March 5, 2019 • 37 mins
New theories bring new suspects. But for many independent investigators, those theories are truth.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not necessarily represent those of iHeart Media, Stuff Media,
or its employees. Some Zodiac researchers don't like people saying
that they're obsessed with the case. I don't either, but
(00:21):
for a different reason because I blew past obsession about
five years ago. It's far more than an obsession to me.
My name is Mark Hewitt. I'm a true crime author.
I've been researching the Zodiac case for about eleven years now.
Various times I've looked at online websites and talk with
(00:42):
other people about the case. Back in two thousand and seven,
around the time that David Fincher's movie Zodiac came out.
That was the beginning of my fascination with the case
that became an obsession eventually. There are a couple of
times in my life back between two thousand and three
and two thousand and seven, when I looked into the case.
(01:04):
I spent a little bit of time on the three
forty cipher and I thought about visiting different crime scenes,
and it came a point where I said, you know what,
either I'm gonna have to throw myself into it wholeheartedly
or I'm gonna need to back away from it. It.
It's got to be one of the two. I can't
just dabble in it and feel like I'm doing anything seriously,
So round about sometime in two thousand and seven, I
(01:26):
made the decision that I was going to throw myself
in it wholeheartedly and read everything I could read and
talk to everybody I could talk to and figure out
everything I could about the case. Threw myself into the case,
knowing that it was a high profile case. It was
eleven years of my life. A couple of years ago,
my wife left me. I'm now divorced in part because
(01:50):
of the case. Not fully, not not, but I threw
myself into the case and neglected friendships, neglected my family,
neglected my career. It's something that I had to do
because of my my makeup as a person. This this
case has actually been my life for eleven years. And
(02:12):
I'm going through the process now that the book has
come out in September, of what am I going to
do now with my life. I can't live off the
zodiac forever. In fact, I've even thought to myself at times, well,
you know, maybe I just need to walk away from
it and just form new social communities, social circles, and
(02:37):
just just leave it completely. And yet I can't do
that because I have great friendships here and the case
is still being looked at by the police, and people
are still reading my book, and reporters keep calling me
and asking for comments, asking for quotes. So I suspect
I'll be involved with the Zodiac the rest of my life.
(03:01):
A man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them,
leaving them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report
a murder, no a double murder. I did it. A
man who wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried a
knife and gun and intended to use them. They have
(03:21):
an arrestipe because they can't move it. I'm not damn Zodiac.
Who is the Zodiac and where is he? From My
Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV, this is
Monster the Zodiac Killer. From the very beginning of this podcast,
(03:41):
we've been asking the big question who is the Zodiac?
The theories seem endless. A few searches on the Internet
and you can be lost in a sea of conjecture.
No other murder in history has drawn so many names
in speculation as to the killer's true identity. With all
this information out there, how can we possibly find that story?
How long have you looked in the wrong places? Is
(04:03):
it possible that there's more than one man behind the mask?
The case details are so vague, so disconnected, they easily
lend themselves to wild interpretation. And the unfortunate truth is
this might be part of the reason why the Zodiac
has gotten away with these atrocities for over fifty years.
So there are a lot of myths out there about
the Zodiac, and they often are attached to various theories
(04:27):
about the case. So if someone has a suspect, they
sort of tailor the story of the Zodiac to fit
that suspect. So depending on who you're talking about, the
story will change. This is Zodiac expert Michael Butterfield. He
says he's heard a lot of unlikely theories about the Zodiac.
While many are based in truth, others are pure conjecture.
(04:49):
Butterfield now listens to every new story with a skeptical year.
So he's either a brilliant Harvard lecturer or he's part
of the Manson family. For all these things, and so
each portrait of the zodiac changes with each theory, but
none of them correspond with reality. The list of possible
suspects is long and bizarre. There are dozens of names,
(05:13):
including the improbable Charles Manson, Dennis Rader, and even Texas
U S. Senator Ted Cruz. But there are also a
number of more plausible suspects, and many investigators have explored
these extensively, often spending years finding the clues and connections.
And for these investigators, their suspect is everything. This is
(05:35):
what they believe. It's their truth, and I'm reporting what
they believe. If there's another side to it, I report
that too. I'm Rachel Raskins Raghan, and I'm a journalist
with The Times Harold the layo. When I got with
The Times Harold, it just came with the package because
(05:56):
The Times Harold was involved from the start. I think
the time I got a phone call from someone who
knew the zodiac was I talked with someone about it.
They say, oh, yeah, we get those all the time.
You get letters, you get phone calls. They know for sure,
and they want to tell you. And most of the
time there's nothing. Really you can do to disprove it.
(06:19):
It happened a long time ago, and it happened to them.
They developed their theory in their head. There's no way
really to disprove it. So I don't normally try, you know,
unless something comes up in the story that that presents
itself of an opportunity to talk to somebody else to
see if there's another story out there that would contradict
(06:40):
it or confirm it, then I do that. Well, Clearly,
some have gotten so into it that it's cost them
other important elements in their life. I've, you know, known
of people who have lost marriages and families over it
because they can't let it go. One of these people
(07:02):
is Mark Hewitt, who you heard at the beginning of
the episode. After more than a decade of research, Mark
recently published a trilogy of books on his Zodiac suspect.
I had to look at myself in the mirror a
number of times over this past year and do a
very serious gut check because I was going to go
live and I was going to publish a book that
(07:22):
identified Ted Kaczynski as a Zodiac serial killer. I put
my credibility on the line, my research ability on the line.
A lot of people have criticized it and ripped it
apart online and called me an idiot and a fool,
and a one person said that they wouldn't have been
more surprised if I had named the Easter Bunny as
(07:43):
being responsible for the Zodiac murders. We met up with
Mark if the Late Herman Road fiftieth anniversary gathering, and
it quickly became clear to me Mark had been through
a lot. Regardless of the criticism he's received, Mark has
done his homework. So we're going to hear Mark out
and into his theory. What I came up with with
(08:03):
six or seven clusters of evidence, one for instances, the
whole use of mathematics. As you get to know the
Zodiac letters, you realize there are awful lot of numbers
in his writings. There are equations, There are umpteen symbols.
This is important because Ted Kazynski studied mathematics religiously, and
(08:24):
according to Mark, there's one particular symbol that had special
meaning to Kazynski, a circle with a cross through it.
The cross hair symbol is a mathematical picture and illustration
of the equation X squared plus y squared equals one
which is so basis to mathematics that it has its
own term. It's called a unit circle. Ted Kazynski in
(08:47):
a number of his papers uses the phrase a unit circle,
and a unit circle is used widely in his area
of expertise boundary functions within mathematics. For another clue, Mark says,
you can look to author Joseph Conrad's book The Secret Agent.
If you read The Secret Agent, you realize, oh my goodness,
they're an awful lot of numbers. They're awful lot of phrases.
(09:10):
Are a large number of vocabulary words that come straight
from The Secret Agent into the Zodiac Letters. One example
of this comes from the Zodiac letter received on November eleven.
This was Zodiac's threat to bomb a school bus. It
won't do to reroute and reschedule the buses because the
(09:30):
bomb can be adapted to new conditions. In Conrad's The
Secret Agent, the main character says that he wants to
quote invent a detonator that would adjust itself to all
conditions of action and even to unexpected changes of condition.
