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Hello! And welcome to My Favorite Murder. That's Georgia Hartstar. That's Karen Kilgareff.
00:02:00
What a weekend. Oh, the relief. Oh, my God. You're there. You're already there. It's Monday.
00:02:06
We're recording this on a Monday. I'm not at relief yet. Maybe by the time this comes out on Thursday, I'll be there.
00:02:11
Yeah. I mean, look, it all takes, we have to go at our own pace. Yeah. But the vibe.
00:02:18
Yes. The vibe is. The vibe is great. The vibe is not an old white man. Anyway. Well, what's going on with you personally?
00:02:24
Personally, the thing I was upset that I couldn't remember last week to bring up, it was we lost Shannon Doherty, who it's so sad.
00:02:36
So sad. And that was really surprising news to me. Me too. It hit me harder than I thought it would.
00:02:42
Yeah. For sure. But I mean, I grew up watching her and being obsessed with her. We all were.
00:02:47
Yes. And she's so young. Well, that's just, that was hard enough. And in the same day, Richard Simmons died.
00:02:54
I know. Oh. Which then watching those clips, because Richard Simmons was like in the 80s, a late night staple.
00:03:02
Yeah. Oh, yeah. So hilarious. He like made the week if he was on with Letterman.
00:03:07
Totally. So funny. Did I ever tell you my Richard Simmons story? No. I don't want to brag.
00:03:13
I want you to brag about Richard Simmons. But this is the best brag of all time.
00:03:16
Okay. So I used to work at a talk show. And so you'd walk around backstage and try to do your job.
00:03:22
the guests would be there in and out of their dressing rooms whatever and the rules you could
00:03:26
you had to act like yes of course hello you're here can I get you anything and and you don't
00:03:31
linger no matter how famous they are just like act normal you just want to bug them you don't
00:03:36
want to make it yeah even harder for them to do it's you know yeah so I came around this corner
00:03:42
and I knew he was there and I was excited he was there but I was pretty sure I wouldn't get to see
00:03:47
him. And I came around a corner and started walking down the hall and he came around the
00:03:52
other corner on the other end of the hall, started walking toward me. And this was at the height of
00:03:58
my like, I worked 16 hour days, incredibly miserable, sallow skin, you know, by four o'clock,
00:04:05
no more makeup on, just like eating M&Ms by the handful, trying to get through every day.
00:04:11
He comes on the corner and does his thing where he goes up on his tiptoes and puts his hands on
00:04:16
his cheeks like this and goes, it's Snow White. Oh my God. And I, it was everything I could do not
00:04:24
to break into full sobs. What an angel. What a thing to say to someone who needs it so bad. And
00:04:31
you do look like Snow White. You got the black hair and the pale skin. Oh my God. That's like,
00:04:36
who'd ever thought of that? I mean, I've known you eight and a half years and I've never thought
00:04:38
of that. And he walks around the corner and fucking sees it. He, he sees it. Yes. It was
00:04:43
very generous. Yeah. It was very generous, but it was also like, that was the vibe. Yeah. He was
00:04:50
going to tell you exactly how great he thought you were. I love it. I was background people. Yeah.
00:04:58
There was no need for it. Sure. Sad that two icons got lost in a day and then there was an
00:05:03
assassination attempt and it all got erased. Crazy. So crazy. Yeah. I have a book. I have a
00:05:10
self-help book. You had another one. Do you need another one? It's called Atomic Habits by James
00:05:15
Clear. And it's just about how to create and stick to habits easily. You're not lazy. You just
00:05:24
haven't formulated the right habit of the thing you want to do that works for your brain. And so
00:05:29
here's how. And I've been falling asleep to it, which is really, I feel like that's helpful if my
00:05:33
brain absorbs it. Because I'm falling asleep. That's not true. And it's really good. Yeah.
00:05:38
That one's been out for a little while, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the doctor told me to do it.
00:05:42
To get in there. Yeah. Sometimes you just need a little basic advice. Yeah. Oh, speaking of, there's a TikTok, a woman, a creator named Jessica Craven, and she popped
00:05:54
up talking about where everybody getting a lot of texts now of like are you excited about Kamala Donate here Yeah And like that very random and you definitely know where you donating And then she goes on to she an activist and an organizer herself
00:06:09
goes on to give like 10 recommendations for some of the best strategic places to give donations.
00:06:16
So I think we'll figure out a way to, we'll definitely retweet it on the exactly right TikTok,
00:06:21
but then we'll try to put it other places too because it's just a great long list of like how
00:06:26
to approach it. Yeah. And how not to get scammed. All right. Should we go into some highlights?
00:06:30
Sure. We have a podcast network called Exactly Right Media. Here are some highlights. Well,
00:06:34
top of the list is of course that George and I are doing this series, Rewind with Karen in Georgia,
00:06:40
where we re-listen to old episodes. We talk about the things that have changed since 2016
00:06:46
and we provide case updates for the murders that we went over then. Episode 3 originally aired on January 31st, 2016.
00:06:57
And so the episode where we cover Episode 3 is now available wherever you get your podcasts.
00:07:02
I think some people didn't know that we're talking in it. We're not just reposting the episodes.
00:07:07
I don't know how much more specifically to explain to people exactly what goes on in things.
00:07:14
You got to listen. We've said it every single time. And on Wicked Words, Kate Winkler-Dawson talks to journalist, podcaster, and friend of Exactly Right, Mandy Matney, who you remember daringly reported on the Murdoch murders.
00:07:26
Over at This Podcast Will Kill You, they're back this week with another important episode on celiac disease.
00:07:32
So go listen to Aaron and Aaron. They are science explainers who do all of their research so you don't have to.
00:07:38
And then Danielle and Millie, hosts of I Saw What You Did, our hilarious film podcast, go deep this week into maybe two of the greats ever.
00:07:46
Hedwig and the Angry Inch from 2001 and Beyond the Valley of the Dolls from 1970.
00:07:51
Plus, you asked for new merch, so we delivered just for you my favorite murder of crows t-shirts are now available in the MFM store.
00:08:00
So go to exactlyrightstore.com and get one now. There's charcoal gray unisex style available in an expanded size range.
00:08:09
And then there's a women's slouchy tee in white that you can get. Crow merch. We finally did it.
00:08:15
Yeah. And some exciting news for listeners who like to shop. The promo codes for all of our advertisers, for all the ads that we do, and we quickly
00:08:22
say the promo when you're driving and you can't write it down, they're now available
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on our website, so you never miss them. The website is myfavoritemurder.com slash promos.
00:08:31
Get your percentage off. You deserve it. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn. I'm the host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
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This week on the podcast, I am sitting down with Ray Porter, the narrator of Andy Weir's audiobook Project Hail Mary,
00:08:51
massive sci-fi adventure about survival and science and what happens when you wake up alone very far from Earth.
00:08:59
I really had to make a decision because I caught myself getting that frog in my throat and starting to get teary as I'm narrating some of these sections.
00:09:07
And it's like, OK, yo, yo, yo, is this indulgent? And I really thought about it.
00:09:10
I was like, no, at this point, it would kind of be betraying the trust the author and the listener have in telling this story if I don't go through it.
00:09:19
But there's places in this book that deeply emotionally affected me. And I left it on the mic.
00:09:26
That's great. Because it served the story. People will say like, oh my God, I cried at the end.
00:09:30
It's like, yeah, dude, me too. Listen to Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club
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00:11:17
I'm first, right? Yeah. Okay, so it's two in the morning on Thursday, May 31st, 1990. We're in
00:11:25
Queens, New York in the early 90s. Okay. Look at it. This is the year New York City's homicide rate peaked with 2,605 killings.
00:11:36
1990? Uh-huh. And for context, in 2023, New York had 386 homicides. Compared to 2,000?
00:11:44
2,600. Oh, my God. And it hasn't had more than 500 since 2011. So that is a big old number.
00:11:52
That's important to know. Right. Right The early 70s through the early 90s are what people called the bad old days And while there currently a lot of fear about crime in New York going back to those levels it nowhere close right now
00:12:05
Yeah. So in the wee hours of Queens in 1990, when an elderly man is shot in the back, a special police unit devoted to violent robberies against the elderly is dispatched to the scene.
