be seen, but they look into Chara Jobates'
Speaker 10: relationship history and didn't find anybody who kind of fit
Speaker 10: the bill. They did find one suspect, and some in
Speaker 10: Riverside believe that that local person is responsible for the death,
Speaker 10: but they just couldn't prove it. Other people believe that
Speaker 10: he had nothing to do with it. So that's kind
Speaker 10: of how the Zodiac serial killer case started, though the
Speaker 10: killer didn't claim his title for a few years until
Speaker 10: nineteen sixty nine, and there were other follow up letters
Speaker 10: on the six month anniversary of Bates' death, and these
Speaker 10: two kind of perplexed the police officers. And this case
Speaker 10: is still has never been solved.
Speaker 9: Let's go back to this letter, because I've read some
Speaker 9: things about the Zodiac, some books, and like I say,
Speaker 9: I just don't remember it. I'm reading such a complete story,
Speaker 9: and these letters are demonstrative, to say the least. If
Speaker 9: you like, I'd just like to read some of this
Speaker 9: and then you can comment, because this is what the
Speaker 9: police are seeing in nineteen sixty six, right after this murder,
Speaker 9: and so tell us the circumstances that they get, are
Speaker 9: contacted and what, and tell us a little bit about
Speaker 9: If you're not going to read, I'll read from some
Speaker 9: parts of the letter, because again, This is something that
Speaker 9: the police had never seen before, and they have to
Speaker 9: analyze this and respond. There is also evidence at that
Speaker 9: crime scene that that the least they gather, and you
Speaker 9: can people imagine what the state of forensic is in
Speaker 9: nineteen sixty six. But to their credit, there's a lot
Speaker 9: of organized evidence gathering in this case. So take us
Speaker 9: back to how they get notified before we talk about
Speaker 9: the content of that letter and what he says, which
Speaker 9: is the foreboding of the evil that he perpetrates for
Speaker 9: many years. Afterwards, well, I'll.
Speaker 10: Have you read the letters if you want to read
Speaker 10: sections of them. I don't have them in front of
Speaker 10: me at the moment.
Speaker 9: Okay.
Speaker 10: What was so fascinating is that these letters just arrived
Speaker 10: in the mail one day. One was sent to the
Speaker 10: local press and the other was sent to the Riverside
Speaker 10: Police department. They were received and quite quickly the police
Speaker 10: believed and were absolutely convinced that the letters did come
Speaker 10: from the killer, that the two letters were identical. By
Speaker 10: the way, the one that sent to the uh the
Speaker 10: press and the police. At the time, as you mentioned,
Speaker 10: the term serial killer had not been invented. That wouldn't
Speaker 10: come along until the nineteen seventies, the Behavioral Science Unit
Speaker 10: of the FBI coined the term serial killer, So back
Speaker 10: then they were he was called a mass murderer just
Speaker 10: because he killed or was threatening to kill a massive people.
Speaker 10: The the letters were quite specific about what had happened,
Speaker 10: and it's very unusual for a Sarah a killer to
Speaker 10: send letters. It has happened in history, of course. BTK
Speaker 10: Dennis Rader sent letters to the press, and son of
Speaker 10: Sam David Berkowitz and New York City sent letters, but
Speaker 10: by and large, seriaal killers tend not to do that.
Speaker 10: They are just as happy to be anonymous and in
Speaker 10: the background and not identified, so they don't send letters.
Speaker 10: So uh, it's unusual that the killer would send a letter.
Speaker 10: What was even more unusual is that he would hint
Speaker 10: at who he was and kind of taught the police
Speaker 10: to catch him.
Speaker 9: What he has here is uh he like you say.
Speaker 9: He goes into detail about what he did to verify
Speaker 9: that he is the actual killer, so that he had
Speaker 9: asked her for a day in high school. But then
Speaker 9: he reverts almost immediately in this letters, she says, but
Speaker 9: I shall cut off her female parts and despose deposit
Speaker 9: them for the whole city to see, So don't make
Speaker 9: it too easy for me. Keep your sisters, daughters and
Speaker 9: wives off the streets and alleys. Miss Bates was stupid.
Speaker 9: She went to the slaughter like a lamb. She did
Speaker 9: not put up a struggle, but I did. It was
Speaker 9: a ball. I first pulled the middle wire from the
Speaker 9: distributor referring to her car. Then I waited for her
Speaker 9: in the library and followed her out after about two minutes,
Speaker 9: and she was very willing to talk with me. So
Speaker 9: he talks about the ruse and then he said it's
Speaker 9: about time. He says about time for what, And I
Speaker 9: said it was about time for her to die. So
Speaker 9: he grabbed it around the neck with my hand over
Speaker 9: her mouth and mother hand with a small knife at
Speaker 9: her throat. And then she went very willingly and was
Speaker 9: making her pay for the brush offs. And she let
Speaker 9: her the scream once and I kicked her head to
Speaker 9: shut her up, and I plunged a knife into her
Speaker 9: and it broke. Beware, I'm stalking your girls now. So
Speaker 9: there's a lot established in that first letter for police
Speaker 9: to determine when he talks about a compliant victim. Was
Speaker 9: something that didn't work at all, So at least in terms,
Speaker 9: they have some idea, which again is very very unusual.
Speaker 9: I can't even imagine in nineteen sixty six, even in
Speaker 9: California they would have any experience like this at all.
Speaker 9: So it's a big learning experience. And as you talk,
Speaker 9: twenty four officers are on this full time right away,
Speaker 9: and an FBI is involved as well. One hundred and
Speaker 9: twenty five citizens were interviewed in a short period of time,
Speaker 9: and there was prints, footprints, and they did have leads
Speaker 9: that they really followed up and seemed to be encouraged,
Speaker 9: and it looked like these government issued boots. So explain
Speaker 9: what they saw at the crime scene, what they gathered,
Speaker 9: what they deduced, but also what they deduced at least
Speaker 9: via the FBI and themselves internally about this killer.
Speaker 10: What I find so amazing and fascinating about the cases
Speaker 10: that there are so many clues that a lot of
Speaker 10: them are tantalizing. We don't know whether to include them
Speaker 10: or not. Just as I said that that confession letter
Speaker 10: may not have come from the killer, they found a
Speaker 10: bootprint at this scene that could have come from the killer.
Speaker 10: It was a government issued military type boot. The bootprint
Speaker 10: was measured and photographed and whatnot. There was a man's
Speaker 10: time ex wriskquatch found at the scene with the strap
Speaker 10: broken off. Now, it's quite possible that part of the
Speaker 10: during part of the struggle, that that was torn from
Speaker 10: the killer and deposited at the scene, but there are
Speaker 10: other possibilities that may have ended up there completely unrelated
Speaker 10: to the case, or if the killer was truly diabolical,
Speaker 10: he could have brought that along that he stole from
Speaker 10: somebody else or found somewhere and just left it in
Speaker 10: the grass for the police to find and think, gee,
Speaker 10: who does this belong to? As kind of a red herring.
Speaker 10: So there was a lot of evidence, but how to
Speaker 10: put together? How to put it together? It fascinates me
Speaker 10: that the whole case happened just prior to the advent
Speaker 10: of modern forensic investigation, so that at the time the
Speaker 10: police weren't dealing with DNA. They didn't think to look
Speaker 10: for trace evidence or hair and fibers. Generally, for all
Speaker 10: the scenes, within four hours, sometimes less, sometimes much less,
Speaker 10: the scenes were just dismantled and they said, well, that's
Speaker 10: the best we can do. The police at the time
Speaker 10: basically looked for bootprints shoe prints, looked for expended cartridges, bullets,
Speaker 10: and anything else deposited at the scene, and then at
Speaker 10: the end of that they said, well, that's all that
Speaker 10: we can find. It would be much different today. They
Speaker 10: would scour a scene for many hours. They would take
Speaker 10: soil samples, they would look for fibers, they would look
Speaker 10: for hairs, and they would do far more with the
Speaker 10: crime scene. In fact, if the Zodiac were to repeat
Speaker 10: the crimes today, I'm sure he would be captured quite
Speaker 10: quickly just because of forensics. But the Zodiac was wise
Speaker 10: enough for lucky enough to pull this off before modern
Speaker 10: forensics came into the four.
Speaker 9: Once he sends that letter, one later tell us about
Speaker 9: the ultimatum or his demands to the media. What does
Speaker 9: that include is that in that first letter he.
Speaker 10: Didn't actually make a demand. He did say that this
Speaker 10: letter should be published for everyone to see it. The
Speaker 10: idea he mentioned in the letter was, you know, if
Speaker 10: you publish it, then these people that I threatened have
Speaker 10: a better chance of surviving because they know that I'm
Speaker 10: threatening them. He made a couple of allusions to somebody
Speaker 10: that he asked out in high school, or to a
Speaker 10: girl who baby sits and walks down an alley every
Speaker 10: night at seven o'clock. And so the press and the
Speaker 10: police were challenged to make the letter public and publish it.