Why that's significant is because that is one of Ted
Kazinski's favorite books. He claims to have read it a
(09:52):
dozen times, and one time when he was trying to
explain himself to his parents and his brother, he said,
you know, you have to read this book to understand me.
Another tie between Zodiac and Kazinski is the use of
written declarations sent to the media. Mark says there are
a lot of similarities between the Uni Bomber manifesto and
(10:12):
the Zodiac letters. A lot of the wording and a
lot of the explanation of the Unibomber manifesto is merely justification.
So Ted Kazinski killed because he enjoyed killing the Zodiac.
In his far away Cipher said, I like killing people
because it's so much fun. So both Kazinski and the
(10:33):
Zodiac killed for the pleasure of it, and both of
them bragged about it and letters sent to local newspapers.
Like many theories about Zodiac suspects, a lot of the
evidence here is circumstantial. However, there are things that do
eerily add up, like the timelines between Zodiac and Ted Kazinski.
Ted was in California nine six interviewing for positions to
(10:57):
become a math professor. Seven he moved to the Bay
Area and was a professor at Berkeley from sixty seven
to sixty nine. He abruptly resigned his position. Four days later,
four days after his last day of work was the
Blue Rock Springs murder. Over the next two years of
(11:18):
his life, Ted Kazynski was missing in action, and during
those two years the bulk of the Zodiac murders and
the bulk of the Zodiac letters took place, culminating with
the letter to the l a times in March of
ninety one, the last time the Zodiac used the word Zodiac,
(11:39):
the last time he used his cross here symbol. Why
is that significant because several months later, in June of
nineteen seventy one, Ted Kazynski moved to Montana, built his cabin,
and lived in Montana. Between nineteen seventy one and nineteen
seventy four, new Zodiac letters were sent to the San
Francisco Chronicle. However, these letters were print They were signed
(12:01):
with other aliases such as the Red Phantom or simply
as a friend. There are maybe one, maybe a couple
additional Zodiac letters after Ted moved to Montana, but they
never used the word Zodiac and they never used the
crossroads symbol. So the timelines of the Zodiac and Ted
(12:22):
Kaczynski line up very well. But what about the way
Zodiac killed people versus the Uni bomber. Zodiac only ever
used guns and knives to kill. Is it possible he
did follow through on his threat to make bombs? The
truth is the Zodiac killed up until the murder of
Paul Stein, in which he was cited, and that changed
(12:46):
the Zodiac. As far as we know, he didn't attack
after that. However, at that time, the Zodiac became more
of a letter writer and began to write many, many
letters to the police. And in those letters he included
a bomb diagram where he threatened to kill a school
bus with a bomb. So the Zodiac himself morphed from
(13:08):
a up close and personal killer to somebody who threatened
with bombs. This isn't just some far fetched theory. In
San Francisco, detectives announced they were investigating Ted Kazinski as
a possible Zodiac suspect. According to the San Francisco Chronicle,
local investigators found distinct similarities between the Uni bomber and
(13:30):
Zodiac crimes, among them where details Mark Hewitt had also
found both sent letters to newspapers bragging of their crimes.
Ted Kazinski was in the Bay Area at the same
time as the Zodiac murders, and Kazinski often used a
symbol similar to the Zodiac crosshairs symbol. Ultimately, police never
(13:51):
confirmed any viable connections between Kazinski and the Zodiac crimes. However,
his name still exists on the roster of possible suspect,
and for Mark Hewitt, that possibility keeps his research alive.
People have said to me, where are you gonna go
with us? So you're gonna try to talk the police
into it? Are you going to try to convince everybody?
(14:12):
I don't feel that's my job. I'm a researcher. I'm
a writer. I've researched the case, I've written about it.
People can respond to it anyway they want to. There's
(14:33):
so much detail to the Kazinski case that covering everything
in this episode would be impossible, and that's true for
nearly all of the high profile Zodiac suspects. In fact,
the sheer amount of information and circumstantial evidence on these
suspects is intimidating. But there's one journalist who's combed through
almost all of it. The main San Francisco Chronicle reporter
(14:54):
assigned to the Zodiac case. Oh you can go into
zodiac r Kenya. Like many rabbits down many holes. I'm
Kevin Fagan. I'm gonna report at the Sanrancisco Chronicle. I
have thousands of tips and a drawer over there. It's
a series of file folders and books dating back to
(15:19):
six I believe it is right around then. Of of
theories and tips and proclamations from people who believe they've
solved the Zonia case. It's gonna spill over. This may
be the first. Yeah, this is one of the first ones. No,
it's not that the first. You could spend all your
(15:39):
days sorting this tune, this one, and this is this guy.
Sure it's someone in I think Scotland. Maybe they're right,
who knows, but they're just so damn many of them
there sorting out which one is the real one. That's
for the cops. That's why a lot of people when
they call I say, you know, my standard response, which
(15:59):
I truly belief, is you know, thank you, I'm glad
you're sharing this. When the cops move on it, that's
when it's the best time to report on this. Because
if I wrote a story on every and in the
plausible one, a restaurant, every plausible zodiac tip that came in.
You know, it'd be a weekly caller. This is just
(16:22):
every one that came in. It's just moving. Come on.
I wrote about this one because two thousand nine my
dad did it. The dad do it, you know. And
then I started getting a ton of stuff from people
who thought their dad's zodiac, their moms maybe the zodiac.
(16:43):
The guy upstairs as the zodiac. It's no, it's a
bunch of cops. No, it's a guy in Scotland. Wait, no,
it's a crazy guy who lives downstairs. And I'm writing
this letter as he's down there right now. If you
if you read the cipher's I get letters, oh hack,
so many every year, and packets and and handmade books
(17:06):
from people who have gone through the ciphers and oh
my god, they've solved it and it says, you know,
fell in the blanks. And people who have gone through
the handwriting say, oh my god, it's my grandpa's handwriting,
or it's the guy down the road's handwriting, or the
Sero Keller and presidents his handwriting, and they're dead sure.
And they get experts who confirmed their their theories. It
(17:31):
comes back my dad did it two thousand nine. No,
my dad did it. Fagan is talking about a phenomenon
that we also noticed in our investigation. In recent years,
several individuals have come forward to claim they have direct
family ties to Zodiac. One of those individuals is Gary Stewart.
In two thousand fourteen, Stewart went public to suggest his
(17:53):
biological father, a man named Earl Van Best Jr. Was
the Zodiac. His primary evidence was found in one of
the Zodiacs unsolved cryptograms. Stewart claims his father's name could
be found in the so called three forty cipher. Remember
this was a later cryptogram sent to the San Francisco
Chronicle on November nine, nineteen sixty nine. Zodiac sent a
(18:17):
follow up thirteen symbol cipher on April twentie, nineteen seventy.
Unlike the first ciphers, these were never officially decrypted. My
father's name is in that cipher, he said, my name is,
and then he put thirteen symbols. Those thirteen letters are
E A, R, L V A N B, E S
(18:38):
T j R. That was Gary Stewart, speaking on a
talk show in He published a book on these findings
and more, but not everyone was convinced on solved cryptograms.