00:12:15
The 79-year-old man named Joseph Prochi is alive when the first responders arrive and he's rushed to the hospital.
00:12:23
Joe is a World War II veteran and a retired ice truck driver, and the assumption is that this was an attempt in mugging.
00:12:30
That is until Detective Michael Cirovolo from the Senior Citizens Robbery Unit, like they had to have a whole unit on Senior Citizens Robbery,
00:12:38
he examines the crime scene a little more closely. There are no fingerprints, but police do recover a lead bullet, and the sides of the bullet are smooth without the grooves that a barrel of a traditional gun would make.
00:12:49
And this tells police that the weapon was a homemade zip gun, they're called, which is something that wouldn't be particularly accurate and would have to be fired at a very close range.
00:12:59
A zip gun can be made from materials as simple as a length of pipe, a nail, and a rubber band.
00:13:04
It's like an elaborate slingshot, but you have to be close up. Wow. Yeah. On Joe's front steps, there's a piece of paper held down by three rocks.
00:13:11
and at the top of the paper, the first paper, there is a circle with three wedges drawn in the lower left corner,
00:13:21
almost like a pie chart with three little areas. In each area, in each little slice, there's a symbol.
00:13:28
They're crudely drawn astrological signs, Scorpio, Gemini, and Taurus. Stand for them.
00:13:34
Gemini. That's me. That's me. Oh my God. Get ready. At the bottom of the piece of paper is a familiar image, a circle with crosshairs drawn through it.
00:13:44
Oh, I know where that's from. Yep. In between the two pictures, the two drawings, is the sentence, this is the Zodiac.
00:13:51
The 12th sign will die when the belts in the heaven are seen. Belts? I don't know.
00:13:56
It doesn't make any sense. This is the story of the New York Zodiac. What? Yeah.
00:14:02
I've never heard of this. I know. So the main sources are an episode of the Netflix show Catching Killers and reporting from the New York Times.
00:14:09
The rest of the sources can be found in the show notes. So Detective C. Ravello sends a copy of the note to California to be compared with the notes from the known Zodiac Killer.
00:14:19
The Zodiac Killer hadn't been active, as far as anyone knows, in about 20 years.
00:14:23
So this is a surprise to everyone. And from the hospital where he's fighting for his life, Joe Procci tells the police that the man who had shot him had asked for a glass of water and possibly money.
00:14:34
Joe had tried to brush him off and walk into his apartment when the man shot him from behind.
00:14:38
But he can't tell them anything about what the guy looked like. The police basically move on.
00:14:43
You know, it's the precinct is Queens and Brooklyn border. Obviously, it's overwhelmed with new homicide cases that keep coming in.
00:14:49
So they don't linger on this case. Yeah. Then almost three weeks after the shooting, another note materializes.
00:14:56
This one had been sent to the New York Post, and a similar one is sent to 60 Minutes.
00:15:01
The notes are a lot like that first one and have the same picture with the three Zodiac signs.
00:15:06
And this letter also includes a list of victims. Like the first one, it contains some spelling and grammatical errors,
00:15:13
and it kind of just explains and gives dates and times of when the New York Zodiac attacked other people.
00:15:20
It turns out that all three of the shootings in the note correspond with real shootings.
00:15:25
Oh. Yeah, he had already done them. So there was two that happened in March. They had not been on the police's radars being connected at all.
00:15:32
But in each shooting, the victim had actually survived. And each shooting had taken place in pretty much the same area of Brooklyn in a neighborhood called East New York,
00:15:41
with Joe's shooting being just over the border in Queens. So all in the same area, and now they're all connected.
00:15:45
Every time the men who were shot had been vulnerable in some way, the first shooting victim on March 8th was a 50-year-old man who used a cane named Mario Orozco.
00:15:57
Mario had been walking at night and was shot in the back as well. He had told police that the shooter had worn a mask and the shooter then held a gun to his head after he fell, but he didn't pull the trigger.
00:16:08
The second victim on March 29th had been a 34-year-old man named Jermaine Montenestro.
00:16:15
Jermaine had been out with friends that night. He had been drinking. He was walking back to his father's house in the same area of Brooklyn and couldn't really give a description of the shooter.
00:16:24
So it just seemed like the shooter had been prowling around for people who seemed vulnerable until the police make one additional discovery.
00:16:33
Each victim's birthday coincides with the astrological signs that were drawn on the note.
00:16:39
Oh, whoa. Yeah. What? Yeah. Isn't that creepy? That is, so it's not random and it's not like just somebody wandering around.
00:16:51
In case, unless it's a huge coincidence. But he's saying it's, you know, not. Right.
00:16:56
Mario is a Scorpio, Jermaine is a Gemini, and Joe is a Taurus. And it seems to the least that this shooter's plan is to try and kill one person from each of the 12 signs of the Zodiac.
00:17:06
But they have no idea how the shooter would have known his victims. None of them recall a stranger ever asking for their birthday.
00:17:13
and all of them were conscious when the shooter fled. So he didn't take out their wallet and look at their birthday.
00:17:19
I mean, which would have been a crazy coincidence still. Right. Right after the police make these realizations,
00:17:24
authorities from San Francisco get in contact and they analyze the letters and they are not from the original Zodiac killer, obviously.
00:17:30
I mean, that would have been huge. Yeah, we would have known about that for sure.
00:17:34
Exactly. Each of the three shootings is 21 days apart. The New York PD brings in an astronomer
00:17:41
and an astrologer to analyze the patterns between the shootings. They did? Uh-huh.
00:17:46
The astronomer notes that each of the three shootings took place on days and times
00:17:51
when three specific constellations were visible in the night sky. Orion Seven Sisters and Taurus your favorites The astronomer says that the next time the stars will all be visible will be the very early hours of June 21st
00:18:05
which is only a few days away from that point. So there's a fucking pattern with astrology.
00:18:10
That can basically anticipate what's going to happen next. That's like straight out of a 90s movie.
00:18:15
Yeah, it's very, what was the movie? Seven? No, wait, what's the one with, what's in the box?
00:18:20
That is Seven. Seven, yeah. Got those vibes. The police have been begging the press, particularly the New York Post, not to run any big stories on the case and the theory of the Zodiac links between the shootings.
00:18:32
They don't care. They run a huge story and publish all the notes and all the details.
00:18:37
So people start to freak out, obviously. The police chief gets on TV and tells New Yorkers to just be cautious if anyone approaches them and asks them for their birthday.
00:18:48
And then also on that specific night, when it's predicted, he'll strike again. Yeah.
00:18:52
So on that evening, on June 20th, into the morning of June 21st, police flood into East New York, hoping to catch the shooter.
00:19:00
And the story here could be its own story. It's a lot about the discriminatory stop and frisk policing that becomes a huge part of New York City for the next 30 years or so.
00:19:12
That happens a lot that night. And they kind of just stop anyone who looks suspicious, you know, which, of course, ends up being a lot of people of color.
00:19:19
Yeah. Right. So the sun rises on East New York and a lot of men have been stopped and frisked, but the shooter hasn't been found and no one has been shot in a way that matches the New York Zodiac's MO.
00:19:31
It's like people have been fucking shot. They've been shot. That's for sure. Absolutely.
00:19:35
That is until later that morning when Detective C. Ravello gets a call from a detective in Manhattan who tells him that somebody in Central Park had been shot.
00:19:45
The most recent victim is an unhoused man who had been sleeping on a bench in Central Park named Larry Parham.
00:19:51
He had been shot in the torso. And there is another note at the crime scene, much like the others, but this one has extra lines, insisting that he is, in fact, the San Francisco Zodiac.
00:20:01
He's like, no, no, no. I swear I am. Oh, he's communicating now directly with like the media.
00:20:07
Yeah. And the cops. Going like you're wrong. Yeah. You have the theory wrong. Right.
