00:00:07
Hey weirdos, I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid. I didn't like the look in your eye when
00:00:29
you were saying that at all. That Mikey said nope. Everybody's just shaking their head at
00:00:36
me like no, absolutely It's creepy. You went like Like she got low sort of. No. Yeah, I just wanted to be weird
00:00:43
about it and I succeeded. Get your hats. High five across the room. Woo. That was weird.
00:00:50
Yeah, I don't know. I'm in a weird mood. It's same. Same. Weird day. Yes. You know? Maybe hold on.
00:00:58
Hold on. Everybody sit tight. Guys, just hold on a second. Just pull over, okay?
00:01:01
You know what? While she's looking that up, we had our 666th episode recently. 666. The mark of the beast.
00:01:10
Wait a second. Oh. Mercury is out of retrograde. Oh. Doesn't feel that way. I know. Well, we're in the after effects
00:01:18
right now. Okay. It got out of It stopped retrograding, I think that's how you say that right, on
00:01:23
April 7th. Right now I think it's the April 9th. So we're still feeling the Yeah, after effects.
00:01:28
We're circling the the toilet drain. Sometimes I feel like that's when it's the worst, is the after effects.
00:01:33
Yeah. So I maybe that's why we feel so weird and why everybody's so annoying. It also
00:01:37
might just be like facts. Everything's just like you know when you have that that moment where everything
00:01:42
just feels like it's taking [ __ ] forever God. forward, anything, any answers you need,
00:01:47
anything. You're just like God. Yeah, it's that. Um sorry I interrupted you. What?
00:01:53
Back to the mark of the beast. Oh, yeah, episode. That was so much It was. It was so much fun and we had we
00:02:01
had a ghost join us named Nicholas. guest, if you will. Um he was he was sassy, he was spicy. He
00:02:08
was that friend. Well, he was that friend that will be honest with you and I like that about
00:02:14
him. So, you agree you think I'm dull? No, he he thought that the tale like the whatever tale I told was dull. He wasn't
00:02:20
calling you dull. Okay. It's not about you, Ash. Well, no, but you said that he you What
00:02:25
was it that you weren't dull or something? Oh, no. I don't know. Go listen to the
00:02:28
episode. I can't remember what he said. he compliment at one point and you were like
00:02:33
He complimented and I and I took it. I received that. For you. And then he said something mean and I
00:02:38
said I don't receive that. said mhm, returning to sender. I understand Nicholas.
00:02:42
Well, he's in your home, so. so I think I I vibe with him. Maybe he's related to us.
00:02:48
Maybe. I was going to say maybe he's related to you and then I was like, well, You're like, I am also related.
00:02:52
would be related to me as well. No, I think we he was fun. It was fun to have him during the episode. We we just
00:02:58
put on Ghost Tube and just kind of like let him chat with us. And I think we have a spooky episode coming up. Um like
00:03:06
a you know, one of our like spooky insert thing here. Spooky Lucy Goosey. Roads, lakes, schools, graveyards, you
00:03:14
know, towns, all that. Uh we're going to do one of those coming up. And I think spooky butts, probably.
00:03:19
Spooky butts, I think is where we're we're going to land on. And uh during our spooky butts episode our spooky bits
00:03:25
uh we're going to we're going to have Nicholas come back. We're going to throw on the Ghost Tube and just let him kind
00:03:30
of comment throughout the episode. I hope it's him again. I feel like it will be.
00:03:35
What it Well, when we turned off the episode and we kept doing something, somebody named Jacob came.
00:03:40
Yeah, we just got a gaggle of a a gaggle of guys just floating around. I don't know how any of us feel about that, but
00:03:47
Not great. I love Nicholas, personally. I feel very connected to him. Jacob, I don't know.
00:03:51
We haven't really had time to get to know each other. Yeah, we turned it off Yeah, we did. We said bye. So, maybe
00:03:56
Jacob will come through, but I think it'll be fun to do for our spooky episodes to have um our Pod Lab spirits
00:04:03
join us and just kind of comment. Yes. Uh I think hopefully you guys will think that's kind of fun. You can let us know
00:04:09
after the episode if you like that was not fun. Yeah. Then totally let us know. But, we
00:04:14
figured it'd be something fun to add to the episode. I think you'll love it. I think you're going to love it.
00:04:18
Personally. I love Nicholas, so you know. Ghost soup's fun, and I think it's for
00:04:23
reals. Like, I'm just saying. Yeah. I stand on ghost soup. hell. No matter what it is, it's fun.
00:04:29
I agree. Yeah. Um what's not fun is the Zodiac killer. No, he's not fun. No. Um and I'm pretty he's probably dead.
00:04:39
I think. Yeah. I would assume. There's a good theory. Oh, okay. he died. Oh. Personally.
00:04:46
I mean, it makes sense considering the time period. I guess like it's a possibility.
00:04:52
Yeah, so He's a bag of bones or bag of bones or a and everybody thought he was 20. So,
00:04:58
let's do some math. So, I mean, you say let's. I will not be joining you in this.
00:05:03
So, it's 2025 minus We'll just say 1970 for the hell of it. that. 55 years ago. If you were 20, let's say
00:05:11
he was like 25. He could be like 80. 80. Yeah, which is very possible. Yeah, I know 80-year-olds.
00:05:19
Damn. I know. Imagine if the if the Zodiac killer is still out. Just imagine if he's just someone's
00:05:26
grandpa. Oh my god. Well, it's like Joseph James DeAngelo. Just like he was like in his
00:05:30
late mid mid to late '70s when he got caught. And well, that's that's the thing.
00:05:34
Absolutely. Absolutely. I don't think he would have just gone away because he loved the theater.
00:05:44
And the dramatics. And like loved even even when it seemed as though he stopped killing people, like they stopped
00:05:51
linking crimes to him officially, he was still sending [ __ ] in. Yeah. To like newspapers and to the police and
00:05:57
everything, so. But maybe he's like a BTK, but like a BTK with restraint. Maybe.
00:06:04
You know, cuz like BTK went away for a long time. Yeah, and then but then he couldn't help
00:06:07
himself. And then he couldn't help himself. But like who knows if, you know, whoever the
00:06:11
Zodiac is if something took precedent that maybe changed maybe the uh trajectory.
00:06:20
the urge kind of thing. I just I am not ruling it out. Like it's definitely possible, but something about
00:06:26
this dude, I feel like he wouldn't be able to resist that urge. And that's just me who has like no profiling
00:06:31
experience whatsoever, but that's what my gut tells me. Hey, I'm willing to listen to your gut.
00:06:36
Thank you. I'll listen to it over here. Thank you. She's trashed, but we're working on her.
00:06:42
very loud and you have to listen to it all the time. That's true. Even if I don't want to
00:06:46
listen to your gut, she's telling me things. Yeah, she's always talking. It's usually just
00:06:52
I know and it's never like I'm never in distress. No, and sometimes it's not even when
00:06:56
you're hungry. Yeah, it's just that's how my gut works. It's just loud. My gut like it doesn't work.
00:07:01
If it like It doesn't in general, but it works with instinct. Yeah. So that's a little bit about our guts.
00:07:07
Now let's get into it. So we're back. We're back everybody with part two. In part one we went over the first of
00:07:13
the attacks which started with the murders of 17-year-old David Faraday and his girlfriend who
00:07:19
Betty Lou Jensen, she was 16 years old and this was her first boyfriend ever. That broke my heart.
00:07:24
Awful and her first date. And then we went over the attacks on two more couples, 22-year-old Darlene Ferrin
00:07:30
and 19-year-old Mike Mageau. Uh then lastly 22-year-old Cecelia Shepard and 20-year-old Bryan Hartnell. And if you
00:07:37
remember from part one those last two attacks, both of the men survived. It doesn't actually seem like that was
00:07:43
intentional like on the part of the killer, but you know, it happened. And of course, we
00:07:49
got into the theatrics that surround the case as far as the taunting letters to the media, the weird ciphers, the
00:07:56
[ __ ] crazy costume that he was wearing Oh. with the clip-on sunglasses. So unsettling.
00:08:02
I'll never be over the clip-on sunglasses. And the flat top of the head, like the executioner's hood being
00:08:08
flat topped. about it. I just don't know. In an executioner's hood in and of itself.
00:08:13
Horrifying. Yeah. So, now let's get into part two, which as most of us know, unfortunately does
00:08:19
not end with the capture of this fool. But luckily, the attack at Lake Berryessa produced more evidence than
00:08:25
the first two attacks. Because remember, the first two attacks, there was like nothing to go off of basically. This
00:08:31
gave us a little bit more. But not so luckily, detectives had pretty much exhausted any lead that they had within
00:08:37
like two weeks. Mhm. Not great. No, not great at all. No, not great at all. The witness
00:08:43
descriptions and communications with the killer allowed investigators to get some
00:08:47
kind of insight into the person that they were looking for, but funny that I was just talking about profiling. At
00:08:52
that time, psychological profiling was still years away. It wasn't a thing that was really, you know, tapped into yet.
00:08:59
And any kind of profile that they developed at that time was really just speculation. For example, a psychiatrist
00:09:04
in Napa quote suggested that the killer may be psychotic rather than psychopathic.