It's like the equivalent of a treasure map, trying to
figure out what whereas the treasure buried. Sometimes I go
through a period we I'll spend a lot of hours
on it, and other times I don't because I get
(18:59):
burned out on trying it. This is programmer and amateur
cryptographer David A. Rancheck. We talked with him early in
the season about the first Cipher's. He's tried to solve
the three forty cipher, but like everyone else, has had
no success. People have written endless books about their suspects,
and you know, their claims about solving the solution, and
(19:19):
in some cases they're rewarded for it, you know, financially,
their books are wildly popular even though they haven't really
solved the codes. You know, if they can convince enough
people that they have, then they know they're they're able
to make a decent buck from it. So that's that's
the other strange aspect of this whole thing. And like
the case of Gary Stewart, who claimed his biological father,
(19:40):
I guess was the Zodiac. You know, he's got very
flimsy evidence on that, and I looked at his codework
in his book. He got a publication deal from Harper's
and he's a big publishing house. It was a best
selling book for a while. It hit the New York
Times Best Sartlist, and he was going around to all
these news shows. They would bring him on and saying,
you know, Zodiac is solved. Here's the guy who solved it.
(20:03):
A lot of people go into it and they don't
bother to learn cryptography. They just have kind of an
intuitive feel for what needs to be done, and that
I think is what gets people stuck in these traps
of you know, they got a name to pop out,
or they got a phrase the pop out, but they
can't prove that it was intentional. There is a sort
of intoxicating effect when you plug in what do you
(20:24):
think Zodiac might have said? And it happens to fit.
So you come up with this long phrase, but invariably
the message turns into gibberish for the rest of the message.
It's easy to get caught up in that first feeling
of Wow, this it's working, it's fitting, this message is
coming out. But that's just because the ciphertext gives you
enough room to make an early mistake, and it looks
(20:48):
right at the beginning, but then later on it it
just turns into nonsense. I often compare it to you know,
seeing faces and clouds. Well, a lot of times you'll
see something that seems to be there and it's not
really there. It's just making your brain think that there's
a pattern there, but it's actually happening because of just
random chance. And that's a frequent mistake that people make
(21:10):
when they look at the ciphers. So that's the kind
of trap that they're in. They're kind of stuck in
this place where they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that the message is real. Somebody will go through a
procedure that generates a name, and so that will be
their solution. But if you repeat the process, you can
make the same process generate other names. But they ignore that.
(21:31):
Some of them are just so fixated on their suspect
that they get locked into a particular way of solving it.
What it's resulted in is, you know, a lot of
people are so severely misinformed on the case they think
that it's already been solved. I stopped playing that game
a long time ago, but people a look, they make
(21:54):
it sound like if you can show them that piece
of information, it'll be really compelling. And then you go
to the trouble to upload it and they say, no,
big deal, doesn't prove anything. I didn't say it did,
Jack Won. That's why I have the delete feature. I
can ban people at all, but I've melted out a lot.
This is Tom Voyd of Zodiac Killer dot com. As
you heard last episode, he started the Zodiac Anniversary meet ups.
(22:15):
In many ways, he's a key figure in this Zodiologist community.
Tom has explored the three forty cipher extensively. He echoed
David ranchek sentiment that the unsolved cipher theories are bogus.
People are so influenced by the fact that three of
those codes didn't get solved. Well, they're just rubbish. There's
no solution to be had. It's just to manipulate people
(22:36):
and get him to keep focusing on that instead of
on the government. Does that you throw out something a
press release about a controversial topic to get people not
to talk about you know what they should be talking about.
It's fake news. Zodia convented it. Zodiac invented fake news
with the code has my Name in it and all
this other every letter was fake news and it was
(22:57):
to get manipulate the people or the police into following
the wrong path. Even still, Tom Void developed his own
suspect through the ciphers. Many years ago, he received a
tip from an informant named gold Catcher. This informant also
spoke with the police, but at the time they didn't
consider him a reliable source. Tom, however, was so convinced
(23:20):
by this new info he began his own investigation. Eventually,
Tom found the name of this new suspect in the
initial three parts cipher. These were the three letters sent
to separate newspapers in July of nineteen sixty nine. The
name Tom found was Richard Geikowski. At the time that
the Zodi X that his three part cipher, Richard was
(23:43):
working for a counterculture newspaper and he would publish articles
and he would call himself Dick Geike, So he would
shorten his last name to the first syllable, and he
spelled it different ways. I have found evidence, the actual
proof that where he spelled at g A i K,
g i k E and g U y k, there's
only one they're spelling to get that Gike sound, and
that's g y k E and that was found in
(24:03):
the cipher before it's translated. You can see it with
your own eyes. G y k E. Zodiac chose the
g y k E was going to go right there,
and he chose that it would represent when solved, the
last four letters of the word because I will not
give you my name, because so in the word, because
the last four letters A, U, S, E are what
(24:24):
GUI translates to when the key is learned and you
translate the cipher. So Guik house key the key syllable
can be found if you consider the word key as
in the decryption key as part of the solution. According
to Tom, Zodiac changed his encoding method throughout the three
parts cipher to throw off cryptographers. So Zodiac potentionally changed
(24:47):
the coding method and that allowed Guike to translate the house.
If he hadn't changed the encoding method, then Guike would
have become something else. It wouldn't have been a usc
So you have all three syllables of his last name,
which is really interesting. And he went on to become
one of the first computer corners in the Bay Are.
He started his own online newsgroup in his fifties, which
is when most people are along done learning something new,
(25:07):
so he obviously had an aptitude for that. For many
online sleuths, Richard Geikowski is another major suspect in the
Zodiac case, but aside from the cipher connection which Tom
just mentioned, what other evidence is out there. Geikowski was
part of a counterculture commune in San Francisco called Good Times.
There he edited an anti police, pro violence newspaper. By
(25:31):
January of nineteen sixty nine, the Good Times newspaper was
publishing violent works of fiction, many were extremely similar to
the Zodiac's future crimes. There's some circumstantial evidence linking Richard
Gaikowski to the Paul Stein murder. Richard's cousin lived on
Washington Street, which you may remember is where Paul Stein
(25:52):
was murdered, and that cousin's birthday was October eleven, the
same day Paul Stein was killed. For this reason, it's
possible he was in the area that day. Also, the
Good Times Communication Center was located just a few houses
down from Paul Stein's residence in San Francisco, and according
to paul Stein's sister, Gaikowski attended Paul's funeral The most
(26:17):
significant evidence came from the informant gold Catcher. He was
a former co worker of Geikowski's. According to Goldcatcher, Geikowski
would invite him to engage in violent acts similar to
the Zodiac crimes. This was convincing enough that NAPA detective
Ken Narlow decided to interview and investigate Gaikowski. Goldcatcher also
(26:38):
obtained an audio clip of Gaikowski talking. We received a
copy of this audio courtesy of Tom Voyd from Zodiac
killer dot com. The whole thing about a code, You've
got to remember also, once the code telecode is broken,
you have I never know, never any way of knowing
whether it's a real code or whether it's just a
fake code. Oh, which means at some time, you know,
(27:01):
like the military and all of that, sometimes you would
send garbled messages that meant absolutely nothing, so that you
get the enemy to depend all their time trying to
make break the code. Nancy Slover, who spoke with the
Zodiac when he called to report the Blue Rock Springs murder,
listened to this clip of Richard Gaikowski. According to Nancy,
(27:22):
it was the voice of the Zodiac, but aside from
some initial questioning by authorities. Geikowski was never thoroughly investigated.