00:20:11
So then there's another slice of that pie chart. And in it is a cancer symbol. And it turns out Larry, the unhoused man who had been shot on the 21st, just like they predicted, just in a different area because he probably knew they were going to be there, was a cancer.
00:20:28
How? I don't know. He survives the shooting. Can't tell the police anything. He had been asleep.
00:20:33
He does, however, remember a stranger asking him his birthday in the days or weeks leading up to being shot.
00:20:40
Ooh. Yeah. Which like, I don't know, would you notice that? Yeah. If someone asked you your birthday?
00:20:46
For sure. Hey, when's your birthday? Like a random person on the street. Because truly, if you move to a city.
00:20:51
Yeah. This is a thing, just being from a farm town. Just anyone says anything to you, who needs to know?
00:20:58
Oh. It's the first thing back. What do you need my birth date for? Absolutely. But this is also the thing of like, you're in a big city.
00:21:06
There's all kinds of, you know, personalities going on and you're interacting with the city.
00:21:10
and some guy on the street's like, hey, when's your birthday? I can tell you about, you know what I mean?
00:21:15
But then you'd remember that. Oh, yeah. Yes. Almost like they've gotten smart enough so that they're doing it in a way that's hidden
00:21:21
in something that's normalized. Yes. But what would be normalized with people guessing your birthday or asking your birthday besides
00:21:29
like a nurse or something? Like pick a card, any card. Okay, what's your birthday?
00:21:34
Okay, put it back in the deck and then they run away. But you'd remember that probably.
00:21:37
You would. I don't know. Well, this guy did. Yeah. But it's still not a lot to go on, even though he does remember this person.
00:21:43
He doesn't remember any details about him. Right after Larry is shot, Joe Prochi, the elderly man who had been shot in the back in the beginning of our story, dies in the hospital, succumbing to his internal injuries.
00:21:54
So in one of the recent shootings, the letter that appeared has some additional drawings in it.
00:22:00
Occult stuff, some sketches, 666 is written on them. It's kind of hard to see what the shooter is getting at with all these additional occult references.
00:22:08
but one of the letters does bring a break, a partial fingerprint, and there had been no prints on any of the previous letters or scenes.
00:22:17
So New Yorkers obviously are freaked out. It's only 13 years after David Berkowitz was arrested for the Son of Sam murders,
00:22:23
so it kind of has that MO as well, which freaks everyone out. Yeah, just the wandering shooter, the wandering night shooter.
00:22:31
With maybe like, who's maybe got some premonition about birthdays too? Yeah. Which makes it seem supernatural and even more scary.
00:22:39
Right. That there's some kind of theory behind it that we couldn't understand. But, you know.
00:22:46
Yeah. A smart criminal, you know, that's scary. An astrological criminal. Yeah. Such a Virgo.
00:22:53
So at the end of the next 21-day cycle in July, people hold their breath. Police again ramp up their presence across the city.
00:23:01
And because now they know that they could strike anywhere. But no shooting comes.
00:23:06
It doesn't come the next month either. And the shooter just disappears. Police officers know he hasn't been arrested for another crime because they have a print on file now.
00:23:14
They would have found him. So both of the main detectives on the case, Mike Cirovalo and Larry Milanese, retire feeling like they let the shooter get away.
00:23:23
They wonder, you know, did he die? Where did he go? And then in August of 1994, so we're being fast forwarded like four years or so.
00:23:33
The New York Post gets another letter and sends it to the police. So the detectives originally on the case have retired.
00:23:41
The new lead detective in the East New York precinct is named Joe Herbert. The new letter takes credit for five additional attacks that had already happened starting
00:23:51
in August of 1992, so two years after the original spree. None of the people in the letter I mentioned by name, but just by physical.
00:24:00
details and time and place they were killed and a brief description of the crime.
00:24:04
So the detections have to go back and identify those exact crimes and do they match the MO.
00:24:11
The attacks don't follow the 21-day schedule. The previous ones had, they're kind of random now.
00:24:16
The letter does not include any mention of the victim's signs, although among them, there will only be one repeat.
00:24:23
Sign? Uh-huh. Oh. A second Taurus in addition to Joe Prochie. Kieran just fist pumped because she's a tourist.
00:24:32
It is a silent fist pump for some reason. That's, yeah. So the first attack on the list is from August of 1992.
00:24:41
It's the most brutal one, and it's immediately recognizable to police as one of their unsolved murders.
00:24:46
A 39-year-old woman named Patricia Fonte had been killed while walking late at night in Highland Park,
00:24:51
which is near that same part of the Brooklyn-Queens border where the first shootings happened.
00:24:56
Patricia had been stabbed more than 100 times. Oh, my God. I know. And at the time her murder was investigated, no one found a gunshot wound and no one found a bullet.
00:25:05
But in this letter, they're saying, I shot and stabbed this woman. I mean, 100 times.
00:25:11
I know. And Patricia had been a Leo. Her neighbors remember her as a lovely person.
00:25:16
And at this point, the NYPD is overwhelmed with somewhere around five homicides every day.
00:25:22
So Patricia's murder had tragically just been added to a growing pile of open investigations.
00:25:27
In addition to Patricia's murder, the letter takes credit for four other shootings, all a year later in 1993 and all in or near the same area, Highland Park.
00:25:36
In June of 93, a 40-year-old man named Jim Weber, a Libra, was shot in the leg while he was walking.
00:25:43
He survived. In July of that year, a 47-year-old man named Joseph Diacone was shot in the neck at point-blank range on a pedestrian walkway, and he died.
00:25:53
He was a Virgo. So they're all different, except for the—it's just like— Then in October of 93, a 40-year-old woman named Diane Ballard was shot in the neck.
00:26:03
She survived but was paralyzed, and Diane is the only repeat that she was a Taurus as well.
00:26:08
So the letter references a fifth victim also shot in Highland Park in June of 94.
00:26:12
all of the other victims had been easily matched to the police reports. But this one doesn't match anything the police have on file.
00:26:19
They search Highland Park extensively with like dogs and helicopters, and they never find any trace of this last unknown victim, which is so eerie.
00:26:30
So at the time, there's no computer database to match fingerprints, so investigators go through manually comparing prints to the print from the letter,
00:26:38
Recover in Central Park. Can you imagine? It's just wild to think about that, that anyone get anything done at all.
00:26:46
Totally. Horrifying. Totally. They don't find anything. The case is tabled yet again.
00:26:51
And Detective Joe Herbert, who is now the lead on the case, he moves on in his career and he becomes a hostage negotiator.
00:26:59
Oh, wow. And because of this one decision, this isn't a cold case. Wow. And it's wild.
00:27:04
So a year later, after that letter, in the summer of 95, it's time for Joe Herbert to do his very first hostage negotiation.
00:27:12
He had been trained. This was his first on-the-job actual thing. What a day. I know.
00:27:18
Scary, right? That's big, yeah. Yeah. And it's the summer and it's like in New York and everyone's, you know.
00:27:23
Everyone's in a bad mood. Yeah. It's humid. Yeah. A 20-year-old man named Eriberto Seda has shot his 17-year-old sister, Gladys, and is holding her boyfriend hostage in an apartment in East New York.
00:27:36
Hundreds of police officers swarm the area, and after basically several hours of back and forth, exchanging some gunfire, Joe urging Seda to come out of the apartment and let his sister get medical attention, Eriberto finally surrenders and comes out.
00:27:52
So Joe, of course, is thrilled. His first hostage negotiation was a success. No one has gotten additionally hurt.
00:27:59
The sister's taken to the hospital for surgery. She's expected to survive. The bomb squad goes into the apartment, removes two pipe bombs,
00:28:06
and Seda writes out a confession saying he shot his sister and held her boyfriend hostage.
00:28:11
End of story, right? Except when Joe takes a look at the confession, his blood pressure drops.
00:28:18
At the bottom, there's a little cross. There's no circle around it, but it does look like crosshairs.
00:28:24
Then he reads the confession again, and it's written in handwriting that he's looked at a thousand times before.
00:28:31
No way. Yep. He shows it to one of his colleagues who had also worked on the New York Zodiac shootings since the beginning, and that colleague says, quote,
00:28:38
It looked like my wife's shopping list. That's how familiar that lettering was, end quote.
