Speaker 1: This is Michael Connolly and you're listening to Killer in
Speaker 1: the Code Solving the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases. This
Speaker 1: is chapter three. We originally said we would be back
Speaker 1: with this episode on January fifteenth, but this has become
Speaker 1: a fast moving story and we decided to push things up.
Speaker 1: So here we are. But before we get into it,
Speaker 1: I just want to give what I guess is a
Speaker 1: preface here. We dropped the first two episodes a couple
Speaker 1: weeks ago and named Marvin Margolis aka Marvin Merrill aka
Speaker 1: Skip Merrill as the killer in both the Zodiac and
Speaker 1: Black Dahia cases. It created quite a stir on the
Speaker 1: Internet on various sites and threads dedicated to one or
Speaker 1: both of these infamous cases. As predicted in our first episode,
Speaker 1: people sniped at our findings, mostly without bothering to listen
Speaker 1: to them first or wait for the rest of the podcast.
Speaker 1: I feel I made a mistake in those opening episodes
Speaker 1: by not operately introducing a couple members of the team
Speaker 1: who have been involved in the investigation and fully support
Speaker 1: its findings. So briefly, let me introduce two of the
Speaker 1: cold case homicide investigators who are part of this team. First,
Speaker 1: there is Missy Roberts. She spent twenty nine years with
Speaker 1: the Los Angeles Police Department, most of it working homicides,
Speaker 1: before retiring last year as the detective in charge of
Speaker 1: the Cold Case Unit. During the last half of her
Speaker 1: career with the LAPD, she was assigned to the murder
Speaker 1: of Elizabeth Short that are known as the Black Dahlia.
Speaker 1: During that time, she was able to review almost all
Speaker 1: of the records and evidence still in the custody of
Speaker 1: the police department. This included a four drawer file cabinet
Speaker 1: and a trunk containing Elizabeth's longings. During that time with
Speaker 1: the case, she was able to review and debunk the
Speaker 1: theories and claims by some of the people now upset
Speaker 1: by this podcast. Example, there are those out there who
Speaker 1: say Marvin Margolis was cleared in the Black Dahlia case
Speaker 1: by the LAPD. Roberts assuredly says he was not. And
Speaker 1: I think what you should know is that, without question,
Speaker 1: Roberts knows more about the Dahlia case than any investigator alive.
Speaker 1: But the Dahlia case was only one assignment. She worked
Speaker 1: dozens of murders and made dozens of arrests As a
Speaker 1: homicide investigator. Probably most notably, she apprehended Sam Little, a
Speaker 1: serial killer who had a near fifty year run until
Speaker 1: Roberts caught the case and in turn finally caught him.
Speaker 1: The FBI says Little, who confessed to killing ninety three people,
Speaker 1: is the most prolific serial killer on record. Though he
Speaker 1: left bodies in his way from coast to coast, he
Speaker 1: ultimately was only convicted of three murders, all cases put
Speaker 1: together in Los Angeles by Detective Roberts. Also a member
Speaker 1: of this team is Rick Jackson, who spent thirty four
Speaker 1: years with the LAPD, most of them in homicide. He
Speaker 1: retired from the department's cold case unit a few years back,
Speaker 1: moved up to the Bay Area in northern California, and
Speaker 1: promptly realized he couldn't give it up. He's a man
Speaker 1: on a mission, a mission to bring justice to victims.
Speaker 1: He became a cold case investigator for the San Mateo
Speaker 1: County Sheriff's Department. He and his partner, Dave Tresmontin, also
Speaker 1: a member of this team, saw three murders in the
Speaker 1: last couple of years, one of which dated all the
Speaker 1: way back to the time of the Zodiac killings. I
Speaker 1: should also mention here that both Jackson and Roberts serve
Speaker 1: as inspirations for characters I write about in my novels.
Speaker 1: That would be Harry Bosh and Renee Baward. They are
Speaker 1: the living embodiment of the homicide detectives Creed. Everybody Counts
Speaker 1: or Nobody counts. These are people who solve murders in
Speaker 1: real life, not on the Internet, not on YouTube. They
Speaker 1: gather I must rely on real evinue. It's when they
Speaker 1: make cases, and that dedication to the truth is what
Speaker 1: they bring to this investigation. At the end of the
Speaker 1: run of this podcast, we're going to have a roundtable
Speaker 1: discussion with Alex Baber and all the investigators, and we
Speaker 1: will answer questions sent to our website killerndecode dot com
Speaker 1: and take on all critics of the work they have done.
Speaker 1: I think it's going to be fun. Now one to
Speaker 1: chapter three. I don't think we need to start with
Speaker 1: another recap. But before we get into a new decoding
Speaker 1: and interpretation of the zodiacs last cipher, I want to
Speaker 1: talk about checking boxes. While the investigation by the team
Speaker 1: led by cold case consultant Baber is built on his
Speaker 1: reveal of the suspect's name in the Ze thirteen cipher.
Speaker 1: That is only a starting point. That's not evidence of anything.
Speaker 1: To make the case that Margolis Merrill, as I've taken
Speaker 1: a call in him, was indeed both the Zodiac killer
Speaker 1: and the Black Dalua Avenger, he need to check many boxes,
Speaker 1: and each of those boxes is a piece of a
Speaker 1: puzzle that, when completed, will prove the case. This is
Speaker 1: Missy Roberts.