00:09:11
Thinking that the cipher revealed the Zodiac's delusional thinking. Okay. Now, if you're like me and you found
00:09:17
that quote a little bit confusing, um according to a quick Google, psychosis, aka being psychotic, is a symptom of
00:09:24
mental illness involving a loss of touch with reality. Oh, interesting. But psychopathy is a personality
00:09:29
disorder characterized by lack of empathy and remorse. Okay. That's the difference between those two
00:09:33
things. Cuz when I first read that, I was like, isn't that the same thing? I mean, yeah, excuse me.
00:09:38
And Google said, no. No. She sang it to me. He said, nor. She said, nor, girl. So, within a matter of a few weeks, all
00:09:45
the theories from a ton of sources started to merge into kind of one big theory that created a kind of unofficial
00:09:51
and obviously again highly speculative profile of the killer. In early October, a reporter from the Sacramento Bee
00:09:57
wrote, he's fairly bright, but his spelling and grammar indicate a poor education.
00:10:02
And this is a quote. He is fat, so he probably does not do too well with girls. In fact, he has unwittingly
00:10:08
indicated a sexual inadequacy. Oh, and he is an astrology fan. And when the signs are right, he goes out and finds
00:10:15
young boys and girls together who symbolize everything life has denied him. Wow.
00:10:22
Oh, the '60s. I don't even know what to think to hit on first. Yeah. To be quite honest.
00:10:28
Yeah. Um, damn. That was journalism. Yeah, sure was. But, like a lot of the theories about
00:10:35
the identity and motives of the Zodiac that have come out in, you know, five decades since the first attacks, it's
00:10:40
unclear what led reporters and investigators to like some of these conclusions in most
00:10:45
of them. But, while everybody was speculating and piecing together the clues that they did have, the Zodiac was
00:10:50
back out on the streets. Mhm. On the afternoon of October 11th, 29-year-old cab driver Paul Stine got
00:10:56
ready to head out for his shift for the night. Paul was a PhD candidate at San Francisco State College, and he was
00:11:03
working as a cab driver just to cover the cost of his education. He was just a few months away from
00:11:09
finishing his degree requirements and would have been on on track to graduate in January. Not far at all.
00:11:16
By 9:30 p.m., Paul had finished his first fare of the night, and he got a notification from the dispatcher about
00:11:22
another fare needing to be picked up. While he was on his way to get the second fare, he stopped to pick up a
00:11:27
single passenger, a man who hailed him at the intersection of Mason and Geary Streets.
00:11:32
The man asked to be dropped off at Washington and Maple streets, which was in a pretty wealthy neighborhood in San
00:11:37
Francisco, uh Presidio Heights. So, Paul entered the location in the logbook and started the meter and then
00:11:43
pulled away from the curb. What happened next is really just based off of speculation based on evidence
00:11:48
found at the scene. When they arrived at the intersection the passenger had requested, the man
00:11:53
instructed Paul to drive just one block further to the corner of Washington and Cherry streets. Once there, the man
00:11:59
produced a 9-mm handgun and placed the barrel to the back of Paul's head just behind his right ear and pulled the the
00:12:06
trigger killing Paul instantly. Come on. Nobody was really around to witness the
00:12:11
the actual shooting itself, but the sound of the gunshot was loud enough to attract the attention of three teenagers
00:12:17
who were in an apartment building across the street. And by the time they went to
00:12:20
the window to see what the hell was happening, they actually saw the killer move from the backseat to the front
00:12:26
passenger seat where it seemed like he was going through Paul's pockets and some kind of robbery.
00:12:31
Yeah. So, while one of the kids called the police, the other two went down to a a
00:12:34
lower floor of the building to try to get a better look at the guy in the cab. And from their new position, they could
00:12:40
see the shooter wiping down the surfaces on the cab with what looked like a cloth.
00:12:44
Oh. And then he moved Paul's body into an upright position and exited the cab through the passenger door.
00:12:50
Ooh. He wiped down the handle before and after closing it. Once he was outside the car, the shooter
00:12:56
walked around to the driver side, opened the door and repositioned Paul's body again since it had kind of like slid
00:13:02
down when he uh down and forward when he got out. And then after wiping down the inside
00:13:07
and outside of that uh the driver side door, the man closed it and just calmly walked away from the scene toward Cherry
00:13:14
Street like he was just some normal [ __ ] dude walking down the street after taking a cab.
00:13:19
That's [ __ ] creepy. You imagine watching that as a teenager watching that happen?
00:13:23
this body around? Multiple times. uh no. Wiping the doors down like, uh, I hate it.
00:13:30
So, when the witness has placed a call to the police, for some reason, there was some kind of miscommunication, and
00:13:37
for whatever reason, the dispatcher thought that the shooter was a black man, and advised responding officers to
00:13:42
that detail. As a result, on their way to the scene, those officers drove right past the
00:13:48
actual shooter as they traveled down Jackson Street, paying no attention to this white man casually walking away,
00:13:55
even though he was the only person in the vicinity of the crime scene at that point.
00:13:59
Oh, come on. How did that happen? How? Was it, now, was, was he wearing the outfit?
00:14:09
That I don't know, actually. maybe the miscommunication was like the black hood?
00:14:15
You know what I mean? Like, maybe that was not relayed correctly, or it didn't get heard correctly.
00:14:20
That is possible. You know? I don't think so, though, because I think that would have been like a major
00:14:24
detail that they the kids Yeah. So, maybe maybe straight-up racism, then. It might have been straight-up racism.
00:14:30
Yeah. Cuz it was, again, like late '60s or '70s. Yeah. Cuz I don't think he would have been
00:14:35
wearing the outfit, because I think Paul, like That would have been startling. Yeah, it wouldn't have got to the the
00:14:40
final destination. No, definitely not. Like, if he just popped that hood on. Yeah, I think he was just dressed like a
00:14:46
a man. Wow. And actually, you know what? Yeah. Yeah. The more I think about it, yeah.
00:14:51
And later on, the teenagers describe him, so yeah. That makes sense. So, San Francisco police officers Armand
00:14:57
Pelissetti and Frank Peta were the first to arrive at the scene, and they found two of the three teenager teenage
00:15:02
witnesses just standing near the cab. Mhm. Just taking this in. Jesus. After moving them to a, I know. After
00:15:09
moving them to a location, uh, further from the scene, they took their statements, which is when they realized
00:15:14
that that initial description of the shooter had been wrong, like like somehow lost in translation.
00:15:19
Mhm. Pelissetti quickly radioed dispatch with the update of a corrected description
00:15:24
and that went out to responding officers. But by the time the additional officers got to that area on Jackson
00:15:29
Street where they had just passed a white man and like the only [ __ ] man in the vicinity
00:15:34
Jesus Christ. he was gone. Damn. Completely gone. So back at the crime scene, officer Palazzeti approached the
00:15:40
cab and looked inside. By that point, Paul's body was again slumped forward and the officer could see that there was
00:15:46
a hole in his head right behind his right ear. Between the injury and the large amount
00:15:52
of blood in the front of the cab, it was obvious that Paul had died, unfortunately.
00:15:56
In the back seat of the cab, the killer had left a pair of size seven black leather gloves, which was a noticeably
00:16:02
small size for a man Huh. at that time. They also found a single 9 mm shell casing and 30 fingerprints.
00:16:09
Wow. Which remember it's a cab, so Yeah. tons of people. Yeah. But among the fingerprints was one that
00:16:14
belonged to Paul Stine and one unidentified print that was streaked with blood indicating that it most
00:16:19
likely belonged to the shooter. Palazzeti and the other officers also noticed that Paul's wallet and keys to
00:16:26
the cab were missing, which actually at that point did make them think that this
00:16:29
was a robbery that had gone wrong. So Palazzeti requested an ambulance and additional officers with dogs to comb
00:16:35
the area in search of the suspect and within a few minutes all seven K9 units had responded to the request along with
00:16:41
a ton of San Francisco police officers. A large number of San Francisco firefighters were also called to the
00:16:47
scene so that they could set up their ladders and high-powered lamps to kind of like illuminate the area more.
00:16:53
And once they collected all the evidence and removed the body, investigators left
00:16:57
the scene still thinking that this was some kind of robbery. Because actually at that point it was
00:17:02
pretty common for cab drivers to get robbed or face some kind of violence like this.
00:17:06
Yeah. So you know, they just thought that that was it. Yeah. And the search teams and the dogs didn't
00:17:12
turn up anything else in search for the killer. Based on the description of the shooter
00:17:16
from the teenagers who reported the shooting, investigators were actually able to produce a sketch of the killer,
00:17:21
which was published in the local papers a few days later. And this man was described as a white man, so the
00:17:27
teenagers the teenagers had not said to the Yeah, so that was clearly either just
00:17:32
straight-up racism or there was some very strange miscommunication happening. Yeah, I don't I'm leaning towards the
00:17:38
the former. The racism, yeah. I don't understand how Yeah, the black man comment was made because
00:17:44
all three said he was a white man 25 to 30 years old, 5'8" or 5'9" tall, and weighed about 150 lb.
00:17:51
Yeah, it's pretty clear. Yeah, definitely. I always wonder how people come up with that. I have no
00:17:58
[ __ ] I don't even know how tall I am. I couldn't tell how tall someone is or how much they weigh if you paid me a
00:18:04
zillion dollars. No, not at all. I could not. I'd be the worst witness ever. 100% I I also just like remember people
00:18:10
looking completely different than they do. at that, either. Yeah, I this would not be great for me.
00:18:15
No. But they also said he has reddish-brown hair, which he wears in a crew cut, and
00:18:19
was wearing heavy-rimmed glasses and a navy blue or black jacket at the time of the slaying.