00:28:44
Wow. They just looked at the paper and knew it was his handwriting. Yeah. That's good detective work.
00:28:49
Well, also, it's a predator who is trying to brand himself with that writing. So why wouldn't you, as that then uncaught serial killer, just use some cursive?
00:29:03
Because he wouldn't think that this random people would connect him. It's such a different...
00:29:09
I mean, yeah, it's a shooting, but it's a different crime altogether. Why not type?
00:29:13
I'm just saying. Yes. He could have made an effort. Absolutely. He deserves everything he's getting.
00:29:19
Yes. Maybe he wanted to get caught. Who knew? Maybe he did. You know? Seda's fingerprint is quickly determined to be a match to the fingerprint from the Central Park letter.
00:29:27
But under questioning, he denies being the Zodiac killer. And it's only when detectives show him pictures from Patricia Fonte's murder, the woman who had been stabbed, that he finally confesses to her murder.
00:29:37
And then he confesses to all the other shootings in order. And authorities find at least 13 homemade guns in his apartment.
00:29:44
Oh, my God. Also, the two pipe bombs that were just thrown in there, like, did they know that was in there? I wonder if he'd, like, threatened people about it or something.
00:29:53
But good God. Yeah. Okay Over the course of the investigation several other frustrating details emerged For one thing Seda had sent his very first taunting letter to the police way back in 1989 before he had shot anybody
00:30:06
And the police had dismissed it as a hoax. Which, I mean, being so bogged down, I bet they get shit like that all the time.
00:30:13
You've got to look into it, but what would they have found? Nothing. I mean, there's a lot of that kind of stuff where it's just like, and then they threw it into the pile.
00:30:20
And it's just like, I wish they hadn't. Yeah. I wish it mattered. Yeah. Secondly, he was known to police officers in his neighborhood, not as a criminal, but as a sort of vigilante.
00:30:29
He tipped them off about local drug dealers and he was known to recite Bible verses to them sometimes.
00:30:35
But that's the thing where these killers sometimes want to involve themselves in the police department's actions or, you know, want to be part of it.
00:30:43
He had been expelled from school and had tried to join the Green Berets, but failed the entrance exam and moved back home with his mom in New York as an angry loner.
00:30:52
He says he saw a documentary on PBS about the Zodiac killer. And he said, quote, holy smokes, this guy terrorized a whole city and never got caught.
00:31:01
I got nothing to live for. I don't got no job. I already got those skills. I could be famous.
00:31:05
I could do that, end quote. And the weird thing about him asking for people's birthdays that I didn't want to say is that he's conventionally attractive.
00:31:14
He's a young man. He looks clean cut. if he had come up to someone on the street,
00:31:19
they wouldn't have equated him with a murderer, you know? Yeah, especially if he was being charming.
00:31:24
Yeah. Yeah, good-looking people get away with a lot. They fucking do. It's very true.
00:31:29
Yeah. I mean, I told you that story, but at the time, how much we talk about, like,
00:31:34
lock your fucking door and everything on this podcast. I was walking the dogs one day,
00:31:37
and this guy walked up, and he was like, I think he said one thing about the dogs that was complimentary,
00:31:42
and then I was like, I live up there. And I gave the whole game away and then walked away going, what is wrong with you?
00:31:49
It's so easy. It's very like, there's a lot of human psychology involved in that.
00:31:54
Definitely. I mean, still. Yeah. He could have also said, what sign are you? Which was like part of the day in the 70s.
00:32:01
Yeah, it didn't have to be birthday. It didn't have to be exact. Yeah. What's your sign?
00:32:06
Yeah. I don't know. And then in March of 94, Seda had been arrested for possession of a homemade gun and was fingerprinted.
00:32:15
Like two of the things that could have connected him. But the charges were dismissed before the fingerprints had been filed.
00:32:21
Why? I don't fucking know. And that had been after all of the attacks except the last one, which is the unknown male victim in Highland Park that they never found.
00:32:30
So Seda's trial isn't until 1998. 1998, and over the course of the six-week trial, he acts erratically, yelling at the
00:32:38
judge multiple times. The prosecution connects him to the crimes with DNA evidence from one of the stamps on
00:32:44
one of the letters he sent. They also present evidence from the tools found in his home, linking them to the guns
00:32:49
and bullets used in the shootings. Seda is convicted of three murders and six attempted murders and is currently serving
00:32:56
multiple life sentences in the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora in upstate New York.
00:33:02
He has since said that he really doesn't know anything about astrology. Just a construct for the character of this killer.
00:33:10
Yeah, exactly. No one has ever figured out if he asked all of the victims their birthdays at some point
00:33:15
or if almost all of them having different signs was just a coincidence. I doubt it, right?
00:33:19
Especially when he's calling himself the Zodiac Killer. Right, right, right. That doesn't make any sense.
00:33:24
Anyways, that's the story of the New York Zodiac who tragically killed three people,
00:33:28
possibly one more, and wounded six others. Wow. New York Zodiac. New York Zodiac.
00:33:34
Well, I got to say, first of all, that was really good. And I do love when there's a serial killer that's just like brand new.
00:33:43
Yeah. Especially one that's like a copycat like that. But it is actually kind of great that I've never heard of him because that's what he did it for.
00:33:51
Exactly. That's what he wanted. That's why we know. Yeah, we know now. Don't shine a light on these fuckers.
00:33:55
Right. All right. Great job. Thank you. Hey, everyone. It's Cal Penn, host of Earsay, the Audible and iHeart Audiobook Club.
00:34:07
This week on the podcast, I'm sitting down with Lily Chu, the author of the Audible original romantic comedy Just Kiss Already.
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00:34:19
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That's always fascinating to me, how they just bring in all these different nuances.
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00:36:46
You're going to like this because my story today is similar to D.B. Cooper's, which you covered.
00:36:54
in episode 272. So if you haven't listened or if you haven't heard Georgia tell the story of D.B.
00:37:00
Cooper, please go back and do that. You don't have to. It's a recommendation, like wine with dinner.
00:37:07
It was at a live show in Seattle. Okay, you're like a true crime sommelier. Really, I'll stand next to your table with white gloves on and hold shit up for you to read and
00:37:15
pretend that you know the difference when I pour it in a little glass. Have you ever seen people
00:37:20
send bottles of wine back? No, and every time someone does that to me, I want to be like,
00:37:23
you don't have to, we don't have to do this. We're not like that. I will drink any wine. I don't know
00:37:28
the difference. I don't care. Maybe one time when it was like clear from my own personal experience
00:37:35
that the bottle had been sitting out for days and days and had corks and stuff in it. And I was like,
00:37:39
can I just, can you just get a different? Can I get a new one? Yeah. And they're like, absolutely.
00:37:45
Yeah. We just thought we'd be able to pass this off on somebody. Right. The one time. And I don't,
00:37:49
I don't send shit back. I'm not that girl. I just would love to be there when it's like someone
00:37:53
and takes a gulp. It's like, oh, no. This is not what it's supposed to taste like.
00:37:57
Sometimes when I order wine at a bar, I'll say, what have you opened recently? Nice.
00:38:02
Yeah, let's make this simple. I don't fucking care. Okay. I'll be like, this tastes like it's a little bit off.
00:38:10
Can you pour some 7-Up in there or something? I'll be fine. Can you put some ice in this red wine?
00:38:16
This is terrible. This is not good red wine. Can you put a little Jack Daniels in there?
00:38:21
Oh, my God. Okay, so the story begins in Provo, Utah on April 9th, 1972. Okay. And this wording made me laugh so hard.
00:38:31
That afternoon, a teenage boy, only known by the FBI alias Peter Fanning, is playing outside.
00:38:39
Which I think was just like, you could just see Maren putting that sentence together and being like, playing outside.
00:38:47
Yeah. A teenage boy is standing around with his arms crossed, harrumphing outside.
00:38:51
Yeah. And he sees something over in the culvert. And then Maren wrote, note to Karen, I had to look up what a culvert was.