He died in two thousand four. Tom Voight, Mark Hewitt,
(27:47):
and other online sleuths have been meeting up for years.
On occasions like these, they come together to tell stories
and share theories. I got a little group together people
that were very interested in the case. They come to
my house. We have dinner, and we sit in the
chat and watch the Zodiac movies over and over and
over again. And so that's that's how this got going.
(28:08):
And we go to all the Zodiac sites for every anniversary.
This is Sandy Betts. She's been a part of the
Zodiac story from the very beginning. Sandy told us that
back in the sixties she knew some of the victims.
She even claims to have had run ins with the
Zodiac himself. It has taken up a good portion of
(28:29):
my life, it really, really truly has. My children have
grown up with it, you know, knowing that I was
being stocked by somebody who was claiming to be the Zodiac,
and my children were afraid. My had a daughter was
scared to death of him because he didn't he followed
her as much as he did me. She finally passed
away for a thing. It sounds terrible, but when she
(28:50):
passed away, I didn't have to worry about her being
tortured by him, because I was scared to death that
he was going to get her and torture her. According
to Sandy, the Zodiac was obsessed with her and her daughter.
She spent years confronting this man. He would supposedly show
up at her home or tail get her car late
at night. Sandy saw his face many times, but never
(29:12):
got his name. I did a steak out. There was
several girls that were murdered in Pittsburgh area, and I
decided to do a steak out because I was told
the guy was an older guy and Betty looked like
my guy. So I went and I backed in to
a laundromatt area where was cross streeping taco bell where
most of the prostitutes hung out. And as I'm hanging
out the pictures that I'm talking, this one girl walking
(29:34):
up and she screams, Oh my god, that's the killer.
I go, whoa, whoa, wo calm down, calm down, what
do you mean that's the killer? And she said he
grabbed her jacket with one hand, and he grabbed her
hair with the other and he pulled a big hunk
of her hair out, and she slipped her arms like
this and slipped out of the jacket. It's not too
long after that I get an envelope in the mail
and one of the pictures has returned to me, no
(29:55):
return address. The stamp was upside down. It was a
love stamp. I think I figured he's telling me that
he got ahold of one of the girls that I
gave the picture too, and he wanted me to know
that he killed another one. Sandy told us many stories
which connect her stalker to the Zodiac. One of those
stories begins just days after the attack at Lake Ferryessa September,
(30:20):
when the Zodiac stabbed se Seria Shepherd and Brian Hart. Now,
within a day or two, this is before it hit
the newspaper. Within a day or two, the costume was
put in my car, the killing costume. Now this is
four weeks before Halloween, so I thought it was a
Halloween costume. But I made a copy of what it
(30:40):
looked like, and it was in two parts. The top
part was made out of a paper sack. It was
painted black. I don't remember if there was a hole
for the nose there or a hole for them out.
But at the very bottom he had sliced each corner
and bent it so that it sat on his shoulders,
and the other part, which I called the poncho part,
(31:01):
went over that and held it down. And the glasses
that he had the clip ones, actually held the hood
in place so that he could turn his head like
this and and it would stay in place because the
glasses holding it together. Sandy's theories really confusing and complex,
but we doesn't matter because we get along and we
(31:21):
treat each other well, and you know, we're nice to
each other's We were curious what Tom thought of all
these different zodiac theories. Each of the Zodiologists has their
own personal story, but still they gather every year to
spend time together, and the differences of opinion don't seem
to matter. As long as people are, you know, nice
(31:43):
and polite and you know, and not rude, then I
don't really care what their theory is. We'll get along
just fine. I have a bad reputation of being an
asshole and kicking people off my message board and stuff
like they have it. Really I think I'm pretty fair.
I just if you're going to be arrogant and aloof
and confrontational, condescending that I'll probably be a dick. Usually,
(32:07):
Tom and the Zodiologists traveled to the actual sites of
the known murders, but something happened this year that changed everything. Well,
this year Tom Tom at a bus. But what was
supposed to happen was we were all going to be
on a bus and do a tour of the crime
scene and probably go to where Betty Luke lived and
(32:28):
where David lived and things like that. And everybody was
very excited about doing this because it's the fiftieth anniversary.
So Tom was having a big deal, you know, a
bus and everything, and this guy who is not mentally stable,
made a threat to Tom, and Tom reported it to
Solano County Sheriff's Department, and I guess they probably said,
(32:51):
you know, it's not a good idea for you to
have this bus tour because this sounds pretty serious. Not
much is known about the person who made this threat.
Tom says he has a history of stalking these Zodiac gatherings.
This individual apparently believes his own father is the Zodiac
and that the Zodiologist community is trying to kill him.
(33:12):
Tom's fiance Angie told us that this case has a
detrimental effect on some people. I think they just get
so wrapped up in it they start to lose sense
of reality. It's easy to lose yourself in a movie
or something, but that's not what this is. And I
think a lot of those people kind of have that mindset,
like maybe like things can play out the way they
want them to fits their movie in their script, and
(33:35):
that's not good. Luckily, I don't see too many too
much of that. Tom probably sees more of it than
I do, but I kind of turn an ignorant eye
to that. Angie says, this individual is one of those people.
After he made the threat, local law enforcement advised everyone
to stay away from Lake Herman. So Tom Void canceled
(33:56):
the bus tour. My boyfriend came all the way from
conduct to to go on the bus tour, and a
lot of people, you know, have hotels booked and things
like that, and this screwed up everything, especially for poor Tom.
We've got it all together, Yeah, so it's a it's
a crying chain. But now they think the guy was
(34:16):
just rambling, which makes me think that possibly they talked
to him and he kind of backed off a little
bit and said, Oh, I'm really not gonna do that.
I just wanted to scare him, you know, And so
we're probably gonna end up going out there anyway next time.
On Monster the Zodiac Killer, I know there were threats
(34:39):
made for people who came here tonight. We're here because
of the fifty anniversary of the Zodiac killing, and we're
just here for extra patrol and just kind of make
sure everyone that comes here wants to be here and
stay safe. I've had a couple of people tell me
that they are positive that they encountered this person and
(35:00):
escaped death. And the headlights, there's a guy's standing in
the road, and then I remember I told the officer
I was saying, I think that was Zodiac from all
that that I've read, I've saw, and I've heard, so like,
I don't think he'll ever be caught. We do need
a face, and we need that face to be a monster.
(35:20):
So that, I think is why we have to identify
the murder with a face in the area that was involved,
basically decent New York Brooklyn at the time, it was
like the motor capital of the world. That was the
most violent police in New York City, and in the
midst of all this violence was an emerging serial killer
who was calling himself to Zodiac Monster. The Zodiac Killer
(35:46):
is a fifteen episode podcast produced by I Heart Radio
How Stuff Works in Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright and Right
our executive producers on behalf of tender Foot TV, alongside
producers Meredith Stepman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hope
is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along
with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and Josh
(36:09):
Thane Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is
our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
If you haven't already, make sure to check out the
first season of Monster called Atlantic Monster, about the Atlantic
child murders from the late seventies to the early eighties.
Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments,
(36:31):
email us at Monster at how stuff Works dot com,
or you can call us at one three five six
six six seven. Thanks for listening.
