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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 VTK. 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.
Speaker 5: Good evening. You probably know part of the Zodiac story.
Speaker 5: The guy killed five, wounded two, wrote letters in code,
Speaker 5: and drew tremendous press. There was a great movie about
Speaker 5: the case. But true crime veteran Michael Benson is taking
Speaker 5: a brand new look at that most interesting cases coming
Speaker 5: from the mindset that the Zodiac's combination of diverse killing styles,
Speaker 5: code making, and letter writing means more than one guy
Speaker 5: was involved. The Zodiac has teamwork written all over it,
Speaker 5: and so perhaps a Zodiac club. Many Zodiac experts assumed
Speaker 5: that in later Zodiac letters, when he wrote the San
Speaker 5: Francisco Examiner letters claiming a prolific kill count, that the
Speaker 5: guy responsible for the murders of Betty Loo Jensen, David Faraday,
Speaker 5: Darlene Farren, Cecilia Sheppard, and Paul Stein and maybe Cherry
Speaker 5: Joe Bates was just bragging about the other forty or so.
Speaker 5: Benson looks at it another way, all of them could
Speaker 5: have been the Zodiac. If the Zodiac was a psycho squad,
Speaker 5: not alone Nut. Each and every victim gets Benson's full
Speaker 5: attention as the body count grows. There is ongoing analysis
Speaker 5: involving hard and circumstantial evidence commonalities between the murders, geographic profiling,
Speaker 5: and pertinent connections to known Zodiac suspects. Many murders are examined.
Speaker 5: It was the era of serial murder, an epidemic especially
Speaker 5: bad in northern California where privacy, seclusion, dusty wilderness, and
Speaker 5: hitchhiking were prevalent. Some of these cases were found to
Speaker 5: not be the Zodiac at all, but perhaps a glimpse
Speaker 5: at the early work of a Ted Bundy, at Kemper,
Speaker 5: Golden State killer, Joseph DiAngelo, and other known killers. The
Speaker 5: next wave of psycho serial carnage. The book that we're
Speaker 5: featuring this evening is The Age of Zodiac, with my
Speaker 5: special guests, journalist and author Michael Benson. Welcome back to
Speaker 5: the program. Thank you so much for this interview. Michael Benson,
Speaker 5: Thank you, Dan, thank you for having me. It's always
Speaker 5: a pleasure. Michael. I'm always looking forward to any new
Speaker 5: work of yours, and this is no exception. As you
Speaker 5: said before this, just before this interview. Finally we get
Speaker 5: to talk about Zodiac.
Speaker 4: That's what it's about.
Speaker 5: Time let's talk, you know, with the go ahead.
Speaker 2: I was gonna say, I think we've both always been
Speaker 2: interested in Zodiac. I'm old enough to remember when the
Speaker 2: murders happened and when they published the even in Rochester,
Speaker 2: New York, they published the codes from the letters in
Speaker 2: the morning newspaper. I remember sitting there trying to figure
Speaker 2: out the code. Of course, nobody ever has. I loved
Speaker 2: Robert Graysmith's book, I loved David Fincher's movie. But the
Speaker 2: subject came up more recently when I was planning a
Speaker 2: book called Killers who Taunt about serial killers weren't content
Speaker 2: to just kill their victims, but they need to brag
Speaker 2: about it. They're usually in letters. They write to the
Speaker 2: press of the police, so the terror becomes part of
Speaker 2: the package. Jack the Ripper is the prototype of that
Speaker 2: kind of killer. He gave himself the name Jack the
Speaker 2: Ripper in a letter he wrote. Since then, there's been
Speaker 2: the Black Dolly Avenge btk Unibomb, son of Sam and Hear.
Speaker 2: The top of that list is Zodiac, who's credited for
Speaker 2: five kills, maybe six, but may.
Speaker 4: Be responsible for many many more, and he was the most.
Speaker 2: He wrote the most taunting letters different from the others.
Speaker 2: In all those other cases I mentioned, the crimes would
Speaker 2: have been tied together even without the letters. Jeck the
Speaker 2: Ripper's victims were all in the same neighborhood. He left
Speaker 2: uniquely messy crime scenes. Son of Sam crimes were all
Speaker 2: committed with the same gun BTK love knots. But the
Speaker 2: Zodiac's crimes would have remained separate cases if the letters
Speaker 2: and phone calls had not tied them together. He killed
Speaker 2: at night, he killed during the day. He killed rural,
Speaker 2: he killed urban. He killed with a knife, He killed
Speaker 2: with a variety of guns.
Speaker 4: So it makes more sense.
Speaker 2: If he was a day and the letters were written
Speaker 2: to create an all encompassing umbrella, and the goal was
Speaker 2: to commit perfect murders. So we go back before the
Speaker 2: first known Zodiac murders in Valleeno, all the way back
Speaker 2: to the early sixties in southern California, where crimes like
Speaker 2: this were starting to happen. There's one which I didn't
Speaker 2: put in the book, but I'll mention here. April nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two, cab driver named Ray Davis was shot in
Speaker 2: an upscale section of Oceanside, California, with twenty two super
Speaker 2: Rex long twenty two twenty two Suprex long ammunition, and
Speaker 2: he called the cops. He threatened bus drivers, He acted clever,
Speaker 2: but didn't strike again. That anybody knew about. My book
Speaker 2: starts a year later in June of nineteen sixty three,
Speaker 2: and it's senior ditch Day. I don't know if you
Speaker 2: had senior ditch day where you went to school, but
Speaker 2: usually somewhere before a few days before graduation, when finals
Speaker 2: are over, seniors get amongst themselves and on one day
Speaker 2: they just don't come to school. They ditch class on
Speaker 2: moss and what are they going to do about it?
Speaker 2: So then our two kids, Linda and Robert, Linda Edwards
Speaker 2: and Robert Domingos went to the beach in Santa Barbara
Speaker 2: County and they found a private spot and they were
Speaker 2: shot with twenty two super Rex long rifle ammunition, and
Speaker 2: the killer created a little scene. He dragged their bodies
Speaker 2: into a nearby lean to where a beach bum lived,
Speaker 2: and he cut Linda's panties and opened them and then
Speaker 2: placed her body on top of Roberts. Now a year done,
Speaker 2: not even a year. The seven months later, also on
Speaker 2: a beach in Southern California, Ocean Beach in San Diego,
Speaker 2: another couple, Johnny Ray and Joyce Swindle, newly read newlyweds,
Speaker 2: are taking a stroll along the beach and their shot
Speaker 2: with a Remington twenty two rifle. First shots come from
Speaker 2: a far sniperlike and then the killer finishes the job
Speaker 2: up close. Ray was a navy man radio ban verse
Speaker 2: first class and that's why he was stationed in San
Speaker 2: Diego and then in the summer nineteen sixty five. This
Speaker 2: is really a very modern crime for nineteen sixty five
Speaker 2: in the most horrible way. Diane Garish. It's sometimes known
Speaker 2: as the black Sapphire murder because she wore a black
Speaker 2: sapphire ring which was missing and she could have a
Speaker 2: book to herself. She was killed August wayne nine, thineteen
Speaker 2: sixty five, found nude and strangled with her own bronze
Speaker 2: stockings just outside the Presidio Army Post in San Francisco.
Speaker 2: She'd been dancing with soldiers at a club there, and
Speaker 2: she was last seen as the Fort Scott Presidio Enlisted
Speaker 2: Men's Club in Presidio Hill, and the killer took the
Speaker 2: ring and took off. And the one after that is
Speaker 2: the one I think a lot of Zodiac fans know about.
Speaker 2: Familure is the word fan, but you know what I mean.
Speaker 2: We don't like the Zodiac. We're just fascinated by him
Speaker 2: or it. But this is Cherry Jobates and she's killed
Speaker 2: the day before Halloween in nineteen sixty six, founding a
Speaker 2: driveway on the campus of Riverside City College. Her car
Speaker 2: is disabled while she's in the school library, so when
Speaker 2: she comes out to go home, car won't start. Man
Speaker 2: offers to help her and next thing we know, she's
Speaker 2: dead at the end of a driveway, stabbed brutally. And
Speaker 2: this is the thing that clinches it as a Zodiac
Speaker 2: crime is that the killer writes a letter or someone
Speaker 2: writes a letter, certainly to the newspaper, and.
Speaker 4: Takes credit.
Speaker 2: It's called the confession, but not a confession at all.
Speaker 4: It's a taunt.
Speaker 2: And in the letter, which is typed in all capital letters,
Speaker 2: there's common frame theology with later Zodiac letters uses the
Speaker 2: phrase squirmed and twitched and twitched is missing its second
Speaker 2: t Now theres a later Zodiac letter that uses the
Speaker 2: phrase squirmed and twitched and twitch is missing the second
Speaker 2: team in that word, so it sounds almost like a signature.
Speaker 2: So I'm pretty sure Cherry Joe has something to do
Speaker 2: with the with the known Zodiac crimes. But the first
Speaker 2: universally universally accepted Zodiac murder murders are David Faride and
Speaker 2: Betty lou Jensen, who were obviously teenagers and they lived
Speaker 2: in Vallejo, went to different schools, and were out on
Speaker 2: their first real date and they were killed. December twentieth,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty eight, was the first evening of Christmas vacation,
Speaker 2: and about eleven twenty pm they were parked just off
Speaker 2: Lake Herman Road, which is a desolate road next Falletjo
Speaker 2: with Benicia. Two three cars an hour go down it
Speaker 2: no street lights, can't see your hand in front of
Speaker 2: your face, and they're found with David lying on his
Speaker 2: back directly beside the front passenger side of the door.
Speaker 2: The door's open, all other doors are closed and locked,
Speaker 2: and cops knew it was a fresh scene because it's
Speaker 2: freezing outside. It's twenty eight degrees outside and the engine
Speaker 2: is still warm. Betty loos dead at the scene. She's
Speaker 2: twenty eight feet from the car in the direction of
Speaker 2: the road, shot five times in the back as she fled,
Speaker 2: and David's doa at Vallejo General Hospital, shot point blank
Speaker 2: in the head. Now there's a bullet hole in the
Speaker 2: back window of the rambler, perhaps an indication that the
Speaker 2: victims were forced off the road. The common thinking is
Speaker 2: that they were parked to make out, but if you
Speaker 2: look at the photos, they're only two or three feet
Speaker 2: off of the road, and it's on a curve, so
Speaker 2: every time a car goes by, the inside of their
Speaker 2: car lights up, so it's not the best place to park.