00:18:24
Okay. So, not not the outfit. No. Now, it wasn't until 2 days later on October 13th that Paul Stine's murder
00:18:45
was linked to the Zodiac. That afternoon a letter arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle containing one single uh page
00:18:52
note written in what was now familiar writing and um in a blue felt-tipped handwriting of the killer.
00:19:00
He said, "This is the Zodiac speaking. I am the murderer of murderer of the taxi
00:19:03
driver over by Washington Street and Maple Street last night. To prove this, here is a blood-stained piece of his
00:19:09
shirt." which he did include. He said, "I am the same man who did in the people in the North Bay Area. The SF
00:19:16
police, San Francisco police, could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of
00:19:21
holding road races with their motorcycles seeing who could make the most noise. The car drivers should have
00:19:26
just parked their cars and sat there waiting for me to come out of cover. School children make nice targets. I
00:19:32
think I shall I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the the
00:19:35
front tire and pick off the kitties as they come bouncing out." Wow. What? I re- I remember hearing that specific
00:19:46
line. I do, too. I've read that. School children make nice targets and then he said like come bouncing out with
00:19:52
the kitties. as they they come bouncing out. Like I remember reading that and just being
00:19:56
horrified by Sinister. how sin- exactly like sinister and depraved that is. And it's just like he starts with
00:20:04
couples, then he targets this cab driver. So that's a complete diversion. kill kids now.
00:20:10
And now he's going to kids, right? Like what the [ __ ] Nobody's safe. No. Which we're going to get into.
00:20:14
Literally nobody's safe. Now just like the other letters, the latest note was signed simply with those
00:20:19
crosshairs, the symbol. And as proof of its authenticity, like I said, the letter writer also included a swatch of
00:20:25
fabric ripped from Paul Stine's blood-soaked shirt. Woah. So he's like this is me.
00:20:29
Yeah. And they also did an analysis of the handwriting and it concluded that it matched the other letters that the San
00:20:36
Francisco area papers had gotten a few months earlier. Mhm. Police Captain Martin Lee told told
00:20:41
reporters, "There are very strong indications, including the handwriting, that we are dealing with the same
00:20:46
person. All of the evidence is pointing toward this." And that inclusion of Paul's gray and
00:20:51
white striped shirt was irrefutable proof that the killings were linked. And if the previous attacks were any
00:20:57
indication, there was going to be more murders to follow. Yeah. The Zodiac had already made mention of
00:21:02
shooting a busload of school children. And as As as the public knew, the police were no closer to stopping him than they
00:21:08
had been after the first murders of David Faraday and Betty Jensen. They made no progress on this case. They
00:21:14
didn't have the slightest idea who this guy was. And in a city as large as San Francisco, he could have been anywhere.
00:21:20
He could have been anyone. Absolutely. An article from the LA Times read, "He could be old Mrs. So-and-so's boy who
00:21:27
never says boo and still loves at home, or that bachelor who keeps to himself and never seems to have any fun, or that
00:21:33
poor guy who works so hard at that lousy job and never complains and never lets on that his marriage is miserable."
00:21:39
Damn. That's bleak. The way that they wrote back then. Yeah. And I remember that clip. I remember he
00:21:44
could be Mrs. So-and-so's boy who never says boo. Yeah. For some reason that always stuck out to
00:21:49
me. But if we know anything about the '60s and '70s in California, or really anything about the last few episodes of
00:21:55
Morbid, we know that Californians had to contend with killers in the past. Yeah.
00:22:00
Some of these killers, obviously, like we've talked about, were theatrical and like evil maniacal. But the Zodiac
00:22:07
wasn't like anything anybody had ever experienced before. Like we were just saying, he changed his method of killing
00:22:13
unexpectedly, changed his preferred victims. He performed his attacks and murders with a kind of showiness, too.
00:22:19
Mhm. And a killer with an unpredictable victim pattern hunting the streets of San Francisco was terrifying enough, but
00:22:26
this guy's doing it while wearing a [ __ ] executioner's hood. Yeah. Like that adds to everything. That hits
00:22:32
Yeah, that hits different. Yeah, it definitely does. I can't imagine living in this area at
00:22:36
that time. No. Because I for me it's the costume, but also the fact that literally, like I
00:22:42
said earlier, no one is safe. Yeah. Couples, cab drivers, kids. And it he would just switch at a moment's notice.
00:22:50
Mhm. So in the wake of the most recent letters from the Zodiac, the Sheriff's Department assigned more than 70
00:22:55
deputies to guard the school buses as they transported children to and from school. It seemed like the killer was
00:23:01
expanding his geographic range to a degree, too. So, a kind of inter-agency task force was assembled, which included
00:23:08
officers from all local and regional law enforcement agencies with the intention of pooling resources
00:23:14
and evidence that could lead to an arrest, which is kind of profound because it doesn't happen a lot.
00:23:19
Yeah, I know. These agencies work together. No, that's actually the most shocking.
00:23:23
And I think it also points to how desperate they were to catch this guy. Almost a year had passed since the
00:23:28
Zodiac first struck in Vallejo, and in that time he had now killed five and seriously wounded two others, again
00:23:35
leaving very little evidence behind and just openly taunting investigators and the public.
00:23:40
But while it seems like the Zodiac was only just starting his rampage, interestingly, Paul Stine would turn out
00:23:46
to be the last victim officially linked to the Zodiac. Interesting. I don't know for sure if Paul really was
00:23:53
the Zodiac's last victim, Huh. but officially he is. Okay. That being said, a lack of victims
00:23:59
didn't get a lack of attention, and the man known as the Zodiac Killer was about
00:24:03
to be elevated to a status that had never been seen before in American history. Mhm.
00:24:08
Within a few days of receiving and publishing the Stine letter, public concern over the threat posed had
00:24:13
reached a point where the law the law enforcement agencies couldn't ignore it. So, Chief of Police Martin Lee released
00:24:19
an all-points bulletin containing instructions for school bus drivers who might find themselves the target of the
00:24:24
killer. The bulletin read, and this is just I can't imagine putting my kids on a
00:24:29
school bus during this time. Oh god. It read, "If a tire is punctured or shots are
00:24:33
heard, keep the bus in motion at all costs. Instruct passengers to lie on the floor. Attract as much attention as
00:24:40
possible by sounding the horn, flashing the lights, and erratic driving if necessary."
00:24:46
What the [ __ ] Like what if you can't keep the bus in motion? Well, that's in the other thing.
00:24:52
popped a tire? You could Sometimes you can't keep going. you want to say like, "Oh, I I would
00:24:56
never put my child on the bus if I was going to but some people didn't have a choice like they didn't have any other
00:25:01
way to do anything and it's like what the [ __ ] imagine reading that? No and what do you do?
00:25:07
Yeah. What do you do? I would just be like at home I think I would I'd probably lose everything down
00:25:12
and we'll lose everything cuz that's so scary. Yeah absolutely it is. Holy [ __ ] and then thinking like these
00:25:19
little kids getting on the bus and like like if that were to happen the bus driver is just supposed to tell them to
00:25:24
lay on the ground. These little kids like Like that's awful. So somehow the notice from Lee did help
00:25:31
reassure a lot of the drivers but he still couldn't help but take a swipe at the killer the police chief he referred
00:25:37
to the zodiac as a quote clumsy criminal liar and a latent homosexual. Huh? Like what?
00:25:45
What if anything indicated his sexual preference? Where the [ __ ] did you come out with
00:25:50
that? That's that's something. That that's neither here nor there. That I I just am like please ex point to
00:25:58
where you found that like what? Point to it. it's just guys being dudes sometimes.
00:26:04
Dudes being bros you know. It's just what? That's You can call that guy a lot of things to
00:26:09
just pull out of thin air and be like But to just be like He's a latent homosexual.
00:26:14
Like He's guy and he's pretending he's not okay. All righty I don't think that's why
00:26:20
we're here but sounds good thanks for being professional about it. Let's focus on the thing that will
00:26:24
definitely help us catch him. Yeah exactly. I'm also like yeah that's good. Needle the crazy man threatening
00:26:29
to shoot up a bus full of children. Yeah and that's the other thing it's like oh yeah cuz first of all we have no
00:26:34
[ __ ] clue what his sexual orientation is nor should it matter. Nope. But also are we really pretending that
00:26:40
straight people don't kill people? More often than not. Are we really pretending that straight
00:26:45
men have not like made up the majority of serial killers in the entire history of the
00:26:52
Hello. Like, are we really pretending that right now? It was just an opportunity to be nice.
00:26:57
Like, okay. Like, I'm not defending the Zodiac by any means here, but that was just
00:27:00
stupid. No, of course you're not defending him. Like, Jesus Christ. It just doesn't help. It's just not
00:27:05
helpful. it doesn't help the public. No. We're looking to catch this person. Give
00:27:10
me things that I can see with my eyeballs and witness with my eyeballs. And if you want to needle him, do it in
00:27:17
a way to draw him out. Like be like he's Say he's [ __ ] pathetic. Right. Say he's a [ __ ] pathetic loser
00:27:24
Right. who has nothing else to take control of, so he's taking control of vulnerable
00:27:29
people in vulnerable positions. Exactly. There you go. He's a [ __ ] loser. Yeah, I just did it.