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not necessarily represent those of iHeart Media, Stuff Media,
or its employees. Some Zodiac researchers don't like people saying
that they're obsessed with the case. I don't either, but
(00:21):
for a different reason because I blew past obsession about
five years ago. It's far more than an obsession to me.
My name is Mark Hewitt. I'm a true crime author.
I've been researching the Zodiac case for about eleven years now.
Various times I've looked at online websites and talk with
(00:42):
other people about the case. Back in two thousand and seven,
around the time that David Fincher's movie Zodiac came out.
That was the beginning of my fascination with the case
that became an obsession eventually. There are a couple of
times in my life back between two thousand and three
and two thousand and seven, when I looked into the case.
(01:04):
I spent a little bit of time on the three
forty cipher and I thought about visiting different crime scenes,
and it came a point where I said, you know what,
either I'm gonna have to throw myself into it wholeheartedly
or I'm gonna need to back away from it. It.
It's got to be one of the two. I can't
just dabble in it and feel like I'm doing anything seriously,
So round about sometime in two thousand and seven, I
(01:26):
made the decision that I was going to throw myself
in it wholeheartedly and read everything I could read and
talk to everybody I could talk to and figure out
everything I could about the case. Threw myself into the case,
knowing that it was a high profile case. It was
eleven years of my life. A couple of years ago,
my wife left me. I'm now divorced in part because
(01:50):
of the case. Not fully, not not, but I threw
myself into the case and neglected friendships, neglected my family,
neglected my career. It's something that I had to do
because of my my makeup as a person. This this
case has actually been my life for eleven years. And
(02:12):
I'm going through the process now that the book has
come out in September, of what am I going to
do now with my life. I can't live off the
zodiac forever. In fact, I've even thought to myself at times, well,
you know, maybe I just need to walk away from
it and just form new social communities, social circles, and
(02:37):
just just leave it completely. And yet I can't do
that because I have great friendships here and the case
is still being looked at by the police, and people
are still reading my book, and reporters keep calling me
and asking for comments, asking for quotes. So I suspect
I'll be involved with the Zodiac the rest of my life.
(03:01):
A man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them,
leaving them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report
a murder, no a double murder. I did it. A
man who wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried a
knife and gun and intended to use them. They have
(03:21):
an arrestipe because they can't move it. I'm not damn Zodiac.
Who is the Zodiac and where is he? From My
Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV, this is
Monster the Zodiac Killer. From the very beginning of this podcast,
(03:41):
we've been asking the big question who is the Zodiac?
The theories seem endless. A few searches on the Internet
and you can be lost in a sea of conjecture.
No other murder in history has drawn so many names
in speculation as to the killer's true identity. With all
this information out there, how can we possibly find that story?
How long have you looked in the wrong places? Is
(04:03):
it possible that there's more than one man behind the mask?
The case details are so vague, so disconnected, they easily
lend themselves to wild interpretation. And the unfortunate truth is
this might be part of the reason why the Zodiac
has gotten away with these atrocities for over fifty years.
So there are a lot of myths out there about
the Zodiac, and they often are attached to various theories
(04:27):
about the case. So if someone has a suspect, they
sort of tailor the story of the Zodiac to fit
that suspect. So depending on who you're talking about, the
story will change. This is Zodiac expert Michael Butterfield. He
says he's heard a lot of unlikely theories about the Zodiac.
While many are based in truth, others are pure conjecture.
(04:49):
Butterfield now listens to every new story with a skeptical year.
So he's either a brilliant Harvard lecturer or he's part
of the Manson family. For all these things, and so
each portrait of the zodiac changes with each theory, but
none of them correspond with reality. The list of possible
suspects is long and bizarre. There are dozens of names,
(05:13):
including the improbable Charles Manson, Dennis Rader, and even Texas
U S. Senator Ted Cruz. But there are also a
number of more plausible suspects, and many investigators have explored
these extensively, often spending years finding the clues and connections.
And for these investigators, their suspect is everything. This is
(05:35):
what they believe. It's their truth, and I'm reporting what
they believe. If there's another side to it, I report
that too. I'm Rachel Raskins Raghan, and I'm a journalist
with The Times Harold the layo. When I got with
The Times Harold, it just came with the package because
(05:56):
The Times Harold was involved from the start. I think
the time I got a phone call from someone who
knew the zodiac was I talked with someone about it.
They say, oh, yeah, we get those all the time.
You get letters, you get phone calls. They know for sure,
and they want to tell you. And most of the
time there's nothing. Really you can do to disprove it.
(06:19):
It happened a long time ago, and it happened to them.
They developed their theory in their head. There's no way
really to disprove it. So I don't normally try, you know,
unless something comes up in the story that that presents
itself of an opportunity to talk to somebody else to
see if there's another story out there that would contradict
(06:40):
it or confirm it, then I do that. Well, Clearly,
some have gotten so into it that it's cost them
other important elements in their life. I've, you know, known
of people who have lost marriages and families over it
because they can't let it go. One of these people
(07:02):
is Mark Hewitt, who you heard at the beginning of
the episode. After more than a decade of research, Mark
recently published a trilogy of books on his Zodiac suspect.
I had to look at myself in the mirror a
number of times over this past year and do a
very serious gut check because I was going to go
live and I was going to publish a book that
(07:22):
identified Ted Kaczynski as a Zodiac serial killer. I put
my credibility on the line, my research ability on the line.
A lot of people have criticized it and ripped it
apart online and called me an idiot and a fool,
and a one person said that they wouldn't have been
more surprised if I had named the Easter Bunny as
(07:43):
being responsible for the Zodiac murders. We met up with
Mark if the Late Herman Road fiftieth anniversary gathering, and
it quickly became clear to me Mark had been through
a lot. Regardless of the criticism he's received, Mark has
done his homework. So we're going to hear Mark out
and into his theory. What I came up with with
(08:03):
six or seven clusters of evidence, one for instances, the
whole use of mathematics. As you get to know the
Zodiac letters, you realize there are awful lot of numbers
in his writings. There are equations, There are umpteen symbols.
This is important because Ted Kazynski studied mathematics religiously, and
(08:24):
according to Mark, there's one particular symbol that had special
meaning to Kazynski, a circle with a cross through it.
The cross hair symbol is a mathematical picture and illustration
of the equation X squared plus y squared equals one
which is so basis to mathematics that it has its
own term. It's called a unit circle. Ted Kazynski in
(08:47):
a number of his papers uses the phrase a unit circle,
and a unit circle is used widely in his area
of expertise boundary functions within mathematics. For another clue, Mark says,
you can look to author Joseph Conrad's book The Secret Agent.
If you read The Secret Agent, you realize, oh my goodness,
they're an awful lot of numbers. They're awful lot of phrases.
(09:10):
Are a large number of vocabulary words that come straight
from The Secret Agent into the Zodiac Letters. One example
of this comes from the Zodiac letter received on November eleven.
This was Zodiac's threat to bomb a school bus. It
won't do to reroute and reschedule the buses because the
(09:30):
bomb can be adapted to new conditions. In Conrad's The
Secret Agent, the main character says that he wants to
quote invent a detonator that would adjust itself to all
conditions of action and even to unexpected changes of condition.