Speaker 2: I had a murder case and one of the closing arguments,
Speaker 2: the DA would actually in a PowerPoint, would take a
Speaker 2: piece of evidence and put and had like a puzzle
Speaker 2: board and would put that in a piece of the puzzle.
Speaker 2: And once the last piece of the puzzle, which was
Speaker 2: a major piece of evidence was placed into the puzzle,
Speaker 2: the picture of the actual person.
Speaker 1: That did it.
Speaker 2: And it was such a cool thing because it's just
Speaker 2: one she put all the evidence together. The picture is
Speaker 2: clear and it leads to the person that did it.
Speaker 2: And in this case, I think it's very clear that
Speaker 2: that's Margaret Margolis.
Speaker 1: Okay, so let's start check in boxes. Some of these
Speaker 1: will pertain to only one of the cases for obvious reasons,
Speaker 1: but some will need to be checked in both cases
Speaker 1: to be valid. Let's begin with what is perhaps the
Speaker 1: easiest one, the physible aspects of the killer. Since there
Speaker 1: were no known witnesses to Elizabeth Short's abduction or the
Speaker 1: discarding of her body, this is pretty much a Zodiac box.
Speaker 1: The final killing officially attributed to the Zodiac was the
Speaker 1: murder of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stein on October eleventh,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine. A description of the killer who shot
Speaker 1: Stein was obtained from three children who looked out a
Speaker 1: window in their home and saw the fleeing man, as
Speaker 1: well as two police officers who passed him while responding
Speaker 1: to the shooting call. The police put out a description
Speaker 1: of a white male thirty five to forty five years old,
Speaker 1: with a stocky build and height between five eight and
Speaker 1: six foot. He wore glasses and had a crew cut,
Speaker 1: adding descriptors from surviving victims of the earlier attacks, The
Speaker 1: Zodiac was known to be right handed as well. This
Speaker 1: is Alex Baber.
Speaker 3: Okay, so here's what we know.
Speaker 4: We know that he's within the height bracket, which is
Speaker 4: a five eight to six foot.
Speaker 3: We know he's right at five ten some accounts of
Speaker 3: five nine. O. There's a five ten, depending on what
Speaker 3: account you go by.
Speaker 4: We know that he's right handed, sign verified that as
Speaker 4: well as some images show him using his right hand
Speaker 4: which would imply such.
Speaker 3: We also know that he wore glasses all the time.
Speaker 4: You know, there's there's an account where his son says
Speaker 4: in an audio, Yeah, my dad wore glasses all the time.
Speaker 4: He had two bears of glasses he wore. You know,
Speaker 4: he's very very clear about that. And also we discovered
Speaker 4: when we went through the evidence that he shared with
Speaker 4: us with the detective Jackson and Mitzi, we discovered a
Speaker 4: Vai prescription that we have in our possession that also
Speaker 4: verified I said he needed glasses. And then we know
Speaker 4: his physical characteristics fit as well his weight at that
Speaker 4: time approximate weight, which he can't really depend on because
Speaker 4: people fluctuate, but we do know from the photograph that
Speaker 4: was shared with us the additional photograph that he fits
Speaker 4: the script as far as the barrel chested and built
Speaker 4: that was described by not only the three children from
Speaker 4: the elevated position, but as well as the police officer.
Speaker 1: Listeners can go to our website to see a side
Speaker 1: by side comparison of the suspect sketch distributed by police
Speaker 1: after the Stein murder and an enhanced image of margois Merril.
Speaker 1: Let me repeat it is enhanced and clearly marked, so
Speaker 1: so no one has to claim subterfuge on our part.
Speaker 1: How is it enhanced? Eyeglasses were added and the hair
Speaker 1: was shortened to the length described by the witnesses. So
Speaker 1: we added eyeglasses to the photo. But it is a
Speaker 1: fact that Margolis Merrill wore glasses, and on this you
Speaker 1: can find the suspects prescriptions for eyeglasses issued by the
Speaker 1: VA under his real name Margolis. Okay. Next, let's go
Speaker 1: with medical skill, another easy box to check. Detectives investigating
Speaker 1: the Elizabeth Short murder concluded that it took a degree
Speaker 1: of medical knowledge and skill to carry out the bisection
Speaker 1: of her body, as well as some of the other
Speaker 1: tortures visited upon her, but they didn't conclude that it
Speaker 1: was someone with expert surgical skills, as some have claimed
Speaker 1: over the years. While it is clear from the investigative
Speaker 1: records that they approached local hospitals and made inquiries about
Speaker 1: surgeons acting suspiciously, they also asked about nurses acting suspiciously.
Speaker 1: They also went to the University of Southern California, located
Speaker 1: near where the black Dahia's body was found, and asked
Speaker 1: for a list of students enrolled into medical school at
Speaker 1: the time of the murder.
Speaker 3: Well, from the get go, the corner surgeon.
Speaker 5: Clearly that he believed it was somebody had medical knowledge
Speaker 5: or knowledge of human anatomy, which is present if you
Speaker 5: look at the mutilation. But for them to believe there
Speaker 5: was only a skilled surgeon is outlandish, and the reason
Speaker 5: being is they themselves were a going to USC medical school.