00:38:58
Yeah, I could guess, but I don't think I'd be right. Give me a guess. Well, like, you know, like a one-way street that is like, what's it called when it's like a...
00:39:06
Cul-de-sac? Yeah, I'm thinking cul-de-sac. No, a culvert is the thing that goes usually under a road and it's a big silver tube that the water goes through.
00:39:16
Oh, okay. So it's basically making the water go over here and like under a road.
00:39:19
Okay. Kind of directing it. So it's like a creek bed. It's like a ditch with directed water.
00:39:25
Okay. And then the big steel tube part comes into play because that's where Peter was looking when he found this thing lying in the culvert.
00:39:36
He pulls it out and he believes that he's just found a parachute. So he picks it up, takes it home.
00:39:42
When he gets there, his dad is working on a car outside. So he brings it up to his dad and the dad inspects it.
00:39:49
And yes, in fact, it is a parachute. So the Fannings get this weird feeling about this discovery.
00:39:55
So they call this sheriff. And soon after they turn the parachute over, detectives announce, Peter has just found a piece of evidence tied to a dangerous fugitive.
00:40:04
The man had recently hijacked a commercial plane, demanded a ransom, and then parachuted out of the plane with that money.
00:40:12
and if that all sounds familiar it's the exact same mo that db cooper had in george's story in
00:40:19
episode 272 and if you don't know the db cooper story i'll just tell you super quick it happened
00:40:26
the year prior in 1971 the flight was out of portland oregon and once that flight was in the
00:40:32
air he hijacked the plane he demanded a ransom of two hundred thousand dollars and four parachutes
00:40:38
And then once he got the money, he jumped out of the plane, money in hand, and he parachuted his way into obscurity.
00:40:45
And to this day, that hijacker has never been found. And the D.B. Cooper case remains unsolved.
00:40:51
So that's where this story is different. This is the case of Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. and the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 855.
00:41:00
Wow. How mad is he that he's not as famous as D.B. Cooper? Well, and also, like he got caught.
00:41:06
It's like there's no legend, there's no romance. The sources Marin used today on this story are various documents from the FBI,
00:41:14
several articles that ran in the Daily Herald newspaper in the early 70s, and archival editions of the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times,
00:41:22
and the rest of the sources are in our show notes. So it's around 5 p.m. on April 7, 1972,
00:41:29
and Flight 855 from Newark, New Jersey, is on a layover in Denver, and it's about to take off again to head for Los Angeles.
00:41:38
This plane is a Boeing 727. There are six crew members and around 85 passengers on board.
00:41:45
And one of these passengers is a white man wearing a pinstripe stute, leather golf gloves, and mirrored sunglasses.
00:41:52
Okay. Once on board the man immediately disappears into the bathroom which of course stands out to the flight attendants He also stands out because once all the passengers have boarded the plane
00:42:06
an airport worker rushes onto the plane with an envelope that someone left behind in the boarding area.
00:42:12
1972, they love for people to leave stuff behind so they can run it back up to you and onto a plane.
00:42:18
Right, right. So the flight attendants make an announcement trying to reunite the letter with whoever left it behind.
00:42:25
No one responds. They're all kind of sitting there until the guy in the pinstripe suit and the leather gloves in the bathroom opens the bathroom door, grabs the letter and shuts the door again.
00:42:35
So he had left it out there as like a ransom note or something. Well, he'd left it out there.
00:42:40
On purpose. We're not sure if it's on purpose or not. So now the plane's about to take off.
00:42:45
So a flight attendant has to go knock on the bathroom door to tell the man to come take a seat.
00:42:50
He got it. He does not. A passenger named Mickey Luckoff, one of the many people on board that day who witnessed this man and his weird behavior,
00:42:59
would later tell the Daily Herald that the man, quote, locked himself in the men's room and a stewardess had to unlock the door and get him out.
00:43:06
Guy. So when the man comes out of the bathroom, he's clearly wearing a dark wig that, quote,
00:43:12
came down in front to eyebrow level and combed back around over his ears. End quote.
00:43:18
He also has a fake mustache and matching fake sideburns that go down to, quote, the middle of his face curving towards the mouth about one inch.
00:43:28
So those big seven feet. Yeah. So this guy isn't just immediately not as smooth as D.B. Cooper, like right off the bat.
00:43:35
No, he, I think it's like, you know, the old fashioned rule where it's like you get ready
00:43:40
and then you take one thing off before you leave. He should have done that in that bathroom.
00:43:46
Flushed it. Flushed it down in that blue liquid. So an interesting note is only a handful of passengers
00:43:54
correctly observed that this man did a costume change in the bathroom. So when he came out and he had the weird wig and mustache and everything,
00:44:03
a lot of people didn't notice because they thought it was a different guy that went into the bathroom because they weren't really paying attention.
00:44:09
So less than 20 minutes into the flight at 5.18 p.m., a passenger calls over a flight attendant in a panic.
00:44:17
They report to the flight attendant seeing a man with fake hair and mustache and sideburns fumbling around with a hand grenade.
00:44:25
Okay. Shit. So the flight attendant immediately tells the pilot what's happening.
00:44:30
The pilot basically has to now figure out a safety strategy. but they remember there's an off-duty pilot who's on the flight i believe they call it deadheading
00:44:40
when they get to fly so they tell him to go walk by and observe the man and see what you know get
00:44:47
eyes on see what's actually going on as the off-duty pilot approaches the mustache man's seat
00:44:53
at the very back of the plane the man pulls out a pistol he aims it squarely at the off-duty pilot
00:44:59
and hands over that envelope that he'd left behind in the boarding area that is clearly labeled hijack instructions.
00:45:07
Wait, it said that and the person ran onto the plane to make sure that he got it?
00:45:12
Well, good catch. Aviation writer Sylvia Wrigley raises the valid question of whether or not
00:45:18
that envelope would have been brought on board and handed off. She writes, quote,
00:45:23
It's hard to believe that the envelope was so clearly labeled when the gate agent brought it to him.
00:45:27
It must have been the case that there was a smaller envelope in a big one, although none of the reports mention this.
00:45:34
We're going to go with envelope inside an envelope. We're going with Sylvia's theory because what?
00:45:40
Yeah. Otherwise, there's no hope. Plans for attack. Why would you run that anywhere?
00:45:45
Oh. No matter the detail, the mustache man now orders the off-duty pilot to bring this letter to the plane's pilot.
00:45:53
So the letters passed to a flight attendant who then brings it into the cockpit.
00:45:59
The crew stays calm and professional, so much so that many of the passengers have no idea what's going on.
00:46:05
They don't know somebody just had a gun pulled on them in their own flight. That's wild, because I'm always checking the flight attendant's faces for panic.
00:46:12
Yes, it's important. They must learn that. Don't panic. Absolutely. And it was also 1972, so they could have been on any number of drugs that they ordered from the back of Rolling Stone magazine.
00:46:26
So Jerry Hearn, who's the pilot, reads the letter, and he requests clearance to immediately land in Grand Junction, Colorado.
00:46:35
And then his plan is, once they're on the ground, he'll call for police assistance.
00:46:39
So to keep everyone as calm as possible, Captain Hearn announces over the intercom that the flight is being diverted because of a minor mechanical problem.
00:46:47
Then the captain opens the hijack instructions envelope, and inside he finds a grenade pin, a bullet, and two typed pages of highly detailed directions.
00:47:00
The letter instructs the captain to land at San Francisco International Airport and park the aircraft at runway 19, comma, left, where it would be somewhat isolated.
00:47:11
The letter states that no person or vehicle except the truck that refills the plane's fuel tank is allowed anywhere near the aircraft.
00:47:18
It also stipulates that one passenger will be assigned to retrieve the hijacker's checked bags from an airline worker.
00:47:25
So go into the belly of the plane and get my checked bag and bring it up here. They must be immediately handed over to him.
00:47:33
And most critically, the letter demands that four parachutes and $500,000 are to be delivered to the plane and then handed over to the hijacker still while they're on the ground in San Francisco.