Why that's significant is because that is one of Ted
Kazinski's favorite books. He claims to have read it a
(09:52):
dozen times, and one time when he was trying to
explain himself to his parents and his brother, he said,
you know, you have to read this book to understand me.
Another tie between Zodiac and Kazinski is the use of
written declarations sent to the media. Mark says there are
a lot of similarities between the Uni Bomber manifesto and
(10:12):
the Zodiac letters. A lot of the wording and a
lot of the explanation of the Unibomber manifesto is merely justification.
So Ted Kazinski killed because he enjoyed killing the Zodiac.
In his far away Cipher said, I like killing people
because it's so much fun. So both Kazinski and the
(10:33):
Zodiac killed for the pleasure of it, and both of
them bragged about it and letters sent to local newspapers.
Like many theories about Zodiac suspects, a lot of the
evidence here is circumstantial. However, there are things that do
eerily add up, like the timelines between Zodiac and Ted Kazinski.
Ted was in California nine six interviewing for positions to
(10:57):
become a math professor. Seven he moved to the Bay
Area and was a professor at Berkeley from sixty seven
to sixty nine. He abruptly resigned his position. Four days later,
four days after his last day of work was the
Blue Rock Springs murder. Over the next two years of
(11:18):
his life, Ted Kazynski was missing in action, and during
those two years the bulk of the Zodiac murders and
the bulk of the Zodiac letters took place, culminating with
the letter to the l a times in March of
ninety one, the last time the Zodiac used the word Zodiac,
(11:39):
the last time he used his cross here symbol. Why
is that significant because several months later, in June of
nineteen seventy one, Ted Kazynski moved to Montana, built his cabin,
and lived in Montana. Between nineteen seventy one and nineteen
seventy four, new Zodiac letters were sent to the San
Francisco Chronicle. However, these letters were print They were signed
(12:01):
with other aliases such as the Red Phantom or simply
as a friend. There are maybe one, maybe a couple
additional Zodiac letters after Ted moved to Montana, but they
never used the word Zodiac and they never used the
crossroads symbol. So the timelines of the Zodiac and Ted
(12:22):
Kaczynski line up very well. But what about the way
Zodiac killed people versus the Uni bomber. Zodiac only ever
used guns and knives to kill. Is it possible he
did follow through on his threat to make bombs? The
truth is the Zodiac killed up until the murder of
Paul Stein, in which he was cited, and that changed
(12:46):
the Zodiac. As far as we know, he didn't attack
after that. However, at that time, the Zodiac became more
of a letter writer and began to write many, many
letters to the police. And in those letters he included
a bomb diagram where he threatened to kill a school
bus with a bomb. So the Zodiac himself morphed from
(13:08):
a up close and personal killer to somebody who threatened
with bombs. This isn't just some far fetched theory. In
San Francisco, detectives announced they were investigating Ted Kazinski as
a possible Zodiac suspect. According to the San Francisco Chronicle,
local investigators found distinct similarities between the Uni bomber and
(13:30):
Zodiac crimes, among them where details Mark Hewitt had also
found both sent letters to newspapers bragging of their crimes.
Ted Kazinski was in the Bay Area at the same
time as the Zodiac murders, and Kazinski often used a
symbol similar to the Zodiac crosshairs symbol. Ultimately, police never
(13:51):
confirmed any viable connections between Kazinski and the Zodiac crimes. However,
his name still exists on the roster of possible suspect,
and for Mark Hewitt, that possibility keeps his research alive.
People have said to me, where are you gonna go
with us? So you're gonna try to talk the police
into it? Are you going to try to convince everybody?
(14:12):
I don't feel that's my job. I'm a researcher. I'm
a writer. I've researched the case, I've written about it.
People can respond to it anyway they want to. There's
(14:33):
so much detail to the Kazinski case that covering everything
in this episode would be impossible, and that's true for
nearly all of the high profile Zodiac suspects. In fact,
the sheer amount of information and circumstantial evidence on these
suspects is intimidating. But there's one journalist who's combed through
almost all of it. The main San Francisco Chronicle reporter
(14:54):
assigned to the Zodiac case. Oh you can go into
zodiac r Kenya. Like many rabbits down many holes. I'm
Kevin Fagan. I'm gonna report at the Sanrancisco Chronicle. I
have thousands of tips and a drawer over there. It's
a series of file folders and books dating back to
(15:19):
six I believe it is right around then. Of of
theories and tips and proclamations from people who believe they've
solved the Zonia case. It's gonna spill over. This may
be the first. Yeah, this is one of the first ones. No,
it's not that the first. You could spend all your
(15:39):
days sorting this tune, this one, and this is this guy.
Sure it's someone in I think Scotland. Maybe they're right,
who knows, but they're just so damn many of them
there sorting out which one is the real one. That's
for the cops. That's why a lot of people when
they call I say, you know, my standard response, which
(15:59):
I truly belief, is you know, thank you, I'm glad
you're sharing this. When the cops move on it, that's
when it's the best time to report on this. Because
if I wrote a story on every and in the
plausible one, a restaurant, every plausible zodiac tip that came in.
You know, it'd be a weekly caller. This is just
(16:22):
every one that came in. It's just moving. Come on.
I wrote about this one because two thousand nine my
dad did it. The dad do it, you know. And
then I started getting a ton of stuff from people
who thought their dad's zodiac, their moms maybe the zodiac.
(16:43):
The guy upstairs as the zodiac. It's no, it's a
bunch of cops. No, it's a guy in Scotland. Wait, no,
it's a crazy guy who lives downstairs. And I'm writing
this letter as he's down there right now. If you
if you read the cipher's I get letters, oh hack,
so many every year, and packets and and handmade books
(17:06):
from people who have gone through the ciphers and oh
my god, they've solved it and it says, you know,
fell in the blanks. And people who have gone through
the handwriting say, oh my god, it's my grandpa's handwriting,
or it's the guy down the road's handwriting, or the
Sero Keller and presidents his handwriting, and they're dead sure.
And they get experts who confirmed their their theories. It
(17:31):
comes back my dad did it two thousand nine. No,
my dad did it. Fagan is talking about a phenomenon
that we also noticed in our investigation. In recent years,
several individuals have come forward to claim they have direct
family ties to Zodiac. One of those individuals is Gary Stewart.
In two thousand fourteen, Stewart went public to suggest his
(17:53):
biological father, a man named Earl Van Best Jr. Was
the Zodiac. His primary evidence was found in one of
the Zodiacs unsolved cryptograms. Stewart claims his father's name could
be found in the so called three forty cipher. Remember
this was a later cryptogram sent to the San Francisco
Chronicle on November nine, nineteen sixty nine. Zodiac sent a
(18:17):
follow up thirteen symbol cipher on April twentie, nineteen seventy.
Unlike the first ciphers, these were never officially decrypted. My
father's name is in that cipher, he said, my name is,
and then he put thirteen symbols. Those thirteen letters are
E A, R, L V A N B, E S
(18:38):
T j R. That was Gary Stewart, speaking on a
talk show in He published a book on these findings
and more, but not everyone was convinced on solved cryptograms.