Speaker 4: Get he listed three hundred students that they were checking individually.
Speaker 4: If they truly believed it was a skilled surgeon, who
Speaker 4: would never have had that list generated for the.
Speaker 1: FBI either way. Marvin Check's at box he was attending
Speaker 1: USC's medical school at the time of the killing, and,
Speaker 1: according to police records, had engaged in a dissection of
Speaker 1: a human body in the months before the Dallia murder,
Speaker 1: and prior to that, he had been a Navy corman
Speaker 1: attached to a marine unit during the World War II
Speaker 1: battle on Okinawa. He dealt with wounded soldiers in the
Speaker 1: battlefield hospital. As it says in the investigative records, he
Speaker 1: cared for many quote mangled soldiers. Moving on, let's go
Speaker 1: with firearms training. Remember three of the Zodiac attacks involved shootings.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Marvin had plenty of training. He was a naval corman,
Speaker 4: which their training is specific. Daring world War two was
Speaker 4: with a forty five APC. The backstory this is is
Speaker 4: Daring world War two the medics or the corman when
Speaker 4: they were in action, they carried only a sidearm and
Speaker 4: they had to.
Speaker 3: Be proficient with it.
Speaker 4: And that being said, we know that Zodiac was extremely
Speaker 4: proficient with Is he hit Jensen.
Speaker 3: Running in the dark. He claims he had a flashlight
Speaker 3: that he taped.
Speaker 4: To the barrel, But even at that point for him
Speaker 4: to hit a moving target in the dark as as
Speaker 4: it's going away from you is very impressive.
Speaker 3: And the five rounds are in close proximity of each
Speaker 3: other in her back. So he did have some skill
Speaker 3: as a marksman with a cyber.
Speaker 1: The victim Baber was referring to there was Betty Lou Jensen,
Speaker 1: who was shot to death in the Zodiac Killer's first
Speaker 1: known attack December twentieth, nineteen sixty eight. Our next box
Speaker 1: is an important one cryptographic expertise. The Zodiac composed four
Speaker 1: ciphers that were mailed to Bay Area newspapers. The first
Speaker 1: was cracked in a week, but the next three stood
Speaker 1: the test of time and were not broken for more
Speaker 1: than fifty years. That shows some serious expertise. If margois
Speaker 1: Merrill was the Zodiac, where did he get it?
Speaker 4: To be honest, I don't think we could ever positively
Speaker 4: identify this background in cryptography, and the reason being is
Speaker 4: unless we discover another piece of evidence or a cryptography
Speaker 4: book in the storage or possession that he left behind, we.
Speaker 3: Really can't be sure.
Speaker 4: What we do know is that being an autodiak polymaths
Speaker 4: like myself, he would be able to teach himself and
Speaker 4: it wouldn't have been very difficult, and he did make
Speaker 4: mistakes which are our key that shows he is an amateur,
Speaker 4: much like myself. But we also know that he had
Speaker 4: a background with one of the World War Two soldiers,
Speaker 4: Bill Robinson, who was selected by General MacArthur for the
Speaker 4: Senate Unit which is turned into the NSA. You know,
Speaker 4: it is the top tier of cryptography our cryptoanalysis. To
Speaker 4: have that as a roommate and a friend at the time,
Speaker 4: meaning just following World War Two, where it's fresh. He
Speaker 4: just got out. You know, we don't know if he
Speaker 4: could have had a manueghing around. He may have shared
Speaker 4: it with Marvin. He was interested in cryptography.
Speaker 3: We will never know.
Speaker 4: What we do know is that it's there and it
Speaker 4: was available, and at that point that opens a door
Speaker 4: for us on a circumstantial level.
Speaker 3: Is okay.
Speaker 4: He may have had or had been exposed to it
Speaker 4: through Bill Robinson.
Speaker 1: In case you're wondering, Bill Robinson died of cancer in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty nine, but we'll have much more to say
Speaker 1: about him down the line. In another episode of the podcast,
Speaker 1: I also went to our team of former NSA cryptologists
Speaker 1: to ask about Margolis Merrill's code making skills and how
Speaker 1: he might have gotten them. Combined, these guys have more
Speaker 1: than fifty years as classified codebreakers with the NSA. They
Speaker 1: believe that the Zodiac ciphers have their origins in military
Speaker 1: code making, and that there were books and other sources
Speaker 1: that would have been available to Margolis Merrill. This is
Speaker 1: Patrick Henry and Ed Georgio.
Speaker 6: So the book that I believe would have been the
Speaker 6: most readily available was by Helen Gaines, and it's called
Speaker 6: Cryptanalysis A study of cipher's and a solution and you
Speaker 6: can see on the cover a sort of grid based
Speaker 6: cipher right that the Omi fel Wild Manual on Basic Cryptography,
Speaker 6: which was actually published in nineteen fifty after the war.
Speaker 6: So it's not clear that he would have had access
Speaker 6: to that specifically, but other materials, similar materials may have
Speaker 6: been available to him during training, or he spent some
Speaker 6: time living with a cryptographer, so he may have had
Speaker 6: access to materials like that. And then the third is
Speaker 6: from nineteen sixteen Manual for the Solution of Military Ciphers
Speaker 6: by Papa hit and that was not quite so readily available.