Speaker 4: Now, there's a.
Speaker 2: Nine empty twenty two caliber shell casings are found, eight
Speaker 2: of them near the car. Once found inside the car,
Speaker 2: the killer put his gun into the car to shoot David,
Speaker 2: and the ammunition was twenty two super X long, same
Speaker 2: as with the cab driver and ocean side and with
Speaker 2: Linda and Robert in the beach near Gaviota in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty three. Now, the murder weapon here was most likely
Speaker 2: a J. C. Higgins Model eighty twenty two automatic pistol. Now,
Speaker 2: the kids had no dangerous enemies, but witnesses said that
Speaker 2: there had been an incident sometime in the recent past
Speaker 2: in which David Faraday had spotted a guy selling marijuana
Speaker 2: at the International House of Pancakes I hop on Tennessee
Speaker 2: Street in Vallejoe. David's an eagle scout, and he threatened
Speaker 2: to turn the guy in, and the popular and response
Speaker 2: threatened David. We don't know who the drug dealer was,
Speaker 2: but that ihop becomes an epicenter of Zodiac activity in.
Speaker 4: Nineteen sixty sixty nine comes up again and again, which.
Speaker 2: Brings us to the following fourth of July and probably
Speaker 2: the most famous Zodiac's murders. This is the one that
Speaker 2: has Hurdy Gurdy man in playing in the background in
Speaker 2: the movie. I'm sure if you've seen the movie, you
Speaker 2: can never pick at that. David Fincher's a genius. But anyway,
Speaker 2: from a true crime point of view, no victim in
Speaker 2: this case is more interesting than one. Darlene Ferret. She's
Speaker 2: twenty two years old, but her life has been a
Speaker 2: soap opera. She has a baby, and she's already trying
Speaker 2: the patience of a second husband. And unlike the kids
Speaker 2: on Lake Kerman Road, Darlene has enemies and I swear
Speaker 2: I can't believe nobody's noticed this Darlene bore a strong
Speaker 2: resemblance to Betty Lou. Now, if you knew them, you
Speaker 2: may not confuse the two, because they gave off a
Speaker 2: very different aura. But going buying a car, you could
Speaker 2: confuse the two. Well scrunch faces cute but not necessarily
Speaker 2: glamorously pretty. But it's enough of a resemblance for me
Speaker 2: anyway to at least consider the possibility that Betty Lou's
Speaker 2: murder was a case of mistaken identity.
Speaker 4: With Darlene.
Speaker 2: On the fourth of July evening is Michael Migeu's nineteen
Speaker 2: and he survives the attack, which is one of the
Speaker 2: reasons that it's a blessing and a curse because he
Speaker 2: tells us everything we know about what happened, but not
Speaker 2: really in the sturdiest and most trustworthy way. For example,
Speaker 2: they're parked in a brown corvet, and when they first
Speaker 2: asked the wounded Mike Migielle what kind of car the
Speaker 2: killer drove, he said it was a brown Corvet, So no,
Speaker 2: that was the kind you're in, So well, maybe it
Speaker 2: was a Mustang. You know, either he knows more than
Speaker 2: he sang or less than he sang, But what he
Speaker 2: says keeps changing. He's still changing his story to this day.
Speaker 2: And nine millimeter shells are found at the scene, so
Speaker 2: it's a different gun.
Speaker 4: It's a luger.
Speaker 2: Michelle mad Joe. We called that parking at that spot,
Speaker 2: which was Blue Rock Springs Golf Course parking lot, was
Speaker 2: Darlene's idea. I guess is that everything was Darlene's idea.
Speaker 2: It was a place where young people didn't just make out,
Speaker 2: but they hung out, and you could buy a nickel
Speaker 2: bag of pot, you could drink beer to socialize, and
Speaker 2: Darlene had been there many times. They parked at approximately
Speaker 2: eleven thirty five pm and for a couple of minutes quietly,
Speaker 2: but their solitude was interrupted by a car driving Northeastern
Speaker 2: Springs Road. The car pulled into the parking lot, up
Speaker 2: to a spot seven feet from the rear of Darling's
Speaker 2: car and turned off its lights. Micheau asked what was up,
Speaker 2: and Darling said, oh, never mind, so he didn't and
Speaker 2: the car sat there for about a minute and then left,
Speaker 2: and they breathed a common sigh of relief. Alone again,
Speaker 2: but in a few minutes the car came back and
Speaker 2: once again parked behind Darling's car now about ten feet away.
Speaker 4: This time, the.
Speaker 2: Headlights stayed on and the driver got out and shined
Speaker 2: the bright flashlight into the car. They couldn't make out
Speaker 2: his features. No words were exchanged, but the gunman opened
Speaker 2: fire and shot through Michael's open passenger side window. He left,
Speaker 2: Michael gave out a little scream, and the killer came
Speaker 2: back to the car shot them both again. She's dead,
Speaker 2: he's wounded, he's been shotting through the tongue. He's having
Speaker 2: trouble speaking. Darlene dies soon after getting to the hospital,
Speaker 2: and he survives. And there are weirdnesses about this crime
Speaker 2: that have nothing to do with the killer. Mijeaux is
Speaker 2: wearing three pairs of trousers, one t shirt, three sweaters,
Speaker 2: and one long sleeved button shirt. And it's a hot,
Speaker 2: steamy forth of July night, so this is extremely odd.
Speaker 2: You can imagine the people in the emergency room trying
Speaker 2: to undress them so they can get a look at
Speaker 2: his wounds, and the clothes just keep coming. He would
Speaker 2: later claim that he wore the extra clothes even on
Speaker 2: the steamy night because he was insecure about his skinniness. Well,
Speaker 2: trouble with that is he's six foot one seventy, which
Speaker 2: is about normal weight for a teenager, and he seemed
Speaker 2: confused and unreliable. So there are indications that maybe Darlene
Speaker 2: and Michael are in the parking lot at the golf
Speaker 2: course at night for reasons than to get to know
Speaker 2: each other better. It is a spot known to buy
Speaker 2: nickel bags, and Darlene's husband was perhaps being euphemistic when
Speaker 2: he told police he sent Darlene to buy fireworks, even
Speaker 2: though it was the middle of the night after the
Speaker 2: Fourth of Jiant, an unlikely time to set off fireworks.
Speaker 2: Darlene only had thirteen cents on her at the time
Speaker 2: of her death. Migelle said the car came left and
Speaker 2: came back, which could be the way it went if
Speaker 2: you paid the guy and then he came back to
Speaker 2: give you the drugs. Only something obviously went very bad.
Speaker 2: Then there are weirdnesses that have everything to do with
Speaker 2: the zoiac. About a half hour also the crime scene
Speaker 2: was discovered, the Valejoll police switchboard operator received a phone
Speaker 2: call from a man in a slow monitonne slow but forceful.
Speaker 2: I want to report a double murder. If you will
Speaker 2: go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to a public park.
Speaker 2: You will find the kids in a brown car. They
Speaker 2: were shot with a nine millimeter luger. I also killed
Speaker 2: those kids last year.
Speaker 4: Good Bye.
Speaker 2: And the last two words were elongated for effect, and
Speaker 2: it worked because Nancy, who took the calls, been haunted
Speaker 2: by that sound for the rest of our life.
Speaker 4: You know. She spoke to the zodiac.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, how will I ever sleep?
Speaker 4: Right now?
Speaker 2: The call was traced to a payphone at a vallet
Speaker 2: Host service station, Joe's Union on Spring Road, and police
Speaker 2: went to the phone booth and found the receiver still
Speaker 2: hanging down off the hook. There was no sign of
Speaker 2: anyone any suspicious activity in the vicinity, and although the
Speaker 2: phone booth was only a ten minute drive from the
Speaker 2: crime scene, thirty minutes go by before the call was made,
Speaker 2: so the killer did something in between the shooting and
Speaker 2: the phone call. Best bet is that our guy is
Speaker 2: a local valay Ho guy. And there were several early
Speaker 2: suspects who most intriguing were a guy named George Waters,
Speaker 2: a Filipino bartender customer that Darlene wouldn't go out with
Speaker 2: and once went to her home and threatened a raper,
Speaker 2: and especially interesting because he's Filipino, and a later Zodiac
Speaker 2: letter talks about collecting slaves for the afterlife, which is
Speaker 2: apparently a Filipino thing. And then there was Darlene's first husband,
Speaker 2: who then their their marriage had been tumultuous and violent,
Speaker 2: so he would naturally have been the first the first suspect, right,
Speaker 2: And then after that.
Speaker 5: We're gonna stop just for one second for these messages.
Speaker 1: Lucky Land Casino asking people what's the weirdest place you've
Speaker 1: gotten lucky?
Speaker 2: Lucky? In line at the Delhi I guess ah, in
Speaker 2: my dentist's office more than once. Actually do I have
Speaker 2: to say?
Speaker 4: Yes? You do?
Speaker 2: In the car before my kid's PTA meeting?
Speaker 1: Really yes, excuse me? What's the weirdest place you've gotten lucky?
Speaker 1: I never win?
Speaker 3: And tell well, there you have it.
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Speaker 5: And he talked about complicating the case with George Waters
Speaker 5: and another suspect, how to police proceed before we talk
Speaker 5: about August Firth nineteen sixty nine, in San Francisco Examiner,
Speaker 5: This and the San Francisco Chronicle and the Valeto Times
Speaker 5: Herald each received the letter.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, they each get a nearly identical letter. It's
Speaker 2: not transcribed perfectly, but it seems to be an attempt
Speaker 2: at three identical letters, and then each one gets a
Speaker 2: third of a cipher. The envelopes were overposted, and the ciphers,
Speaker 2: if decoded, the letter promised, would contain a clue as
Speaker 2: to the killer's identity. The letter also established authenticity by
Speaker 2: describing not perfectly, the type of ammunition used, the precise number.
Speaker 4: Of shots fired, and the positions of the bodies.
Speaker 2: And it contained details that were not in the newspapers.
Speaker 2: But he got things a little wrong, which made it
Speaker 2: may not discredit him as the actual killer at all.