It's like the equivalent of a treasure map, trying to
figure out what whereas the treasure buried. Sometimes I go
through a period we I'll spend a lot of hours
on it, and other times I don't because I get
(18:59):
burned out on trying it. This is programmer and amateur
cryptographer David A. Rancheck. We talked with him early in
the season about the first Cipher's. He's tried to solve
the three forty cipher, but like everyone else, has had
no success. People have written endless books about their suspects,
and you know, their claims about solving the solution, and
(19:19):
in some cases they're rewarded for it, you know, financially,
their books are wildly popular even though they haven't really
solved the codes. You know, if they can convince enough
people that they have, then they know they're they're able
to make a decent buck from it. So that's that's
the other strange aspect of this whole thing. And like
the case of Gary Stewart, who claimed his biological father,
(19:40):
I guess was the Zodiac. You know, he's got very
flimsy evidence on that, and I looked at his codework
in his book. He got a publication deal from Harper's
and he's a big publishing house. It was a best
selling book for a while. It hit the New York
Times Best Sartlist, and he was going around to all
these news shows. They would bring him on and saying,
you know, Zodiac is solved. Here's the guy who solved it.
(20:03):
A lot of people go into it and they don't
bother to learn cryptography. They just have kind of an
intuitive feel for what needs to be done, and that
I think is what gets people stuck in these traps
of you know, they got a name to pop out,
or they got a phrase the pop out, but they
can't prove that it was intentional. There is a sort
of intoxicating effect when you plug in what do you
(20:24):
think Zodiac might have said? And it happens to fit.
So you come up with this long phrase, but invariably
the message turns into gibberish for the rest of the message.
It's easy to get caught up in that first feeling
of Wow, this it's working, it's fitting, this message is
coming out. But that's just because the ciphertext gives you
enough room to make an early mistake, and it looks
(20:48):
right at the beginning, but then later on it it
just turns into nonsense. I often compare it to you know,
seeing faces and clouds. Well, a lot of times you'll
see something that seems to be there and it's not
really there. It's just making your brain think that there's
a pattern there, but it's actually happening because of just
random chance. And that's a frequent mistake that people make
(21:10):
when they look at the ciphers. So that's the kind
of trap that they're in. They're kind of stuck in
this place where they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt
that the message is real. Somebody will go through a
procedure that generates a name, and so that will be
their solution. But if you repeat the process, you can
make the same process generate other names. But they ignore that.
(21:31):
Some of them are just so fixated on their suspect
that they get locked into a particular way of solving it.
What it's resulted in is, you know, a lot of
people are so severely misinformed on the case they think
that it's already been solved. I stopped playing that game
a long time ago, but people a look, they make
(21:54):
it sound like if you can show them that piece
of information, it'll be really compelling. And then you go
to the trouble to upload it and they say, no,
big deal, doesn't prove anything. I didn't say it did,
Jack Won. That's why I have the delete feature. I
can ban people at all, but I've melted out a lot.
This is Tom Voyd of Zodiac Killer dot com. As
you heard last episode, he started the Zodiac Anniversary meet ups.
(22:15):
In many ways, he's a key figure in this Zodiologist community.
Tom has explored the three forty cipher extensively. He echoed
David ranchek sentiment that the unsolved cipher theories are bogus.
People are so influenced by the fact that three of
those codes didn't get solved. Well, they're just rubbish. There's
no solution to be had. It's just to manipulate people
(22:36):
and get him to keep focusing on that instead of
on the government. Does that you throw out something a
press release about a controversial topic to get people not
to talk about you know what they should be talking about.
It's fake news. Zodia convented it. Zodiac invented fake news
with the code has my Name in it and all
this other every letter was fake news and it was
(22:57):
to get manipulate the people or the police into following
the wrong path. Even still, Tom Void developed his own
suspect through the ciphers. Many years ago, he received a
tip from an informant named gold Catcher. This informant also
spoke with the police, but at the time they didn't
consider him a reliable source. Tom, however, was so convinced
(23:20):
by this new info he began his own investigation. Eventually,
Tom found the name of this new suspect in the
initial three parts cipher. These were the three letters sent
to separate newspapers in July of nineteen sixty nine. The
name Tom found was Richard Geikowski. At the time that
the Zodi X that his three part cipher, Richard was
(23:43):
working for a counterculture newspaper and he would publish articles
and he would call himself Dick Geike, So he would
shorten his last name to the first syllable, and he
spelled it different ways. I have found evidence, the actual
proof that where he spelled at g A i K,
g i k E and g U y k, there's
only one they're spelling to get that Gike sound, and
that's g y k E and that was found in
(24:03):
the cipher before it's translated. You can see it with
your own eyes. G y k E. Zodiac chose the
g y k E was going to go right there,
and he chose that it would represent when solved, the
last four letters of the word because I will not
give you my name, because so in the word, because
the last four letters A, U, S, E are what
(24:24):
GUI translates to when the key is learned and you
translate the cipher. So Guik house key the key syllable
can be found if you consider the word key as
in the decryption key as part of the solution. According
to Tom, Zodiac changed his encoding method throughout the three
parts cipher to throw off cryptographers. So Zodiac potentionally changed
(24:47):
the coding method and that allowed Guike to translate the house.
If he hadn't changed the encoding method, then Guike would
have become something else. It wouldn't have been a usc
So you have all three syllables of his last name,
which is really interesting. And he went on to become
one of the first computer corners in the Bay Are.
He started his own online newsgroup in his fifties, which
is when most people are along done learning something new,
(25:07):
so he obviously had an aptitude for that. For many
online sleuths, Richard Geikowski is another major suspect in the
Zodiac case, but aside from the cipher connection which Tom
just mentioned, what other evidence is out there. Geikowski was
part of a counterculture commune in San Francisco called Good Times.
There he edited an anti police, pro violence newspaper. By
(25:31):
January of nineteen sixty nine, the Good Times newspaper was
publishing violent works of fiction, many were extremely similar to
the Zodiac's future crimes. There's some circumstantial evidence linking Richard
Gaikowski to the Paul Stein murder. Richard's cousin lived on
Washington Street, which you may remember is where Paul Stein
(25:52):
was murdered, and that cousin's birthday was October eleven, the
same day Paul Stein was killed. For this reason, it's
possible he was in the area that day. Also, the
Good Times Communication Center was located just a few houses
down from Paul Stein's residence in San Francisco, and according
to paul Stein's sister, Gaikowski attended Paul's funeral The most
(26:17):
significant evidence came from the informant gold Catcher. He was
a former co worker of Geikowski's. According to Goldcatcher, Geikowski
would invite him to engage in violent acts similar to
the Zodiac crimes. This was convincing enough that NAPA detective
Ken Narlow decided to interview and investigate Gaikowski. Goldcatcher also
(26:38):
obtained an audio clip of Gaikowski talking. We received a
copy of this audio courtesy of Tom Voyd from Zodiac
killer dot com. The whole thing about a code, You've
got to remember also, once the code telecode is broken,
you have I never know, never any way of knowing
whether it's a real code or whether it's just a
fake code. Oh, which means at some time, you know,
(27:01):
like the military and all of that, sometimes you would
send garbled messages that meant absolutely nothing, so that you
get the enemy to depend all their time trying to
make break the code. Nancy Slover, who spoke with the
Zodiac when he called to report the Blue Rock Springs murder,
listened to this clip of Richard Gaikowski. According to Nancy,
(27:22):
it was the voice of the Zodiac, but aside from
some initial questioning by authorities. Geikowski was never thoroughly investigated.