00:47:46
Okay. So it's 1972. Okay. $500,000 is worth how much in today's money? $500,000.
00:47:53
$3.2 million. $3.7 million. Shut the fuck up! $3.7 million. Yuck! Fucking million high five across the table.
00:48:02
That's the closest I've ever gotten. I mean, wouldn't it be cool if now you won 3.5 million for your trouble?
00:48:10
For my trouble. That's what's on the line the whole time. The goal this entire time.
00:48:14
And then from our studio here, the money just drops from the ceiling. It's real dirty money.
00:48:18
They didn't even get new bills. That's right. We should talk to them about keeping up in a ball like Squid Game.
00:48:23
Absolutely. Don't drop the money on us. So the last thing the hijacker writes is that he wants all of these written instructions returned to him.
00:48:33
Nobody gets to keep any of these little letters, and there are a ton of them. Captain Hearn later says, quote,
00:48:39
There was practically no verbal communication with him. About 99% of his communication was in written messages.
00:48:47
Interesting. So Captain Hearn follows the hijacker's demands, and after coordinating with the airline and airport officials,
00:48:53
flight 855 lands at the San Francisco airport. Meanwhile, authorities go get the half a million dollars cash from Wells Fargo Bank.
00:49:02
They stuff it into two 20-pound bags, and then they head down to the airport. Back on the plane, a flight attendant gets on the intercom and announces they've just landed,
00:49:11
not in Grand Junction, but at the San Francisco International Airport, because there they're better equipped to handle the plane's specific issues.
00:49:19
The pilot then stops the plane at the hijacker's designated area. and then once they basically pull into that spot,
00:49:27
any illusion of calm that these passengers had left is shattered. The hijacker fully takes control of the plane.
00:49:34
He's brandishing a pistol. He takes the crew hostage and then he sends a passenger out to go pick up the cash
00:49:42
and the parachutes that an airport employee has waiting. The passenger comes back, delivers all that
00:49:49
and while that's happening, a fuel truck is refilling the plane and the other passenger assigned to go grab the hijackers' bags
00:49:57
meets up with the airline worker who's taken them out of the cargo hold. All the while the hijackers handing letters to one specific flight attendant
00:50:05
who is summoned on the intercom. So some of these letters appear to have been pre-typed.
00:50:12
Others have clearly just been written. They all contain more and more instructions for the flight crew and the passengers.
00:50:20
So three hours after landing at SFO, all the hijackers' requests seem to have been met.
00:50:26
So he hands over another letter, and in it, he orders the crew to open the doors and make sure every single one of the passengers, one by one, gets off of the plane and plus one flight attendant.
00:50:38
Okay. So then through more notes, the hijacker tells the crew that the doors must be shut and the plane should take off.
00:50:46
The crew is ordered to huddle in the cockpit while the hijacker will stay in the back of the plane.
00:50:52
So, of course, Captain Hearn has no choice but to follow these demands. And once again, he prepares for takeoff.
00:50:59
But then they hear the hijacker's voice over the intercom. He asks the same flight attendant to meet him at the back of the plane that he's been talking to or interacting with this whole time.
00:51:09
Yeah. And there he gives a last set of handwritten instructions. Captain Hearn needs to fly east towards Utah, maintaining an elevation of 16,000 feet and keeping a speed of 200 miles per hour.
00:51:22
And they need to pass over several specific communities in Utah as they go. So they need to be on a specific flight path.
00:51:30
Okay. So the hijacker then orders the cabin to be depressurized and the lights to be turned down.
00:51:37
Oh my God. Is he going to fucking throw money to his friends and family? I mean, well, no, but.
00:51:43
Okay. Kind of. So he also wants consistent updates on the wind speeds and the sky conditions.
00:51:49
And if the captain doesn't obey, the hijacker vows to blow up the plane with that hand grenade that he basically is messaged that they now have the pin for and he's just holding on to.
00:52:00
Oh, shit. Like, it's an active grenade. Oh, okay. A lot of grenades back in the 70s and 80s, like, bandied about.
00:52:09
Vietnam. Oh, right. Yeah. To take that out. Yeah. so flight 855 takes off once again this time back east toward utah so at some point
00:52:21
the hijacker which is so funny and devious but he covers that there's a peephole in the cockpit
00:52:28
and he covers it with tape so they can't see him oh my god look at him that's simple or watch him
00:52:33
i know do you ever do that when you knock on someone's door i just i always do that cover it
00:52:37
with my finger like you don't get to look at me you don't get it open the door open the fucking
00:52:40
door. Didn't we make a plan? One forward-thinking member of the flight crew gets down on the ground
00:52:46
and tries to see what he's doing from the gap at the bottom of the cockpit door. And that crew
00:52:51
member can't see the man's face, but they watch him open his suitcase and then change into a
00:52:56
jumpsuit, a helmet, and a parachute pack. Moments later, the hijacker jumps out of the plane.
00:53:02
Damn. And he takes his bags of ransom money with him. It's now been five hours since this whole ordeal
00:53:08
began. So after a few moments with no new contact or correspondence from the back of the plane,
00:53:14
the crew opens the cockpit door and is overjoyed to see that the hijacker is no longer on board.
00:53:20
And with that, Captain Hearn lands the plane in Salt Lake City. And later on, that flight crew
00:53:25
is flown back to LA, which was their destination in the first place. According to the Herald
00:53:30
Examiner newspaper, they, quote, walked off the plane at Los Angeles International Airport, tired,
00:53:35
some dazed a few carrying cocktails. Yeah, they did. They fucking made themselves
00:53:41
a cocktail. Right? Yeah. 1,000 tiny Tanqueray bottles up to those. I mean, to know it's over,
00:53:49
to factually know it's over by the fact that he jumped out of the plane, you're just like,
00:53:53
yeah. We're safe now. Jesus. Or did he hide a fucking grenade somewhere You can That the thing When you let go they explode Yeah but what Okay Yeah Oh you can wedge it Wedge it somewhere
00:54:05
Yeah. I don't know. In the Sky Mall? Wedge it into a Sky Mall? Yes. And I'm sure there's many more details about how grenades explode.
00:54:14
Yes. That somebody out there definitely wants to teach us about. Please do. According to a 1972 issue of the New York Times, including the mysterious D.B. Cooper case,
00:54:23
This will be the seventh hijacking involving a parachute in the last five months of 1972 alone.
00:54:32
Five months? Yes. Oh my God. It was a big deal back then. I mean, it was like, it was a way people were figuring out how to like effectively get their word out there and make known the cause that they wanted an international audience to know about.
00:54:49
Yeah, we've done quite a few of those. Yeah. Wow. But this, the hijacking of Flight 855, it stands out as the highest paid ransom in an airplane hijacking.
00:55:01
So law enforcement kicks off yet another skyjacking investigation. So first they search the plane itself.
00:55:08
The only thing they find is one of the hijacker's handwritten letters. But since he was wearing gloves, it's initially suspected there won't be any fingerprints to find.
00:55:18
Investigators interview the crew of Flight 855, and they piece together that the hijacker jumped out of the plane over Provo, Utah.
00:55:25
Now a team made up of FBI agents, Provo police, and cops from the Utah County Sheriff's Department create a search triangle that extends from Provo to Soldier Summit to NEFI, your three favorite Utah cities.
00:55:41
If you're out in Soldier Summit right now listening to this podcast, what are you even doing?
00:55:46
What are you even camping right now? I just, I added the sentence, these are all cities in Utah.
00:55:53
I was actually going to text Bridger. I was going to say, Bridger knows. Bridger probably is familiar with all of them and could give reviews.
00:56:00
So they create this search triangle. Investigators go search in that triangle for a full day, aided by two Air Force helicopters
00:56:08
and the Utah Highway Patrol who set up roadblocks. Not a town going out in Utah.
00:56:14
They can't find anything. Provo police chief Jesse Evans tells the Daily Herald, quote, we found no human footprints and no sign of anything out there.
00:56:23
And the second day is when Peter Fanning, the teenager, finds one of the hijackers four parachutes in a Provo culvert.
00:56:31
Why did he order four parachutes? Is that something that guy jumpers know that I don't know?