Speaker 6: It was never classified, but I don't think it was
Speaker 6: particularly widely circulated, whereas Gaines' book was available widely and
Speaker 6: we published several times.
Speaker 7: We also think that Bill Robinson might have had that
Speaker 7: little technical article in his backpack or something, or his
Speaker 7: duffel bag or should say that's pure speculation, but.
Speaker 6: Absolutely so, there may have been other materials that basically
Speaker 6: had the same kind of contents available that.
Speaker 1: It's another box that has caused for possible debate is
Speaker 1: modus operandi and more specifically, the question surrounding how different
Speaker 1: the murder of Elizabeth Short was from the Zodiac killings.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short's murder was, by all counts, a personal and
Speaker 1: passionate attack. Every profiler who has looked at the case
Speaker 1: has concluded that she knew her killer. The Zodiac killings,
Speaker 1: more than twenty years later were likely random stranger killings
Speaker 1: and most involved firearms. How do we account for these
Speaker 1: changes in mL do we have to account for them?
Speaker 1: I went to our veteran homicide detectives of this one.
Speaker 1: Missy Roberts told me that Margolis Merrill was smart and
Speaker 1: had aoute mind for murder, and that is changing m
Speaker 1: does not bother or change her conclusions at all.
Speaker 8: Yeah, it really doesn't because for numerous reasons.
Speaker 2: But one of the biggest ones is if you look
Speaker 2: at just the Zodiac case, his MO switches in just
Speaker 2: that case alone, Like if you don't even look at
Speaker 2: the Black Dahia, you know, like the taxi cab drivers
Speaker 2: is completely random.
Speaker 1: To the case.
Speaker 2: And I think it's one of the reasons why it's
Speaker 2: always been so hard to catch this guy is because
Speaker 2: he was so unpredictable and all over the place, and
Speaker 2: maybe you know, it was part of the game that
Speaker 2: he played. I would say that it's no doubt that
Speaker 2: the Zodiac and the Black Dahlia, they left these little
Speaker 2: clues and this mystery, and so though it wouldn't surprise
Speaker 2: me that one of the things he decided to do
Speaker 2: to sort of enhance that mystery would be to change his.
Speaker 1: Mo Rick Jackson suggests there are more things binding the
Speaker 1: cases together in terms of mo than separating them, starting
Speaker 1: with the taunting of the public.
Speaker 9: Here's my take on the taunting, the letter sending the
Speaker 9: police to the media in this matter. I have worked
Speaker 9: homicide for thirty six years, twenty eight with LAPD in
Speaker 9: the last eight in cold cases in San Mateo County.
Speaker 3: I have never had.
Speaker 9: One case where a killer taunted communicated with like in
Speaker 9: these two cases, the Zodiac and the Black Dalu. I've
Speaker 9: never had that happen in any of my cases. And
Speaker 9: I've worked with hundreds of investigators over those years, and
Speaker 9: I've never known of any of them to have a
Speaker 9: case that this type of thing happened. It is so rare.
Speaker 9: It's an amazing thing. Actually, it's really kind of interesting.
Speaker 9: And you have to have the right mindset to be
Speaker 9: able to do that, and the confidence are arrogance to
Speaker 9: be able to do that, because you're just increasing the chances,
Speaker 9: especially nowadays and getting caught. The conting is just another
Speaker 9: piece of circumstantial evidence that really is very, very strong.
Speaker 1: I was wondering, when you have the Dahia reaching out
Speaker 1: to the media and the Zodiac reaching out, what about
Speaker 1: Marvin Merrill himself. Did he have a pension for courting
Speaker 1: the media as himself Alex Babers says the answer is
Speaker 1: an unequivocal yes, that he often sought media attention for
Speaker 1: himself and the many businesses he operated in the course
Speaker 1: of his life.
Speaker 4: That was another thing that surprised me when we dug
Speaker 4: into his background.
Speaker 3: Is this guy was a media account.
Speaker 4: He loved his face or name in the newspaper, and
Speaker 4: he would he would write the editors of newspapers and
Speaker 4: make these strange comments. You know, the one that he's
Speaker 4: sent locally to San Diego when you lived in the
Speaker 4: Oceanside was about violent demonstrations being statements. You know, used
Speaker 4: to be the demonstrations or there res demonstrations that gets violence,
Speaker 4: but now violence becomes the demonstration itself, and that kind
Speaker 4: of you know, I'm like, is he talking about what
Speaker 4: he's doing? Or what he's going to do here, and
Speaker 4: then we found out also in his nineteen sixty one Wellington,
Speaker 4: Kansas article, he admits in the article that he loves poetry,
Speaker 4: he loves antique books, and by the way, he's a
Speaker 4: former newspaper correspondent. He literally states that in his interview.
Speaker 1: Was calling himself a newspaper correspondent, a subtle hint to
Speaker 1: his correspondence as a Black Dahia avenger. One has to
Speaker 1: think Merrill had a good laugh to himself about that.