Speaker 2: It may just be an imperfect memory, which is the
Speaker 2: way people are. But again there was It looked like
Speaker 2: a team work effort. The printing was sloppy and prone
Speaker 2: to slant, yet the cipher was printed with precision on
Speaker 2: a grid with roges that lined up perfectly verbally, vertically
Speaker 2: and horizontally. Had the same hand created both the letters
Speaker 2: and the ciphers. Doesn't look like code from The first
Speaker 2: letter was broken during the first week in August by
Speaker 2: a history professor and his wife, and it started, I
Speaker 2: like killing people because it is so much fun, which
Speaker 2: is the theme of psychopaths ever since. It went on
Speaker 2: to say that hunting people was the ultimate kick, it's
Speaker 2: better than sex, and that when he died, he would
Speaker 2: be reborn in paradise and those he killed would be
Speaker 2: his slaves. Right, there was a clue to his identity,
Speaker 2: and nobody figured it out. And a week later, the
Speaker 2: Manson murders take place in Los Angeles, and this guy
Speaker 2: loses the front page of the newspapers. Our Zodiac Club's
Speaker 2: going to have to up the ante if they want
Speaker 2: to again become the center of attention. And you know
Speaker 2: that's something comes several weeks later at Lake barri Essa.
Speaker 5: Right, you talk about Brian Hartnell, a twenty years old
Speaker 5: and Cecilia Anne Shepherd at Lake Barriessa, seventy miles north
Speaker 5: of San Francisco and forty miles north of Vallejo. Tell
Speaker 5: us about this incredible incident at Lake Barriessa.
Speaker 4: Oh, well, this.
Speaker 2: Is burned into the nightmare of America. I think the
Speaker 2: victims are on a blanket in the sand, a little
Speaker 2: peninsula sticks out into Lake Lake Barriers, which is a
Speaker 2: large lake in northern California, And because they're on a peninsula,
Speaker 2: really only one way to and from their location, so
Speaker 2: when a strange man approaches, they feel a little trapped
Speaker 2: right away. Cecilia seas him first and the man hides
Speaker 2: poorly behind a tree. So now it's a weirdo and
Speaker 2: they're on high alert. But that alertness turns to fear
Speaker 2: when the man re emerges from behind the tree, wearing
Speaker 2: a black hood over his head that falls to a
Speaker 2: crust on his chest, and neatly and precisely painted on
Speaker 2: the hood in white was the circling crosshairs symbol that
Speaker 2: became Zodiac's logo. He's holding a dark automatic pistol in
Speaker 2: his hand, which the scariest part of all, and the
Speaker 2: hooded man orders Brian to lie down on his stomach
Speaker 2: and tell Cecilia to tie his wrists. This is interesting
Speaker 2: because we go back to Robert and Linda on the beach,
Speaker 2: the same thing appeared.
Speaker 4: To have happened.
Speaker 2: The killer asked the girl to tie up the guy
Speaker 2: for her for him, which is an unusual thing to do,
Speaker 2: and Brian is tied by Cecilia using pre cut lengths
Speaker 2: of clothesline that he brought. He then produces a long,
Speaker 2: thin knife and stabs Brian ten times in the back.
Speaker 2: He ties up Cecilia himself, although he seems very nervous
Speaker 2: while he's doing it, and again Brian survives the attack,
Speaker 2: which is the reason we know these details. If both
Speaker 2: had died.
Speaker 4: None of this, they would just be dead people on
Speaker 4: a beach and we wouldn't know what happened.
Speaker 2: He stabs his Cia three times in the back, and
Speaker 2: when she writhes herself over onto her back, he stabs
Speaker 2: her once in each breast, once in the crotch, and
Speaker 2: once in the abdomen, and then goes berserk and covers
Speaker 2: her with holes with the knife. I mean, I read
Speaker 2: on the internet recently somebody's saying that the zodiac showed
Speaker 2: no signs of misogyny. You know, I could fell like screaming.
Speaker 2: Look at with the autopsy report on Cecilia Shepherd, did
Speaker 2: you think that.
Speaker 4: His work done?
Speaker 2: Hooded man leaves and Brian's estimations of time, of course,
Speaker 2: are all over the place because of the traumas he's undergone.
Speaker 2: But he says the attack took place. It took about
Speaker 2: fifteen minutes, and then there's a long delay before the
Speaker 2: victims are found. They have to wait until somebody sees
Speaker 2: them from the water, and then there's another delay for
Speaker 2: an ambulance to get there. Once they get Cecilia to
Speaker 2: the hospital, there's a problem with her blood type.
Speaker 4: And when she passes away.
Speaker 2: And the killer on his way out, writes a message
Speaker 2: on passenger side door of Brian's car, which is a
Speaker 2: little teeny car Volkswagen Karmen Idea, and he puts the
Speaker 2: circle and Crosshair's logo is his signature. Vallejo twelve, twenty
Speaker 2: sixty eight seven four sixty nine by gun, September twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty nine, six thirty pm by knife, and he
Speaker 2: also leaves footprints size ten and a half wing walker's shoes,
Speaker 2: which are government issue shoes usually worn by Air Force
Speaker 2: personnel if they won't slip when they're walking on the
Speaker 2: wings of planes. But they're available anyway. You can go
Speaker 2: to an Army Navy store and get them now, just
Speaker 2: had been the case in July. There's a phone call.
Speaker 2: About hour and ten minutes later, man calls the NAPO police.
Speaker 2: I want to report a murder, Noah double murder. There
Speaker 2: They are two miles north of park headquarters. They were
Speaker 2: in a white Volkswagen Yia, and the dispatcher, whose officer,
Speaker 2: David Slate, asks from where are you calling there? And
Speaker 2: the caller responds in a terrifying whisper.
Speaker 4: I'm the one who did it. Now. They they traced that.
Speaker 2: Call to a payphone at the Napa car wash corner
Speaker 2: of Maine and Clinton Streets in Napa, which is on
Speaker 2: the way back to Vallejo. If that's indeed where the
Speaker 2: killer lived, and the Zilliac's next attack couldn't be more different.
Speaker 2: It would take place in an urban setting and in
Speaker 2: front of witnesses. And that's of course Paul Stein m H.
Speaker 2: So the evening of October eleventh, nineteen sixty nine, Stein,
Speaker 2: he's a PhD candidate, got several jobs, one of which
Speaker 2: is driving a yellow cab in San Francisco in the
Speaker 2: Graveyard Chist and he picks up a man at the
Speaker 2: corner of Mason and Geary Streets, and the man asks
Speaker 2: to be taken to Maple and Washington, which is in
Speaker 2: the Ritzy Presidio Heights section of San Francisco. There's that
Speaker 2: word presidio again keeps coming out. When they arrive at
Speaker 2: the corner of Washington and Cherry Streets, about a block
Speaker 2: away from the intended destination, passenger pulls the gun, puts
Speaker 2: it to the cab driver's head, and pulls the trigger.
Speaker 2: Now this is important. The immediate aftermath to this murder
Speaker 2: is observed by several teenaged witnesses from a window across
Speaker 2: the street. The killer circles around to the front passenger
Speaker 2: side door opens, it pulls the cabby down across the seat,
Speaker 2: and then does something over the boy. And we now
Speaker 2: know he's cutting a piece of shirt away so that
Speaker 2: he can use bloody shirt pieces as certificates of authenticity
Speaker 2: and future letters. But they didn't because tell he's doing
Speaker 2: something over the body. He then fussed over the side
Speaker 2: of the cab for a time with a white rag
Speaker 2: in his hand, which the witnesses interpreted as wiping away
Speaker 2: fingerprints on the CAB's exterior. The killer took Stein's car,
Speaker 2: keys and wall, maybe his sunglass and maybe his eyeglasses,
Speaker 2: but left other items there and walked away casually on foot.
Speaker 4: Now, when the.
Speaker 2: First police officers arrived, they could see a complete fingerprint
Speaker 2: in blood on the side of the cab, So apparently
Speaker 2: the killer wasn't wiping fingerprints away. But what else could
Speaker 2: he have been doing. Witnesses were asked about the Boody
Speaker 2: print and the best they could come up with was, well,
Speaker 2: maybe he left it there while he was wiping the
Speaker 2: cab clean.
Speaker 4: That makes no sense.
Speaker 2: In a future letter, the Zodiac claims that he was
Speaker 2: leaving false evidence, which explained what had been seen and
Speaker 2: then found better than anything the investigators or eye witness
Speaker 2: has had to say. Despite the odd manner in which
Speaker 2: the print was left and found, it was and is
Speaker 2: still being used to eliminate suspects, how many suspects all
Speaker 2: of them. The print has no known match. There's one
Speaker 2: nine millimeter shell casing found on the floor of the cab,
Speaker 2: the front of the passenger side and begun similar but
Speaker 2: not the same as the weapon used at Blue Rock
Speaker 2: Springs Park. And that was the last of the official
Speaker 2: Zodiac murders, but just the beginning of the letter writing campaign.
Speaker 2: Now you know, Paul Stein's dead and the killer still
Speaker 2: doesn't have a name. He's being called the Cipher Killer
Speaker 2: in the newspapers, but that's.
Speaker 4: About to change.
Speaker 5: You talk about October fifteenth, and the San Francisco Chronicle
Speaker 5: receives a letter from Zodiac and it also contains a
Speaker 5: bloody piece of Paul Stein's shirt postmarks from San Francisco.
Speaker 5: What does he what else does the Zodiac claim in
Speaker 5: that letter?
Speaker 2: Incredibly Well, he has become now a full fledged terrorist.
Speaker 2: He says he's got a plan. He's going to attack
Speaker 2: a school bus. He's going to shoot out the front
Speaker 2: tire and then his pick off the kiddies as they
Speaker 2: come bouncing out. And that's the start of Zodiac Mania.
Speaker 2: I mean, the hall of Northern California is now obsessed
Speaker 2: with this guy. The parents are terrified that their kids
Speaker 2: are going to be attacked on their way to school.