Speaker 10: It should be noted, though, that all letters from criminals
Speaker 10: are pieces of staging. Unless the criminal is psychotic or
Speaker 10: wants to be caught. The letters are something that's going
Speaker 10: to lead the investigation astray. So every time there's a
Speaker 10: fact placed in the letter doesn't mean it's true. It
Speaker 10: may in fact be completely false or misleading.
Speaker 9: Right now, this case goes cold, and they have the letter,
Speaker 9: but they have no suspect. But they're still working the case. Now,
Speaker 9: six months after the Baits attacked, three letters arrived. Now
Speaker 9: where do they arrive and who they addressed to? And
Speaker 9: tell us a little bit about the content.
Speaker 10: Well, once again two of the letters, one went to
Speaker 10: the press, one went to the police. This time a
Speaker 10: third one went to the father of Baits, which, unbelievably,
Speaker 10: I mean, how horrible is that for a father to
Speaker 10: receive a letter from the killer. Each of the letters
Speaker 10: is only eight words long. Baits had to die. There
Speaker 10: will be more. With the letter to Joseph Bates, the father,
Speaker 10: one word was changed so that it said she had
Speaker 10: to die. There will be more. These letters were linked
Speaker 10: to future Zodiac letters by handwriting by the Chief Document
Speaker 10: Examiner of California. Later on in nineteen seventy, when it
Speaker 10: became when this murder was linked to a series of
Speaker 10: murders that was taking place in northern California. It's disputed.
Speaker 10: At this time, few legitimate graphologists would link an eight
Speaker 10: word letter to a particular person or to a particular
Speaker 10: series of writing, just based on the short amount of
Speaker 10: writing and how easy it is to fake writing. But
Speaker 10: other people have said that, yes, those three letters that
Speaker 10: were handwritten on loose leaf's binder paper were the work
Speaker 10: of the zodiac.
Speaker 9: There is, I guess, the beginning of the development of
Speaker 9: the insignia or the logo of the zodiac. So there's
Speaker 9: a there's a letter that's there's a Z that's left.
Speaker 10: Yes, two of the three letters have two of the
Speaker 10: three notes that were sent have the little letters Z
Speaker 10: that appears to be a Z with a little squiggle
Speaker 10: at the top. There are other interpretations of what it is,
Speaker 10: but many people believe that that's the beginnings of the
Speaker 10: name Zodiac, where he just puts a Z at the bottom,
Speaker 10: kind of signing off the letter, and then that was
Speaker 10: that arrived in April. Those arrived in April of sixty seven,
Speaker 10: and then everything went quiet until outside Valeo in nineteen
Speaker 10: sixty eight.
Speaker 9: Yes, so in nineteen sixty eight, almost at the end
Speaker 9: December twentieth, Betty Lou Jensen and her boyfriend David Faraday
Speaker 9: around eleven fifteen. They're seventeen and sixteen years old. Betty
Speaker 9: Lou's sixteen. Take us back to what these two teenagers
Speaker 9: were doing at eleven fifteen and where they were and
Speaker 9: what happens a couple.
Speaker 10: Of teenagers high school students. They went to different high schools,
Speaker 10: they met, began spending time together after school, and this
Speaker 10: was their first actual date. David went and picked up
Speaker 10: Betty Loo at her home, met her parents, took her out,
Speaker 10: and they ended up at a Lover's Lane area on
Speaker 10: Lake Herman Road just after eleven o'clock. They parked, and
Speaker 10: there were a few people who drove by that night
Speaker 10: and were able to report on what they saw, seeing
Speaker 10: the station wagon that they were in, seeing the couple
Speaker 10: where they were parked, and surprisingly there was only a
Speaker 10: sixth minute window of opportunity for the killer to have
Speaker 10: actually struck them. A couple of people were able to
Speaker 10: pinpoint in time when they saw the rambler all by itself,
Speaker 10: and then another person came along. Somebody came along and
Speaker 10: saw the rambler and that there was they believed there
Speaker 10: was a car parked parallel to it. Unfortunately, the very
Speaker 10: little information about this car was available. And then six
Speaker 10: minutes later a woman drove by and saw the station
Speaker 10: wagon without the second car, and the couple was lying
Speaker 10: in the parking lot after having been shot. David was
Speaker 10: shot once in the head and Betty Lou was shot
Speaker 10: five times in the back. And so that began the
Speaker 10: mystery of Once again, people in the Valeo area thought
Speaker 10: there was just some crazy person on in the area
Speaker 10: because they couldn't solve this case. There appeared to be
Speaker 10: no motive. There appeared to be nobody who wanted to
Speaker 10: do harm to either of these two. They were just
Speaker 10: a couple of teenagers, and the case began to go cold.
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Speaker 9: Was the Was there any link to any other crime
Speaker 9: considered at that time? Or was it considered an isolated case? Oh?
Speaker 10: Completely isolated? They looked high and low. It became California
Speaker 10: is one of California's greatest unsolved murders at the time.
Speaker 10: Because the law enforcement agencies reached out to other counties
Speaker 10: and other cities and asked questions, and they they looked
Speaker 10: for a drug connection. They looked for relationships that these
Speaker 10: two had been in previously. They're they're a couple of
Speaker 10: good teenagers, a couple of good kids, very involved in schools,
Speaker 10: very involved with their families. It became a it was
Speaker 10: a motivelest murder. They they eventually concluded, and they just
Speaker 10: try as hard as they might, they couldn't find a motive,
Speaker 10: They couldn't find a perpetrator. They just it was a
Speaker 10: senseless murder.
Speaker 9: And we got to say too. We we didn't talk
Speaker 9: about it, but to be fair, Cherry Josephine Bates opted
Speaker 9: out of church with her and she was very close
Speaker 9: to her parents, with her father, and to go to
Speaker 9: the library, oh no, she went.
Speaker 10: She went to church that morning with her father and
Speaker 10: went to breakfast as well. She opted out. Bates opted
Speaker 10: out to going to the beach with her father, to
Speaker 10: go on homework, send her boyfriend a letter, and go
Speaker 10: to the library and pick up some books. So, no,
Speaker 10: none of these, none of the Zodiac victims were the
Speaker 10: type of people that you would expect to be killed,
Speaker 10: expect to be dead. Really, the only thing that Cherry
Speaker 10: jo it's the fact that she was a young female
Speaker 10: and quite attractive. And as we know, they have an
Speaker 10: elevated risk of murder from boyfriends or husbands or people
Speaker 10: who want to be boyfriends. In all other respects, none
Speaker 10: of the victims really was a high risk victim.
Speaker 9: Faraday was d away at hospital, but did he make
Speaker 9: any statements? Did they Were they able to get any
Speaker 9: information from him at all?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 10: Neither of them spoke after they were shot.
Speaker 9: Okay, now we have to go to it's quiet for
Speaker 9: a few months. And then July fourth, around midnight, Darlene
Speaker 9: Farren and Michael Majoe Mago mangled that name, no doubt,
Speaker 9: nineteen years old. And it's a couple of miles where Parmy.
Speaker 10: It's usually pronounce the mis jou, but there are other
Speaker 10: pronunciations as well.
Speaker 9: That's probably it nice. You probably know that anyway, thank you.
Speaker 9: There were a couple miles from where Faraday and Jensen
Speaker 9: were killed. So what happens? And is this another lover's
Speaker 9: lane type situation?
Speaker 10: Now there's Lover's Lane just a few miles drive away
Speaker 10: from the Lake Herman road spot. And once again it's
Speaker 10: late at night. This time it's around midnight. Darlene Ferron
Speaker 10: and Mike Majeaux go to this park, also the outskirts
Speaker 10: of Valo, and somebody drives up, gets out of the car,
Speaker 10: and walks up to the side of the car and
Speaker 10: starts firing. We know more about this attack than any
Speaker 10: of the previous attacks because Mike Michall survived. It's miraculous
Speaker 10: that he survived, because he received four gunshot wounds, including
Speaker 10: one of the mouth, one of the leg, one to
Speaker 10: his back, but he did survive. He turned out to
Speaker 10: be a very poor witness as far as what he
Speaker 10: could say was limited to the amount that he could
Speaker 10: actually provide for them. And even when he did provide
Speaker 10: the information, he said, you know, what I'm giving is
Speaker 10: kind of an impression I have. It's not really accurate.