Speaker 1: You can see a sampling of his correspondence as Marvin
Speaker 1: Merrill on the podcast website. Related to the discussion of
Speaker 1: it is what I call the interval box, meaning how
Speaker 1: do we account for the almost twenty two years between
Speaker 1: the Black dalli and murder and the Zodiac killings. We'll
Speaker 1: check this box later in the podcast when we reveal
Speaker 1: evidence that sadly, there wasn't an interval at all, that
Speaker 1: there were murders committed by Margolis Merrill in between Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Shorts killing and the five murders officially credited by law
Speaker 1: enforcement to the Zodiac. Next time, the list is the
Speaker 1: engineering box. There's a bit of a contradiction here the
Speaker 1: Zodiac showed a high level of skill when it came
Speaker 1: to his last cipher and its use of measurements of
Speaker 1: radians and degrees on a map, but he also supplied
Speaker 1: the schematic drawing of a bomb he allegedly planted that
Speaker 1: showed a basic knowledge of electric circuitry, yes, but was
Speaker 1: also almost childlike and flawed.
Speaker 4: We identified that he had a background in engineering and surveying.
Speaker 4: We located an article where he's a otion side in
Speaker 4: the early sixties and he's a engineer architect and he
Speaker 4: runs this company called the Project Consultants is what it's called.
Speaker 4: And knowing that and digging deeper into it, his knowledge
Speaker 4: of ratings and degrees would have been necessary in order
Speaker 4: to hold that position. And that's very interesting when he
Speaker 4: took it into in delight the Z thirty two and
Speaker 4: the letter that says, you know, the Mount Diablo map
Speaker 4: concerns ratings and inches in particular. So we knew that
Speaker 4: he had the background to do this, and for the
Speaker 4: first time we have a suspect that has that background
Speaker 4: that the block needs to be checked, and Marvin does that.
Speaker 1: We will have further discussions about this when we get
Speaker 1: to the Z thirty two cipher in a few minutes.
Speaker 1: There are many more boxes to check, and we will
Speaker 1: get to them all in the course of the podcast.
Speaker 1: But the last box to discuss today is proximity. This
Speaker 1: is an important one. Can we place Margolis Merrill in
Speaker 1: geographic proximity to the killings with the Dahlia murder? That's easy.
Speaker 1: He briefly lived with Elizabeth Short just three months before
Speaker 1: her murder. Police records call him her last known boyfriend.
Speaker 1: He lived in the Guardian Arms apartments on Hollywood Boulevard
Speaker 1: and was known to be taking pre med's classes at USC.
Speaker 1: So the challenge with this box is in putting Meryl
Speaker 1: Margolis in the Bay Area at the time of the
Speaker 1: Zodiac killings. Records indicate Meryl kept a home near San
Speaker 1: Diego through the late sixties and into the seventies, but
Speaker 1: records also placed him in San Jose in nineteen sixty nine,
Speaker 1: where he rented a house under the name Skip Merrill,
Speaker 1: another alias that draws on his birth name of Marvin
Speaker 1: Skipton Margolis. It appears he rented the house while still
Speaker 1: maintaining a home near San Diego where his family lived.
Speaker 1: This coincides with a period of time when, according to
Speaker 1: his son, he was working as an engineer for Intel,
Speaker 1: the semiconductor chip company located in Santa Clara. In one
Speaker 1: of the boxes of documents the Sun turned over to
Speaker 1: the investigation, we found Intel business cards in the name
Speaker 1: of Skip Merrill. Intel's headquarters would be a twenty five
Speaker 1: minute drive from the house Merril rented in San Jose.
Speaker 1: We'll come back to Intel and whether Merrill actually worked
Speaker 1: there in a later episode. Getting back to the proximity box.
Speaker 1: The question is whether San Jose was too far from
Speaker 1: the killing zone for us to check the box. It
Speaker 1: was about seventy miles from the San Jose house to
Speaker 1: Solano County, where the first two Zodiac attacks took place.
Speaker 1: With traffic, that could be a ninety minute drive. The
Speaker 1: location of the Paul Stein murder in San Francisco would
Speaker 1: have been a much shorter drive. The homicide detective is
Speaker 1: involved in this investigation. Don't see the distance as being
Speaker 1: an impediment to checking the box.
Speaker 2: I mean, seventy miles is not that far of a
Speaker 2: distance for somebody to travel because they don't want to
Speaker 2: hunt in their own backyard.
Speaker 9: Well, I don't have any problem. I mean, that's that's
Speaker 9: an hour, hour and fifteen minute drive. And it's what
Speaker 9: you have to look at is look beyond that, is
Speaker 9: look at the evidence that connects him, not just the location.
Speaker 9: And when you take all those things into into your
Speaker 9: you know you're viewing as the detective, all those things
Speaker 9: together amount to so much more than just a location.
Speaker 9: It's not like it's you have to get on a
Speaker 9: plane and go there or drive four or five hours.
Speaker 9: It's it's a short drive and in general, and I
Speaker 9: don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 1: The next question about proximity that up his why Solano County.
Speaker 1: If Margolis Merrill was in San Jose and didn't want
Speaker 1: to hunt in his backyard, why did he then pick
Speaker 1: Ballejoe and nearby places in the North Bay area. Well,
Speaker 1: the investigation conducted by Baber and his team uncovered an
Speaker 1: intriguing set of facts that might hold an answer. The
Speaker 1: second Zodiac attack came early in the morning of July fifth,
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty nine, in the parking lot of Blue Rock
Speaker 1: Springs Park in Ballejo. A couple was shot multiple times
Speaker 1: as they sat in a car. The woman, Darlene Fahren, died.