Speaker 2: Every school bus has a police escort. Soon thereafter. The
Speaker 2: situation's complicated because a man claiming to be the Zodiac
Speaker 2: earns his fifty minutes of fame by calling a TV
Speaker 2: talk show in San Francisco and chatting with the famous
Speaker 2: lawyer in Melvin Belli. Dispatchers who'd received phone calls from
Speaker 2: the killer and the lady in Valley Helens and the
Speaker 2: man in Napa, along with David Hartnell listen to the
Speaker 2: broadcast and say it's not the same guy. I mean
Speaker 2: Hartnell had a long conversation with the Zodiac, and it
Speaker 2: wasn't the guy on the television show who wanted to
Speaker 2: be called Sam. The letters continued from the killer, claiming
Speaker 2: an edward increased number of victims, and by the time
Speaker 2: the letters stopped it was up to thirty seven. He
Speaker 2: threatened to build bombs and blow stuff up. He quoted
Speaker 2: Gilbert and Sullivan's operata The Mecado. He referred to cops
Speaker 2: as Blue Meanis, which comes from the animated Beatles movie
Speaker 2: Yellow Submarine. The communications, however, stopped claiming particular crimes, saying
Speaker 2: it was up to authorities to figure out who he
Speaker 2: had and hadn't killed. One letter contained a three hundred
Speaker 2: and forty character cipher, resembling the ones that had been solved.
Speaker 2: But this cipher, if that is indeed what it is,
Speaker 2: has never been solved. The letters give us a tantalizing
Speaker 2: glimpse to the writer's personality. He's obnoxious, he's socially immature,
Speaker 2: but he never once offers anything that forwards the investigation.
Speaker 2: From a detective's viewpoint, the letters have been a big
Speaker 2: useless distraction in any theory based on decoding these clues,
Speaker 2: that call and Z is immediately suspect. After Paul Stein's murder,
Speaker 2: it wasn't long before the mentally ill of Northern California
Speaker 2: latched onto Zodiac's game. Anyone could play call in a
Speaker 2: bomb scare, say you Zodiac kill a hitchhiker? No thingk
Speaker 2: Zodiac did it? Who did the Zodiac Club actually kill? Well,
Speaker 2: there are plenty of people to choose from, because there
Speaker 2: was an explosion of psychopathic murders in Northern California at
Speaker 2: that point, just killing for fun. It was the new game,
Speaker 2: and I go through them all in the book in
Speaker 2: pretty strong detail. I'll gome quickly. Here starts with Elaine Davis.
Speaker 2: She's petite in seventeen. Her family phone number had recently
Speaker 2: been changed because of obscene phone calls. Leona Roberts sixteen,
Speaker 2: Her father was from Vallejo. Victim had been bound at
Speaker 2: the wrists and ankles. Cindy Lee Mellin, who's the car
Speaker 2: was disabled. She was last seen talking to a guy
Speaker 2: volunteering to help and was never found. Still technically missing.
Speaker 2: Cosette Ellison fifteen. She's found nude and partially buried. Patricia
Speaker 2: King twenty one, three days after Cosette. She's returning to
Speaker 2: her car when her life is interrupted. Judith and Hakari
Speaker 2: twenty three years old, two days after Patricia King, and
Speaker 2: the first in a series of victims to be a nurse.
Speaker 2: She vanished returning home from work at the Southern Memorial
Speaker 2: Hospital in Sacramento, Antoinette Ansey, she's a waitress like Darlene Farren,
Speaker 2: left her home in South Vallejall on March thirteenth, nineteen seventy,
Speaker 2: gott in her mother's car and disappeared, and the nude
Speaker 2: body was found eight days later off.
Speaker 4: A remote country road.
Speaker 2: Now, in the midst of the many psycho killings, there
Speaker 2: is a crime that the Zodiac does take credit for
Speaker 2: in a letter, and that's the abduction of Kathleen John's right.
Speaker 2: And that's a very strange story because it's another indication
Speaker 2: that even if one guy isn't responsible for all of
Speaker 2: these cases, he's paying attention, or they're paying attention. The
Speaker 2: Zodiac Club is reading the news and responding sometimes accordingly. Anyway,
Speaker 2: Kathleen John's a twenty two year old woman. She's seven
Speaker 2: months pregnant and She's brought into the police station in Patterson, California,
Speaker 2: on the early morning of March twenty third, nineteen seventy.
Speaker 2: She's in hysterics. She told the police that she'd been
Speaker 2: abducted by a man and she and her infant daughter
Speaker 2: had managed to escape. She was driving late at night
Speaker 2: near Patterson when a car came up behind her and
Speaker 2: began blinking his lights. She pulled over and the other
Speaker 2: car pulled alongside her. A man leaned over and said
Speaker 2: that her rear wheel was loose. He looked reliable to her.
Speaker 2: There was nothing freaky about him so well. They took
Speaker 2: a look at the wheel. The hub cap was off,
Speaker 2: there were only two lug nuts present. So he offers
Speaker 2: her rise to the gas station. Reluctantly, She carrying her child,
Speaker 2: gets into his car with him, and she asked him
Speaker 2: if he always went around helping people, and he reportedly
Speaker 2: replied that by the time he was through with people,
Speaker 2: they didn't need any help. His His car looked lived in.
Speaker 2: There were pots and pans closed for an adult man
Speaker 2: and closed for a child, all scattered around. Now, she says,
Speaker 2: the guy drove her around for two hours, mumbling strangely
Speaker 2: and ignoring her pleas to be let out. Finally he
Speaker 2: stops at a stop sign. She jumps out, runs into
Speaker 2: a field and hides. He tries looking for her, but
Speaker 2: a farmer stops in a truck says here, what's going
Speaker 2: on here? And the man who gave her the ride
Speaker 2: took off, So she gets the ride to the police
Speaker 2: station and she's hysterical. Cop goes to look for her
Speaker 2: car and finds it right where she said it was,
Speaker 2: only it's been torched, destroyed, And while she's being interviewed,
Speaker 2: she looks at the wall and there's a wanted poster
Speaker 2: for the Zodiac with a composite drawing based on Paulstein witnesses,
Speaker 2: and she freaks out.
Speaker 4: That's him, she.
Speaker 2: Screams Now is uncertain if this incident had anything to
Speaker 2: do with any of the Zodiac people, but one thing
Speaker 2: is absolutely for certain. The actual writer of the Zodiac
Speaker 2: letters mentions Missus Johns, Yes he picked them up, Yes
Speaker 2: he rode them around, Yes he torched her car. The
Speaker 2: Zodiac also sent both Missus Johns and calumnist Paul Avery
Speaker 2: Halloween cards with dancing skeletons on them. In her card,
Speaker 2: which was sent to her house, the must be scary
Speaker 2: was addressed to the lady in the station the wagon.
Speaker 2: So it's around this time that the Zodiac's primary function
Speaker 2: becomes extortion. He says do as I say, or bad
Speaker 2: things will happen. His requests they're stupid, and wants people
Speaker 2: to wear buttons that have his circle crosshairs logo on
Speaker 2: them or else. If you don't wear buttons, he's going
Speaker 2: to explode a bomb and kill a bunch of people.
Speaker 2: He sends authorities a map with radians and a compass
Speaker 2: drawn over Mount Diablo, supposedly clues to help find the bomb,
Speaker 2: but like the letters, no one ever figures out what
Speaker 2: the map means. But again, we learned something. We learned
Speaker 2: that the Zodiac knows what a radian is. An a
Speaker 2: radian for those that don't know, his fifty seven point
Speaker 2: three degrees, and it's used by engineers. The writer of
Speaker 2: the Zodiac letters has some sort of background in engineering
Speaker 2: or navigation. And then there's an indication that the Zodiac
Speaker 2: had is it in Lake Tahoe, Nevada with the disappearance
Speaker 2: of another nurse named Donna laughs.
Speaker 5: Right, yeah, sorry, the letter and talk about the letter
Speaker 5: at April twentieth, how many victims he claiming to have
Speaker 5: killed so far, and also talk about the expression blue
Speaker 5: meanis and what that refers to.
Speaker 2: Well, well, blue meanis is. I don't remember the number
Speaker 2: of Kilsey claims in that particular letter, is it up to.
Speaker 5: Twelve ten ten?
Speaker 2: But blue meanis is his reference to policemen, and it
Speaker 2: comes from the villains in the Beatles movie Yellow Submarine.
Speaker 2: It's a pop culture reference, you know. I think one
Speaker 2: of the things we do learn about the writer of
Speaker 2: the Zodiac letters is what he likes, and he likes, uh,
Speaker 2: he likes the Mikado a lot. He goes to the
Speaker 2: Mikado twice in two different letters, quoting from that in
Speaker 2: one case quoting in particular the Groucho Marx version of
Speaker 2: the Mikado, who in Groucho played the Lord High Executioner
Speaker 2: in that operetta, which is an interesting coincidence because I
Speaker 2: wrote a book last year called The Lord Executioner about Mobster.
Speaker 2: But that's that's what that means. And then he said
Speaker 2: the postcard, which is got pine trees and references to
Speaker 2: like Tahoe and supposed the clues is to where to
Speaker 2: find the missing person there and The missing person is
Speaker 2: Donna Lass, who was a twenty five year old nurse
Speaker 2: and another nurse and she worked at the Sahara Tahoe Hotel.
Speaker 2: She was in the first aid room at the casino,
Speaker 2: and before that she worked for five months at the
Speaker 2: Letterman Army Medical Center in the Presidio in San Francisco,
Speaker 2: near the Paulstein murder and where Diane Garrish was found
Speaker 2: horribly violated and murdered, missing her black Sciphi ring back
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty five. How Donna was last seen at
Speaker 2: work on September sixth, nineteen seventy, around one point fifty am.
Speaker 2: Her car was found near her apartment, but she was
Speaker 2: never seen again, and not long after she vanished, a
Speaker 2: male telephone caller called her workplace and her landlord and
Speaker 2: explained that she had to leave town abruptly due to
Speaker 2: an illness in the family. Now, a subsequent Zodiac letter
Speaker 2: seems to take credit for the disappearance plenty of other
Speaker 2: crimes that he didn't take credit. The epidemic of evil continues,
Speaker 2: and it's just you know, it.
Speaker 4: Goes on and on.
Speaker 2: There's Nancy Benelak, Betty or Carol Hilburn, all in Sacramento,
Speaker 2: and these are all within driving distance of Vallejo, if
Speaker 2: our boys still lives there. Benilac has stabbed to definitely
Speaker 2: two blocks from the spot where nurse Judith Hacari was abducted.
Speaker 2: Linda Kaynes as a student at Pacific Union College. That's
Speaker 2: the same college attended by the Lake Barry Assa victims,
Speaker 2: Brian Hartnell and Cecilia Shephard. Susan Lynch twenty.