Speaker 10: And he's alive today. However, he has had a difficult
Speaker 10: life with substance abuse problems, and much of what he
Speaker 10: says today on the case really is of limited value
Speaker 10: because he just can't remember. And he's heard so many
Speaker 10: versions of the stories that when he talks about the
Speaker 10: case now, he's talking more about the versions that he's heard.
Speaker 9: What about this Andy that's a nineteen year old that
Speaker 9: was at the crime scene, but left and didn't offer
Speaker 9: any assistance, and him and his passenger tell us about this.
Speaker 10: That's a curious part of the story, as you say.
Speaker 10: A young man named Andy and his girlfriend. They were
Speaker 10: driving along Columbus Parkway as the police were approaching the
Speaker 10: scene because they had been notified that there was a
Speaker 10: gunshots fired, So they raced over to the scene and
Speaker 10: they saw this car leaving, so they pulled it over
Speaker 10: and pulled Andy out of the car and Andy said, oh,
Speaker 10: is this about the couple that's lying down outside of
Speaker 10: their car over there? Well, that sure got the uh
Speaker 10: the U. It raised the interests of the officers that
Speaker 10: this couple had seen the car, seen two people lying
Speaker 10: on the ground, and had just driven away. They were
Speaker 10: the only two people ever to be arrested for crimes
Speaker 10: of the Zodiac, but eventually no case was brought because
Speaker 10: as it appeared that it appeared that they just drove
Speaker 10: into the parking lot, saw what was saw two people
Speaker 10: lying out by their car, and decided to drive away
Speaker 10: and not get involved. There was suspicion that they may
Speaker 10: have had something to do with it, but they were
Speaker 10: never connected in any way to the case through motives,
Speaker 10: through any weapons, through any background. They just they had
Speaker 10: nothing to do with it.
Speaker 9: Now, it seemed like they got a description that the
Speaker 9: vehicle was a fifty eight or fifty nine Ford Falcon
Speaker 9: brown or bronze. But there was a phone call at
Speaker 9: twelve forty the police, I'd like to report a double murder.
Speaker 9: Go on with what this caller has to say.
Speaker 10: Yeah, what's what's unusual again about this murder is that
Speaker 10: about forty minutes after the murder took place, somebody the
Speaker 10: killer from a payphone called the police department and took
Speaker 10: credit for the murder and said, you know, I'd like
Speaker 10: to report this murder. I'm the one that did or
Speaker 10: he you know, I'm responsible for this and described where
Speaker 10: it is. And that's very unusual. It has happened before.
Speaker 10: Dennis Raider BTK phoned after one of his murders and
Speaker 10: directed the police to the location of the body.
Speaker 9: Very rare.
Speaker 10: You know, it's an extremely high risk activity to call
Speaker 10: the police because, you know, calling from a payphone, he
Speaker 10: could have been seen, which he may have been seen,
Speaker 10: and he may have left fingerprints or he could leave fingerprints.
Speaker 10: The police found the phone booth and dusted it for
Speaker 10: princes and collected a bunch, but whether any of them
Speaker 10: belonged to the killer has not been confirmed at this point.
Speaker 10: Very odd behavior. And then a month later he sent
Speaker 10: a series of three letters to the police department, claiming
Speaker 10: credit for the fourth of July murder, but also claiming
Speaker 10: credit for the December twenty murders, and in that he
Speaker 10: provided information to prove that he was the one who
Speaker 10: committed these murders. So it's odd that a criminal would
Speaker 10: number one write letters to the police. It was it's
Speaker 10: odd that a criminal would claim credit for murders when
Speaker 10: most murderers will say, no, I didn't do it, I
Speaker 10: don't know anything about it. And it's extremely odd that
Speaker 10: not only does he claim credit for it, but he
Speaker 10: provides proof that he was the one who did it.
Speaker 9: What is the type of proof that he provides? By
Speaker 9: this time, he described.
Speaker 10: The victims, you know, he mentioned one victim that she
Speaker 10: had patterned pants. He mentioned another victim was lying on
Speaker 10: his back, that type of thing. Not super specific. In fact,
Speaker 10: the police even commented that you know, if you had
Speaker 10: been at the crime scene, or you'd overheard a conversation
Speaker 10: with police officers, you might have been able to put
Speaker 10: peace to gather this information, so they weren't one absolutely
Speaker 10: convinced that this was that this person was actually responsible
Speaker 10: for it, but just the tone of it and the
Speaker 10: way it's described makes it look quite clear that he
Speaker 10: was indeed responsible.
Speaker 9: All through this case and all through your book, you
Speaker 9: chronicle what the police have to do due diligence in
Speaker 9: taking every lead and at least considering it and eliminating it.
Speaker 9: We kind of all know that, but there this case
Speaker 9: creates an incredible amount of leads, tips, people turning in.
Speaker 9: People tell us about the state of is there with
Speaker 9: the one survivor was there any composite drawing done as
Speaker 9: a result of that? And as you talk about in
Speaker 9: the book, tell us just the extent if you can,
Speaker 9: to describe the amount of work that these the police
Speaker 9: have to do with this information that's coming in, whether
Speaker 9: they realized, well they realize that most of it it's
Speaker 9: not gonna be credible, but tell us about that.
Speaker 10: Well, Dan, you you raised two fascinating points here. One
Speaker 10: is that because the serial killer was k was not captured,
Speaker 10: not identified, the police have taken a lot of heat
Speaker 10: and now people have said, oh, they didn't do a
Speaker 10: very good job. They didn't really try very hard. They
Speaker 10: didn't want to catch this person. I think I make
Speaker 10: quite clear that the police poured themselves into the case
Speaker 10: and worked round the clock to try to capture this person.
Speaker 10: H There was no lead that they didn't explore, There
Speaker 10: was no piece of evidence that came before them that
Speaker 10: they weren't willing to check out because they really wanted
Speaker 10: to capture this person. They really wanted to solve these murders.
Speaker 10: And that's each one of the d police departments that
Speaker 10: were tasked with capturing the criminal in Riverside. In Swannel
Speaker 10: County Sheriff's Office took over the investigation into Faraday and Jensen,
Speaker 10: and the Valayo Police Department took led the investigation into
Speaker 10: the murder of Darlene Farrin. Every one of these police
Speaker 10: departments did everything that they possibly could. And the second
Speaker 10: point that you raise is that the community became quite
Speaker 10: alarmed by what was taking place, and many people were
Speaker 10: in great fear, and many people did what they could
Speaker 10: to provide help, and some of them. Every one of
Speaker 10: the police departments, over time became overwhelmed by the public support.
Speaker 10: People got turned in left and right. Have you looked
Speaker 10: at this person, how about this person? This person said something.
Speaker 10: And as you can tell by a lot of the
Speaker 10: anecdotes that I provide in the book, that anybody with
Speaker 10: anything slightly resembling something that the Zodiac could set in
Speaker 10: a letter or something that the Zodiac had done at
Speaker 10: one of these crime scenes, it reminded persons. It reminded
Speaker 10: people of their odd uncle, or this strange neighbor, or
Speaker 10: this menacing person that they know.
Speaker 4: And so the.
Speaker 10: Police literally had thousands of leads to follow up on,
Speaker 10: many of which were ridiculous, not helpful. Cases like this,
Speaker 10: high profile cases bring out a lot of the underbelly
Speaker 10: of society where people want to get involved in the case,
Speaker 10: they want to be the one who solves it, or
Speaker 10: they think they have special knowledge or whatever. The police
Speaker 10: departments were just absolutely overwhelmed with the tips that they received.
Speaker 9: Now, what about handwriting comparisons? Was it hard to get
Speaker 9: the cooperation from potential suspects to eliminate them and how
Speaker 9: far did they go in seriously looking to compare as
Speaker 9: many people as possible and their handwriting?