00:27:35
Oh. So, the California Attorney General Thomas Lynch also got involved, acting as a coordinator for various state and
00:27:41
local agencies involved in the now growing manhunt, and he provided updates to the public. In his initial statement,
00:27:47
Lynch acknowledged the threat to the public. You couldn't not. Yeah. But, assured them that a competent task
00:27:52
force was pursuing the killer. He said, "Our law enforcement officers are competent. They are concerned, and
00:27:58
they will provide all the protection possible." And in an effort to quell public
00:28:02
hysteria, he told them the odds are that no tragedy will occur. But, it's like I feel like the odds are actually the
00:28:10
opposite at this point if we're actually like being real. If we're like really looking at this.
00:28:15
living in a place of reality, I feel like Cuz odds are that the Zodiac will strike
00:28:19
again Cuz if history has told us anything, he has. Yeah, let's be on alert. Luckily here, it worked out for him,
00:28:26
this statement. But, that I was like, "What was that based on?" Yeah. Anyway. Hm.
00:28:30
At the same time, he also issued an appeal to the Zodiac, urging the killer to turn himself in. He said, "He's
00:28:35
obviously an intelligent individual. He knows that eventually he'll be taken into custody, so it would be best that
00:28:41
he give himself up before tragedy is written in blood." Hm. That's the way you go about that.
00:28:46
go. And it's like that's the way to go about that. You do have to do a little like complimenting
00:28:53
and then you kind of threaten him a little bit. Like you know what I mean? There's a way to go about it.
00:28:57
Mhm. Lynch's assurances were more than just lip service though or him trying to simply placate a very increasingly
00:29:03
worried public. In Napa County, the school district's 64 school buses were given armed police escorts every day
00:29:11
as they covered roughly 4,000 miles transporting children to 28 different schools.
00:29:16
Damn. really put in like a lot of resources here. And additionally, a volunteer spotter
00:29:22
was added to every school bus and their job was to watch for any unusual activity along the bus route.
00:29:28
What a scary job. Yeah, seriously. But the statements and the press coverage of the manhunt prompted a
00:29:34
massive public outpouring and within a few days the San Francisco police had received hundreds of tips but none
00:29:41
provided any useful information. Mhm. Among the most bizarre was a call from a man claiming to be the killer and
00:29:48
offering a strange offer of surrender, basically. On October 21st, the caller told investigators he wanted them to
00:29:56
arrange for a nationally recognized lawyer, F. Lee Bailey, to appear on the local morning show, AM San Francisco,
00:30:03
the next morning and he said he would call in to discuss a possible surrender. And he said if Bailey's not available,
00:30:09
he would settle for California defense attorney Melvin Belli who had made a name for himself. He
00:30:14
actually represented Lee Harvey Oswald's assassin, Jack Ruby, and plenty of other
00:30:19
high-profile people. But San Francisco attempted to reach F. Lee Bailey, but when he was unavailable, they contacted
00:30:27
Belli and he happily agreed to appear on the show. A recording of the call was played for Bryan Hartnell who was one of
00:30:33
the last victims attacked in an effort to identify it as the man who had attacked him, but he wasn't able to
00:30:39
provide confirmation, unfortunately. So the next morning, host Jim Dunbar, who was joined by Melvin Belli, urged
00:30:46
regular listeners not to call in so that the lines would remain completely open for the killer.
00:30:51
For nearly an hour, the two men just chatted on air as they waited for this supposed killer to call, who finally
00:30:57
called in about 50 minutes into the show. In the clip, Belli can heard be heard saying, "Did you hear me?" And a
00:31:04
disembodied voice replies, "Yes, I did." And then hangs up the phone. Huh. A few minutes later, the man claiming to
00:31:09
be the Zodiac called back and they started a strange conversation where he told Belli to refer to him as Sam.
00:31:16
Like the name Sam. Interesting. Yeah. Throughout the conversation, both Dunbar and Belli tried to get some confirmation
00:31:23
that the caller was the man who had called the police the night before, if not the actual killer, but Sam, {quote}
00:31:28
{unquote}, dodged their questions and just continued insisting that he was the killer. He said, "I don't want to give
00:31:34
myself up. I want to kill those kids. I'm getting one of my headaches now. I've got to kill. I've got to kill."
00:31:39
Ooh. And this is just in like a morning show. Like, damn. That's the scariest thing ever.
00:31:45
Hello. Liter- Hello. After roughly 20 minutes, the caller told Belli, "Meet me on top
00:31:50
of the Fairmont Hotel with nobody else or I'll jump." No, thank you. So, Belli refused to meet the man on the
00:31:57
roof. you. But he said they they ended up agreeing on an alternate location. He was like,
00:32:02
"I'll meet you somewhere." So, they made plans to meet at 10:30 a.m., but when Belli arrived at this secret location,
00:32:08
there was no one there to meet him. Huh. He waited until 11:15, but when Sam, {quote} {unquote}, failed to show up, he
00:32:14
just abandoned the plan and left. Okay. Now, that Sam didn't show up at the agreed upon location didn't come as a
00:32:20
surprise to a lot of people. Captain Lee, not the Below Deck star, you were going to say that.
00:32:26
the reporter he that an officer, told reporters, "I think the caller has a problem, but whether he's involved in
00:32:32
the killings, I cannot say." Yeah. So, he was like, "I think this might just be a sick individual."
00:32:36
Makes sense. The dispatcher who had taken the call from the supposed killer the night
00:32:40
before listened to the audio from AM San Francisco and was certain that the voice
00:32:45
of the caller from the night before was not the same voice that called to speak to Belli.
00:32:49
Okay. According to the dispatcher, the caller quote revealed knowledge about one or
00:32:53
more of the five murders charged to the Zodiac that had never been made public. So she was like they told the dispatcher
00:33:00
said they said that the night before, but they didn't sound like the guy who called in.
00:33:04
So whether it was the killer who called or not, the opportunity to continue contact was lost once the show was over.
00:33:09
Ah. Unfortunately. So after the Belli interview on AM San Francisco, the Zodiac went quiet for a few weeks until
00:33:16
finally popping back up with a greeting card and yet another cipher Oh. sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.
00:33:23
Followed a day later by a rambling seven-page letter known now as the dripping pen card and the bus bomb
00:33:30
letter. The dripping pen card? pen card. Creepy. Very creepy. On the front of the
00:33:36
greeting card was an illustration of a wet fountain pen hanging up to dry and pre-printed text that said, "Sorry I
00:33:42
haven't written, but I just washed my pen." Wow. Like what? That's upsetting. I don't know why, but it is.
00:33:51
No, I know. That's like it's so [ __ ] creepy, but you can't explain why. Cuz sorry, but I just washed my pen.
00:33:58
Sorry, just washing my pen. Inside the card contained the pre-printed message, "And I can't do a thing with it."
00:34:06
No. So the card just said like on the front "Sorry, I just washed my pen and I can't
00:34:11
do a thing with it." Nope. I don't like that at all. What? I don't like it. Into this pre-printed message, the
00:34:18
killer added, "This is the Zodiac speaking." Which is a dumb thing to say because you're not speaking. And also
00:34:23
like We know. Yeah. Like you don't need to Yeah. You don't need to do that. It doesn't
00:34:30
need to be so official. He continued, uh I though, but it's supposed to say thought, you would need a good laugh
00:34:37
before you hear the bad news. You won't get the news for a while yet. PS, could you print this new cipher on your front
00:34:43
page? I get awfully lonely when I'm ignored, so lonely I could do my thing. And the do my thing?
00:34:50
So lonely I could do my thing. Exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark, exclamation mark. And
00:34:55
the word thing was written in bold dark letters and underlined six times. Huh. Yeah.
00:35:01
Underneath the text, the writer drew the crosshair symbol, of course, with some text beneath that read Dez, like
00:35:07
December, July, Aug, Sept, Oct = 7. So the dates on the bottom were quickly interpreted as a taunt to the police
00:35:15
with the killer trying to indicate that he had actually killed seven people, not
00:35:19
five. sense. According to author Michael Cole, there was a high-profile double murder in San
00:35:24
Jose on August 3rd, 1969. Two young women, Deborah Furlong and Kathy Snoozy, were savagely murdered, each being
00:35:32
stabbed more than a hundred times. Oh my what? Yeah. Holy [ __ ] And Cole claims there are many who
00:35:39
believe these two be the Zodiac's sixth and seventh victims, but there's no evidence conclusively linking him to
00:35:46
either murder. Interesting. And actually several years later, a man named Karl Werner pleaded guilty to the
00:35:51
murders of Furlong and Snoo- and Snoozy as well as a third victim. Oh, okay. Who knows.
00:35:57
All right. But the second letter received by the Examiner which was much different than
00:36:01
anything the Zodiac had sent before. Among the more obvious differences, according to Cole, was that the previous
00:36:07
communication, quote, had been noticeably matter-of-fact and somewhat detached, but this letter exhibited a
00:36:13
clear sense of palpable hostility, primarily at law enforcement. The letter read in part, "This is the
00:36:19
Zodiac speaking. Up to the end of October, I have killed seven people. I have grown rather angry with the police
00:36:25
for telling their lies about me. So, I shall challenge the way of collecting slaves. I shall no longer announce to
00:36:31
anyone when I commit my murders, they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger plus a few fake
00:36:36
accidents, etc. The police shall never catch me because I've been too clever for them. If you wonder why I was wiping
00:36:43
the cab down, I was leaving fake clues for the police to run all over town with. As one might say, I gave the cops
00:36:49
some uh busy work to keep them happy. Hey pig, doesn't it rile you up to have your nose rubbed in your boo-boos? If
00:36:56
you cops think I'm going to take on a bus in the way I stated I was, you deserve to have holes in your heads.