00:56:34
I think because if they rig, like they can't rig them all or it's something along those lines.
00:56:40
If they're left with one, they can just cut all of it. But it's like they can basically say don't mess with the parachutes.
00:56:47
They all look the same. I can tell if you fucked with them. Something along those lines.
00:56:51
But also they say the theory that got developed around D.B. Cooper and that's applied here is that he, as they go, they throw the parachutes out the door.
00:57:03
So it could be like we found the parachute here and that's over Provo, but that's not where he jumped out.
00:57:08
Okay, that totally makes sense. Yeah. Or they could be like, oh, they're going to take some of the crew with them.
00:57:14
We better leave them alone too, right, maybe? Could be. Yeah, make somebody innocent use one of those parachutes.
00:57:21
Yeah. It could also be that once the hijacker landed, he just wanted to throw the parachute in the air and get under it
00:57:28
like we used to in grammar school, in Montessori grammar school. So, of course, the FBI is trying to figure out who this hijacker is.
00:57:35
his plane ticket says the initial T Johnson immediately determined to be a fake name.
00:57:41
When they talked to the passengers and crew members on that flight, they described this man
00:57:46
as a white man around 30 years old with a medium build who was clearly wearing a wig, a fake
00:57:51
mustache and fake sideburns. They also mentioned he had a bandaid on his left cheek, although it's
00:57:56
unclear why, and very short, very dirty fingernails. Look away from my mind right now. Captain Hearn and
00:58:04
his co-pilot, a man named Ken Bradley, tell investigators that they believe the hijacker
00:58:09
must have had flying experience and could be a pilot himself, since he clearly had a
00:58:13
handle on the logistics of air travel. He also seemed to know Utah incredibly well from the sky, suggesting he might live there.
00:58:22
A United Airlines official is quoted in the Daily Herald as saying, quote, it would seem
00:58:27
that the hijacking was well thought out, well planned, and he obviously had a knowledge
00:58:30
of parachutes. Yeah. So less than two days after the hijacking, the FBI's office in Salt Lake City gets the call it's been waiting for.
00:58:39
A man calls in with a tip saying that one of his best friends fits the hijacker's description to a T.
00:58:45
And not only that, but his friend had recently talked about wanting to hijack a plane for a $500,000 ransom.
00:58:52
Come on, narc. Like, can you? That's no friend. No. That's a lowercase F friend in my opinion.
00:58:59
That's an F you friend. The friend that the friend was talking about is a man named Richard Floyd McCoy Jr.
00:59:05
It was that easy? Yeah. That his friend fucking narked on him? Well, but also he told on himself.
00:59:10
He did. Don't keep it to yourself. Yeah. Yes, you're overjoyed about this plan, but zip it.
00:59:17
Would you have told on your friend though? Like, depends on acquaintance. But, well, I guess it would depend on the threat level that you would feel like this person was at.
00:59:26
Oh, yeah. So we'll talk about Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. In 1972, he was a 29-year-old student at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City.
00:59:37
He's a married father of two. He's an active member of the Mormon Church, and he used to teach Sunday school.
00:59:43
One of his classmates at BYU tells a reporter, quote, all he ever talked about was sin.
00:59:48
Jesus. It was real fun to hang out with. There's two ways you can talk about sin.
00:59:54
Either you a total bore or you the best So Richard McCoy Jr completed two tours of Vietnam He served as a helicopter pilot
01:00:05
and he was currently serving at the time as a member of the National Guard. When FBI agents arrive at the McCoy home to interview Richard,
01:00:14
they notice that he fits the basic description of the hijacker, but he also has a limp, which he claims is the result of a recent skiing accident.
01:00:23
Oh, dear. Richard denies having anything to do with the hijacking of Flight 855, and he even claims to have an alibi.
01:00:30
He was with his wife during the incident. He allows the agents to take his picture and search his car, but he will not let them inside his home.
01:00:38
And before they leave, Richard hands over what the FBI will describe as a limited amount of handwriting samples.
01:00:45
Mm-hmm. So investigators compare these samples with some of the handwritten documents that they got from Richard's time in the military,
01:00:52
and they appear to be a match. Then investigators managed to pull a latent print
01:00:57
off an airline magazine from the seat back pocket beside the hijacker's assigned seat.
01:01:03
Wow. He really got that. When they compare it to a print of Richard's from his military records, it's a match.
01:01:11
So police then talked to Richard's doctor. They confirmed that he was in fact treated
01:01:16
for a ski injury several weeks prior. However, his leg had been placed in a cast
01:01:21
which was no longer there they don't know if richard removed it himself either because it
01:01:27
would hinder his escape or it would be used to identify him after the hijacking why he couldn't
01:01:33
do the hijacking after he was fully healed yeah so he didn't get it jumping out of a plane he
01:01:38
actually had had a okay yeah unless the doctor was like lying for him yeah or he lied to the doctor
01:01:44
it doesn't sound like it right because it said several weeks earlier right so i know because it
01:01:50
It was like, yeah, you're going to jump out of a plane and probably hurt yourself once you land.
01:01:55
Yeah. But it didn't seem like that was the connection. Or maybe it's like he, you know, threw himself down skiing, had to get treated by a doctor, and then had a cover.
01:02:05
Yeah. Yeah. So when investigators show some of the witnesses Richard's photograph, they actually hit a stumbling block because it's hard for anyone to make a positive ID because the hijacker was wearing such a weird disguise.
01:02:18
But then Richard's own sister-in-law comes forward and she claims that he had tried to pull her into this hijacking scheme.
01:02:26
So I think if everybody in Richard's life is narcing on Richard, then I think Richard's the problem.
01:02:33
Yeah. Richard left all the detailed instructions on the seat beside him in the fucking waiting area.
01:02:40
I mean. So why would you try? Like, he's not someone you want to make a plan with.
01:02:43
No. I mean, those were what the pilot needed to have to go forward and make the hijacking happen.
01:02:50
That was an accident, him leaving them behind. He fucking left it out by the coffee machine.
01:02:55
Hijacking instructions on the outside. So soon after that, investigators get a positive ID from one of the Flight 855 passengers, and it's one that really counts.
01:03:08
It's the passenger sent to pick up the ransom money and parachutes from the airport worker and bring them back to Richard on the parked plane.
01:03:18
So this is a person who actually directly interacted with him. So with that, police get the green light to dig up the McCoy's yard looking for that money, assuming that he buried it.
01:03:30
They don't find it, but they do find a few buried boxes that contain quote unquote evidence.
01:03:36
It's unclear what this evidence is, but they basically, because of that, get a search warrant for Richard's home.
01:03:43
And that's where they find $499,970 stuffed into two bags and a cardboard box. Oh, shit.
01:03:52
Quick math. How much has he spent? Say it again. I wasn't listening. $499,970. He has spent...
01:04:05
$30. $30. He said $30. Oh, man. It's hilarious. So they also find in the house a parachute and a pistol and that hand grenade, which turns out to be fake.
01:04:18
Oh, man. So less than a week after the hijacking, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. is arrested by the FBI.
01:04:25
He is charged with air piracy, which carries a maximum penalty of death. Is it like a federal offense?
01:04:31
Uh-huh. Oh, no. I don't know if that was always the law or if they even, it'd be interesting to know when they came up with that law when they had to.
01:04:40
Yeah. Because I think this was a whole new world. For everybody. After Richard's preliminary hearing, a reporter asks if he has any comment and Richard replies, quote, well, it's embarrassing.
01:04:51
Let's face it. Aww. Which is maybe my favorite criminal quote of all time. Yeah.
01:04:59
Let's just be real. This is embarrassing. Look, so Richard McCoy Jr. pleads not guilty, but by the end of his trial in June 1972, which is only two months after this hijacking took place.
01:05:12
So they were like, you are going to be made a lesson of. He's convicted and he's sentenced to 45 years in prison.
01:05:20
He files for an appeal shortly after that appeal is denied. Richard's eventually sent to a federal prison in Pennsylvania.