Speaker 1: The man, Michael Maggud survived. I should note here that
Speaker 1: July fifth happened to be the birthday of Margolis Merrill's
Speaker 1: youngest child. Directly after the shooting at the park, the
Speaker 1: Zodiac called the Vallejo Police Department and claimed responsibility. He said,
Speaker 1: and I quote, I want to report a double murray.
Speaker 1: If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway
Speaker 1: to the public park, you will find the kids in
Speaker 1: a brown car. They were shot with a nine millimeter luger.
Speaker 1: I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye. That call
Speaker 1: marked the beginning of the Zodiac's reign of terror in
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. It was straced to a payphone at
Speaker 1: a gas station at the corner of Tulamay Avenue and
Speaker 1: Springs Road, so the location appeared to be significant. The
Speaker 1: police plotted two possible routes from the park to the
Speaker 1: phone booth the Zodiac used, and going either way, he
Speaker 1: would have passed several payphones before getting to the one
Speaker 1: he stopped at. Why stop at that particular phone? Was
Speaker 1: it a random choice or was there something significant about
Speaker 1: that intersection? Perhaps the answer is this, That payphone happened
Speaker 1: to be less than five hundred feet from the house.
Speaker 1: Where Elizabeth Short lived with her father when she first
Speaker 1: moved to California five years before her murder.
Speaker 4: If you were to stand where the phone booth was
Speaker 4: at the time he placed that phone call, you could
Speaker 4: see the front door of where Elizabeth resided when she
Speaker 4: first came to California.
Speaker 1: It had been twenty two years since the Black Dallia murder.
Speaker 1: How could Marvin Merrill the Zodiac have known that address
Speaker 1: and understood its significance, especially when the original investigators had
Speaker 1: listed the wrong the Lahill address in case records. Well,
Speaker 1: obviously Elizabeth could have told him when he was Marvin
Speaker 1: Margolis and they lived together in Hollywood three months before
Speaker 1: her death. But also remember that after her murder, the
Speaker 1: Black Dahlia Avenger mailed the contents of her purse to
Speaker 1: a Los Angeles newspaper. This included an address book with
Speaker 1: several pages torn out. Investigators learned that Elizabeth had a
Speaker 1: habit of writing her current address or phone number down
Speaker 1: in the book and then tearing out the page to
Speaker 1: give who acquaintance that she'd meet. That accounted for some
Speaker 1: of the missing pages, but there are also pages that
Speaker 1: have been removed with a straight edge. Her killer likely
Speaker 1: took those pages and whatever information they may have contained.
Speaker 1: Investigators had learned that Elizabeth liked to journal. Could she
Speaker 1: have written about her journey from Massachusetts to California in
Speaker 1: those missing pages? Could she have included the Springs Road
Speaker 1: address in Vallejoe. Possibly, but detectives traced the address book
Speaker 1: to a Hollywood acquaintance and sometime benefactor, So Elizabeth did
Speaker 1: not have that book with her on her journey to
Speaker 1: California in nineteen forty two. But speaking of that journey,
Speaker 1: here's another interesting connection between the Dahlia case and the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: According to records obtained by baber And from the original investigation,
Speaker 1: Elizabeth left Boston on a bus to California on December fifteenth,
Speaker 1: nineteen forty two. Her destination was Vallejo, where she would
Speaker 1: live with her father, Cleo Short on Springs Road. According
Speaker 1: to bus schedules from that time, the trip west would
Speaker 1: have taken five days. This would put her arrival on
Speaker 1: Vallejo on December twentieth, nineteen forty two. The first known
Speaker 1: Zodiac attack occurred in a lover's Lane not far from
Speaker 1: Balleo on December twentieth, nineteen sixty eight. Was December twentieth
Speaker 1: merely a coincidence. Was the first attack on July fifth,
Speaker 1: the birthday of Meryl Margolis's child, a coincidence? And was
Speaker 1: the zodiac chusing that particular payphone just the coincidence or
Speaker 1: was it all part of what detectives call a fact pattern.
Speaker 2: The thing about coincidence starts out with just one, and
Speaker 2: so you kind of.
Speaker 8: It's easy to discard. It's easy to sort of say, ah,
Speaker 8: that's just wow, that's weird. But then you get.
Speaker 2: Another one, and then you get another one, and then
Speaker 2: you get another one, and all of a sudden, it's like,
Speaker 2: this is not coincidence anymore. This is more this is
Speaker 2: more evidentiary, this is more fact. I feel like when
Speaker 2: you get a coincidence after a coincidence, that leads to
Speaker 2: the same conclusion that it's no longer coincidence.
Speaker 6: It's a fact.
Speaker 2: And that seems what's happening in this case for sure,
Speaker 2: and in law enforcement in these kind.
Speaker 8: Of cases, that's what they say fact patterns. So, yeah,
Speaker 8: patterns of factual things that occurred, and so it's no
Speaker 8: longer a coincidence, it's a fact pattern.
Speaker 9: When you come up and come upon coincidence. As an investigation,
Speaker 9: you definitely become alerted to those and you need to
Speaker 9: follow up see is there more to this or is
Speaker 9: it just a one a one item coincidence, if you will.