00:37:02
For someone using the term um boo-boos, that's very aggressive. Boo-boos. aggressive letter for someone using the
00:37:11
word boo-boos. That's upsetting and I don't like it. Like nothing about that is uh something
00:37:31
I want to be around. I don't like that the fact that he's saying I'm going to make them look like routine
00:37:38
robberies and accidents and [ __ ] so you can't trace them to an actual murder or
00:37:45
trace them back to me is so scary. It's so scary and it's possible he did that. Well, that's the thing. I'm like, so did
00:37:51
you do that? Because remember, like I said, Paul's dad is the last official victim.
00:37:55
Yeah. But did he kill like who knows how many other people he could have killed and
00:38:00
made it look like accidents, robberies. Cuz there's a degree here where people are
00:38:06
like, I don't even know that he's not intelligent. Like look at all the grammatical mistakes he makes. I think
00:38:10
those are on purpose. Yeah. Possibly. And it's like he has gotten away so far, so he does know how to make things look
00:38:18
a certain way, you know? Yeah. I mean, he definitely I think he was capable of making things
00:38:23
look like accidents. So it's like he's he's at the very least capable of doing that.
00:38:28
Right. And but then you also have to look at it like the Jack the Ripper letters and you
00:38:33
have to say which ones are from him, which ones are copycats cuz you know there's always going to be some
00:38:40
you know, level of people who want to get involved with this [ __ ] Oh yeah, and there and we'll get into
00:38:44
it. There were plenty of letters that were sent that were not from the Zodiac. one is talking about the seven victims
00:38:51
again. It's talking about wiping down the Wiping down the cab and there were certain things that were not made uh
00:38:57
that the public was not made aware of. Yeah. So it's interesting but to the whole
00:39:02
ending of like if you cops think I'm going to take a bus in the way I stated I was, you deserve to have holes in your
00:39:08
heads. It's like woah. And it's also like why wouldn't we think that? Well, it's like that's
00:39:13
Like I don't get what your aim is there. Are you trying to say that you do have a
00:39:17
victim profile and like that's totally against it? So like you're dumb for thinking I was serious?
00:39:23
Yeah, I I mean I guess. it's him being like oh you just don't get my humor. Maybe.
00:39:27
Like to him that's humor. Maybe yeah, you know. I mean cuz he's a sick individual.
00:39:31
I feel like that's him being like like you don't get my highbrow humor, you know, like that's that feels like
00:39:38
that. It does, yeah. Yeah. Well, the letter goes on to describe the killer's new plan where he would place a
00:39:43
bomb described as a quote death machine and quote my masterpiece on a local bus.
00:39:48
Oh. And the letter included a list of components used to create the bomb as well as a kind of crude diagram in the
00:39:55
same blue felt tip pen used to write the letter. Mhm. The letter ended in a postscript
00:39:59
instructing the editors to print the diagram of the bomb and on the back final page was a second postscript that
00:40:06
said, "To prove that I am the Zodiac, ask that Vallejo cop about my electric gun sight which I used to start my
00:40:12
collecting of slaves." It's It's so weird to me when killers do this. Yeah, like taunt like this.
00:40:21
Because it's such like it feels like such 12-year-old kid behavior to be like ask him ask him
00:40:31
Yeah, I did that. I mean like it's just like It's like in his mind he's like a supervillain, not a murderer.
00:40:39
Yeah, it's like it's very strange. It's such immature behavior. It is. begging for attention for these awful
00:40:46
things you have done. Oh, and he keeps doing acting out like child acting out in a
00:40:51
negative way for any kind of attention Yes. situation. So I'm just like what the
00:40:55
it's so weird when they do this. No, it's bizarre. Yeah. Well, 6 weeks or so later on December
00:41:00
20th, the 1-year anniversary of David Faraday and Betty Jensen's murders, the Zodiac wrote again. This time to Melvin
00:41:06
Belli. In the now-familiar blue felt-tip pen uh in much better handwriting though. He
00:41:12
wrote that he writes with blue ink. Yeah. I'm sorry. I hate blue ink. I don't like
00:41:16
blue ink either. I get Yeah, I get frustrated with blue ink. But he wrote and again in much better
00:41:21
handwriting. Interesting. He said, "Dear Melvin, this is the Zodiac speaking. I wish uh you I wish
00:41:26
you a happy Christmas." Spelled incorrectly, the same way he had in the first letter.
00:41:30
"The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me. I cannot reach out for help because of this in me won't let me.
00:41:36
I'm finding it extremely difficult to hold it in check. I am afraid I will lose control again and take my ninth and
00:41:42
possibly 10th victim. Please help me, I am drowning. At the time at the moment the children are safe from the bomb
00:41:49
because it is so massive to dig it in. Plus the trigger mech requires much work to get it adjusted just right. But if I
00:41:57
hold back too long from 09, I will lose all control of myself plus set the bomb up. Please
00:42:04
help me, I cannot remain in control for much longer." That one was really hard to read because
00:42:08
the grammatical errors are a plenty. Yeah. The letter was signed with the same crosshairs now common among all Zodiac
00:42:17
letters and it included another swatch of fabric from Paul Stine's shirt. That's [ __ ] up.
00:42:22
Which meant it wasn't authentic letter. It's he's like devolving in such a strange way.
00:42:29
Yes. Like they're so different. Like you from that one where he's like, "Oh, I think
00:42:34
like shooting the kitties as they bounce out of school will be fun." And then here he's like, "I don't want to kill
00:42:39
anyone. I need help. help." And you're like, "What the fuck?" But he's still saying he's making this
00:42:44
bomb, but like it's too much work and he Yeah. if he can't get help, he's going to use
00:42:49
it. do it. And his first letter that he wrote like a long time ago was like saying how killing people was something
00:42:56
he loved to do and it gave him excitement. It was better than sex. But now he doesn't want to. And now here
00:43:00
he's like, "I don't want to take my ninth and 10th victims." And it's like, "What the What is happening?" This is
00:43:05
some scattered thinking. It is. Whoever this individual was, they were sick and scary.
00:43:14
All of the above. Yeah. A few days later, Melvin Belli contacted the Chronicle who did agree to
00:43:19
publish his response to the Zodiac on the front page of the December 20th 28th edition of the paper.
00:43:25
Belli said, "You have asked for my help and I promise you I will do everything in my power to provide you with whatever
00:43:30
help you may need or want." He offered to meet the killer in a private location of his choosing. But as the days passed
00:43:37
without a response, it became clear that the Zodiac had no intention of actually
00:43:41
turning himself in or meeting with Belli. You wonder if that was just a ploy to get him to
00:43:48
Get a response. Yeah. And to get a response that's like, "We'll help you. We'll do whatever you
00:43:53
want." You know, like that gives him the what he needs. And I think it probably would have made
00:43:57
him like laugh, like chuckle. I think it makes him feel powerful because he just got them all to tuck
00:44:02
their tails between their legs and say, "Would you And I'm not saying that against them
00:44:07
No. what else did they What other choice did they have? Yeah, they're scared that he's going to
00:44:11
put a bomb on the bus. yourself. Go kill some kids." Like Right. They're not going to set him up for
00:44:15
that. So, it's like it's not their fault, but that is what he wanted, I think. Yep.
00:44:19
I agree. After the letter was sent to Belly in late December, communication from the
00:44:24
Zodiac ceased for several months until a pair of letters showed up at the offices
00:44:28
of the Chronicle in late April about a week apart. Uh like the other letters, the latest
00:44:34
seemed to be an attempt to manipulate the press into keeping the story alive on the front pages because remember,
00:44:40
there's no new leads. He hasn't killed anybody that the police can link to him. So, this isn't being reported on exactly
00:44:46
how it was when it was like when everybody was in the thick of it. But in these letters, the Zodiac
00:44:52
demanded that investigators release, quote, all of the details of his bus bomb threat and called on San
00:44:57
Franciscans to wear uh to start wearing, quote, some nice Zodiac buttons. Oh, this he is delulu in a way that you
00:45:05
can't even And it's just it's like spiraling out of control. It's power. He's looking for power. He's
00:45:11
looking to be in control. That's why he's going to be like, "Let me see if I can get people to start wearing buttons
00:45:17
with my signature like with my logo there on it." You know what I mean? Like, "Let me see how far I can flex
00:45:23
this power I have over everybody." Just the fact that he thought that people might be willing to do that is so
00:45:28
wild. he scared if he scared people enough that they would think they were safe if
00:45:33
they wore those buttons. Like, "We're listening to you. We'll do what you say." Right.