Speaker 4: Two years old.
Speaker 2: She's found partially buried in a dry creek bed a
Speaker 2: hitchhiker connected geographically to the Hakari, Hillburn and Benilac murders.
Speaker 2: And the killings continued through nineteen seventy three. Gale McLaughlin
Speaker 2: again in Sacramento, Roseavasquez and San Francisco, who once worked
Speaker 2: in a hospital in the Presidio, the same one where
Speaker 2: Donal last worked, Angela Thomas, whose dad had been stationed
Speaker 2: for years in the presidio, Nancy Gidley, Nancy Fusei, and
Speaker 2: to round out a really rotten nineteen seventy three, two
Speaker 2: thirteen year old girls in Sacramento, Valery Lane and Doris
Speaker 2: Garryberry were executed with a shotgun. Now the killings extended
Speaker 2: through the first half of the decade. In Santa Rosa
Speaker 2: and in other places, girls hitchhiking, either alone or in
Speaker 2: pairs were disappearing and being found half in half, you know,
Speaker 2: in dry creek beds.
Speaker 4: And that's it.
Speaker 2: There are thirty seven murders at least, which I think
Speaker 2: is the highest number Zodiac ever claimed, and too many
Speaker 2: for one guy. Too many different looks, too many different
Speaker 2: styles for it to be one fellow. So not only
Speaker 2: do we look at top suspects, we look at the
Speaker 2: chances that top suspects might know each other.
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Speaker 5: Before I interrupted you, Michael, we were talking about the carnage,
Speaker 5: that the carnage that continued, but also that there was
Speaker 5: an interesting January development January twenty ninth, nineteen seventy four,
Speaker 5: the interrogation of Arthur Lee Allen, and anybody who's seen
Speaker 5: the movie Zodiac obviously is familiar with the name. Tell
Speaker 5: us a little bit about this interrogation of Arthur Lee Allen.
Speaker 2: I suppose that interrogation is actually the second time that
Speaker 2: the police spoke to him. He is my suspect number
Speaker 2: one is just about everybody's suspect number one. There are
Speaker 2: dogmatic people on the Internet who say that there are
Speaker 2: no suspects because the fingerprint on Paul Stein's cab has
Speaker 2: never been matched. But I'll get to that in a second. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Arthur Lee Allen has been eliminated technically because of the
Speaker 2: bloody figerprint and the same as two of all other suspects.
Speaker 2: So officially there are no suspects.
Speaker 4: But that.
Speaker 2: Let me let me talk about the print first, because
Speaker 2: it's the key. The question is how could a killer
Speaker 2: who profiles out as possibly military, possible journey through the
Speaker 2: mental health system, possibly incarcerated, not have his fingerprints on
Speaker 2: file anywhere. And one appealing conspiracy theory, and I see
Speaker 2: this all the time and people love this kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: is that the Zodiac is a US government mind control
Speaker 2: experiment gone wrong, that in an attempt to create super
Speaker 2: soldiers for the war in Vietnam, they had produced a
Speaker 2: few rejects who washed out and some were released back
Speaker 2: into society. Guys like that might have had their fingerprints
Speaker 2: erased from the system to prevent exposure. Now there's no
Speaker 2: evidence that, I mean, they're evidence that those programs existed,
Speaker 2: no evidence really connecting those programs with the Zodiac crimes.
Speaker 2: But at the Zodiac Club, I guess might have been
Speaker 2: government issue, just like the killer's wingwalker shoes. But I
Speaker 2: have another theory. At the Paul stein scene, we have
Speaker 2: a guy who plans to take away part of the
Speaker 2: victim's bloody shirt so he can include pieces in letters to.
Speaker 4: Prove that he's really the guy. So he uses evidence.
Speaker 2: He's a guy who uses evidence in that case to terrify,
Speaker 2: but he could also use evidence to deceive. Say someone
Speaker 2: in the Bay Area had disappeared, a guy who'd never
Speaker 2: been fingerprinted and who was never going to be fingerprinted,
Speaker 2: and his finger or his hand wrapped up in a
Speaker 2: white cloth that the witnesses saw was in the killer's pocket.
Speaker 2: When the teenager saw the man fussing over the side
Speaker 2: of the cab with the white rag and theory wiping
Speaker 2: prints away, Perhaps he was actually dipping the finger in
Speaker 2: Paul Steine's blood and then using it to make a
Speaker 2: clear print in blood on the cab. Now no one
Speaker 2: can ever be arrested for Paul Stein's murder because that
Speaker 2: fingerprint will never produce a match. It is the perfect murder. Yes,
Speaker 2: that's right there. Now back to Arthur Lee Allen. There
Speaker 2: are all sorts of reasons to make him suspect number one.
Speaker 2: For one thing, he lived right around the corner from
Speaker 2: the Eye Hop, and police records show that it was
Speaker 2: a from very early on. Darlene Farron worked at that
Speaker 2: I Hop from nineteen sixty six to sixty seven. David
Speaker 2: Ferdy threatened the drug dealer and that I hop and
Speaker 2: Arthur Lee Allen lives about one hundred yards from that
Speaker 2: I Hop. In October sixth, nineteen sixty nine, as part
Speaker 2: of the Lake Barry Assa investigation, please talk to him
Speaker 2: for the first time, and Sergeant Lynch of the Valley
Speaker 2: Jo Police Department shows up and he asked Allen.
Speaker 4: Where he was at the time of the Lake Barryssa murders, and.
Speaker 2: Lee says he went ski diving at Salt Point Ranch,
Speaker 2: stayed overnight, and returned to Valley holl on September twenty seven.
Speaker 2: He was unable to recall whether or not his parents
Speaker 2: were home that day. Now I've read I think every
Speaker 2: Valley Jo police report involving Zodiac, and most of the
Speaker 2: time they mentioned the reason why a suspect was warranted scrutiny.
Speaker 2: There was a phone tip, observation of unusual behavior and
Speaker 2: overheard comment something. But this one has no indication of
Speaker 2: why Alan is being interviewed, so we don't know he
Speaker 2: did somebody dropped the diamond Arthur Lee Allen right after
Speaker 2: the Lake Barriessa crimes, but we don't know what He's
Speaker 2: later interviewed, and this was what you were asking about.
Speaker 2: Later interviewed by detectives Toshi and Armstrong of the San
Speaker 2: Francisco Police Department. It's a surprise visit at his workplace,
Speaker 2: and he's wearing a Zodiac brand watch with the circle
Speaker 2: and crosshairs on the face, which was the logo for
Speaker 2: the brand. So there's the circle and crosshairs the word
Speaker 2: Zodiac with each other on his wrist. During the interview,
Speaker 2: he mentioned the most Dangerous game, which is mentioned in
Speaker 2: the very first cipher, and he said he said he'd
Speaker 2: been a suspect in the Lake Barriessa because someone saw
Speaker 2: him with bloody knives in his car, but it was okay.
Speaker 2: Because he'd just been killing chickens.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: A couple of search warrants were eventually taken out executed,
Speaker 2: but they failed to find any souvenirs from any murders,
Speaker 2: and I didn't find the black sapphire ring, didn't find
Speaker 2: Paulstein's glasses, although the second rate did produce items that
Speaker 2: indicated that Arthur Allen was into bomb making, as was
Speaker 2: the author of the Zodiac letters. His trailer. His trailer
Speaker 2: was in Santa Rosa, where he lived during the Santa
Speaker 2: Rosa hitchhiker murders, which I haven't spoken about yet, but
Speaker 2: there were a separate set of killings in Santa Rosa
Speaker 2: girl's hitchhiking and his trailer was filled with porno and
Speaker 2: dead squirrels. You know, I would like to know just
Speaker 2: how many trailers are out there filled with porno and
Speaker 2: dead squirrels, and I hope it was just one. Okay,
Speaker 2: here's Dan. I think this is the most fascinating aspect
Speaker 2: of this case. Alan possessed an odd and perhaps unique skill.
Speaker 2: He was a star diver as a teenager, and in
Speaker 2: his early twenties he was a junior College All American
Speaker 2: diver get fancy dives off the diving board, and he
Speaker 2: could do something no other diver could do. He could
Speaker 2: do his fancy dives spinning right or spinning left, and
Speaker 2: he did them equally well both ways. All other divers
Speaker 2: have to pick one direction or the other. You're either
Speaker 2: right handed or you're left handed. So that's a tremendous
Speaker 2: level of ampithe s terry. And that comes to mind
Speaker 2: when police tried to get writing samples out of him.
Speaker 2: Right and cursive right and the left printing left, right, left,
Speaker 2: Alan claims he can't print right handed because he'd been
Speaker 2: trained to print lefty in school and felt anxiety when
Speaker 2: trying to print with his right hand. The pen falls
Speaker 2: out of his hand when he tries to write it,
Speaker 2: so the writing test that determines he didn't write the
Speaker 2: zodiac letters is woefully incomplete. Now. His personality also makes
Speaker 2: him a suitable serial killer candidate as well. Son of
Speaker 2: a Navy commander, yet he had been a korman in
Speaker 2: the Navy but was drummed out. He was always angry
Speaker 2: at his mother. He took a job at the Tescadero
Speaker 2: State Hospital, a mental hospital, but was fired in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty two. He's a big man boy, makes people uncomfortable
Speaker 2: with his socially immature behavior, and he's a child molester.
Speaker 2: Never had a relationship with an adult that we know of.
Speaker 2: According to family members, he had spelling eccentricities, as did
Speaker 2: the writer of the Zodiac Letters. Here's an unlikely coincidence.
Speaker 2: Lee Allen used to write X hyphen m ass to
Speaker 2: mean Christmas right an extra s, and that's the way
Speaker 2: it's spelled in the Zodiac Letters. He also his sistern
Speaker 2: tells his sister in law that he got a letter
Speaker 2: from somebody he knew at the Attaeskadero State Mental Hospital
Speaker 2: and the letter has codes written in it and he
Speaker 2: keeps it in a gray box. His history shows a
Speaker 2: remarkable proximity to the killer activities. He's in the area
Speaker 2: when Cherry Joe Bates is killed in Riverside. He only
Speaker 2: missed one day of work down there, and it was
Speaker 2: the day after bates murder. He's in Vallejo for the
Speaker 2: first two Zodiac attacks. He ate at the ihop were
Speaker 2: Darlene Fahren, waitress. He says he played and to go
Speaker 2: to Lake Barriassa on the day of the murders there,
Speaker 2: but he changed his mind at the last second, and
Speaker 2: those bloody knives, those were just chickens. And he lived
Speaker 2: in Santa Rose at the time of the Santa Rose
Speaker 2: a hitchhiker murders. But his fingerprint doesn't Mactually, he's not
Speaker 2: a suspect now. The Arthur Lee Allen legend was enhanced
Speaker 2: by the incriminating statements of Alan's so called friend.