Speaker 10: Well, what they had a problem that at the beginning,
Speaker 10: so many people were being brought in front of them,
Speaker 10: but they didn't have a lot of They didn't have
Speaker 10: a lot of evidence against the perpetrator. The best evidence
Speaker 10: they had was handwriting and fingerprints. Unfortunately, they weren't sure
Speaker 10: if some or any of them were connected to the
Speaker 10: case at all. You know, they took fingerprints from a
Speaker 10: phone booth, Well, of course a phone booth is going
Speaker 10: to have fingerprints all over it from the public. They
Speaker 10: took fingerprints from a cab, They took fingerprints from other
Speaker 10: situations related to the crime scenes, and they were never
Speaker 10: able to match somebody. But they may have mistakenly looked
Speaker 10: at somebody and said, gee, this person, their fingerprints doesn't
Speaker 10: match any of the fingerprints that we've collected in the case. Well,
Speaker 10: that's not an acceptable way to eliminate somebody from suspicion
Speaker 10: because none of those it's possible that none of those
Speaker 10: fingerprints belonged to the Zodiac. In fact, in the future letter,
Speaker 10: the Zodiac says, by this time, I haven't left any
Speaker 10: fingerprints handwriting, that's a little bit more difficult. Handwriting is
Speaker 10: an art as much as it is a science. Different
Speaker 10: handwriting experts will not agree with one another. Unfortunately, it
Speaker 10: was the best evidence they had at the time. And
Speaker 10: so they took letters of the Zodiac, photocopied them and
Speaker 10: took them around and compared the handwriting that somebody would
Speaker 10: use to the Zodiac's handwriting. That's only useful if the
Speaker 10: Zodiac actually wrote with his own handprinting when he wrote
Speaker 10: the letters. Shrewd criminal will fake his handwriting, so that
Speaker 10: the handwriting that we have of the Zodiac is quite
Speaker 10: possibly even quite likely to be faked handwriting and won't
Speaker 10: match what that person uses in everyday life. Some handwriting
Speaker 10: experts said, oh no, that looks like his handwriting. That
Speaker 10: looks like handwriting that he would use in everyday life,
Speaker 10: and so that maybe somebody would notice that handwriting and
Speaker 10: make a match. But here it is, almost fifty years later.
Speaker 10: No matches between handwriting have ever been found. And the
Speaker 10: Zodiac's handwriting was extremely distinctive. It looked like the kind
Speaker 10: of he printed everything, which is one one idea, one
Speaker 10: suggestion that it is faked, because when you one way
Speaker 10: to fake is to print, and it's very messy, it's
Speaker 10: very slanted, And ways to fake your handwriting is to
Speaker 10: write at an extreme slant, is to vary the speed
Speaker 10: at which you write, and to write with felt tip pen,
Speaker 10: which the Zodiac did, and not write over the same
Speaker 10: line twice. So it's quite possible that this person was
Speaker 10: educated enough into handwriting and knowing what the police were
Speaker 10: going to look for that he would he faked it.
Speaker 10: So the point I bring out in the book is
Speaker 10: that it's quite possible that the Zodiac was eliminated from
Speaker 10: suspicion on the basis of fingerprints or handwriting when the
Speaker 10: police really had no basis of eliminating people based on
Speaker 10: those two.
Speaker 9: Now soon trying to clear all these potential suspects, and
Speaker 9: you just raised a fantastic point about if the criminal
Speaker 9: is shrewd, then how can you counter that you're on
Speaker 9: a wild goose chase or a detour at the very
Speaker 9: very least based on that misleading bit of information. We
Speaker 9: want to talk about the ciphers because, as everybody knows
Speaker 9: from the Zodiac movie, the very successful Zodiac movie, about
Speaker 9: the ciphers and the codes, and how clever and how
Speaker 9: clever he was with the codes, and how clever people
Speaker 9: had to be to break these complicated codes. But before
Speaker 9: we do that, Mark, I'm just going to stop for
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Speaker 9: When we last talked, we spoke, we were speaking about
Speaker 9: what the Zodiac is very well known for. These clever ciphers,
Speaker 9: this code that had to be broken. So this is
Speaker 9: August first, and there's these three nearly identical letters were
Speaker 9: sent to three Bay area newspapers, The vale O Times Harold,
Speaker 9: the San Francisco Chronicle, and the San Francisco Examiner, handwritten
Speaker 9: two page letters, a third of a cipher in each
Speaker 9: of the three letters. Let tell us what he put
Speaker 9: in these letters, why these letters were so much different,
Speaker 9: and what was the response from first the media that
Speaker 9: were sent these these codes? Tell us about this what
Speaker 9: would be a credible engineering phenomena.
Speaker 10: The letters that the Zodiac sent at this point gave
Speaker 10: it every indication that he was interested in publicity. The
Speaker 10: fact that he sent a part of a cipher to
Speaker 10: each of three different newspapers, forcing them to compete with
Speaker 10: one another. And in the letters, he said, if you
Speaker 10: don't print these on the front page of your paper
Speaker 10: by the first of August, I will go on a
Speaker 10: shooting rampage and I will kill up to a dozen people.
Speaker 10: Well that's a that's a pretty strong indication that he
Speaker 10: wants this stuff published. And all of the papers did
Speaker 10: publish it, but not necessarily by the deadline, and not
Speaker 10: necessarily on the front page, but they did publish them.
Speaker 10: The public became fascinated by the situation, and of course
Speaker 10: the police sent these cryptogoram pieces on to the FBI
Speaker 10: and said, you know, can you decipher these? Can you
Speaker 10: decode these?
Speaker 9: Well?
Speaker 10: Amazingly, high school teacher and his wife saw these. They
Speaker 10: were fascinated with puzzles, and they put a lot of
Speaker 10: time and effort into it and actually broke the code.
Speaker 10: There were three pages of symbols. The total number of
Speaker 10: symbols was four hundred and eight, So that's why it's
Speaker 10: called the four toh eight cipher or the Z four
Speaker 10: eight in the parliance of the FBI. The killer didn't
Speaker 10: say which of the three sheets of code was to
Speaker 10: be first, second, or third. The husband and wife team
Speaker 10: just tried different words, tried different ideas, and finally were
Speaker 10: able to solve it and came up with this amazing
Speaker 10: solution to the cipher. And the cipher started out I
Speaker 10: like killing people. So this killer was actually quite a
Speaker 10: treacherous person and was willing to threaten and interested in
Speaker 10: gaining publicity through these newspapers. It's absolutely an astounding part
Speaker 10: of the case that a killer would send the cipher
Speaker 10: inviting the public, you know, demanding that to be published
Speaker 10: and inviting the public to us solve it. You know,
Speaker 10: what type of person is interested in cipher? Is that
Speaker 10: something that I did back in you know, when I
Speaker 10: was ten or eleven years of age, something in boy
Speaker 10: Scouts that people look at, you know, why do that?
Speaker 10: And what type of killer is interested in corresponding with
Speaker 10: and sending letters to get publicity and sending these codes.
Speaker 10: It's just it's rather bizarre when you stop to think
Speaker 10: about it. If you wrote up a screenplay and pried
Speaker 10: to sell it in Hollywood with this type of story,
Speaker 10: people would say it's ridiculous, It's just it's a silly story.
Speaker 10: But here it is. This is what the Zodiac did
Speaker 10: and by sending these pieces of code, and after this
Speaker 10: code was solved, he over the course of the next
Speaker 10: year or so three more additional codes which were never solved.
Speaker 10: But it really tantalized the public. What type of person
Speaker 10: would do this?
Speaker 9: I want to just read this because he said, I
Speaker 9: like killing people because it is so much fun. It's
Speaker 9: more fun than killing wild game. And we all know
Speaker 9: this one. It's been stolen because man is the most
Speaker 9: dangerous animal of all. To kill something gives me the
Speaker 9: most thrilling experience. When I die, I will be reborn
Speaker 9: in paradise, and all I've killed will be my slaves.
Speaker 9: I won't give you my name because you will try
Speaker 9: to stop me from collecting slaves for my afterlife. Now,
Speaker 9: was any part of this letter held back or was
Speaker 9: all of it printed? Everything that all of it was printed.
Speaker 10: Once the key had been solved, that they knew which
Speaker 10: letters stood, which symbols for which letters, they published the
Speaker 10: whole thing. It's just that the last eighteen symbols didn't
Speaker 10: decode to anything meaningful, and it was just a bunch
Speaker 10: of series of letters. And people speculated that the killer
Speaker 10: did that to make it more difficult to solve, or
Speaker 10: else to fill out the squares so that the boxes
Speaker 10: that he sent to each one of the newspapers was
Speaker 10: the same size.
Speaker 9: Now, the FBI, with the famous Behavioral Science Unit, has
Speaker 9: a strategy that they said that they would employ, and
Speaker 9: so what did they think would work and what did
Speaker 9: they try and did it work well?