00:45:37
Cuz he just saw them bend and say, "We'll help you however we can. We'll do whatever you want. What do you want?" He
00:45:43
says, "Print it on the front page." They print it on the front page. So, he's sitting there going, "How far can I take
00:45:48
this? I'll get them to wear buttons." So, this is power. This is all power. Like, I've ne- This is such a clear
00:45:54
case of power trip. It is in the worst way possible. Yeah. Well, the April letters repeated their
00:46:01
earlier claims that the killer had developed a massive bomb and was planning to leave it in an undisclosed
00:46:06
public location in order to cause now he said the most damage possible. Like the previous threats, this
00:46:12
obviously caused considerable panic among the public, but after a few weeks without any kind of
00:46:18
evidence about an actual bomb, things slowly started to return to normal. And like the previous letters, the April
00:46:24
letters stated that the killer had taken more lives, of course, but the police had yet to catch on. He said, "I've
00:46:30
killed 10 people to date. It would have been uh a lot more except I was swamped out by
00:46:34
the rain we had a while back." The [ __ ] Like, okay. Oh, cool. More letters followed a few months
00:46:41
later. In late June, the editor of the Chronicle received a note along with a new cipher saying, "This is the Zodiac
00:46:47
speaking. I've become very upset with the people of the San Fran Bay Area. They have not complied with my wishes
00:46:52
for them to wear some nice crosshair symbols button. I promise to punish them if they did not comply by annihilating a
00:46:59
a full school bus. But now school is out for the summer, so I punished them in another way. I shot a man sitting in a
00:47:05
parked car with a .38." Oh. Now, this is interesting. Yeah. The note was signed with the usual
00:47:12
crosshair symbol, of course, and text indicating that the Zodiac had now killed 12 people
00:47:17
and was accompanied by what would be his fourth and final cipher. So, a lot of people think that the line
00:47:23
about the man being shot in his car with a .38 was a reference to the June 19th death of 25-year-old San Francisco
00:47:31
police officer I looked up his name, I'm not positive. There's a few different pronunciations, but I think the best one
00:47:36
is Richard Radick. Okay. Right? Yeah. So, around 5:30 a.m. this officer was sitting in his car and had started
00:47:44
writing a parking ticket for a vehicle parked in front of him or sorry, parked in front of a hydrant when an unknown
00:47:50
assailant uh approached him from behind and fired three shots through the driver's side window.
00:47:55
Damn. Yeah. It is worth noting though referencing the first five murders in his letters,
00:48:00
the Zodiac offered some form of evidence that validated his claims. Mhm. Like an unpublished detail or in the
00:48:07
case of Paul Stein's murder a piece of physical evidence. But the claims made in the letter since Paul Stein's death
00:48:13
didn't include any verifications and he probably could have he very likely did learn about them through the press.
00:48:20
Oh, so there you go. Yeah. But still the letters are believed to have been sent by the Zodiac himself.
00:48:25
Okay. So who knows? It's possible. Two more letters were sent that year. One to the
00:48:30
Chronicle on October 5th and another to Chronicle writer Paul Avery directly on October 27th. Like the others these
00:48:37
letters seem to be an attempt to keep the story on the front page as a power move since it had started to be replaced
00:48:43
by other more pressing matters. The difference in the case of the October 27th letter though
00:48:48
was that it was one of the rare instances where the killer addressed a single person. The only other time he
00:48:53
had really done that was when it was Marvin uh Melvin Belli. Oh, yeah. In this case the killer sent a Halloween
00:48:59
card to Avery who had done the bulk of the reporting on the Zodiac for the Chronicle and made a vague threat on his
00:49:05
life. Oh. But in an interview Paul Avery said, "I'm really not scared. I've needled him
00:49:09
in some of my stories. Maybe that's why he wrote me." I love that. He's just like whatever.
00:49:14
He's like I'm not afraid. That's fine. I'd be [ __ ] I needled him. terrified. Five months after Avery received the
00:49:20
Halloween card threatening his life, the editor of the Los Angeles Times received
00:49:24
its first letters uh letter from the killer. In the latest letter the killer noted the number of victims was now 17.
00:49:31
So he's going up like exponentially. just going to say that was a jump. And he said, "The reason that I'm
00:49:36
writing to the Times is this. They don't bury me on the back pages like some of the others."
00:49:41
Wow. Uh he used this as an opportunity obviously to declare a high a higher victim number.
00:49:46
Of course. It was mostly yet another letter taunting the police who had failed to
00:49:50
make any significant progress on the case. He said, "Like I've always said, I'm I'm crack-proof. If the blue meanies
00:49:57
Wow. are ever going to catch me, they had best do something because the longer they fiddle around, the more slaves I
00:50:02
will collect for my afterlife." Ew. I hate that that's like what he's claiming this is for.
00:50:09
To go from boo-boos to blue meanies? I'm like, you were calling them pigs at one point. Like, that's rude and like
00:50:16
shitty. Now you've Now you're saying blue meanies? He feels like he has like and I I by no
00:50:22
means armchair diagnosing anybody. I'm just saying that in these letters, it seems like there's different
00:50:28
personalities coming through. No, I completely agree. some of them are much like the one
00:50:32
pleading for help. Yeah. And please stop and then the next one is like, "It's better than sex." And then
00:50:38
there's one that's just like, "My boo-boos." And then the other one's like, "Blue meanies, pigs." Like, it's
00:50:42
just like, "What?" It's It's very It's various different tones. like there's very different people
00:50:47
coming through here but the same person. Yeah, there's some kind of like mood disorder or something going on here.
00:50:53
Something going on. But after sending the letter to the LA Times, the Zodiac went quiet for almost
00:50:57
3 years until the Chronicle received what would prove to be the final communication from the Zodiac himself on
00:51:04
January 29th, 1974. In his latest communication postmarked from the Santa Clara from Santa Clara
00:51:10
County, the Zodiac gave no indication of why he'd gone silent for such a long period of time, which is interesting and
00:51:17
we'll touch on it later. Mhm. But instead, he offered only three thoughts. He said, "I saw and think The
00:51:23
Exorcist was the best satirical comedy I've ever seen." Signed, "Yours truly." He plunged himself into the billowy wave
00:51:30
and echo aroused from the suicider's grove, tit willow, tit willow, tit willow. P.S. I If I do not see the note
00:51:37
in your paper, I will do something nasty which you know I'm capable of doing. Wow.
00:51:42
So now he's just like, "I'll just do something." He's like, "I'll Yeah, I'll come up with
00:51:45
something nasty, you know I will." That just I'm like did is that where Beetlejuice got it?
00:51:51
Oh. Maybe. Is that where like The Exorcist? And it gets funnier every time I've seen it.
00:51:57
Maybe. Yeah. Good call. As soon as I heard that I was like Beetlejuice? What? Oh [ __ ] that's creepy. I hate that.
00:52:05
Uh cuz I mean that's exactly what he says essentially. It is, yeah. Yeah. Well, that makes it even scarier,
00:52:11
Beetlejuice. like oh god. In small script on the bottom right corner of the page he included me 37
00:52:17
SFPD zero. Like San Francisco Police Department. So now he's claiming he's killed 37 people.
00:52:22
I mean and at this point though too, it's like who knows? He might have. Yeah. Additionally, the signature on the
00:52:28
letter wasn't the actual um recognizable crosshair symbol this time. A series of
00:52:33
strange markings that looked like maybe Chinese or Japanese writing, but they've
00:52:37
never been identified as any known language. Scary. Yeah. What is probably the most noticeable and
00:52:45
unusual about the final Zodiac letter isn't the missing signature, but the lack of any real substance. Because in
00:52:52
the past the letters sent by the killer were sent to claim one of his murders, to taunt the police, or you know, give
00:52:58
the press some kind of [ __ ] puzzle to solve. Yeah. But here he just makes a snarky joke
00:53:02
about The Exorcist, which had been released in theaters a couple months earlier. And then he just quotes line
00:53:08
from the Rodgers and Hammerstein play The Mikado and makes what feels like we were just saying is like a pretty vague
00:53:13
threat of violence just for the hell of it. Yeah, just to do Yeah. But the letter has been analyzed
00:53:19
thoroughly and it is believed by law enforcement officials to be authentic. why. Like what about that feels
00:53:24
authentic? I don't know if it was like maybe the blue felt pen or something. Yeah, sure.
00:53:32
I know that one I'm not positive about, especially the fact that it didn't have the crosshair symbol.
00:53:36
That's what I'm like this feels very Jack the Rippery where it's like yeah, it's totally a real one.
00:53:40
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know about that. The one I don't I mean, like obviously handwriting
00:53:44
analysis is a real thing, but it's also like a tricky science, so definitely be tricky.
00:53:48
I don't know. But the Chronicle did publish the letter in full either way. They left out the strange markings on
00:53:53
the bottom though at the request of the San Francisco police. But in the years that followed investigators would
00:53:59
receive hundreds if not thousands of letters and cards claiming to come from the Zodiac. But as far as investigators
00:54:05
are concerned, this was the last time any news outlet or law enforcement agency would hear from the Zodiac.
00:54:11
Interesting. Yeah. So who the [ __ ] was this guy? Yeah. We got to talk about it.
00:54:16
We do. So obviously a lot of the Zodiac story is, you know, result of the media attention, the public fascination that
00:54:22
surrounded the case, but at the same time there's also a massive and very long-ranging investigation or there was
00:54:29
that went on behind the scenes. Countless law enforcement officers from local cops to FBI all worked together to
00:54:35
try to stop him. Their efforts obviously didn't make it into the endless stream of press
00:54:40
coverage because there wasn't a lot to say beyond we don't really have much to go on, but we're trying.
00:54:45
Well, you don't want to be like here's what they're doing to catch him because he's just going to be like cool.