Speaker 4: Don Cheney.
Speaker 2: Don Cheney also is on our list as suspect number two.
Speaker 2: Cheney is best known as Alan's friend who had nothing
Speaker 2: nice to say about Alan. Alan told him he would
Speaker 2: take the name Zodiac and he would write letters to
Speaker 2: Chiy police in disguised handwrite. Then he would take off
Speaker 2: lood nuts to disable a woman's car. He loved Blake Lake, Barriessa,
Speaker 2: and had a crush on a waitress at the Valet
Speaker 2: hell Iha. So if you believe everything Chaney says, Arthur
Speaker 2: Lee Allen has to be the Zodiac. Cheney also said
Speaker 2: that Alan loved the Agatha Christie book The Murders, which
Speaker 2: is about a killer who murders victims with the same
Speaker 2: first and last initial in towns that also start with
Speaker 2: that initial, which is strange for me because that plot
Speaker 2: repeated itself in real life in Rochester, New York, and
Speaker 2: was the subject of a book I wrote with private
Speaker 2: investigator Donald da Tubman called Nightmare in Rochester. But Anla
Speaker 2: liked the book for a different reason didn't care about
Speaker 2: the initials. The Agatha Christie book describes a series of
Speaker 2: crimes committed by one man, one crime with a clear
Speaker 2: cut motive and the others arbitrary to confuse the issue,
Speaker 2: a strategy that would have been high on any Zodiac
Speaker 2: Clubs to do list. Chaney himself has an excellent background
Speaker 2: to be a Zodiac Club member. Spent two years in
Speaker 2: the Air Force. He went to college with Paul Avery,
Speaker 2: the calumnist that the Zodiac took great light to light
Speaker 2: and satirizing. His printing was close to that in the
Speaker 2: Zodiac Letters. He also did something that always gets an
Speaker 2: investigator's attention. He tried to explain away evidence that the
Speaker 2: authorities didn't know about.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: This happened in the Martha Moxley case. Michael Skeaigell was
Speaker 2: was one of the suspects, but jump to the head
Speaker 2: of the class when he said that if you find
Speaker 2: semen in the lawn outside her home, that's just because
Speaker 2: I climbed the tree and watched her through her bedroom.
Speaker 2: Wind Well police hadn't found any semen in the lawn,
Speaker 2: hadn't looked in the lawn for semen, but they all
Speaker 2: of a sudden had a renewed interest in Michael Skagell.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 2: Here, Don Cheney says, and this is more recently, it's
Speaker 2: about in the nineteen nineties, after DNA technology is known
Speaker 2: of He says, well, you know, Lee always had me
Speaker 2: lick his stamps and envelopes for him because he didn't
Speaker 2: like the taste of glue. He said it made him sick.
Speaker 2: So you know, just in case you find my DNA
Speaker 2: on the envelope, it's always because I like the envelopes
Speaker 2: for him. And he also said that Lee had him
Speaker 2: press his right thumb into a ball of wax, so
Speaker 2: Alan had his thumb print. Plus, Cheney was a mechanical
Speaker 2: engineer who knew what a radian was. He died in
Speaker 2: twenty oh nine. And those are the two top guys.
Speaker 2: But I have other members of the zodiac crobi resuspect
Speaker 2: as well.
Speaker 5: You talk about somebody named Tucker, and we didn't mention
Speaker 5: that one of the predominant vehicle spotted or the most
Speaker 5: popular vehicle spotted was a brown corvat So tell us
Speaker 5: about this Tucker and what police ask him.
Speaker 4: About regarding that corvet Tucker.
Speaker 2: This is after Michael migaul says that a brown corvet. Oh,
Speaker 2: did Lee borrowed the car? Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2: There's what you're asking about.
Speaker 5: Well, they were asking that this Tucker had a brown corvet.
Speaker 5: So they were asking, you know, they the police knew
Speaker 5: about a corvet, at least that was what witness had said,
Speaker 5: So they were asking.
Speaker 2: The only reason that's interesting is because they believed Michael
Speaker 2: Migeaux and I think that that maybe they were a
Speaker 2: little bit off the and there's more more persuasive evidence
Speaker 2: that the killer was in a white Chevrolet. We didn't
Speaker 2: we didn't talk about it. But before Betty lew and
Speaker 2: David are shot, a sports cars parked in that spot
Speaker 2: because the driver's trying to figure out what he's driving,
Speaker 2: his girlfriend's car, and he's trying to figure out what
Speaker 2: the what the button and how to put the bright
Speaker 2: lights on and off and that kind of thing, and
Speaker 2: they're chased out of there by a guy in a
Speaker 2: white Chevy, and the white Chevy reappears the brown Corvet.
Speaker 2: I think it was the police trying to follow up
Speaker 2: on him on a clue that had been left by
Speaker 2: Michael Migeau, who was very, very confused when he said
Speaker 2: that he came off of that car being a brown
Speaker 2: Corvet almost immediately and said, well maybe it was a
Speaker 2: Mustang and he didn't really know.
Speaker 4: And the guy's and who could blame him? He's been
Speaker 4: shot in the face.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm gonna get to the to the white Chevy
Speaker 2: a little bit more because that comes with its own suspect.
Speaker 2: But we'll start with with Philip Hughes, who was a
Speaker 2: convicted serial killer. Uh, he became a killer because he
Speaker 2: wanted to kill an ex girlfriend, but that would have
Speaker 2: been too obvious of us. He would have been too
Speaker 2: obvious of a suspect, so instead killed girls who reminded
Speaker 2: him of it. Experts say that as many as six
Speaker 2: serial killers were working in Contra Costa County during the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventies. Hughes was one of them. He once used
Speaker 2: a victims. He once called a victim's dad and said
Speaker 2: your daughter is dead. I know because I'm the one
Speaker 2: who killed her, which is almost word for word.
Speaker 4: What the.
Speaker 2: Phone call said after Lake barri Essa, he was convicted
Speaker 2: of three murders and spent the rest of his life
Speaker 2: in prison. Next is James Crabtree also knows James Phillips
Speaker 2: as Darlene Farren's narra duell first husband. It's an Army veteran.
Speaker 2: He told people he'd been an undercover agent in the
Speaker 2: Army but got in trouble and spent time in the
Speaker 2: stockade at the presidio so he could have MK Zodiac reject.
Speaker 2: Perhaps he had a tempestuous relationship with Darlene. Came to
Speaker 2: Darlene's funeral, spoke to no one, and later, after he
Speaker 2: was arrested as a suspect in her murder, told cops
Speaker 2: he didn't know Darlene was dead.
Speaker 4: Jeez.
Speaker 2: Next time, my list is William Grant. This one's very
Speaker 2: very strange. Grant got a military background and received seven
Speaker 2: months of training in military code work and then was
Speaker 2: an instructor in cryptography, and according to a police report,
Speaker 2: he apparently placed three separate calls within one and a
Speaker 2: half hours after Darlene Farren's death to each of the
Speaker 2: family members. These calls were made before media announcement of
Speaker 2: the murder and made certain references indicating the caller new Darlene.
Speaker 2: I'm not sure how the police know that, but that's
Speaker 2: in the report. Now, Grant drove a white Chevy resembled
Speaker 2: the car scene on Lake Herman Road, and after the
Speaker 2: Lake Herman murders, but before Blue Rock Springs, Darlene's babysitter
Speaker 2: saw a white Chevy parked outside darlingne department. Darling told
Speaker 2: the sitter she was afraid of a man in a
Speaker 2: white Chevy because she'd seen that man kill someone. Now
Speaker 2: we also have a report that Grant, or a man
Speaker 2: pretending to be Grant, went to local libraries in and
Speaker 2: near Vallejo and borrowed a book on code writing and
Speaker 2: a vinyl album of the Mikado, two things that practically
Speaker 2: defined the zodiac. So there's a lot happening there.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: I forget the particular type of Chevrolet he drove, but
Speaker 2: it had a wrap around windshield that the windshield came
Speaker 2: all the way around to the driver's sent to the
Speaker 2: passenger side windows. And one of the things the babysitter
Speaker 2: said was that she didn't know what kind of car
Speaker 2: it was, but it was white and it had a
Speaker 2: premendously huge windshield, which describes William Grant's car perfectly. Now
Speaker 2: next time, I this is Rick Marshall. He lived in
Speaker 2: Riverside in October nineteen six six, at the time of
Speaker 2: the Cherry Joe Bates murder. At the time of Paul
Speaker 2: Stein's murder, he worked as a movie theater projectionist and
Speaker 2: lived in a San Francisco basement apartment on Scott Street,
Speaker 2: within walking distance of the Stein crime scene. Then as
Speaker 2: Richard Gaikowski were known as Dick Gick g y k E,
Speaker 2: and two key pieces of evidence make him a suspect.
Speaker 2: Nancy Slover, the the Vallejo police dispatcher, and Officer Slate,
Speaker 2: the NAPO police dispatcher, talked to the Zodiac minutes after
Speaker 2: the shootings, and they said Gaikowski's voice was closer than
Speaker 2: any other they'd heard to the one they spoke to
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty nine and two. Gaikowski spent three years
Speaker 2: in a mental institution in nineteen seventy one to seventy four,
Speaker 2: and those were three years when the Zodiac stopped writing letters.
Speaker 2: He lived for a time in Albany, New York, in
Speaker 2: the same building with Darlene Farren's first husband same building
Speaker 2: and lived ten miles from the lay house in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty eight and sixty nine. The Albany, New York is
Speaker 2: another strange, particularly strange cluster because it's on the other
Speaker 2: side of the country, but there is a cluster Zodiac
Speaker 2: activity there that I'll get to. Some suspects, like Lawrence Kane,
Speaker 2: seem to have been jerry rigged out of the so
Speaker 2: called clues plucked subjectively from Zodiac's various writings. Others, Ross
Speaker 2: Sullivan comes to mind better suspect for one crime in
Speaker 2: this case Cherry Jo Bates than he is for the others.