Speaker 10: At that time, the Behavioral Science Unit didn't exist, so
Speaker 10: they didn't offer any suggestions. They weren't there. It wasn't
Speaker 10: until the seventies that the Behavioral Science Unit was formed,
Speaker 10: and at that point, many years after the Zodiac had
Speaker 10: stopped killing, they set about putting together a profile of
Speaker 10: the killer, but it was very early. In fact, the
Speaker 10: Zodiac case was one of the first cases that they
Speaker 10: ever looked at, but they weren't able to whatever profile
Speaker 10: was prepared, if they did prepare a profile, was never
Speaker 10: released to the public. John Douglas, in his book The
Speaker 10: Cases That Haunt Us, say that the case was put
Speaker 10: in front of him quite suddenly, and then a little
Speaker 10: bit later it was taken away from him and said, no,
Speaker 10: stop working on it. So we don't know exactly the
Speaker 10: extent of the FBI's involvement in the case. But with
Speaker 10: the receipt of these three letters, a police chief at
Speaker 10: the time said, and it was recorded in the papers
Speaker 10: and recorded on television, well we're not really sure that
Speaker 10: this did come from the killer or not. And it
Speaker 10: turned out to be a brilliant strategy because if the
Speaker 10: behavioral science unit had been active back in sixty nine,
Speaker 10: they may have suggested something like that. The fact that
Speaker 10: the kill tried to prove his involvement and prove that
Speaker 10: he was the one who did it, well, one way
Speaker 10: that you can play with a killer's mind is to say, well,
Speaker 10: you know, you've provided this proof, but we're really not
Speaker 10: sure that you're the one. And it was very effective
Speaker 10: because a few days later, the Zodiac wrote again and
Speaker 10: sent his one of the most famous letters, the more
Speaker 10: material letter, because the letter was the first one to
Speaker 10: start with the phrase this is the Zodiac speaking. That
Speaker 10: caused so much fright and panic in the community that
Speaker 10: the Zodiac continued to use that phrase in almost every
Speaker 10: letter that he sent from that point on, This is
Speaker 10: the Zodiac speaking. So that's it became the killer's tagline.
Speaker 9: Now we're talking about sixty eight and nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 9: and the effect of this killer had as had on
Speaker 9: this community, but also on the US It's just not
Speaker 9: a phenomena that the US is accustomed to, and a
Speaker 9: story that is very close to your heart, obviously because
Speaker 9: of the book you wrote. Tell us what happens to
Speaker 9: derail all of the status that the Zodiac has created,
Speaker 9: carefully created his desire to be publicly known, his publicity efforts.
Speaker 9: In August eighth, nineteen sixty nine, thanks.
Speaker 10: For giving me the shameless plug of my previous book
Speaker 10: and the previous podcast that we did together. Of course,
Speaker 10: I wrote the book Charles Manson Behind Bars. The Zodiac
Speaker 10: was providing terror throughout the Bay Area, and then suddenly
Speaker 10: in the eighth and ninth and tenth, eighth and ninth
Speaker 10: of August, Charles Manson and the Manson family struck in
Speaker 10: southern California and basically he became the pre eminent boogyman
Speaker 10: of American society. Charles Manson is a much more flamboyant
Speaker 10: and feared killer, where the Zodiac was kind of kind
Speaker 10: of the neglected step brother. He was operating in northern California,
Speaker 10: where Charles Manson and Manson family were around Hollywood and
Speaker 10: southern California and received much more publicity. They were captured
Speaker 10: and so there was much more film footage, and there
Speaker 10: was a year long trial of members of the Manson
Speaker 10: family which provided headlines almost daily. So the Zodiac, who
Speaker 10: was attempting to get as much publicity as he could
Speaker 10: and attempting to provide to spread horror throughout the Bay area,
Speaker 10: suddenly was overshadowed by Charles Manson.
Speaker 9: Did that stop his murderous spree? Were we talking about
Speaker 9: in super in Napa County Baryessa?
Speaker 10: Well, obviously, the Zodiac continued to kill, and his next
Speaker 10: attack at Lake Barriessa may have been in response to
Speaker 10: the Zodiac killings. We can only speculate at this point,
Speaker 10: but it appears that the Zodiac incorporated into the next
Speaker 10: attack some of the things that he saw the Manson
Speaker 10: family do, including writing words and leaving them at the
Speaker 10: crime scene, returning again to using a knife to kill with,
Speaker 10: and the way that the Manson family took blood and
Speaker 10: wrote words on the walls, refrigerators, and doors following their murders.
Speaker 10: In August, the Zodiac took a pen and wrote, took
Speaker 10: a marker and wrote on the side of one of
Speaker 10: the victim's car dates of previous attacks, including the the
Speaker 10: current attack. So there is speculation that the Zodiac responded
Speaker 10: to Manson's attacks. In future letters he makes reference to
Speaker 10: the Beatles, and in future letters he uses more hip language,
Speaker 10: talks about Blue Meani's And there's some thought that maybe
Speaker 10: he saw that the Manson family was getting more publicity
Speaker 10: because they were making use of the Beatles, and maybe
Speaker 10: he should do that too. Maybe the Manson family was
Speaker 10: getting more headlines because they were appealing more to young
Speaker 10: people or least speaking in their vernacular, and that maybe
Speaker 10: he should do that as well. But that's all speculation
Speaker 10: until the Zodiac is actually captured and we can ask
Speaker 10: him whether that was the case or not. But it
Speaker 10: certainly seems that he was affected by the Manson family.
Speaker 9: Now, on September twenty seventh, he attacks Brian Hartnell and
Speaker 9: Cecilia Shepherd, and we have the benefit of knowing more
Speaker 9: because of Brian's condition in the end here and this is,
Speaker 9: as you mentioned, a knife attack. Ce Celia is twenty
Speaker 9: two and Brian is twenty, and you include some of
Speaker 9: the strategy that Brian employed to survive. Fascinating again, you
Speaker 9: can't even write this kind of stuff, So tell us
Speaker 9: about the attack itself. And because we have so much
Speaker 9: of that information tell us about that attack.
Speaker 10: Yeah, in a bizarre case. This attack is more bizarreness.
Speaker 10: The killer actually wore a black hood over his head
Speaker 10: that was square in shape, kind of the shape of
Speaker 10: a brown paper grocery bag. It was black, had glasses
Speaker 10: over top of the slits that he used for eyes.
Speaker 10: The hood pulled down across his chest, and in the
Speaker 10: center of the chest had the crosshair symbol, a circle
Speaker 10: with a cross over it, which, like the phrase this
Speaker 10: is a zodiac speaking, became a symbol to represent the Zodiac.
Speaker 10: This couple was in a very remote area at the
Speaker 10: side of a lake, a very very quiet evening, a
Speaker 10: very quiet afternoon, very few people in the area. The
Speaker 10: Zodiac approached them with his hood, holding a gun and
Speaker 10: telling them that he was going to rob them. He
Speaker 10: spent a considerable amount of effort quieting the couple and saying, no, no,
Speaker 10: you have nothing to fear, nothing going to happen here.
Speaker 10: I just want your money, I just want your car
Speaker 10: I'm an escape convict, you know. Give me your money,
Speaker 10: give me your car keys, and you will be fine.
Speaker 10: And the couple believed them. They were terrified, of course,
Speaker 10: but they believed him, and he even tied them up,
Speaker 10: hug tied them so that they were on their bellies
Speaker 10: with their arms tied behind their backs and their feet
Speaker 10: tied behind them. And then suddenly he pulled out this
Speaker 10: long bayonet style knife and started to thrust it into
Speaker 10: the back in Brian Hartnell's back, stabbed him a bunch
Speaker 10: of times, and then turned to Cecilia Shepherd, the other victim,
Speaker 10: and started to stab her as well. She did not survive.
Speaker 10: She went into a coma and died two days later.
Speaker 10: But miraculously, Brian Hartnell did survive. He played dead to
Speaker 10: ward off the attacker. He must have thought that he
Speaker 10: had thrust enough, he stabbed him enough, and he left.
Speaker 10: But the couple he did survive and was able to
Speaker 10: describe what had taken place and even give some of
Speaker 10: the dialogue that occurred at the side of the water.
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's a very interesting strategy the guy employed. But
Speaker 9: he said he had seventy five cents in his pocket,
Speaker 9: and then the zodiac said, where every little bit helps.
Speaker 10: Yeah, And Hartnell even thought that it was a great
Speaker 10: fortune that it happened to him, because he could lose
Speaker 10: seventy five cents and go through the the experience of
Speaker 10: being robbed, just to see what it was like. He
Speaker 10: didn't really feel that his life was in danger, but
Speaker 10: he became he was very close to death.
Speaker 9: Now there was a good description. Talk about the weight,
Speaker 9: and the height, and the build and maybe even their
Speaker 9: hair color and clothing and age. Told us what they
Speaker 9: deduced at that time. And they did they believe that
Speaker 9: they had a good well, they must have believed that
Speaker 9: they had their best lead so far in terms of description,
Speaker 9: didn't they.