00:54:49
First, they started here. Then, they went here. And like we know he had left some
00:54:54
evidence behind at the crime scene and he provided some clues throughout everything that he was doing, but they
00:55:00
never got any major major breaks in the case. But there were actually at least 13 other murders where the Zodiac was
00:55:06
briefly considered a suspect. Mhm. It's just that they could never be confidently connected. He could never
00:55:12
confidently be connected to the Which is what he wanted. Yep. And while it's true that there were
00:55:16
never any major breaks in the case like I just said, there have been close to 2,500 suspects over the course of the
00:55:23
case. That's horrible. Which is wild. terrible. Yeah, over 2,500 in general with at
00:55:30
least a handful of them being considered by investigators to be serious. Wow. Yeah.
00:55:50
But with a suspect list so long and one that includes a number of actually high-profile killers like Ted Kaczynski
00:55:56
and Charles Manson, it would be pretty impossible for us to sit here and go through every single
00:56:00
suspect. Yeah. So we're going to get into the three most popular suspects. Just kidding. We're going to sit down
00:56:06
and we're going to go through 2,500 of the suspects. Okay, are you sitting down?
00:56:11
Does anybody have to go to the bathroom? The next 3 years of Morbid is going to be just dedicated to suspects of the
00:56:17
Zodiac killer. Okay, so today we're going to Can you imagine? All right, so the first one is Richard
00:56:22
Gaikowski. When the Zodiac murders started, he was living in the San Francisco area. He had been living there
00:56:28
for about 6 years and he was working as the editor at the popular newspaper Good
00:56:33
Times. Good times. Good times, man. He would have been within a short distance of two of the
00:56:38
Zodiac crime scenes, which were the Lake Herman Road and the Blue Rock Springs attacks.
00:56:43
He does bear a resemblance to the sketches of the Zodiac released in the press. And
00:56:50
all of the evidence against him is circumstantial, but some of it is pretty compelling.
00:56:54
So when Mageau gave his statement to the police after his attack, he mentioned that he had actually been chased by one
00:57:00
of Darlene's former boyfriends just before they were assaulted that night. Huh. Yeah.
00:57:06
He said, "I thought he drove off and drove away, but he he came back later and shot us." So that's he really
00:57:12
thought it was that person. And he does resemble the sketch. He does. He very much does. And Mike
00:57:17
continued, "She told me it was a friend of hers and he was just jealous. She mentioned his name and she referred to
00:57:21
him as Richard." Mhm. And later Darlene Ferrin's sister Diane claimed her sister did in fact have a
00:57:27
former boyfriend named Richard who was a journalist. Oh. So those two things link up.
00:57:31
Interesting. Now, another uh circumstantial piece of evidence, Nancy Slover, I think it is, a
00:57:37
former police dispatcher who took the call from the Zodiac after the Faraday murder, after Darlene's murder.
00:57:44
She listened to a tape of Gaikowski's voice in 2009, and she was very confident that it was the same voice she
00:57:50
heard on the night of the murder. Interesting. She said, "I listened to the voice of
00:57:55
Richard, and I felt shock and deja vu. In my opinion, he was the same person I listened to in July of 1969."
00:58:01
Wow. This one, this next one creeps me out. It will give you the chills. Paul Stine,
00:58:08
the young cab driver who was murdered, his sister claimed that a man resembling Gaikowski was at her brother's funeral,
00:58:15
but she had no idea, like she had no way of knowing who he was at the time. Oh, [ __ ]
00:58:20
later, when it was brought to her attention, she was like, "Oh, I saw somebody that looked just like that."
00:58:25
Well, and if you look at the police sketch, like look at the composite, and you look at there's like a picture of
00:58:31
Gaikowski where he's making the exact same face as the composite, cuz in the composite, the like the one where the
00:58:38
mouth is closed, he's doing almost like a little like hm, like a little like smirk, like a like a sneer.
00:58:44
Yeah. Almost, but it's like very subtle. There's a picture where he's doing the same thing with his mouth.
00:58:49
Hold on, I'm looking. And the eyebrows are very similar, like they're that low set eyebrow.
00:58:54
Mm. And he's got the same glasses. He does have the same glasses. Like even the hairline is the same.
00:59:01
Yeah. Like And like the the narrowness of the forehead. Yeah. Like the the hairline and the
00:59:08
narrowness, like that's that's pretty crazy. Yeah, even the lips look very similar.
00:59:14
and the way he does that little slight sneer with his lips. It's pretty It's pretty compelling. That That's
00:59:20
compelling, at least. It is. Well, the last um like big piece of circumstantial uh evidence against
00:59:27
him, a lot of his co-workers at Good Times found him to be pretty strange. And in 1971, they actually filed
00:59:33
paperwork to have him involuntarily committed to the Napa State Mental Hospital.
00:59:38
Woah. And there he was diagnosed with an undisclosed mental illness, but that hospitalization would have coincided
00:59:44
with the drop-off in communication from the Zodiac in 1971. Okay. And remember, when he came back, he
00:59:51
didn't say [ __ ] all about where he had been. Like when they got the next letter.
00:59:57
So, that's interesting. That's a compelling one. That's interesting. He was investigated
01:00:02
by the FBI after Darlene Ferrin's murder, but told investigators that he was out of the country at the time,
01:00:07
which effectively ruled him out as a suspect. But, according to amateur investigator Tom Voigt, Gaikowski had
01:00:13
actually lost his passport just before the murders, so it wouldn't have been possible for him to leave the country.
01:00:19
Oh my guys. Yeah. This one seems like It seems very compelling. And Voigt alleges that the FBI never
01:00:28
bothered to follow up on Gaikowski's alibi, but if they had, they wouldn't have ruled him out.
01:00:32
Hey FBI, what the [ __ ] Honestly. And after being released from the Napa State Hospital, Gaikowski went back to
01:00:39
San Francisco, where he just opened a small movie theater and a store and managed a few local punk bands, which is
01:00:45
just wild, while also advocating for progressive political issues. Huh. So, maybe he did get some kind of
01:00:52
treatment that helped him in the hospital and maybe like obviously speculating here, but maybe received
01:00:57
ongoing treatment. Woah. That got him in check. Woah. Uh but he did pass away in 2004.
01:01:03
And at least one former co-worker has been very vocal about him being the Zodiac,
01:01:09
but he's never been seriously investigated by law enforcement. Yeah. That's wild.
01:01:15
If anyone that you know, like if you if you think someone's the Zodiac, you know a wild ass person.
01:01:22
Yeah, that's the thing. I can't imagine one of my friends being a serial killer.
01:01:25
I can't imagine one of my friends being like, "I think that like you might be a notorious serial killer."
01:01:30
Yeah. Like if somebody thinks that, then like you've really done some stuff. Yeah. You really You really showed your
01:01:36
ass in that relationship. that phrase. I think that phrase is so funny. Cuz I mean it's it is a perfect
01:01:42
description. It is. Yeah. I think he's very compelling, but our our next one is Gary Francis Post.
01:01:50
In 2021, an independent group of retired investigators known as the Case Breakers, which I love.
01:01:56
This That's amazing. It reminds me of in Yellowjackets with like the That was thinking of. I almost said it.
01:02:02
Like the web sleuths. Yes. Well, they identified Gary Francis Post as the man who was most likely to have
01:02:07
been the Zodiac Killer. Uh he was a former member of the US Air Force, and he had a very long history of very
01:02:14
violent behavior, including a history of domestic violence. He lived within a 15-minute drive of
01:02:19
several crime scenes while the murders were taking place. And like Richard Gaikowski, the case against Post is
01:02:26
built entirely on circumstantial evidence and has been refuted by the FBI, but he remains a popular suspect
01:02:33
with the Case Breakers and just people who enjoy true crime in general. Mhm. Uh according to the group Case Breakers,
01:02:39
photos showed Mr. Post with supposed scars on his forehead that they believed matched the marks shown on a police
01:02:45
sketch of the Zodiac Killer. Mhm. And that's among a handful of facts related to physical evidence that they
01:02:51
makes him a strong suspect. Others uh include the fact that a size 10 military boot military-style boot print was
01:02:58
discovered at one of the crime scenes, and that was similar to the style of boots that he was known to have worn at
01:03:04
the time. So, that's interesting. Okay. Uh also a Timex watch band was discovered at one of the crime scenes,
01:03:10
which investigators believe was purchased at a military base around the mid to late '60s, which is when he would
01:03:16
have been in the military. Perhaps maybe the most important, at least as far as the case breakers are
01:03:21
concerned, is his supposed link to the murder of Sherry Jo Bates, an 18-year-old girl who was killed in
01:03:27
Riverside in 1966. That fall she started her first year at Riverside Community College and the last
01:03:33
time she was seen was when she was studying at the library on the night of October 30th.
01:03:39
The next morning a groundskeeper on the campus had just started street sweeping when he came across her body in an alley
01:03:46
on campus. And police believe her killer had disabled her vehicle and then waited for
01:03:51
her to go back to her car, which is so [ __ ] terrifying. At some point in the life of the Zodiac
01:03:57
case, Sherry Jo Bates was considered actually to be one of the victims linked to the Zodiac. And the case breakers
01:04:04
believe that Post was responsible for her death. Given the link between her murder and
01:04:09
the Zodiac and his history of violent behavior and enthusiasm for guns and military propaganda, they think he's the
01:04:16
best best suspect. But despite their enthusiasm, investigators on the Zodiac case
01:04:22
completely reject their theory and they ruled him out completely as a suspect. Yeah. In 2021, a spokesperson for the
01:04:29
Riverside police said, "In 2016 investigators received an anonymous letter from a person admitting the
01:04:35
handwritten letter sent to our department months after Sherry Jo Bates was murdered was written as a sick joke
01:04:40
and that he was not the Zodiac killer." Which [ __ ] up. That's not any kind of joke. That's ridiculous.