Speaker 2: John Coetrou murdered Leslie Perlow and Janet Taylor in the
Speaker 2: Stanford area. Donald Boujack was an Army vet was mental problems,
Speaker 2: and he's on the list because he was released from
Speaker 2: prison three days before the Lake Barrys attack. And the
Speaker 2: list goes on by a special section of the for
Speaker 2: the Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders, which are important for a
Speaker 2: couple of reasons. So nineteen seventy two and seventy three,
Speaker 2: the girls and young women are all hitchhiking near Santa Rosa,
Speaker 2: and the second of these victims was Kim Wendy Allen,
Speaker 2: nineteen year old student at Santa Rosa Junior College. She
Speaker 2: was one of two Santa Rosa Junior College women on
Speaker 2: the list of Santa Rosa hitchhiker murder victims. Arthur Lellen,
Speaker 2: of course, lived in a trailer in Santa Rosa with
Speaker 2: the dead squirrels and the porno and there was another
Speaker 2: guy though named Fred Manelli. And Fred Minelli was Kim
Speaker 2: Allen's teacher at Santa Rosa Junior College. He died on
Speaker 2: August twenty fourth, nineteen seventy six in a head on
Speaker 2: collision and in his car police found his artwork, which
Speaker 2: was disturbing stuff. He drew pictures of women in extreme
Speaker 2: and tortuous by BTK and one of the drawings was
Speaker 2: labeled Kim Allen who died bound up, and another appeared
Speaker 2: to be of the artist in drag and was not
Speaker 2: labeled Fred. It was labeled Freedom. So we'll put he
Speaker 2: gets to be on the list. And Yeah, the last
Speaker 2: thing I want to talk about is the Albany connection,
Speaker 2: because it's one of those weird side zodiac stories and
Speaker 2: I'm not sure that this has anything to do with
Speaker 2: the zodiac.
Speaker 4: Club.
Speaker 2: It seems to be working out of Vallejo, California. But
Speaker 2: it's interesting anyway because it ties in with other things,
Speaker 2: people glombing onto the Avatari for their own nefarious purposes.
Speaker 2: On November twenty first, nineteen sixty nine, this is right
Speaker 2: during the time of Zodiac's activity and the Manson activity,
Speaker 2: two bodies are found in a Los Angeles alley, man
Speaker 2: and a woman. The woman is Doreen Gaul. She's nineteen
Speaker 2: and she comes from Albany, New York. She's found nude
Speaker 2: except for Indian beads. The man and the woman had
Speaker 2: been beaten to death, and their eyes were slashed with
Speaker 2: a knife, and they were each stabbed fifty to sixty
Speaker 2: times anger overkill. They were members of the Church of Scientology,
Speaker 2: which was much smaller in nineteen sixty nine was routinely
Speaker 2: referred to as a hippie cult. It's somewhat more than
Speaker 2: that now, and one suspect in the murders was a
Speaker 2: member of a London anti establishment group called The Process,
Speaker 2: whose members were known to worship Satan.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: According to The Valley Times, the Process was an offshoot
Speaker 2: of the Church of Scientology. Two things The Process also
Speaker 2: comes up in the Son of Sam investigation by Maury Terry,
Speaker 2: and the suspect in this case he was probably Bruce Davis,
Speaker 2: who hung with Charles Manson and is imprisoned her life
Speaker 2: for two nineteen sixty murders they committed while pretty much
Speaker 2: acting under Manson's guidance. Now in Doreen's room and she's
Speaker 2: the nineteen year old victim found naked with the beads.
Speaker 2: They go to her room and they find a type
Speaker 2: note signed the Zodiac. The letter picks up additional significance
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy three when another clearly spurious Zodiac letter
Speaker 2: is sent to the Albany Times Union Dorien's hometown, and
Speaker 2: a code in that letter was deciphered to reference the
Speaker 2: Albany Medical Center, which is basically across the street from
Speaker 2: the home in which Doreen Gall grew up. So I
Speaker 2: have won Zodiac victim and two suspects have Albany, New
Speaker 2: York connections. Darlene Ferron and her first husband lived in
Speaker 2: Albany after they were married in nineteen sixty six, and
Speaker 2: Jim worked for the Albany Times Union. Richard Gaikowski we
Speaker 2: talked about before, whose name has been bandied about as
Speaker 2: a Zodiac suspect also worked for an Albany paper, the
Speaker 2: Knickerbacker News. That's just the age of Zodiac.
Speaker 5: You talked about in the beginning of the book, and
Speaker 5: we hadn't mentioned this that you felt or you talked
Speaker 5: about Anton Levey Church of Satan in nineteen sixty next
Speaker 5: six and its significance, talked about the age of a
Speaker 5: new age of Satanism, as you do in the book.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about your ideas about that.
Speaker 2: Well, that's something that happened to me a long time
Speaker 2: ago when I was investigating the murders of my friends
Speaker 2: when I was a kid, George and Formacole and Kathy Bernhardt,
Speaker 2: who were murdered near the Summersaultice in nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: and I read that Anton LaVey, who was the head
Speaker 2: of the Church of Satan and the friend of the
Speaker 2: guy who started Scientology, they started their own religion pretty
Speaker 2: much in competition with one another. So get people to
Speaker 2: worship science file and I'll get people to worship the devil,
Speaker 2: you know. Five bucks to the guy who recruits the
Speaker 2: most people into their cult, and I guess Scientology wins.
Speaker 2: But he wrote a book called the Satanic Bible, and
Speaker 2: it claimed that the age of God being in charge
Speaker 2: was over and that the age of Satan being in
Speaker 2: charge was to begin, and that nineteen sixty six was
Speaker 2: year one of the Age of Satan. So, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't think that Anton LaVey Messes fairly was a
Speaker 2: criminal in his own right, but he attracted weirdos.
Speaker 4: To his cult.
Speaker 2: And I don't really want to call the religion and
Speaker 2: who could say what they would do. But since my
Speaker 2: girls were killed near the summer so sollstice, I said, well, gee,
Speaker 2: maybe there were other bad things that happened that year
Speaker 2: that would indicate that maybe there's something to this Age
Speaker 2: of Satan business. So I checked Halloween nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 2: and that's Cherry Joe Bates, believed by some to be
Speaker 2: the first Zodiac kill. August first was another Black holiday,
Speaker 2: and that was the day that Charles Whitman climbed to
Speaker 2: the top of the tower in the University of Texas
Speaker 2: and shot a bunch of students sniper style, thus becoming
Speaker 2: the first school mass shooting in the US history, long
Speaker 2: before Columbine. So it really does seem like nineteen sixty
Speaker 2: other sixty six is an opening of a sort of
Speaker 2: Pandora's box of evil, from which the Age of Zodiac
Speaker 2: is one of the things that emerges. I mean that
Speaker 2: summer is also Richard Speck who kills eight nurses in Chicago,
Speaker 2: and not far away from there, the strange murder of
Speaker 2: Valerie Percy, who was the senator's daughter, who is killed
Speaker 2: by someone who gets into the house using a glass
Speaker 2: cutter and you know, kills her and gets away. So
Speaker 2: that was that was a crime so startling that the
Speaker 2: CBS was playing to show the movie Cycle al for
Speaker 2: Hitchcock's movie Cycle for the first time on the network,
Speaker 2: and they canceled it. And I think to this day
Speaker 2: CBS has never shown the movie Cycle. You can see
Speaker 2: it on TV now. Its network premiere, which was all
Speaker 2: built up and was going to be a big thing,
Speaker 2: canceled because Killing for Fun was out of control during
Speaker 2: the summer in nineteen sixty six in a way that
Speaker 2: it just hadn't been in previous years.
Speaker 5: You write about Arlest K Perry, nineteen year old, stabbed
Speaker 5: in the back and neck with an ice pick still
Speaker 5: protruding from her head. You said this was similar to
Speaker 5: the Black Sapphire murder that we mentioned in San Francisco.
Speaker 5: Tell us there's some incredible details, and then why was
Speaker 5: this not considered a satanic ritual slag?
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I first learned about Arles Perry when reading
Speaker 2: a book called The Ultimate Evil. It's Mary Terry's book,
Speaker 2: and he claims that he was talking to David Berkowitz
Speaker 2: after Burkowitz's arrest in The Son of Sam Cases, and
Speaker 2: Burkwitz made reference to our Less Pair and be found
Speaker 2: that there's this horrible crime in the in the church
Speaker 2: on the campus of Stanford University. She's been violated with
Speaker 2: a church candle and there's another one found between her breasts,
Speaker 2: and it just it just looks like a black mass
Speaker 2: has taken place.
Speaker 4: Why it was not.
Speaker 2: Considered a Satanic is probably because authorities, as a rule
Speaker 2: don't like to speculate. They don't like to ask questions
Speaker 2: they can't answer. They like small problems rather than a
Speaker 2: big problem, and they avoid unnecessarily terrifying the community. So
Speaker 2: I mean, you could you could call that. Whatever you
Speaker 2: want you have to do is describe the crime scene.
Speaker 2: People are going to be terrified. The The night Watchman
Speaker 2: has since been well that they finally made a DNA
Speaker 2: match with URLs Perry and linked the murder to the
Speaker 2: night watchman at the church. But we don't know, We
Speaker 2: don't know the details if he was alone or if
Speaker 2: there was a black mass going on, because when they
Speaker 2: went to his house to arrest him, he committed suicide. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's always going to be a mystery, the Rlest Perry.
Speaker 4: Murder.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's a horrible deal. And you know, there
Speaker 2: were a couple couple others. Stanford was a dangerous place
Speaker 2: at that time. At least three co eds were killed,
Speaker 2: but all three have been solved.
Speaker 5: You right, you talk about when we started this program.
Speaker 5: This episode, he talked about the possibility of more than
Speaker 5: one zodiac, more than one perpetrator. Tell us more about
Speaker 5: your theory about this club and how this unofficial club
Speaker 5: could operate.
Speaker 2: And what well I think.
Speaker 4: It is the answer to the question how do you
Speaker 4: commit the perfect murder? If you.