Speaker 10: Well, they thought so. They you know. The difficult part
Speaker 10: is that eyewitness descriptions are among the worst evidence that
Speaker 10: an investigator can collect because witnesses, you know, well, they
Speaker 10: can be deceived, They can be mistaken, they could be
Speaker 10: traumatized to the experience and not remember things correctly. They
Speaker 10: can be suggestible if the investigator is not careful. The
Speaker 10: investigator can bring in their own ideas of what they
Speaker 10: think the attacker may have looked like and encouraged the
Speaker 10: person to agree with them. That said, Hartnell was able
Speaker 10: to give a description and within a range. But Hartnell
Speaker 10: is kind of a tall gentleman, and he has a
Speaker 10: difficult time estimating the height of other people. So he
Speaker 10: said anywhere from I forget exactly what it was, but
Speaker 10: about anywhere from the area of five nine to six
Speaker 10: two he could have been. You know that he wasn't
Speaker 10: able to narrow it down too much. But he did
Speaker 10: say that that the killer appeared to be a hefty,
Speaker 10: well built individual who may have had his stomach extending
Speaker 10: over his belt. That he may I had a bit
Speaker 10: of a gut to him. It could have been as
Speaker 10: heavy as that two hundred and twenty or two hundred
Speaker 10: and fifty pounds.
Speaker 9: Now that he.
Speaker 10: Was pretty sure that the perpetrator had brown hair, because
Speaker 10: he could see some greasy brown hair through the islet
Speaker 10: in the perpetrator's hood.
Speaker 9: Now you talk about this later, that the combined tips
Speaker 9: leads calls people to check out became a you call
Speaker 9: it a deluge, deluge, a torrent. You know that there
Speaker 9: was that much stuff for dominating their resources, directing their focus,
Speaker 9: and you name some suspects that didn't look too bad.
Speaker 9: They had handwriting samples to analyze, and you talked about
Speaker 9: one guy named Michael seemed to fit after the tip.
Speaker 9: But this composite, the composite that they created, learned a
Speaker 9: lot of attention and more manpower was added to the investigation.
Speaker 9: So how do police proceed and what do they think
Speaker 9: do they have and how close do they think they
Speaker 9: are to imminent arrest. What's the what's the mood in
Speaker 9: the public, what's happening?
Speaker 10: People are doing whatever they can to help, And as
Speaker 10: I said earlier, they appears they may have done too
Speaker 10: much and overwhelmed the police departments with all the information
Speaker 10: that was shared. They knew a crazy person was on
Speaker 10: the loose, and so who did they look to. Well,
Speaker 10: they looked to the odd people in their community. They
Speaker 10: looked to the uncle who never married, They looked to
Speaker 10: this loaner, or they looked to some other individual who
Speaker 10: acted bizarre. They looked at all the psychiatric units to
Speaker 10: see who was out. They looked at sex offenders, they
Speaker 10: looked at every strange person. And on top of that,
Speaker 10: a lot of women turned in their ex husbands or
Speaker 10: their ex lovers out of spite. The police just had
Speaker 10: too much to look at, but they did the best
Speaker 10: they could of going through each and every one of
Speaker 10: the leads that was provided to them.
Speaker 9: One of those leads was with this military issue boots,
Speaker 9: these wingwalkers. So that was something that seemed to be promising,
Speaker 9: but tell us about that.
Speaker 10: Yeah. Wingwalker shoes are rather distinctive military issue shoes that
Speaker 10: are available on air force bases. The shoes were originally
Speaker 10: designed to be used by pilots and maintenance workers so
Speaker 10: that they could walk on the airplane without inducing static electricity.
Speaker 10: That was the design behind them. They were first manufactured
Speaker 10: back in nineteen sixty six, a full three years prior
Speaker 10: to the attack at Lake barri Essa. But they found
Speaker 10: out that hundreds of thousands of pairs had been manufactured
Speaker 10: and spread around and dispensed. Not only could military people
Speaker 10: buy them, but families of military people could buy them
Speaker 10: on a military base. They had hoped that that would
Speaker 10: narrow down the range of suspects because they did get
Speaker 10: excellent prints. They made some they photographed and made impressions
Speaker 10: of shoe prints that they found at the scene at
Speaker 10: Lake barri Essa, and it gave an indication that the
Speaker 10: suspect may have a military background, may be involved in
Speaker 10: a military base somewhere. But they weren't able to They
Speaker 10: weren't able to find the individual who wore that particular pair.
Speaker 9: Now, a couple of weeks later, we're going ahead and
Speaker 9: the Zodiac finally strikes in San Francisco with a cab
Speaker 9: driver and Paul Stein. He's a student driving cab and
Speaker 9: there's maybe his last passenger into Prosido Heights. So tell
Speaker 9: us about this attack.
Speaker 10: What's fascinating about this attack is the acceleration of the
Speaker 10: killing spree. If you've been following the timeline, the first
Speaker 10: attack was in sixty six, went quiet until the second
Speaker 10: attack in sixty eight December, then seven months later in
Speaker 10: fourth of July, and then a number of weeks later
Speaker 10: September the twenty seventh. The attack and the Presidio the
Speaker 10: Presidio district of San Francisco happened exactly two weeks after
Speaker 10: the attack on Lake Berriessa, and this extremely concerned police officers.
Speaker 10: If he is accelerating in the pace of the killing,
Speaker 10: when is he going to kill next? And how is this?
Speaker 10: You know, what's going to happen. The perpetrator got in
Speaker 10: a cab, directed the cab, apparently directed the cab driver
Speaker 10: to drive him to the Presidio Heights district, and shot
Speaker 10: the cab driver in the head, took his keys and wallet.
Speaker 10: And at the time it looked just like a routine robbery,
Speaker 10: but a robbery that apparently went bad and the cab
Speaker 10: driver ended up dead with a bullet to the head.
Speaker 10: But a few days later a letter arrived in the
Speaker 10: mail announcing that it was indeed a Zodiac killing. Not
Speaker 10: only was it a claim, but included in the letter
Speaker 10: with a piece of Paullstein's shirt that had bloodstain on it,
Speaker 10: and the police were able to match that piece with
Speaker 10: missing fabric from Paulstein's the tail of Paulstein's shirt.
Speaker 9: Now there are witnesses, and these are deemed good witnesses
Speaker 9: of their children of a let me say, an a
Speaker 9: steam doctor. But these children thirteen, fourteen and sixteen witness
Speaker 9: the wiping down of the cab. There are enough of
Speaker 9: a distance that they can see these kinds of details,
Speaker 9: and so tell us about what they see. And as
Speaker 9: a result, there's another composite, and there is some controversy
Speaker 9: over this composite. So tell us about what they saw
Speaker 9: and the composite as a result in the controversy.
Speaker 10: Well, the kids did see from the second floor of
Speaker 10: their home. They looked out the window. They didn't actually
Speaker 10: hear the gunshot, or they say they didn't hear the gunshot,
Speaker 10: but something drew their attention. They looked outside and saw
Speaker 10: this cab driver that this passenger apparently with the cab
Speaker 10: driver draped over his lap, wiping down the inside of
Speaker 10: the cab. They saw the perpetrator get out of the cab,
Speaker 10: wipe down the cab, but walking around it with some
Speaker 10: type of piece of cloth. They realized something was going
Speaker 10: something very bad with happening the robbery at the very least,
Speaker 10: and so they called the police. The police raced to
Speaker 10: the scene. The kids were able to provide enough information
Speaker 10: that a composite picture could be drawn. And yet, several
Speaker 10: days after that composite, a second composite was made, possibly
Speaker 10: by returning to the kids, possibly by speaking to other
Speaker 10: officers who may have seen the perpetrator. So the two composites,
Speaker 10: one is of a younger man and the other is
Speaker 10: a slight you know estimated twenty five to thirty five.
Speaker 10: The revised composite made him somewhat older with lines in
Speaker 10: his forehead, but essentially the same photo. It's the same picture.
Speaker 10: So again the question is you know, is this, how
Speaker 10: reasonable a composite picture is this? And can somebody be
Speaker 10: identified from that composite? Unfortunately, the person in the composite
Speaker 10: had a brush cut, crew cut, very short hair, and
Speaker 10: at the time, there were a lot of people wearing
Speaker 10: very short hair, particularly military people, so it didn't really
Speaker 10: stand out. He wore black glasses, but they seemed to
Speaker 10: be a very common type of frame of black glasses.
Speaker 10: And so you know, you look at a yearbook from
Speaker 10: the nineteen fifties and nineteen sixties, and that composite picture
Speaker 10: could describe quite a few people in pretty much any yearbook.
Speaker 10: So again it was more information, But how good was
Speaker 10: that information? And here we are almost five decades later,
Speaker 10: and we haven't been able to match somebody to that
Speaker 10: composite picture.
Speaker 9: Now another while the most controversial of this first book
Speaker 9: is the officers I mispronounces Fouquet and Zelms going to
Speaker 9: the crime scene. And again, variations of and you point
Speaker 9: this out, versions of whether tell us about the conduct
Speaker 9: of these two officers, what they did and what they
Speaker 9: didn't do, what they claimed they did, tell us what
Speaker 9: position they were in to be able to make this
Speaker 9: mistake or this error.