01:04:47
Riverside police officer Ryan Railsback went a step further when he told ABC News, "We don't know how we can be any
01:04:53
more clear. The $50,000 private reward is still valid. If someone has any information on the Bates case, please
01:05:00
come forward." So he was like, "It's not this guy. Like we we looked at him." That one doesn't
01:05:05
um doesn't uh compel me any further. No, I feel the same way. So, the FBI and the Riverside police and
01:05:13
me and Elena might have ruled Gary Post out as a Zodiac suspect, but the Case Breakers remain committed to their
01:05:19
belief that he is the guy. In an interview with Post's former neighbor, referred only to as Gwenny,
01:05:25
the woman told the reporters he, meaning Gary, lived a double life. As a As I'm an adult thinking back it all kind of
01:05:31
makes sense now. At the time when I was a teenager, I didn't put two and two together until I got older. It hit me
01:05:36
full blown like Gary's the Zodiac. I One of my This case is so wild because it's so
01:05:44
different from any other case where people just confidently indict people to be the Zodiac.
01:05:51
So, that guy over there. In this case they're literally like, "Yeah, it just [ __ ] hit me like a ton
01:05:55
of bricks that um Gary over there is the Zodiac." And it's just like, "You literally can't say
01:06:01
that. You can't do that." That is quite an indictment, ma'am. You just can't Like that's like, "My
01:06:06
neighbor's annoying. I the Zodiac." It's just like What are we doing? And just to be like
01:06:12
I never thought about it before, but what? The Case Breakers said it. It just Zodiac.
01:06:16
Tap tap. Period. That guy's the Zodiac. And it's just like, you literally can't do that.
01:06:21
That's lawless. But it's just this is the only This is the case that that really happens
01:06:26
Yes. so often and has happened for decades. Yeah. For decades people have not just been
01:06:32
like, "Oh, I think this person should be looked at as the Zodiac." People are like, "That is the Zodiac killer."
01:06:39
man right there is the Zodiac killer. It's wild. It's fascinating to watch. It is. It's It's also scary.
01:06:46
It's very scary. Humans do crazy [ __ ] We're wildin'. Well, this next one and last one that
01:06:51
we'll talk about is also very interesting. The Guy Kowski suspect is a strong one.
01:06:57
my guy. He's strong. Post, not so much. This one, back to strong. Okay. This is Arthur Leigh Allen.
01:07:04
So, Guy Kowski and Post may top the list of amateur investigators, but as far as
01:07:09
the members of the actual Zodiac task force were concerned, the most compelling suspect, and the only person
01:07:15
to ever be publicly identified by investigators, was former elementary school teacher Arthur Leigh Allen.
01:07:22
I hate that. Yeah, I hate that he was an elementary school teacher. that a lot. He served in the US Navy, and he was
01:07:28
honorably discharged in 1959. And 2 years later, in 1961, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, yeah, found work
01:07:35
as a teacher until he was fired in 1968 when a student made accusations of sexual misconduct.
01:07:43
Oh. Weirdly, he was generally well-liked, but a lot of people in later years did
01:07:48
find him to be strange. Okay. And later, friends and neighbors would find similarities between the things
01:07:53
that the Zodiac wrote in letters and comments made by Allen over the years. Just like the way he spoke and certain
01:08:00
things he would say. It should also be said that Allen was the number one suspect for the lead
01:08:05
detective on the case, who was Dave Toschi, and also a former San Francisco Chronicle writer, Robert Graysmith, who
01:08:12
covered the case extensively for the paper. He also believed that this was like the number one guy.
01:08:17
Really? In a 2007 interview, Graysmith said, "Dave and George Bawart of the Vallejo
01:08:22
police, they're convinced the Zodiac is Arthur Leigh Allen." And Graysmith and others who believe
01:08:27
that Allen was the killer are not just speculating. They do cite some pretty compelling evidence.
01:08:33
On the day of the attack at Lake uh Lake Berryessa, Arthur Leigh Allen was known
01:08:38
to be only one of nine people to visit the lake that day. Wow. That's compelling.
01:08:43
Yeah. Also on that same day, a Vallejo police officer pulled him over for speeding
01:08:47
that afternoon, like the same uh day as the attack at the lake. And when the officer looked in the back of Allen's
01:08:53
car, he discovered a bloody hunting knife, which Allen said he used to kill chickens.
01:09:00
Oh. Yep. Before the killings Allen frequently bragged to his friends that he was, quote, "going to hunt
01:09:06
couples at night, send letters to the press, and call himself Zodiac." Before any of this happened.
01:09:15
I mean, whoa. Allen's coworker, Don Cheney, told police about these statements and
01:09:19
voluntarily took and passed a polygraph. Wow. Yeah. In 1971, Cheney reported Allen to the
01:09:29
police after he made several alarming statements indicating a, quote, "desire to commit violence," some of which, like
01:09:36
thing some of the things he was saying were similar to statements made in the Zodiac letters. He said, quote, "That
01:09:42
phrase about picking the little darlings off, I remembered that, and that's what
01:09:45
forced me to go to the police." What This is compelling. Compelling, right? Yeah.
01:09:52
Uh after their interview with Cheney in 1971, police actually interviewed Allen a number of times, and they searched his
01:09:58
home where they discovered hunting knives inside, as well as a freezer of dead hamsters, squirrels, and birds.
01:10:06
Dead hamsters? I don't know, man. But, yeah. And in 1991, they searched his home
01:10:13
again, and this time they found, quote, "some writings, some pipe bombs, and some illegal weapons."
01:10:20
Oh. Yeah. Vallejo Police Captain Roy Conway told the San Francisco Chronicle in 1992, "None of it was sufficient to make
01:10:27
an arrest for him being the Zodiac." Huh. Yeah. Now, in 2002, DNA and fingerprint
01:10:35
analysis was conducted comparing Allen's DNA and fingerprints to those found on the Zodiac letters, and they were not a
01:10:41
match, which ruled him out as a suspect. But, I don't know. I don't know. This one's weird.
01:10:48
Yeah. Despite that finding, in 2018, Vallejo Police Detective Terry Poser told reporters, "Our Vallejo suspect, Allen,
01:10:55
is probably still the best lead. There are probably 30 different circumstantial things that point to him. He was
01:11:00
extremely intelligent but a deviant dude. Unfortunately, he died of natural causes
01:11:06
in 1992. Guys. Yeah. Now, in 2004, the case was officially made inactive by higher-ups at the San
01:11:15
Francisco Police Department. They explained that their caseload required them to just set aside some older
01:11:20
unsolved cases. It makes sense. But, in 2007, the case was reopened when investigators wanted additional DNA
01:11:27
testing. And in 2018, after the capture of Joseph James James DeAngelo, the Golden State Killer, using familiar DNA
01:11:35
to testing, another profile was put together actually using the DNA from samples from the Zodiac letters. But,
01:11:43
the results weren't conclusive. Of course they were. Yeah. But, as of now, the case does
01:11:47
remain open with the FBI. Holy [ __ ] And that is the infamous Zodiac case. I Gaikowski is still my is the one that
01:11:59
hits. Gaikowski hits really, really hard. Yeah. He's up there. Especially the fact that he was like
01:12:06
involuntarily put in a hospital. And it lines up with the timing. Because there is some mental illness in
01:12:13
that in those letters. Absolutely. The number one thing for me are the number like tied for number one pieces
01:12:20
of evidence against Arthur Leigh Allen are the fact that he was at like Berryessa that day. And only one of nine
01:12:25
people. Yeah. And then, the fact that he got pulled over that afternoon and had a bloody
01:12:30
hunting knife. Yeah, that's pretty wild. Like He doesn't look like the sketch. I know. And well, and Richard Gaikowski,
01:12:38
like He literally looks identical. He looks exactly like the sketch. Not that I'm just going off the sketch.
01:12:43
No, you can't just go off that, but when you go when you have all of those other circumstantial pieces of evidence
01:12:48
that we talked about, and then he looks like the sketch. looks exactly like it. It's like, "Hmm,
01:12:52
yeah. That is interesting." It's so interesting, too. Like, it's so weird cuz you hear like Zodiac and in
01:12:59
your mind you're like, "He killed like so many people." But there's only and it's awful, but there's only five that
01:13:05
are confirmed. You just wonder how many people he actually killed. Yeah, cuz he claimed like somewhere in
01:13:11
the 30s. Yeah, I think it ended up being like 37, something like that. And it's like
01:13:16
I don't people were connected? That's the thing. And again, like the police came out and said themselves
01:13:22
there were cases that were considered, but they just couldn't conclusively link them.
01:13:27
just like scary. Freaks you out. It's a very wild, very interesting case. I mean, they solved the Golden State
01:13:36
Killer case after how many years? Nope. Like you always say, a cold case is never cold.
01:13:42
Never cold. Yeah. You just got to warm it up a little. Just thaw it out, you know.
01:13:46
So, thaw that out, guys. Yeah. And we hope you keep listening. And I think we hope you keep it
01:13:51
weird. But not so weird that we don't solve the Zodiac Killer case because can you
01:13:55
[ __ ] imagine if that's solved within our lifetimes? Let's go. It'd be crazy. Let's do it.
01:13:59
Who knows? Mhm.