Speaker 2: Are two men and you each want to kill someone
Speaker 2: you hate, you could switch murders and therefore each will
Speaker 2: have an alibi for the murder for which he would
Speaker 2: be a suspect. That's the basis for the movie Strangers
Speaker 2: on a Train. Another Hitchcock movie, and of course it
Speaker 2: goes wrong because the two men have to keep their
Speaker 2: word and they're bargain with each other or else it
Speaker 2: doesn't work. But if you are a group of people
Speaker 2: and you are connected to one another in some other way,
Speaker 2: you belong to an actual club, or you were all
Speaker 2: in the service together, or you were in the wing
Speaker 2: of a mental hospital together or something, and you wanted
Speaker 2: to kill for fun. I think what you could do
Speaker 2: is create eight a all encompassing avatar, call it the Zodiac,
Speaker 2: and then you could go out do your thing. We're
Speaker 2: a phrase that the Zodiac liked, and the Zodiac would
Speaker 2: then take credit for all of it. And since the
Speaker 2: Zodiac would be would be assumed to be one guy,
Speaker 2: no one would get calm. And obviously, if you're using
Speaker 2: fingers from people who never have or never will be
Speaker 2: fingerprinted to put down false evidence, it's close to the
Speaker 2: perfect murder.
Speaker 5: I don't know how right about Yeah, sorry, go ahead, No,
Speaker 5: I was just say I.
Speaker 2: Even if the truth came out, I don't think. And
Speaker 2: then there were people in this group who were alive,
Speaker 2: still alive.
Speaker 4: And they'd be old by now.
Speaker 2: I don't think you could get a conviction because is
Speaker 2: what defense attorney wouldn't jump all over that fingerprint.
Speaker 4: You know, the.
Speaker 2: Fingerprint is in blood, it's in the victim's blood. It
Speaker 2: times itself on a cab. The problem is that you
Speaker 2: have thousands of fingerprints and there's no telling when each
Speaker 2: one was put there. But by doing it, by dipping
Speaker 2: the finger in the blood and then putting on the cab,
Speaker 2: you have timed it. And the police absolutely help by saying, well,
Speaker 2: no one else touched the car, it must be the killer.
Speaker 2: But you had the witnesses, and the witnesses were what
Speaker 2: the what the guy didn't count on saying we saw
Speaker 2: him with a white rag fussing over there. Well, you
Speaker 2: know you don't fuss with a white rag and then
Speaker 2: leave a perfectly good fingerprint.
Speaker 5: It's interesting all of the very descriptions of the zodiac
Speaker 5: as well, just to end credibility that the light didn't
Speaker 5: want more than one. It's it's really the separate descriptions
Speaker 5: of these potential perpetrators, isn't it right?
Speaker 2: I think I think in an effort to sell it
Speaker 2: as one guy, they all wore eyeglasses. But yeah, they're
Speaker 2: different guys. I mean, you've got six foot tundred pounds
Speaker 2: five eight one hundred and fifty pounds. Everybody seems to
Speaker 2: agree that the Zodiacs are dumpy dressers. Their clothes don't
Speaker 2: fit properly. They seem soft. You know, nobody ever describes
Speaker 2: somebody who's in really good shape, but they are dramatically
Speaker 2: different in size. Yeah, so it could It could all
Speaker 2: be a group of men all playing the same part.
Speaker 5: You talk about the role of the media in this.
Speaker 5: You talk about the role of the media in this
Speaker 5: as well, because of course that's their business, is to
Speaker 5: fan the flames, whether it's accurate or not. And occasionally
Speaker 5: or often you talk about the Zodiac too in this book,
Speaker 5: about the phenomena in the Big Apple and the tabloids
Speaker 5: originally trying to link it to the Zodiac. Tell us
Speaker 5: a little bit about this attempt and who it ends
Speaker 5: up being. Again, similar to someone shooting into park cars
Speaker 5: at kids and write taunting letters. Tell us about this
Speaker 5: comparison in New York City.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, there was an attempt.
Speaker 2: I suspect at least a couple of guys in the
Speaker 2: East New York section of Brooklyn, which is a very
Speaker 2: poor section. A lot of New York has made a
Speaker 2: comeback since those days. But the East New York's really
Speaker 2: not one of those sections.
Speaker 4: And this guy, he.
Speaker 2: Did something that the original zodiac forgot to do, which
Speaker 2: was involved astrology. Yeah, for all, for all the zodiac business,
Speaker 2: there's never talked of Virgo and Sagittarius.
Speaker 4: They don't care.
Speaker 2: Zodiac's is the name of the of the guy, and
Speaker 2: that's it. But these these guys in Brooklyn took it
Speaker 2: more seriously. And we're going to kill twelve people, all
Speaker 2: with different astrological signs. And one theory was that they
Speaker 2: were going to kill those people in places in New
Speaker 2: York so that the map would would if you connect
Speaker 2: the dots, you it would be like the star pattern
Speaker 2: of one of the astrological signs. Some The interesting thing
Speaker 2: here is there's no word for this phenomenon, but there's
Speaker 2: a really good eyewitness early on in these series of crimes.
Speaker 2: And again, in order to become a notorious Hall of
Speaker 2: Shame psycho killer, you have to pick victims of high quality,
Speaker 2: and so you have, I mean, the richer and more
Speaker 2: beautiful your victims, the more play you will get in
Speaker 2: the press. But sure, this guy had a zip gun
Speaker 2: and was killing people who are ineebrated at three in
Speaker 2: the morning and bums on park benches and things like that.
Speaker 2: But the original description results in a composite drawing which
Speaker 2: is identical to a fellow named Colin Ferguson, who in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety three became known for the mass murder known
Speaker 2: as the Long Island Railroad Massacre the Little Notoriety later
Speaker 2: because he ended.
Speaker 4: Himself in court. It was all a fiasco.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but when they finally catched the guy, he's he's
Speaker 2: an guy named Alan Parados Sada who's tall, thin, and
Speaker 2: a light skin Puerto Rican man as opposed to Ferguson,
Speaker 2: was kind of a round black guy. So it's it's interesting,
Speaker 2: it's it's uh, never before. Sometimes the composite is so
Speaker 2: good that he's obviously the guy, like Richard Speck. When
Speaker 2: they were looking for Richard Speck. They didn't know his
Speaker 2: name yet.
Speaker 4: But there was a drawing.
Speaker 2: It looks just like Richard Speck in the newspaper. They
Speaker 2: were looking for Colin Ferguson, and he remained free for
Speaker 2: three more years and then eventually committed his own horrible
Speaker 2: crime to get him thrown in jail forever. Yes, but yeah,
Speaker 2: it was it was. It was an attempt, the last
Speaker 2: attempt we hope to glom onto the zodiac thing. And
Speaker 2: uh it worked because the New York has competing tabloids
Speaker 2: and they love that kind of thing. But the second
Speaker 2: that case was over, it was over.
Speaker 5: And you talked about yeah, sorry, you talk about your
Speaker 5: favorite suspect and this as we as we wrap up this,
Speaker 5: Robert Lee Allen or pardon me, Art Allen's.
Speaker 2: I don't think anybody ever called him Arthur.
Speaker 5: Don't know why, Yeah Lee Allen, Uh, this is you
Speaker 5: said that this was your best suspect. Before I let
Speaker 5: you go, tell us just a little bit more. Why
Speaker 5: you believe that Arthur Lee or Lee Allen was the
Speaker 5: perpetrator Zodiac.
Speaker 2: Well, if you remember when I was talking about the
Speaker 2: double initial killer and I had a I had a
Speaker 2: suspect who got upset with me because the guy's name
Speaker 2: was the alphabet killer and I should get it right.
Speaker 2: Arthur Lealen is the only suspect who always insisted on
Speaker 2: saying the Zodiac. People are you Zodiac and U Zodiac killer?
Speaker 2: And I am not the Zodiac And in the letters
Speaker 2: it's always the Zodiac. There's he's not a Zodiac. He's
Speaker 2: the Zodiac. This is the Zodiac speaking, which again is
Speaker 2: very naval. This is the captain speaking. Is the way
Speaker 2: announcements are on ship, and he he does the world's
Speaker 2: worst job of seeming innocent. He can't stop toying with
Speaker 2: the blue means. He has to mention. He has to
Speaker 2: mention the most dangerous game.
Speaker 4: In his interview with the with the.
Speaker 2: Two detectives in San Francisco, he wears that watch and
Speaker 2: this is a couple of years have gone by. He's
Speaker 2: still learning the Zodiac watch. And it's put the best
Speaker 2: bet that the watch leads to the name of the killer,
Speaker 2: because it really it has the logo on the face
Speaker 2: of the watch. There's the only place where those two
Speaker 2: things are together.
Speaker 4: M hm. He fits the.
Speaker 2: Profile psychologically, you know, dominating mother, a smothering your chili,
Speaker 2: relationship with parents in general. You know, when he cried
Speaker 2: for help, they bought him a boat when maybe maybe
Speaker 2: a hug would have been better. And he was a
Speaker 2: great disappointment to his parents. He he tried to have
Speaker 2: a naval career like his dad and didn't last because
Speaker 2: you know, he liked children too much in the wrong way.
Speaker 2: And he you know, I think history demands that Arthur
Speaker 2: Lee l and P the zodiac and so efforts. That's
Speaker 2: why efforts to clear him are suspicious. Not their intent,
Speaker 2: but just you know, he can't be the zodiactors. This,
Speaker 2: this and this, Well, let's take a look at those
Speaker 2: three things because they might be the things that are wrong.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Absolutely, I want to thank you very much Michael for
Speaker 5: coming on and talking to Thank you the Age of Day.
Speaker 2: It's one of my favorite, one of my favorite cases.
Speaker 2: I'm glad I had an opportunity, largely due to the pandemic,
Speaker 2: to put the time into writing a book about the case.
Speaker 2: And it's obviously nothing good about the pandemic, but it
Speaker 2: has has given me some time to.
Speaker 5: Write certainly and even quite prolific. Thank you so much
Speaker 5: for coming on talking about the Age of Zoyah. For
Speaker 5: those that might want to take a further look, you
Speaker 5: have a website and a Facebook page.
Speaker 2: Show I think, tweet me it's a good dependfil at
Speaker 2: Michael zero nine zero three zero one zero seven, no
Speaker 2: last name at Michael zero nine zero three zero one
Speaker 2: zero seven, and uh ask me anything. I'll answer any question, jaire.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much. Night, Michael Benson, Thank you good night.
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