Speaker 10: Well, it's a very complex part of the story that
Speaker 10: you're you're getting into. But there are very various versions
Speaker 10: of what happened following the murder. One cop claims that
Speaker 10: driving to the scene, he saw a person that was
Speaker 10: the Zodiac, but because it had been relayed to dispatch
Speaker 10: that the person was a black man who was responsible
Speaker 10: for the killing, they saw a white man and drove past.
Speaker 10: The killer sent a letter a few weeks later claiming
Speaker 10: that two cops had actually stopped and talked to him.
Speaker 10: So it remains a hotly contested issue in the case
Speaker 10: whether this these two police officers stopped and talked to
Speaker 10: the Zodiac, whether they as they claimed, saw a white
Speaker 10: person and kept driving, or whether the person that they
Speaker 10: saw wasn't the Zodiac whatsoever. So there are, as you say,
Speaker 10: different versions of the story.
Speaker 9: Well one of them is is well not different version
Speaker 9: is that? To add to this mix is that the
Speaker 9: Zodiac weighs in on this as well, claiming that he
Speaker 9: spoke to a couple of cops. So tell us about
Speaker 9: that claim.
Speaker 10: Well, yeah, he in fact, in his longest letter he
Speaker 10: marked out a place asking that that particular paragraph be
Speaker 10: included in the paper printed in the paper saying that
Speaker 10: two cops pulled a goof and pulled him over and
Speaker 10: asked him if he'd seen anything suspicious or strange. And
Speaker 10: he had directed them around the corner saying, yes, I
Speaker 10: saw a man run away with a gun. And according
Speaker 10: to him, the police officers raced around the corner trying
Speaker 10: to catch this so called person that they'd been directed to.
Speaker 10: It is quite likely not true, part of the criminal
Speaker 10: staging a story entirely made up to embarrass the police department,
Speaker 10: make the police department look bad. But it's the killer's
Speaker 10: words that have become kind of the accepted version of
Speaker 10: events to a lot of people.
Speaker 9: So what do they do with that information? What does
Speaker 9: the police do with that information?
Speaker 10: Well, the officer said that he saw the criminal go
Speaker 10: into the Presidio Park, which is a large was a
Speaker 10: large military base at the time, hundreds of acres. And
Speaker 10: so the police assembled a crew and assembled an investigation
Speaker 10: and looked into the Presidio Park to see if the
Speaker 10: killer had escaped into there, and brought out floodlights, brought
Speaker 10: out search dogs, and attempted to find the killer if
Speaker 10: he was in the park, but they didn't find anything.
Speaker 9: Now we move ahead to October twenty second, nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 9: and a phone call to Oakland Police Department guy claiming
Speaker 9: he was a zodiac and he wants to speak to
Speaker 9: a Flee Bailey or Melvin Belly and also to join
Speaker 9: newsman Jim Dunbar on KGOTV channel seven. So tell us
Speaker 9: about this and how excited are the police, the newsman
Speaker 9: and everybody. Well, tell us woe Fflee Bailey not being
Speaker 9: able to do it, But tell us who Melvin Belly
Speaker 9: is and tell us about this little scenario.
Speaker 10: I think a lot of people know who Flee Bailey
Speaker 10: is because of the O. J. Sison Frial and some
Speaker 10: of his work before that. He actually represented the Boston
Speaker 10: Strangler at least iane convicted of being the Boston Strangler.
Speaker 10: Melvin bell I was a West Coast celebrity lawyer.
Speaker 9: Who was known.
Speaker 10: Very well and loved to have this picture in the paper,
Speaker 10: and loved to be written up in the paper and
Speaker 10: loved to be in the forefront of everything. So he
Speaker 10: was a natural choice for somebody on the West Coast.
Speaker 10: The question was was this an actual phone call from
Speaker 10: the Zodiac or was this some hoaster. They set up
Speaker 10: the radio show with the idea that it if it
Speaker 10: was the Zodiac, they didn't want to miss out on
Speaker 10: the opportunity, and sure enough, somebody called in on the
Speaker 10: reserve line, and they were able to have a conversation
Speaker 10: with that person claiming to be the Zodiac. Turned out
Speaker 10: if it wasn't it was a mental patient, somebody with
Speaker 10: a whole lot of problems, but it was not the Zodiac.
Speaker 10: The question kind of remained, was the original call from
Speaker 10: the Zodiac or was the original call from the same person.
Speaker 10: But it didn't really move the case forward. It was
Speaker 10: one in a long line of hoaxes that were brought
Speaker 10: into the case. A lot of people got involved in
Speaker 10: the case, people making jokes, people sending notes, people saying
Speaker 10: this is a Zodiac speaking. You know, you can imagine that.
Speaker 10: It was the talk of the town, as talk of
Speaker 10: the Bay area at the time, and so there was
Speaker 10: a lot a lot of foolish talk about that whole case.
Speaker 10: But in December, the Zodiac sent a letter to Melvin
Speaker 10: Belli to his home and again sent a piece of
Speaker 10: Paul Stein's shirt with blood on it to prove that
Speaker 10: it was actually from the Zodiac. It was a strange
Speaker 10: letter that Melvin bell I received. They didn't really know
Speaker 10: how to how to interpret it because it could have
Speaker 10: been mocking at the police and their attempt to talk
Speaker 10: to him. On the phone on the Jim Dunbar show
Speaker 10: that he was kind of saying it wasn't me and
Speaker 10: obviously I don't need help. But in the letter three
Speaker 10: times he says please help me and talks about a
Speaker 10: situation now he needs help. But it was a very
Speaker 10: short lived plea for help because the very next letter
Speaker 10: he goes back to taunting and threatening. So it was
Speaker 10: probably a mocking tone that the killer was using and
Speaker 10: not an actual reaching out for help. But who knows,
Speaker 10: maybe in a moment of weakness he was reaching out
Speaker 10: for help and looking for help. But as I say,
Speaker 10: it was short lived.
Speaker 9: If it was true, what about the letter where he
Speaker 9: talks about slaughtering the children and then the follow up
Speaker 9: to make some kind of correction or some correction about
Speaker 9: his threat. And again, how did the police respond to
Speaker 9: that kind of threat.
Speaker 10: Well, following the murder of Paul Stein. In the Stein letter,
Speaker 10: the Zodiac made the claim that he was going to
Speaker 10: shoot at a school bus and pick off the little
Speaker 10: the kids as they came bouncing off of the bus,
Speaker 10: as I guess, as some kind of sniper or something. Well,
Speaker 10: this put the Bay area in an uproar because he
Speaker 10: had attacked in a number of different communities and attacked
Speaker 10: in downtown San Francisco. People wondered where he was going
Speaker 10: to attack and where he was going to pull this off,
Speaker 10: and so measures were taken to protect children and protect
Speaker 10: school buses, which, as you can imagine, was a mammoth
Speaker 10: task because there were so many school buses and thousands
Speaker 10: and thousands of miles driven every day by school buses.
Speaker 10: Planes were used to oversee an area looking for a sniper.
Speaker 10: Police cars shadowed some buses. Bus routes were changed, people
Speaker 10: were brought on board, security were brought on board some
Speaker 10: buses to ride along. It was a really terrifying time
Speaker 10: for a while. But as you pointed out in a
Speaker 10: future letter, the Zodiac claimed that he wasn't really going
Speaker 10: to do that the way he said he was. But
Speaker 10: also in that next letter that where he called that
Speaker 10: off and said he wasn't going to shoot up a
Speaker 10: school bus, he provided a bomb diagram for a bomb
Speaker 10: that he was going to set up at the side
Speaker 10: of a road that would take out a school bus
Speaker 10: as it drove past, And once again people became scared.
Speaker 10: But it wasn't for a while that the police really
Speaker 10: least the information about the bombs. They kept that under
Speaker 10: wrap because they didn't want to terrorize the neighborhood and
Speaker 10: put people in an unnecessary fear, especially if it was
Speaker 10: just a hoax. But the following year, in nineteen seventy,
Speaker 10: they did release information about the bombs, but they made
Speaker 10: very clear that to actually set up such a bomb
Speaker 10: would be a very difficult task. And by that time
Speaker 10: people were less worried about the Zodiac because as far
Speaker 10: as his attacks concerned, it appeared that he had stopped,
Speaker 10: and so I think most people by that time thought
Speaker 10: that the bomb was a hoax.
Speaker 9: Now his letters of there's a transformation, even call a
Speaker 9: transformation in his character and his mo and how he
Speaker 9: conducts himself and the tone of his letters as well
Speaker 9: in the content, so he talks about again we talked
Speaker 9: about taunting the police, but taunting in the police, and
Speaker 9: including how stupid they are and how superior is intelligence,
Speaker 9: but also how many people does he admit to have
Speaker 9: killed in the most recent letter, and then there's a
Speaker 9: letter that ups that kill count, and how do police
Speaker 9: respond to that? Do they have an interpretation for that?