Speaker 9: In this case, it's totally irrelevant because, and it's a
Speaker 9: saying that we've all heard as detectives and just in
Speaker 9: life in general, a coincidence followed by a coincidence, followed
Speaker 9: by a coincidence in maybe ten or fifteen or twenty
Speaker 9: other coincidence is at some point no longer become a coincidence.
Speaker 9: It's it's just a percentage of things that just can
Speaker 9: happen randomly. After a while, and that stuff becomes very important.
Speaker 9: It's a basis for circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's move on now to a discussion of the
Speaker 1: Zodiac's last cipher, known as the Z thirty two. We
Speaker 1: need to first start with the Zodiac note that included
Speaker 1: the Z thirteen code. It also included a sketch of
Speaker 1: a bomb the Zodiac claimed he would plant in order
Speaker 1: to take out a school bus. You can check it
Speaker 1: out on our website, but essentially it's a crew drawing
Speaker 1: of a Rube Goldberg sort of device that would involve
Speaker 1: a bus driving by an unknown spot and blocking sunlight
Speaker 1: from reflecting on a mirror, thus closing an electric circuit
Speaker 1: and detonating a string of bombs as the bus drove by.
Speaker 1: It does not take into consideration that a vehicle like
Speaker 1: a truck driving by could also detonate the bomb, or
Speaker 1: that there could be any number of reasons for the
Speaker 1: sun's connection to the mirror to be interrupted, let alone
Speaker 1: the idea that a mirror positioned on the side of
Speaker 1: the road would go unnoticed. Though it was likely just
Speaker 1: a hollow threat, if not a joke, the threat served
Speaker 1: the Zodiac's purpose of stoking the grip kafir he held
Speaker 1: on the Bay Area. Parents literally started driving their kids
Speaker 1: to school. The bomb threat was followed on June twenty sixth,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy, with a letter from the Zodiac to the
Speaker 1: San Francisco Chronicle. It contained the Z thirty two cipher,
Speaker 1: along with a Phillip sixty six map of the Bay Area.
Speaker 1: The familiar Zodiac symbol, the circle with the crosshairs, was
Speaker 1: centered on the peak of Mount Diablo in the e
Speaker 1: Pay area. The message from the Zodiac read the map
Speaker 1: coupled with this code will tell you where the bomb
Speaker 1: is set. You have till next fall to dig it
Speaker 1: up on the map. The Zodiac noted that the crosshair
Speaker 1: logo should be set to magnetic north. The Z thirty
Speaker 1: two proved difficult to crack, largely because there were only
Speaker 1: three repeating symbols, leaving twenty six variables a codebreaker's nightmare,
Speaker 1: especially in nineteen seventy one, computer technology and processing power
Speaker 1: was nothing like it would become in the decades ahead.
Speaker 1: A month later, with Z thirty two unbroken, the Zodiac
Speaker 1: offered a sizeable hint in a new letter to the Chronicle.
Speaker 1: He quoted the Mikado, the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera,
Speaker 1: and ended the note with ps. The Mount Diablo code
Speaker 1: concerns radians and numbers of inches along the radians.
Speaker 3: Note.
Speaker 1: It also included two versions of the Zodiac Killer's standard
Speaker 1: crosshairs symbol and is repeating Zodiac versus Police scorecard, which
Speaker 1: was now thirteen to zero, apparently meaning that his kill
Speaker 1: count was now up to thirteen while the police were
Speaker 1: scoreless in their attempts to identify and capture him. There
Speaker 1: was one curious difference in the score. This time one
Speaker 1: of the crosshair circles contained a zero that was round
Speaker 1: instead of oval, and was also deeply outlined. It was
Speaker 1: inside the circle and positioned at about eight if it
Speaker 1: were a clockface. To many decoders, this meant something in
Speaker 1: addition to the clues about inches and radians. It took
Speaker 1: many years, but the hint from the zodiac helped the
Speaker 1: code Z thirty two. The interpretation was that if the
Speaker 1: Zodiac said it was about inches and radians, then the
Speaker 1: fuller variation of those two words would be in the code.
Speaker 1: A radian is a measurement of the arc of a circle.
Speaker 1: Roughly six radians of equal length complete a circle. They
Speaker 1: are technically measured in degrees, with three hundred and sixty
Speaker 1: degrees being the full circle, but going by the face
Speaker 1: of a clock, for example, two radians would generally put
Speaker 1: you at four, while four radians would put you at
Speaker 1: the eight. I want to try to avoid being two
Speaker 1: technical here, but a radian is basically two times pi,
Speaker 1: and because Pi is a number that can go on
Speaker 1: to infinity, radians are often measured in estimates, and so
Speaker 1: the word estimate or its abbreviation was assumed by a
Speaker 1: cryptologists to also be somewhere in the Z thirty two cipher.
Speaker 1: In the last few years, various codebreakers have come out
Speaker 1: with their interpretation of the Z thirty two. One solution
Speaker 1: that fit the cipher was estimate four radians and five inches.