01:05:27
within two years of his arrival at that prison. He and a group of inmates mastermind a plan to overtake a garbage truck
01:05:34
and drive it through the prison gates. And they do. They succeed. Oh, my God. The plan works.
01:05:40
Richard is once again on the lam. It's suspected that he and the other escapees then go rob a bank.
01:05:46
They make off with $100,000. Wow. Worth about how much in today's money? $100,000 is going to be worth $1.2.
01:05:55
Oh okay I mean 640 Once they get away they all vanish The FBI agents now have to open yet another investigation centered around Richard Floyd McCoy Jr
01:06:08
But Richard is tracked down a couple months later at a house in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
01:06:13
He's staying there with another fugitive named Melvindale Walker, who's wanted for robbing banks.
01:06:19
So the FBI basically go into the house one day when the men aren't home. and they stake out inside the house and the surrounding property.
01:06:29
And an agent named Gerald Coakley will later say, quote, McCoy entered the front door with a key,
01:06:35
and one of the agents identified himself and told him to hold it right there. The fellow went for his gun, got one shot off, and the agent returned fire.
01:06:43
Oh, wow. So Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. is shot and killed at the scene. Melvindale Walker surrenders, and he is arrested without incident.
01:06:52
Wow. In November of 1974, Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. is buried in his home state of North Carolina, and he is just 31 years old.
01:07:01
Oh, my God. So there's a few lingering questions about the McCoy case. One is motive.
01:07:08
Obviously, it was money on the surface, but Richard never explained why he chose such an extreme way of getting that money.
01:07:14
As for the missing $30, the FBI has an idea of where at least some of it went. because the write-up in the case includes this quote quote when shown mccoy's photograph an
01:07:26
employee at a roadside hamburger stand said that she had sold him a milkshake at about 11 30 on the
01:07:31
night of the crime in addition a teenager stated that a man fitting mccoy's description paid him
01:07:36
five dollars for a ride from the stand to a nearby town wow he went and got a milkshake after jumping
01:07:43
out of a fucking hijacked plane yeah yeah but the biggest unresolved element in this case involves
01:07:50
the connection to db cooper back in 1972 an fbi spokesperson told the new york times quote
01:07:57
we're not working on the theory that richard mccoy and db cooper were the same person
01:08:02
apparently the bureau couldn't find a solid link connecting the two hijackings which is surprising
01:08:08
given how similar they are right down to the four parachutes requested by both men yeah not to
01:08:14
mention the sketch of db cooper looks exactly like richard floyd mccoy shut up and in
01:08:20
In recent years, McCoy's own son, Rick, has identified his dad as D.B. Cooper. Oh my God, no way.
01:08:26
Yeah, right? Rick is now working with the FBI to share whatever information he has and claims he's only just come forward now because his mother, who Rick claims confessed to being a co-conspirator, had recently passed away.
01:08:40
Dude. Deathbed confessions. Yeah. We know that the FBI has requested a DNA sample that they hope to compare with evidence found on the airplane that D.B. Cooper hijacked.
01:08:52
And Rick is cooperating with the agents, but it's still in process, so no announcements have been made.
01:08:58
I feel like D.B. Cooper's was kind of smooth and flawless, and this one wasn't. This one was, like, nervous, you know, and flawed.
01:09:11
Well, yeah, but who knows? The hijack instructions piece really looks a bit green in JV.
01:09:18
Totally. But maybe he did it the one time, and then he used that money to take drugs.
01:09:25
Oh, could be drugs. He used that money to sin as much as he could. Meanwhile, naysayers point out that Richard can't possibly be D.B. Cooper because he's too young.
01:09:36
not to mention that the witnesses on flight 855 were shown sketches of db cooper and denied he was
01:09:42
their hijacker yeah but they kind of recognize him to begin with because of his shit what the
01:09:46
fuck do they know people who don't support people who don't support the theory that richard and db
01:09:52
cooper are the same man believes that richard simply ripped off db cooper's act yeah if that's
01:09:57
the case he was a very precise copycat the sunglasses the suit the number of parachutes
01:10:03
listed in the demands. Investigators believe D.B. Cooper asked for four parachutes so he could toss
01:10:09
them out, as I said, to throw off a ground search. So maybe Richard was just repeating an effective
01:10:15
strategy because he knew D.B. Cooper never got caught. Yeah. Maybe someday as the FBI continues
01:10:21
to work on this case, we'll have a clear answer. But for now, whether Richard McCoy is in fact D.B.
01:10:27
Cooper remains a mystery and that is the story of Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. and the hijacking of
01:10:34
Flight 855. Wow do you think we'll ever find out who D.B. Cooper was I can I like this line of
01:10:41
questioning. I do too I love it when and this has happened a couple times in big true crime cases
01:10:46
the children of the people come forward and they're like well here's this yeah my dad always
01:10:52
We've talked about this. Yeah. Mom always fucking. Also the mom on a deathbed being like, I'm a co-conspirator, but I have to tell you this.
01:11:00
Yeah. Is very convincing to me. I agree. I agree. Or it's good writing, but it kind of adds up.
01:11:07
Wow. Great job. Thank you. I love that one. Yeah. I love it. Hijacking. That's just, yeah, wild.
01:11:14
Right. Also just that like a spate of hijackings. Oh my God. In the 70s. That's wild.
01:11:20
I want like a podcast that explains why and all that, you know? Yeah. Should we tell you guys what you're even doing right now?
01:11:27
Yeah, I think we should. Okay. This is the hashtag, what are you even doing right now, where you guys tell us what you
01:11:32
even do when you listen to My Favorite Murder? Kind of fun. Yeah. We love to know.
01:11:37
This one kind of hit me. This is from Shelby NEM from Instagram. I listened to this episode while ending an insomnia all-nighter with a 5 a.m. walk to
01:11:47
the beach and ocean swim. Oh. Oh. I, yeah, I'm impressed because my insomnia all-nighters, I just stay in bed the whole time.
01:11:55
Yeah. I mean, that's a nice way to just kind of try to do something different. Sounds lovely.
01:12:00
Near the ocean. Right. Sorry about the insomnia. It's the worst. Magnesium. Yeah.
01:12:06
Glycinate. Glycinate. I have magnesium lotion I put on my feet. Ooh. They say. That's a good one.
01:12:13
Put on some lotion, put on some socks. Great. This one's from an email, and it says, I'm helping solve a murder right now.
01:12:21
What? Hey, Karen and Georgia, I've got a story for your What Are You Even Doing Right Now segment.
01:12:25
This one's a bit of a thriller. I'm a GIS analyst. So my day usually revolves around making maps and analyzing geographic data.
01:12:35
But today things got a whole lot more interesting. An investigator put in a request with my department for a map to assist in a murder investigation.
01:12:43
Right now I'm creating a detailed map of the county boundary and city limits for them to use.
01:12:49
And it's not just any map. This one will help investigators pinpoint crucial locations related to the case and provide a clearer picture of the area.
01:12:57
who knew my love for maps would lead me to assist in a murder investigation. Talk about a plot twist.
01:13:03
Say sexy and don't get murdered, Em. Holy shit. So that's not what they're supposed to be doing.
01:13:10
And suddenly it's like, well, you need to. This is an episode of Bones, for sure.
01:13:16
One, a shy map maker. Yes. Hidden in the back room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Wow. Oh my God.
01:13:24
It's exciting. Yeah. Thanks for letting us know what you guys are even doing right now.
01:13:27
And thanks for listening. Yeah. We appreciate you. Thanks for listening and multitasking and supporting us.
01:13:34
Yeah. You're really going above and beyond and we appreciate it. You're doing it all.
01:13:39
And congratulations on the future. Yeah. Stay sexy. And don't get murdered. Goodbye.
01:13:44
Elvis, do you want a cookie? Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.
01:13:53
This has been an Exactly Right production Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Creighton Our editor is Aristotle Acevedo This episode was mixed by Liana Squalache
01:14:05
Our researchers are Maren McClashen and Allie Elkin. Email your hometowns to myfavoritemurder at gmail.com.
01:14:11
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at myfavoritemurder and Twitter at myfavemurder.
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