Speaker 9: Do they understand what he means by that? Do they
Speaker 9: believe him what's their response.
Speaker 10: Yeah, the Zodiac did include a score of sorts that
Speaker 10: can be interpreted, this is how many people I killed.
Speaker 10: And he started to up it in such a way
Speaker 10: that the police began to doubt it that he was
Speaker 10: patting his numbers, that he wasn't really killing that many people. Today,
Speaker 10: there are five canonical victims that they're quite sure that
Speaker 10: the Zodiac killed. There may be a few others. There
Speaker 10: may be many more that they don't know about. But
Speaker 10: the Zodiac ran a score up to I believe it
Speaker 10: was thirty seven by the exorcist letter, but they could
Speaker 10: only confirm that he had killed five that they were
Speaker 10: certain of. The biggest transformation that the Zodiac underwent following
Speaker 10: the murder of Paul Stein was that no further murders
Speaker 10: could be attributed to him. He in the six page letter,
Speaker 10: he claimed that he was going to change the way
Speaker 10: he killed people, change the way he gathered as victims,
Speaker 10: and he wouldn't announce his future deaths, and that some
Speaker 10: of them he would make to look like accidents, and
Speaker 10: some of them would be a variety of other things,
Speaker 10: but wouldn't look like Zodiac murders. The truth is that
Speaker 10: he may have stopped, and this was a faith saving
Speaker 10: way of stopping by leaving. The police always not sure
Speaker 10: whether some particular death or some particular car accident was
Speaker 10: perpetrated by him, but they couldn't attribute any more murders
Speaker 10: to him. And that's probably the biggest mystery surrounding the
Speaker 10: Zodiac serial killer is did he stop? And if he
Speaker 10: did stop, why did he stop? Because it's very rare
Speaker 10: for a serial killer to stop unless he is dead
Speaker 10: or convicted on some other charges and put in prison,
Speaker 10: or else leaves the area and begins killing in some
Speaker 10: other area. But that said, it's not impossible for a
Speaker 10: serial killer to kill to stop killing, it's entirely possible.
Speaker 10: But if that's the case, it's extremely rare. And what
Speaker 10: exactly happened to him? And how did he kind of
Speaker 10: disappear from the historical stage, Where did he go? What
Speaker 10: happened to him? His last letter, the Exporcist letter, gave
Speaker 10: a hint that he might have been thinking about suicide,
Speaker 10: either a literal suicide and maybe he took his own life,
Speaker 10: or maybe some kind of metaphorical suicide where he stopped
Speaker 10: killing and stopped identifying as the Zodiac. And who knows.
Speaker 10: Maybe he's living in a senior citizen home today. Maybe
Speaker 10: he got married and made some changes in his life
Speaker 10: and refused to be the Zodiac serial killer anymore. Who knows.
Speaker 10: That's kind of the question that everybody's been is left
Speaker 10: with at this point.
Speaker 9: You talk about extremely rare for a serial killer, but
Speaker 9: we're talking about nineteen sixty six. There wasn't even the phrase.
Speaker 9: There wasn't even the idea that there was such a
Speaker 9: thing as a serial killer.
Speaker 10: No, and Zodiac was not the first serial killer. I mean,
Speaker 10: even Jack the Ripper was not the first serial killer.
Speaker 10: A serial killer seemed to be something that has been
Speaker 10: part of the human condition for possibly thousands and thousands
Speaker 10: of years. Even the legendary beasts like the werewolf and
Speaker 10: the vampire and whatnot may come to us and may
Speaker 10: be familiar to us, because that was a mythological way
Speaker 10: of explaining a serial killer. Jack the Ripper was just
Speaker 10: the most prominent serial killer of the nineteenth century. But
Speaker 10: prior to the Jack the Ripper, there were other serial killers,
Speaker 10: and of course we know much more about them today.
Speaker 10: But one thing we know about serial killers is that
Speaker 10: they are addicted to killing, and there's nothing that's more
Speaker 10: important to them than killing people. So why would it
Speaker 10: make sense for a serial killer to suddenly stop.
Speaker 9: Well, my point was just what I was going to
Speaker 9: make is that he seems to be extremely rare in
Speaker 9: terms of how unique he was in terms of some sophistication,
Speaker 9: changing locations, the codes, the contacting the media and the police,
Speaker 9: and the taunting and the father contacting the father of
Speaker 9: Josephine Bates, and so the idea that he may quit again, it's,
Speaker 9: of course it's rare, but this is seriously a very
Speaker 9: unique killer as well, So anything can go. Obviously it
Speaker 9: can't happen.
Speaker 11: At this point.
Speaker 9: What I want to talk about is that you speculate
Speaker 9: about that why anybody would quit. Was there any idea
Speaker 9: that maybe he continued experimenting with bomb making and maybe
Speaker 9: meticen that way. Was there any any talk of was
Speaker 9: there any investigation into how serious he was in terms
Speaker 9: of changing how he did things and using utilizing bombs,
Speaker 9: homemade bombs.
Speaker 10: There's a lot of speculation. The fact that he was
Speaker 10: never identified leaves it as just speculation at this point.
Speaker 10: John Douglas, the FBI profiler, speculated that he was almost
Speaker 10: caught because because the police officers drove by him the
Speaker 10: murder of Paul Stein, that he got so scared that
Speaker 10: he stopped killing. That was his estimation of the situation, right,
Speaker 10: The idea that he built the bomb and blew himself up,
Speaker 10: that's you know, that's entirely possible.
Speaker 9: Now with this investigation. By the end of this first book,
Speaker 9: where are you in terms of this investigation providing more information?
Speaker 9: What is the conclusion that or where are we at
Speaker 9: at the end of this book Zodiac Murders.
Speaker 10: While The Zodiac Murders lay out the murders and the
Speaker 10: community response to the murders as including the police investigation.
Speaker 10: That's book one. I have two more books that I'm
Speaker 10: working on at this point. In book number two, I'm
Speaker 10: going to look at the evidence, dig in deeper into
Speaker 10: kind of a systematic look at the information and the
Speaker 10: evidence that the Zodiac has left behind, kind of explore
Speaker 10: some of the possibly some trends that he went through
Speaker 10: from one crime scene to the next. I'm telling the
Speaker 10: story is the first part, but beyond that we can
Speaker 10: start to ask what has he told us about himself
Speaker 10: through the letters, through the attacks, through changes that he
Speaker 10: has made, through decisions that he has appeared to make
Speaker 10: what can we say about him? And I'm hoping to
Speaker 10: conclude my second book with a profile.
Speaker 11: Of the killer.
Speaker 10: I'm basically a list of characteristics of the type of
Speaker 10: person that we're looking for. The third book, which seems
Speaker 10: like it's way off, which won't be available until two
Speaker 10: thousand and eighteen, I'm hoping to narrow the list of suspects.
Speaker 10: A lot of people have been looked at, a lot
Speaker 10: of people have been put forward as the Zodiac serial killer.
Speaker 10: In the past decade or two. There have been a
Speaker 10: couple dozen books of people who are absolutely certain that
Speaker 10: they know who it is. Some suspects are better than others.
Speaker 10: I hope to weed through some of that in the
Speaker 10: third book.
Speaker 9: Well, that's fascinating, Mark, that's incredible, and we'll look forward
Speaker 9: to that and also those upcoming books. I want to
Speaker 9: thank you for coming on and talking about Hunted the
Speaker 9: Zodiac Murders for those people that might want to find
Speaker 9: out more information and your other work. You have the
Speaker 9: Facebook page. Do you have a website? Tell us a
Speaker 9: little bit about that.
Speaker 10: Well, I'm the editor of Radians and Inches, the journal
Speaker 10: dedicated to the search for the Zodiac serial Killer and
Speaker 10: you can look at our website radiansaninches dot com. My
Speaker 10: previous book, Charles Manson Behind Bars, is available on Amazon.
Speaker 10: Any bookstore can order it for you as well, and
Speaker 10: Hunted within the next week or so you should it
Speaker 10: should be available for pre order through Amazon dot com
Speaker 10: or other online bookstores, and again any bookstore can order
Speaker 10: it for you if you ask them to.
Speaker 9: Well, I want to thank you Mark for coming on
Speaker 9: and this being the first program to got to the
Speaker 9: opportunity to speak to you about this incredible book. So
Speaker 9: thank you very much for coming on and talking about
Speaker 9: Hunted the Zodiac Murders. Thank you very much, Mark, It's
Speaker 9: been a pleasure, have a great evening.
Speaker 10: Thank you for having me.
Speaker 11: Good Night, good night
Speaker 4: The