He died in two thousand four. Tom Voight, Mark Hewitt,
(27:47):
and other online sleuths have been meeting up for years.
On occasions like these, they come together to tell stories
and share theories. I got a little group together people
that were very interested in the case. They come to
my house. We have dinner, and we sit in the
chat and watch the Zodiac movies over and over and
over again. And so that's that's how this got going.
(28:08):
And we go to all the Zodiac sites for every anniversary.
This is Sandy Betts. She's been a part of the
Zodiac story from the very beginning. Sandy told us that
back in the sixties she knew some of the victims.
She even claims to have had run ins with the
Zodiac himself. It has taken up a good portion of
(28:29):
my life, it really, really truly has. My children have
grown up with it, you know, knowing that I was
being stocked by somebody who was claiming to be the Zodiac,
and my children were afraid. My had a daughter was
scared to death of him because he didn't he followed
her as much as he did me. She finally passed
away for a thing. It sounds terrible, but when she
(28:50):
passed away, I didn't have to worry about her being
tortured by him, because I was scared to death that
he was going to get her and torture her. According
to Sandy, the Zodiac was obsessed with her and her daughter.
She spent years confronting this man. He would supposedly show
up at her home or tail get her car late
at night. Sandy saw his face many times, but never
(29:12):
got his name. I did a steak out. There was
several girls that were murdered in Pittsburgh area, and I
decided to do a steak out because I was told
the guy was an older guy and Betty looked like
my guy. So I went and I backed in to
a laundromatt area where was cross streeping taco bell where
most of the prostitutes hung out. And as I'm hanging
out the pictures that I'm talking, this one girl walking
(29:34):
up and she screams, Oh my god, that's the killer.
I go, whoa, whoa, wo calm down, calm down, what
do you mean that's the killer? And she said he
grabbed her jacket with one hand, and he grabbed her
hair with the other and he pulled a big hunk
of her hair out, and she slipped her arms like
this and slipped out of the jacket. It's not too
long after that I get an envelope in the mail
and one of the pictures has returned to me, no
(29:55):
return address. The stamp was upside down. It was a
love stamp. I think I figured he's telling me that
he got ahold of one of the girls that I
gave the picture too, and he wanted me to know
that he killed another one. Sandy told us many stories
which connect her stalker to the Zodiac. One of those
stories begins just days after the attack at Lake Ferryessa September,
(30:20):
when the Zodiac stabbed se Seria Shepherd and Brian Hart. Now,
within a day or two, this is before it hit
the newspaper. Within a day or two, the costume was
put in my car, the killing costume. Now this is
four weeks before Halloween, so I thought it was a
Halloween costume. But I made a copy of what it
(30:40):
looked like, and it was in two parts. The top
part was made out of a paper sack. It was
painted black. I don't remember if there was a hole
for the nose there or a hole for them out.
But at the very bottom he had sliced each corner
and bent it so that it sat on his shoulders,
and the other part, which I called the poncho part,
(31:01):
went over that and held it down. And the glasses
that he had the clip ones, actually held the hood
in place so that he could turn his head like
this and and it would stay in place because the
glasses holding it together. Sandy's theories really confusing and complex,
but we doesn't matter because we get along and we
(31:21):
treat each other well, and you know, we're nice to
each other's We were curious what Tom thought of all
these different zodiac theories. Each of the Zodiologists has their
own personal story, but still they gather every year to
spend time together, and the differences of opinion don't seem
to matter. As long as people are, you know, nice
(31:43):
and polite and you know, and not rude, then I
don't really care what their theory is. We'll get along
just fine. I have a bad reputation of being an
asshole and kicking people off my message board and stuff
like they have it. Really I think I'm pretty fair.
I just if you're going to be arrogant and aloof
and confrontational, condescending that I'll probably be a dick. Usually,
(32:07):
Tom and the Zodiologists traveled to the actual sites of
the known murders, but something happened this year that changed everything. Well,
this year Tom Tom at a bus. But what was
supposed to happen was we were all going to be
on a bus and do a tour of the crime
scene and probably go to where Betty Luke lived and
(32:28):
where David lived and things like that. And everybody was
very excited about doing this because it's the fiftieth anniversary.
So Tom was having a big deal, you know, a
bus and everything, and this guy who is not mentally stable,
made a threat to Tom, and Tom reported it to
Solano County Sheriff's Department, and I guess they probably said,
(32:51):
you know, it's not a good idea for you to
have this bus tour because this sounds pretty serious. Not
much is known about the person who made this threat.
Tom says he has a history of stalking these Zodiac gatherings.
This individual apparently believes his own father is the Zodiac
and that the Zodiologist community is trying to kill him.
(33:12):
Tom's fiance Angie told us that this case has a
detrimental effect on some people. I think they just get
so wrapped up in it they start to lose sense
of reality. It's easy to lose yourself in a movie
or something, but that's not what this is. And I
think a lot of those people kind of have that mindset,
like maybe like things can play out the way they
want them to fits their movie in their script, and
(33:35):
that's not good. Luckily, I don't see too many too
much of that. Tom probably sees more of it than
I do, but I kind of turn an ignorant eye
to that. Angie says, this individual is one of those people.
After he made the threat, local law enforcement advised everyone
to stay away from Lake Herman. So Tom Void canceled
(33:56):
the bus tour. My boyfriend came all the way from
conduct to to go on the bus tour, and a
lot of people, you know, have hotels booked and things
like that, and this screwed up everything, especially for poor Tom.
We've got it all together, Yeah, so it's a it's
a crying chain. But now they think the guy was
(34:16):
just rambling, which makes me think that possibly they talked
to him and he kind of backed off a little
bit and said, Oh, I'm really not gonna do that.
I just wanted to scare him, you know, And so
we're probably gonna end up going out there anyway next time.
On Monster the Zodiac Killer, I know there were threats
(34:39):
made for people who came here tonight. We're here because
of the fifty anniversary of the Zodiac killing, and we're
just here for extra patrol and just kind of make
sure everyone that comes here wants to be here and
stay safe. I've had a couple of people tell me
that they are positive that they encountered this person and
(35:00):
escaped death. And the headlights, there's a guy's standing in
the road, and then I remember I told the officer
I was saying, I think that was Zodiac from all
that that I've read, I've saw, and I've heard, so like,
I don't think he'll ever be caught. We do need
a face, and we need that face to be a monster.
(35:20):
So that, I think is why we have to identify
the murder with a face in the area that was involved,
basically decent New York Brooklyn at the time, it was
like the motor capital of the world. That was the
most violent police in New York City, and in the
midst of all this violence was an emerging serial killer
who was calling himself to Zodiac Monster. The Zodiac Killer
(35:46):
is a fifteen episode podcast produced by I Heart Radio
How Stuff Works in Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright and Right
our executive producers on behalf of tender Foot TV, alongside
producers Meredith Stepman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hope
is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along
with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and Josh
(36:09):
Thane Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is
our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
If you haven't already, make sure to check out the
first season of Monster called Atlantic Monster, about the Atlantic
child murders from the late seventies to the early eighties.
Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments,
(36:31):
email us at Monster at how stuff Works dot com,
or you can call us at one three five six
six six seven. Thanks for listening.
Monster: The Zodiac Killer News
Hosts And Creators
Payne Lindsey
Matt Frederick
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!