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