Speaker 1: When that formula was applied to the Phillip sixty six
Speaker 1: sixth map with the crosshairs turned to the coordinates for
Speaker 1: magnetic north in nineteen seventy, the radiant tracks the line
Speaker 1: from the peak of Mount Diablo five inches to a
Speaker 1: spot on the map where there is a police station. However,
Speaker 1: in fifty five years since the Zodiac made his bomb threat,
Speaker 1: no bomb was ever found near that police station or
Speaker 1: anywhere else in the Bay Area. What was the Zodiac
Speaker 1: trying to say, there is no bomb and the jokes
Speaker 1: on the police That seems hardly worth the effort to
Speaker 1: provide the map and coded coordinates. Then along came Alex Baber,
Speaker 1: the self styled cold case investigator, who had just cracked
Speaker 1: the Z thirteen cipher. He had information none of those
Speaker 1: codebreakers before him had. He had the name Marvin Merrill.
Speaker 1: He knew Merrill's real name was Marvin Margolis and that
Speaker 1: he was a prime suspect in the murder of the
Speaker 1: Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short. He knew that on the night
Speaker 1: of the second Zodiac attack, the killer called the police
Speaker 1: from a gas station that had a view of Elizabeth
Speaker 1: Short's one time front door. It seemed to him that
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short was at the nexus of these cases, armed
Speaker 1: with this intel. Baber thought that maybe it wasn't a
Speaker 1: map to a bomb. The bomb schematic, after all, was ludicrous.
Speaker 1: It wasn't just a hoax. It was a joke played
Speaker 1: on the public by a killer who had a history
Speaker 1: of taunting the public. Baber thought about the heavily outlined
Speaker 1: zero that was inside the circle of the crosshair, positioned
Speaker 1: at eight o'clock, the same as for Radiant. He thought
Speaker 1: about going short of the perimeter armed off all this,
Speaker 1: he tried a different decryption of the Z thirty two
Speaker 1: estimate for Radiant and three inches it fit into cipher
Speaker 1: and when it was fitted to the crosshair symbol set
Speaker 1: to nineteen seventy magnetic north, the darkened round zero covered
Speaker 1: place on the map called Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland,
Speaker 1: the final resting place of the Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short.
Speaker 4: There was never a bomb. If he's referencing Elizabeth as
Speaker 4: the bomb. That makes sense now again, it is a
Speaker 4: part of his game. He's always there's always this thing
Speaker 4: about him. It's moreoty like. It's as if there's this
Speaker 4: hidden agender layer that you have to discover to identify
Speaker 4: what his cluer plan is.
Speaker 3: It was a game that he described it himself.
Speaker 4: He was playing chess with everybody else, including law enforcement
Speaker 4: in the public, but nobody could beat him at his
Speaker 4: own game.
Speaker 1: If the zodiac was mariarity like, did that put Baber
Speaker 1: in the role of Sherlock Holmes. It seemed that everywhere
Speaker 1: he looked as he investigated, that he found clues that
Speaker 1: showed the cunning detail that went into every move the
Speaker 1: killer made, even the choice of a Phillips sixty six map.
Speaker 1: Elizabeth Short was buried by her family at Mountain View
Speaker 1: Cemetery in early nineteen forty seven. It was a spot
Speaker 1: close to her nearest family member, a sister who lived
Speaker 1: in Oakland. Visitors to her grave in the vast cemetery
Speaker 1: will find it in section sixty six. Now is Baber's
Speaker 1: proposed solution to Z thirty two and exercise in confirmation bias?
Speaker 1: Perhaps I'm sure there will be many who will claim that,
Speaker 1: while others will see it as part of the fact pattern.
Speaker 1: Mitzie Roberts spoke of Baber readily admits he came to
Speaker 1: the last cipher from a starting point that was Elizabeth Short.
Speaker 1: But it is a piece of the puzzle that irrefutably
Speaker 1: fits into place with the cipher and other factors as well.
Speaker 1: And as we end this episode, let me add one
Speaker 1: other thing to that fact pattern and puzzle. As I
Speaker 1: mentioned before, in the note that carried the Z thirty
Speaker 1: two cipher, the Zodiac quoted from the Mercado opera when
Speaker 1: the night Elizabeth Short was murdered in Los Angeles, the
Speaker 1: Mikado was performed on stage on Hollywood Boulevard, not far
Speaker 1: from the Hollywood apartment she once shared with Marvin Margolis,
Speaker 1: and the quote the Zodiac used in his message with
Speaker 1: the Z thirty two was this, as someday it may
Speaker 1: happen that a victim must be found. I've got a
Speaker 1: little list of society offenders who might well be underground. Underground,
Speaker 1: think about that, and you decide whether confirmation bias led
Speaker 1: this investigation astray. In our next episode, coming Thursday, we
Speaker 1: are going to sit down with our independent cryptology team
Speaker 1: and tell the story of their investigation within the investigation
Speaker 1: and how it led not only to a confirmation of
Speaker 1: Alex Baber's work, but also connected Marvin Merrill to another murder.
Speaker 1: It's a thrower. I'm Michael Connolly and you've been listening
Speaker 1: to Killer in the Code solving the Black Dali and
Speaker 1: Zodiac cases. This chapter was written and produced by Michael Connolly.
Speaker 1: It was edited by Teroll Lee Langford. Sound designed by
Speaker 1: Michael Odemark with music by Mark Henry Phillips. Go to
Speaker 1: Killerinthecode dot com for more information on the investigation. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening.