March 26, 2019 • 38 mins
A frightening final theory
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Episode Transcript
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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. Over the course of our investigation, we
conducted nearly one interviews and combed through dozens of police
records in old newspaper articles, We traveled to the crime
(00:22):
sites and unearthed hours of archival footage that hadn't been
heard since its original broadcast. It's easy to get lost
in this fifty year old mystery. As we investigated the case,
we met people who were there when it all started.
Their stories are an important reminder that this case is
rooted in a very real tragedy. Through all these conversations,
(00:42):
we also discovered new facts about the case and began
to see cracks in the stories engraved in the zodiac lore,
even going back to the first attack in the Bay Area,
the murders of Betty lu Jensen and David Faraday just
five days before Christmas. By Lewis really head over heels
(01:04):
for David. I didn't meet him until the night that
they were killed, because they came to her house that night.
My name was John Henslin and I grew up in Vaio, California.
There was they Lewis, my sister's best friend since Kenny Garden.
She came to the house Calle often. She drew a lot,
and she was really into Snoopy and she wanted to
(01:28):
be an artist. Vitty Lou and David came to her
house that night and this was supposed to be their
first date, which really wasn't their first date because they
were seeing each other at school. He went to val
High and she went to Hogan which was across town.
But my sister said that they would always see each
other lunchtime and stuff like that, so they were, you know,
(01:49):
dating for a while, but officially as far as her
parents were concerned, my sister she had a boyfriend that
was a little bit older. At a car, her and
Vitty Lou and David and her boyfriend were supposed to
go to San Francisco. Was a story that they were
telling my parents that night, and my sister's boyfriend was
late showing up finding my sister said go wherever you
(02:10):
need to go because I can't find my boyfriend, and
she walked him into the car and they made plans
to go up that next morning to go shopping and
Vitty Lou and David drove off and that was the
last time in we saw him. It really affected my
sister a lot, because, you know, the phone rang the
next morning. It was our friend across the street heard
(02:31):
on radio that Bailey was killed, and my sister just
went nuts. It was five days before Christmas and she
was sixteen, and it just ruined everything for everybody. You know,
it was pretty sad, and you know the things that
went on with the the police and everything about you know,
(02:52):
what they thought happened and when they're trying to find
out what happened. And it was hard on my sister
because in those days, they went down to the police
station and talked to the detectives without my parents or anything,
because you know, they didn't have that Miranda thing or
any of that kind of stuff. And they were showing
my sister the the bullets that came out of Betty
(03:12):
Low and saying, you know, we know this was a
drug deal and we need you to tell us what happened.
And they went the next day and went through my
sister's locker because herne Bailey shared a locker at school,
and it was really hard on my sister, the way
they treat her and where they try to get her
to confess this big drug deal going bad that they
(03:33):
thought it all was, but it never was anything to
do with drugs because they were just you know, just
say steam. They were really into that lifestyle at all,
you know, even though my sister and boyfriend was one
of the big drug dealers in town and he ended
up odin later on anyhow, you know, but the cops
(03:54):
thought it that's all it was, was some drug deal
going bad and trying to get my sister to confess
to what she knew of out it. They were really
really mean to her and you know, showing her the
bullets that came out of her and there was guns
in the room and saying these were kind of guns
that shot her, and you know, she was really really
affected by it forever, you know, for years, basically you
(04:16):
just did one movie know where she was or who
she was or nothing for a long long time. For
fear of the fact that the Zodiac could still be
around somewhere, we reached out to John Hencelin after getting
a tip from a zodiologist we met in San Francisco.
We wondered how many other people no untold parts of
this story and have held their tongues out of fear,
(04:38):
because we fear that with every passing year, more clues
may be lost forever. And we hope that those who
do know something will come forward, because a single interview,
a single story, can change everything. The thing that really
happened that affected us again was July fourth murder at
(04:58):
Blue Rock Springs. My sister was out with her boyfriend
that night, and if you weren't home at midnight, yours
a call in to you know, get clearance on when
you're coming home or everybody where you're at. Well, it
was fourth of July, so everybody was up late, and
my mother was worried, and my sister wasn't home after midnight.
So I had this multi band radio that got police calls.
(05:22):
About ten after twelve, I get the radio out, we
turn it on and started listening to the police calls
and nothing major going on. All of a sudden, the
report comes from Blue Rock Springs of brown Chevy with
two kids in it and they were shot, and they're
talking about, you know, the kind of car, what the
kids look like, and they looked like my sister and
her boyfriend and he had a brown Chevy, and my
(05:44):
mother was going nuts, and then they're saying the girl
was dead and the guy wasn't and the bullets were nine.
The moment lugers and we're all going nuts on what
was going on. Five ten minutes later, my sister comes
walking in the door and when, where the hell have
you been? Do you know what's going on? And never
really scared everybody, especially my mother. The weird thing about it,
(06:10):
you know, years later thinking about it. Ten minutes later,
that's when the Zodiac called the police station to report
a double murder and told everybody, you know, it was
a nine milliment or louder. And when he sent the
letter to the paper, he said, to prove that I'm
who it was that killed him, I'll tell you only
(06:30):
things that I know, and the police no. But if
you go through and read the police reports, it's almost
word for word, verbatim on what the police said in
the police reports and exactly what I heard the police
say on the radio that night. So you know, it
makes sense that it was somebody from Valleo, somebody that
(06:51):
was in that area and had a scanner in your
car or something and heard everything because you know, he
said the things before any of the police are words
ever came out. So it was a coincidence that the
guy knew everything that the police knew, and he actually
repeated everything that we heard on the radio. A man
(07:14):
in a mask robbed and 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 haven't arrested me
(07:34):
because they can't prove it. I'm not damn Zodiac. Who
is the Zodiac and where is he? From My Heart Radio,
How Staff works and Tenderfoot TV, this is monster the
Zodiac killer? Is the Zodiac? A man, a myth or
something in between. As we conclude the season, we'll investigate
(07:57):
one of the most frightening theories about the Zodiac, and
we'll explore the Zodiac's legacy. How is he alluded capture
for fifty years but still stuck in our minds? Where
is the Zodiac now? And where will he fit in history?
After Darlene Ferrin and Michael Majau were shot, someone called
the police department to report a murder. If you will
(08:20):
go one mile east on Columbus Parkway, you'll find kids
in a brown car. They were shot with a nine
millimeter luker, I also killed those kids last year, goodbye?
Could that phone call have been just a cruel prank
by someone who heard the police dispatch? And weeks later
when the first letters arrived, how can we be sure
(08:41):
that those letters were sent by the killer himself and
not by someone else with access to information about the murders,
a photographer or police officer at the crime scene, or
an overly ambitious journalist. Dear editor, this is the murderer
of the two teenagers last Christmas at Lake Herman. To
prove I killed them, I shall state some facts which
(09:03):
only I and the police know. One brand name of
Ammo super X. Two ten shots were fired. And of
course there's been theories over the years that they invented
the Zodiac to sell more newspapers. Zodiac expert Michael Butterfield
says some posit that the Zodiac killer was just an
elaborate hoax, that there was no serial killer at all,
(09:25):
just a letter writer linking together entirely separate crimes and
I can't say that there wasn't any part of these
newspaper editors who were seeing a green you know, saying
oh my god, okay, well, this is gonna certainly spike
our circulation. At the Lake berries a stabbing of Cecilia
Shepherd and Brian Hartnell. The killer donned the zodiacs now
(09:48):
iconic outfit and scrawled a message on the victim's car.
He drew the crosshairs Zodiac symbol, listed the dates of
the first three attacks, and wrote only four words v LEO,
timber and by knife. But do the outfit and message
on the car truly proved the Berryessa attack was linked
to the other crimes. Could the attacker have been a
(10:10):
copycat killer inspired by news stories about the Zodiac. Really
only two things linked the Berryessa attack to the other killings.
The attackers m o in handwriting analysis. But how accurately
can experts determine the author of just a few words
scrawled on the side of a car. And wasn't this
attack with knives rope in a costume a deviation from
(10:33):
the Zodiac's usual method. Most serial killers do follow some
discernible pattern where the victims match some criteria. You know,
But for someone who had committed two shootings of couples
sitting in parked cars and lovers lanes at night and
secluded areas, the fact that the Zodiac then showed up
(10:54):
in a popular recreation area during the day, why did
he change his m O from blitz creeg shootings at
night to daylight stabbings of young couples sitting out on
a lake. There's a theory that the attack at Lake
Berryessa was a copycat killer who was inspired by what
he read in the newspapers. Now, I don't think that
(11:14):
the evidence supports that theory, especially the fact that experts
have determined that the handwriting on the car door matches.
Now you can disagree with the experts, But if it
was the Zodiac, again, why this drastic departure from his
previous m O, and then why no effort to communicate
or take credit for it in any meaningful way. Strangely,
(11:36):
the Zodiac never directly referred to the Lake Berryessa stabbing
in any of his letters. This was his most iconic attack,
and for someone who seemed to delight in boasting about
his crimes, leaving it out seems odd. But Butterfield says
there's one real weakness in any Zodiac coax theory, the
murder of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stein. It's hard
(12:00):
to imagine a scenario where the letter writer wasn't at
least somehow connected to Stein's killing, because pieces of Stein's
bloody shirt were included in the next three Zodiac letters. Now,
it's possible that the Zodiac felt this was necessary because
there was a lot of speculation about crimes that he
had committed or crimes that were being linked to him
(12:20):
in the media. He may have felt it was necessary
to prove beyond any doubt that he was responsible for
that crime. So we can safely link the Zodiac letters
to the murder of cab driver Paul Stein. But could
the fixation on finding a single suspect responsible for all
of the crimes have led investigators to discount viable suspects
(12:43):
for some of the crimes. For example, is it possible
that prime suspect Arthur Lee Allen was actually a copycat killer.
He admitted to police he had bloody knives in his
car on the day of the Lake Barriesa stabbings knives
he leaned he used to slaughter chickens. Could it be
that Alan was responsible for the berries a static but
(13:06):
had nothing to do with the other Zodiac murders or
any of the letters. But I'm not the Zodiac killer.
I know that. I know that deep in my shoul.
When Valleo Place searched Arthur Lee Allen's home, they discovered
some clippings about the Zodiac case. Although we don't know
(13:28):
precisely what those were, some of them may have been
related to the book Zodiac. If I could go back
and give myself some advice, the very first piece of
advice I would give myself is be skeptical of everything. Ultimately,
(13:53):
Michael Butterfield believes in a simple explanation for the Zodiac crimes.
The Five Bay Area murders, the phone calls, and most
of the letters were the work of a single man,
a man we know only as the Zodiac. As I
have always said, I believe the fingerprints, the handwriting, the DNA,
the palm print, I believe those things belong to the killer.
(14:15):
And when they actually do find the killer, I believe
that evidence will match him and we will be able
to write the end of this story. But there are
many points of disagreement between different investigators, and there's still
debate about the scope of the Zodiac's crimes. Which letters
did the Zodiacs send and which were forgeries, how much
(14:36):
can we trust the witness identifications, and who are the
confirmed victims. You have to be careful when you're discussing
possible Zodiac crimes because once you assume that another crime
has been committed by the Zodiac, you're taking on all
the elements of that case, including the evidence. So in
a case like the Riverside murder of Sherry Joe Bates
(14:59):
in six, there is DNA associated with that case. And
if you assume that the Zodiac is responsible for the crime,
and then you have a suspect whose DNA does not
match the DNA and the Riverside case, you could mistakenly
exclude someone because it is possible that the Riverside case
is not connected to the Zodiac and therefore the Zodiacs
(15:20):
DNA would have nothing to do with the Riverside case.
The same applies to the failed abduction of Kathleen John's
in Vy. You have to be very careful because at
the end of the day, it's perfectly possible the Zodiac
was not involved at all. Even in a podcast of
this length. There are many theories and clues we haven't
(15:41):
been able to explore, like the water theory. Many Zodiac
killings occurred by bodies of water or at locations named
after water, Blue Rock Springs, Lake Herman, Lake Berriessa. Did
he intentionally pick these places for that reason? And could
this therefore be a clue. The water theory also seems
(16:04):
to fit the murders of Sherry Joe Bates in Riverside,
and of Robert Dominguez and Linda Edwards, who were killed
on a beach in Santa Barbara, and even Donna Lass
who disappeared from Lake Tahoe, and Dana Lull who was
dropped down a mine shaft off Mountain Springs Road. And
many wonder about the Zodiac's apparent fascination with the Makado,
(16:25):
a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. In three later letters, the
Zodiac paraphrased lyrics from the Macado as someday it may
happen that a victim must be found. I've got a
little list. I've got a little list of society offenders
who might well be underground, who would never be missed,
who would never be missed, there is the pestilential nuisances
(16:48):
who write for autographs, all people who have flabby hands
and irritating laughs, all children who were up in dates,
employee with implatte, all people who were shaking hands, shake
hands like that, and all third persons with spoiling kick.
Those who insist they'd none of them be missed, they'd
none of them be missed. In fact, the Zodiac's letters
(17:09):
alluded to many works of popular culture. When he talked
about shooting victims with an electric flashlight attached to the
barrel of a gun, that might have come from an
episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents. Another thing that he wrote
on a letter about methods of killing by knife, by fire,
by gun and rope might have come from an old
comic book. You know. He referred to the Blue Meanies
(17:31):
in the movie Yellow Submarine. And it appears that at
a certain point the Zodiac started writing letters as a
media critic. He complained that the movie The Exorcist was
a satirical comedy. He complained about the glorification of violence
in the movie The bad Lands, and in turn, the
Zodiac greatly impacted pop culture himself. For example, consider the
(17:54):
Zodiac school bus threats. He almost goes to a symbol
of innocence school children, not of us. That's like, you know,
killing a grandmother. It's particularly diabolical. That's Peter Richardson, historian
and lecturer at San Francisco State University. And interestingly, that's
the part that creates the afterlife for the Zodiac as well,
(18:18):
because that incident is what gets Clinton Eastwood's first big movie,
Going Dirty, Harry his first big star turn. I know
what you're thinking, Bitty by her six shots are only five?
Being this supporting for Magnet, the most powerful handgun in
the world, you get to ask yourself one question, Do
I feel lucky? Well? Do your bunker? The influence of
(18:42):
pop culture may explain why there are so many theories
and so much misinformation about the Zodiac case, But why
has the Zodiac in particular fascinated the public for the
last fifty years. Here's San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan.
I've covered a lot of killers with a lot higher
body counts and a lot more sick, twisted ways of
(19:03):
killing people. William Bond on the freeway killer. That guy
killed forty boys, raped him in a van tortured him,
killed him in horrible ways, and throw him out naked
on the freeway. That's a little worse than what the
Zodiac did. I find it kind of sad because the
thing that makes it interesting is this guy was theatrical
that if it hadn't been for the ciphers and the
(19:25):
taunting letters in particular, no one would remember this guy.
The Zodiac's killings are theatrical. They almost feel ripped from
the pages of crime fiction. There's a masked villain cryptic
codes said to contain his identity in the murders of
teenagers who made the tragic mistake of going to a
lover's lane. Michael Butterfield thinks this helped sustain the Zodiac's infamy.
(19:51):
That's always been part of the horror story lexicon, the
idea of the lover's lane killer, you know, the guy
with the hook and all those stories. So that just
it into that and it was terrifying on a whole
new level because, unlike those other stories that you hear
about the hook man or whatever, this guy actually shows up.
One of the things that was most terrifying about it
was the fact that these people were selected at random,
(20:13):
that they were young kids who had so much going
for them. I think people can understand more when you
know it's I hate to say it, when someone's raped
and murdered, you can understand why the person did it,
what their motive was. And maybe our hesitancy to talk
about sexual violence helps explain his prominence as well. Maybe
the fact that the Zodiac was just a killer who
(20:36):
didn't torture or sexually assault his victims made his crimes
easier to discuss. In a culture obsessed with violence but
squeamish about sex, we are surrounded by violence all the time,
but we're not aware of that. If you want proof,
just look at the television listings for any given day
of the week and think about how many of the
(20:56):
shows revolve around homicidal by lence. David Schmidt is an
English professor at the University of Buffalo. He's an expert
on the intersection of crime and popular culture. We spoke
with him to try and understand America's fascination with violence.
You will find that it's everywhere, and yet we don't
see it because we've become so used to it now.
(21:19):
Part of the reason for this is that popular culture
that deals with violence is always faced with a problem,
how do you make violence entertain him but also make
it possible for the viewer not to feel guilty about
enjoying violence, and popular culture has been incredibly successful in
(21:40):
coming up with a variety of ways to quite frankly,
let viewers off the hook. So, for example, big fans
of C. S I. They will tell you, well, I
don't really like the violence. I just watch it because
I'm interested in forensic technology. Or fans of the Law
and Order franchise will say, yeah, it's very violent, but
I learned so much about the legal process from watching it.
(22:03):
Popular culture provides them with reasons to justify their interest
in violence, and so after a while that violence becomes
just an invisible part of the background. We don't want
to think about it, we're not made to think about it,
so there's no reason for us to see it. And
Schmidt says media often popularizes or even glorifies serial killers.
(22:26):
Not long after I moved to the US, the Science
of the Lamb's film came out, and the Night of
the Oscars broadcast began with Billy Crystal being wheeled out
onto the stage with a hockey mask on like Hannibal
Lector in the film, and now your host, Mr Billy Crystal,
I'm having some of the academy over for dinner. Care
(22:48):
to join me? And the entire broadcast was basically a
tribute to that character. So I'm sitting there watching this
and I'm thinking to myself, what does it say about
temporary American society that this type of event is dedicated
to a fictional, cannibalistic serial killer. And I realized at
(23:09):
that point. The popularity of the film version of the
Silence of the Lambs can be explained, among other things,
by the fact that the film is very, very clever
in allowing us to maintain some kind of identification with
Hannibal Lectera. He's highly educated, he is apparently a genius,
(23:29):
and in the film he quite literally walks off into
the sunset, almost like you know, the hero walking off
into the sunset. I do wish we could chat lander,
but I'm having an old fan for dinner, and it's
true he is the hero of the film. To some extent.
There are parallels between the depictions of the Zodiac in
(23:50):
Hannibal Lecter. The Zodiac is often presented as a criminal mastermind,
an expert marksman, and a crafter of uncrackable codes and stories,
often for us on him to the exclusion of telling
the stories of his victims or examining why his story
is important to tell. Now, if you can trast a
film like Signs to the Lambs with a film like
(24:11):
Natural Born Killers, it deals with many of the same issues,
but rubs on noses in the fact that we make
serial killers celebricies. That's not something the audience wants to
be reminded of because it makes us feel guilty, It
makes us feel uncomfortable, and it makes us have to
ask difficult questions of ourselves about why we find this
(24:36):
entertain him. Popular culture about serial killers is not dedicated
to making us ask difficult questions. Instead, it gives us
easy answers. That's what we find appealing about it. Criminologist
James Fox says most people's fascination with serial killers comes
in three forms. There are some who are fascinated because
(24:59):
they had iify with the victims, and they want to
make sure that they're not the next one. And and
then you have a few who enjoy fantasizing about what
it would be like to do what that person did.
The other form of fascination, which is the most common,
is it's just so different from everyday life. People can
(25:21):
be entertained by real stories of real serial killers in
the same way they get entertained by someone like Hannibal Elector,
who's a fictional character. The serial murder is so out
of the ordinary that it might as well be fiction.
Then for most people true crime and crime fiction it
feels the same, and it's just for them entertainment because
(25:44):
they don't feel personally threatened. Most people will never ever
encounter someone like the Zodiac. Having covered crime for decades,
reporter Kevin Fagan avoids glorifying the Zodiac. I think it's disgusting. Glamora,
someone of freaking kills people come on. When I was
a young reporter, I thought, oh wow, this is really fascinating.
(26:06):
I've watched people burned to death. I've stood over bleeding
bodies while they bled out. I've been shot at the
Glamor goes away. I can't even watch TV crime shows.
It's like, oh, let's have entertainment with the death. When
you talk to survivors of victims have been killed, you
get it. You get that this is not fun. There's
nothing fun about murder and you know wacky ciphers and
(26:30):
letters that you know taunt and say, I like hunting
the most dangerous game. Yeah, great, the guy belongs in
freaking prison. America was going through big changes around the
(26:55):
time of the Zodiac murders. Between nineteen sixty and nineteen seventy,
America's violent crime rate more than doubled, and, aside from
a few temporary dips, violent crime continued to increase until
it peaked in Since then, it's fallen dramatically, and today
violent crime levels are actually about where they were when
(27:15):
the Zodiac's Bay Area crimes started. The number of serial
killers has followed a similar trend as violent crime overall,
rising dramatically in the nineteen sixties and peaking in the
eighties and nineties before dropping off. There are still serial
killers out there, but because of advancements in technology from
(27:35):
cell phones to forensic DNA techniques, most serial killers get
caught after just a few crimes and so rarely make
the headlines. Despite our society getting much safer, our fears
about crime have heightened. Gallop Poles show that over the
last two decades, most Americans have felt crime was increasing,
(27:57):
when in fact the opposite was true. Here's Michael Butterfield.
I know I'm terrified of serial killers, even though the
odds of me being killed by one are extremely low.
But I think that some way, it's a way in
which we confront our fears. It's easier to look at
a true crime case from afar than it is to
(28:18):
be in it yourself. When I was a kid, I
was interested in true crime, but people used to think
that was weird. Now true crime is very popular. It's
very trendy, and I don't know why, but I think
that we all need to remember that this is not entertainment,
that it is a tragedy and treated as such. There
(28:39):
might be some fascinating and sensational elements of the case.
It certainly is compelling, but it's also a very real,
human tragedy that continues to affect real people today. Over
the years, I've talked to some of the friends and
family of the victims, and it has a tremendous impact
on them, even to this day. It's bad enough to
(29:01):
have a loved one or friend murdered and have that
murder remain unsolved, to go through life without any kind
of closure, but it's another thing to see that murder
repeated in re enactments over and over and over again
for decades, and to have every aspect of the crime,
every aspect of the victim's life, scrutinized under a microscope,
(29:22):
and every time it comes up, nothing comes of it.
So that kind of frustration, that kind of grief, is
unique in many ways. I don't think a lot of
us can really understand what that's really like unless we
go through it ourselves, and hopefully we won't. Dean Farren
(29:42):
was the husband of Darlene Farren, the woman who was
shot and killed on July nine, sixty nine at Blue
Rock Springs. It was difficult. I had a girl take
care of one thing that I remembered. It my boss
and we were friends at the time, but we turned
out to be best friends over the years. We went
through a lot of weddings and divorces and deaths and stuff,
(30:06):
and I worked for him for twenty years. So but anyway,
he came over that next morning and banging on my
door and I said, I don't want to get up.
I got nothing to live for, you know, I just
all depressed. And he said, get up off you're lazy ass.
You gotta eat today because you gotta ship tomorrow. It
was his way to day life goes on. You know,
you gotta make the best of what you got. And
(30:30):
I'm reading that kind of kickstarre to me. I guess
got me going and said, okay, okay, I gotta go on.
I'll but we did so at that time, I I
didn't know where I was gone. Okay, I'm angry about
the situation, But who'd you get mad at her? How
(30:53):
do you express that angry? You can't just punch anybody,
or there's really nothing you can do, and it's kind
of wait, now, okay, the police will take care of
this and then we'll find out what what happened. Here
we are fifty years later and nothing yet. Last episode,
(31:17):
we spoke to investigator Paul Holes about his work on
the Golden State Killer case. He's spoken with many survivors
of horrific crimes when we caught the Golden State Killer.
For these victims, for some of them, there was that
instant peace of mind that he is not going to
(31:39):
come back, and for many of them, they at least
had an answer as to who. But it doesn't erase
the trauma, and it doesn't bring the loved one back.
This term closure, you know, which is a controversial term.
These people don't experience closure like that part of my
life is over. It will live with them for the
(32:01):
rest of their lives. If the Zodiac is identified, I
would expect that those who survived the Zodiac's attacks, or
those victims families, they're not going to get a sense
of closure. And they know that. These people know that
they're not going to be okay, I can now just
erase that chapter out of my life and be happy.
(32:22):
But they will at least get an answer, you know,
and maybe they'll get justice, but it's not going to
change the trauma. And and that's for the people that
have not lived that, you know, that's maybe the hard
thing for them to understand. People want endings. Endings are
(32:45):
psychologically satisfying. So I hope that the case will be
solved and that ending will be provided to us. The
alternative is to at least find out what the hell
actually happened, because as an investigator, and Arlow told me,
when you're doing a homicide investigation, the first thing you
have to do is find out what actually happened. I
(33:06):
think the best way to end the show is by
telling the truth, and that's not usually what happens. People
claim that they have solved the case. They say, this
is the killer. I've identified the killer, and then some
people are satisfied by that because ultimately, what people want
as an answer, and some people will take any answer
as opposed to the correct answer. Each passing anniversary of
(33:29):
the case means that we've lost another year with no resolution,
and it often means that we lose some of the
people who are involved in the case. We lose their insight,
their experiences, their memories, and a lot of information that
might help us understand that case. Today, there's often a
sentiment among people who are not involved in these cases
(33:52):
where they seem to think that there should be a
time where you move on, that you should let it go.
And I think that the families of the victims would
argue other wise. So what hope remains for the Zodiac case.
Someone could still come forward and confess on their deathbed,
revealing Paul Stein's driver's license as proof, or that evidence
(34:13):
could turn up in an attic or an estate sale.
The unsolved ciphers could still reveal an identity or some clue,
or they could just be gibberish. Maybe, as we discussed
last episode, DNA tests of a letter will finally pinpoint
a suspect, or maybe he'll be identified through DNA from
a seemingly unrelated case. I think it's very possible that
(34:36):
he committed other crimes under another persona. I don't think
most people would believe that someone like the Zodiac could
simply stop killing, So we have to take him at
his word that he continued to kill, only he made
his crimes look like accidents or robberies. If that's the case,
the Zodiac could have continued killing for a long time
(34:57):
and we wouldn't know anything about it, because the only
way we really knew he was attached to these crimes
in the first place was because he called up the
police or set letters to tell us. Regardless, we're running
out of time to set the record straight. People are
working on the case today. It's an active investigation. Police
(35:19):
are trying to find a DNA match. Reporters like Kevin
Fagan continue to cover developments, and the zodiologists chased down
every lead they can find. If he's still alive, he
might be watching all this and he might be terrified
because look what happened to Joseph Gangelo in the Golden
State Killer case. If they can find one relative of his,
(35:41):
it's all over. Then all they have to do is
just make out the family trees who fits the right
age the description boom. So he's probably very worried, and
he should be because people like me. I'm not gonna
stop people at did VPD, did San Francisco Police Department.
That would be the biggest thing they could ever do
(36:02):
is catch the Zodiac. And now that they know that
it can be done with the Golden State Killer, there's
every reason to keep trying. In Every Hope Monster, The
Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced by iHeart
Radio How Stuff Works in Tinderfoot TV. Johnald Alright and
(36:25):
I are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot 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 Thane.
Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is our host.
(36:47):
Original music is by Makeup and Vanity set. If you
haven't already, make sure to check out the first season
of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders
from the late seventies to the early eighties. Download the
tin episode season right now. Have questions or comments, email
us at Monster at how Stuff Works dot com, or
(37:07):
you can call us at one eight five six six
six seven. Thanks for listening. If you feel ready to
keep going on this journey, you can go to Michael
(37:28):
Butterfield's website Zodiac Killer Facts dot com. You can connect
with the Zodiologists on Tom Void's forum at Zodiac Killer
dot com, and if you have a tip about the case,
you can call our number one eight three three to
five six six six seven. I think the most important
thing someone can do is cut the facts away from
(37:50):
the fiction and focus on the facts. And I think
this podcast has done a lot to help people in
that regard. But the simple fact is you should question everything.
There's a a great line by a journalist who said,
if your mother tells you that she loves you, you
should still do your research and check it out. Anyone
who is interested in learning more about the case, I
(38:11):
would recommend that they spend time reading the actual police reports,
the actual FBI files, and other official documents that they
spend time looking at the evidence and using common sense
and logic to examine all the information that's out there,
because the true story of the Zodiac case is right
(38:32):
there in those police reports. So that's it. Our regular
season is over, but we're going to continue following new
developments about the Zodiac and we'll be back soon with
a whole new case. 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. Over the course of our investigation, we
conducted nearly one interviews and combed through dozens of police
records in old newspaper articles, We traveled to the crime
(00:22):
sites and unearthed hours of archival footage that hadn't been
heard since its original broadcast. It's easy to get lost
in this fifty year old mystery. As we investigated the case,
we met people who were there when it all started.
Their stories are an important reminder that this case is
rooted in a very real tragedy. Through all these conversations,
(00:42):
we also discovered new facts about the case and began
to see cracks in the stories engraved in the zodiac lore,
even going back to the first attack in the Bay Area,
the murders of Betty lu Jensen and David Faraday just
five days before Christmas. By Lewis really head over heels
(01:04):
for David. I didn't meet him until the night that
they were killed, because they came to her house that night.
My name was John Henslin and I grew up in Vaio, California.
There was they Lewis, my sister's best friend since Kenny Garden.
She came to the house Calle often. She drew a lot,
and she was really into Snoopy and she wanted to
(01:28):
be an artist. Vitty Lou and David came to her
house that night and this was supposed to be their
first date, which really wasn't their first date because they
were seeing each other at school. He went to val
High and she went to Hogan which was across town.
But my sister said that they would always see each
other lunchtime and stuff like that, so they were, you know,
(01:49):
dating for a while, but officially as far as her
parents were concerned, my sister she had a boyfriend that
was a little bit older. At a car, her and
Vitty Lou and David and her boyfriend were supposed to
go to San Francisco. Was a story that they were
telling my parents that night, and my sister's boyfriend was
late showing up finding my sister said go wherever you
(02:10):
need to go because I can't find my boyfriend, and
she walked him into the car and they made plans
to go up that next morning to go shopping and
Vitty Lou and David drove off and that was the
last time in we saw him. It really affected my
sister a lot, because, you know, the phone rang the
next morning. It was our friend across the street heard
(02:31):
on radio that Bailey was killed, and my sister just
went nuts. It was five days before Christmas and she
was sixteen, and it just ruined everything for everybody. You know,
it was pretty sad, and you know the things that
went on with the the police and everything about you know,
(02:52):
what they thought happened and when they're trying to find
out what happened. And it was hard on my sister
because in those days, they went down to the police
station and talked to the detectives without my parents or anything,
because you know, they didn't have that Miranda thing or
any of that kind of stuff. And they were showing
my sister the the bullets that came out of Betty
(03:12):
Low and saying, you know, we know this was a
drug deal and we need you to tell us what happened.
And they went the next day and went through my
sister's locker because herne Bailey shared a locker at school,
and it was really hard on my sister, the way
they treat her and where they try to get her
to confess this big drug deal going bad that they
(03:33):
thought it all was, but it never was anything to
do with drugs because they were just you know, just
say steam. They were really into that lifestyle at all,
you know, even though my sister and boyfriend was one
of the big drug dealers in town and he ended
up odin later on anyhow, you know, but the cops
(03:54):
thought it that's all it was, was some drug deal
going bad and trying to get my sister to confess
to what she knew of out it. They were really
really mean to her and you know, showing her the
bullets that came out of her and there was guns
in the room and saying these were kind of guns
that shot her, and you know, she was really really
affected by it forever, you know, for years, basically you
(04:16):
just did one movie know where she was or who
she was or nothing for a long long time. For
fear of the fact that the Zodiac could still be
around somewhere, we reached out to John Hencelin after getting
a tip from a zodiologist we met in San Francisco.
We wondered how many other people no untold parts of
this story and have held their tongues out of fear,
(04:38):
because we fear that with every passing year, more clues
may be lost forever. And we hope that those who
do know something will come forward, because a single interview,
a single story, can change everything. The thing that really
happened that affected us again was July fourth murder at
(04:58):
Blue Rock Springs. My sister was out with her boyfriend
that night, and if you weren't home at midnight, yours
a call in to you know, get clearance on when
you're coming home or everybody where you're at. Well, it
was fourth of July, so everybody was up late, and
my mother was worried, and my sister wasn't home after midnight.
So I had this multi band radio that got police calls.
(05:22):
About ten after twelve, I get the radio out, we
turn it on and started listening to the police calls
and nothing major going on. All of a sudden, the
report comes from Blue Rock Springs of brown Chevy with
two kids in it and they were shot, and they're
talking about, you know, the kind of car, what the
kids look like, and they looked like my sister and
her boyfriend and he had a brown Chevy, and my
(05:44):
mother was going nuts, and then they're saying the girl
was dead and the guy wasn't and the bullets were nine.
The moment lugers and we're all going nuts on what
was going on. Five ten minutes later, my sister comes
walking in the door and when, where the hell have
you been? Do you know what's going on? And never
really scared everybody, especially my mother. The weird thing about it,
(06:10):
you know, years later thinking about it. Ten minutes later,
that's when the Zodiac called the police station to report
a double murder and told everybody, you know, it was
a nine milliment or louder. And when he sent the
letter to the paper, he said, to prove that I'm
who it was that killed him, I'll tell you only
(06:30):
things that I know, and the police no. But if
you go through and read the police reports, it's almost
word for word, verbatim on what the police said in
the police reports and exactly what I heard the police
say on the radio that night. So you know, it
makes sense that it was somebody from Valleo, somebody that
(06:51):
was in that area and had a scanner in your
car or something and heard everything because you know, he
said the things before any of the police are words
ever came out. So it was a coincidence that the
guy knew everything that the police knew, and he actually
repeated everything that we heard on the radio. A man
(07:14):
in a mask robbed and 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 haven't arrested me
(07:34):
because they can't prove it. I'm not damn Zodiac. Who
is the Zodiac and where is he? From My Heart Radio,
How Staff works and Tenderfoot TV, this is monster the
Zodiac killer? Is the Zodiac? A man, a myth or
something in between. As we conclude the season, we'll investigate
(07:57):
one of the most frightening theories about the Zodiac, and
we'll explore the Zodiac's legacy. How is he alluded capture
for fifty years but still stuck in our minds? Where
is the Zodiac now? And where will he fit in history?
After Darlene Ferrin and Michael Majau were shot, someone called
the police department to report a murder. If you will
(08:20):
go one mile east on Columbus Parkway, you'll find kids
in a brown car. They were shot with a nine
millimeter luker, I also killed those kids last year, goodbye?
Could that phone call have been just a cruel prank
by someone who heard the police dispatch? And weeks later
when the first letters arrived, how can we be sure
(08:41):
that those letters were sent by the killer himself and
not by someone else with access to information about the murders,
a photographer or police officer at the crime scene, or
an overly ambitious journalist. Dear editor, this is the murderer
of the two teenagers last Christmas at Lake Herman. To
prove I killed them, I shall state some facts which
(09:03):
only I and the police know. One brand name of
Ammo super X. Two ten shots were fired. And of
course there's been theories over the years that they invented
the Zodiac to sell more newspapers. Zodiac expert Michael Butterfield
says some posit that the Zodiac killer was just an
elaborate hoax, that there was no serial killer at all,
(09:25):
just a letter writer linking together entirely separate crimes and
I can't say that there wasn't any part of these
newspaper editors who were seeing a green you know, saying
oh my god, okay, well, this is gonna certainly spike
our circulation. At the Lake berries a stabbing of Cecilia
Shepherd and Brian Hartnell. The killer donned the zodiacs now
(09:48):
iconic outfit and scrawled a message on the victim's car.
He drew the crosshairs Zodiac symbol, listed the dates of
the first three attacks, and wrote only four words v LEO,
timber and by knife. But do the outfit and message
on the car truly proved the Berryessa attack was linked
to the other crimes. Could the attacker have been a
(10:10):
copycat killer inspired by news stories about the Zodiac. Really
only two things linked the Berryessa attack to the other killings.
The attackers m o in handwriting analysis. But how accurately
can experts determine the author of just a few words
scrawled on the side of a car. And wasn't this
attack with knives rope in a costume a deviation from
(10:33):
the Zodiac's usual method. Most serial killers do follow some
discernible pattern where the victims match some criteria. You know,
But for someone who had committed two shootings of couples
sitting in parked cars and lovers lanes at night and
secluded areas, the fact that the Zodiac then showed up
(10:54):
in a popular recreation area during the day, why did
he change his m O from blitz creeg shootings at
night to daylight stabbings of young couples sitting out on
a lake. There's a theory that the attack at Lake
Berryessa was a copycat killer who was inspired by what
he read in the newspapers. Now, I don't think that
(11:14):
the evidence supports that theory, especially the fact that experts
have determined that the handwriting on the car door matches.
Now you can disagree with the experts, But if it
was the Zodiac, again, why this drastic departure from his
previous m O, and then why no effort to communicate
or take credit for it in any meaningful way. Strangely,
(11:36):
the Zodiac never directly referred to the Lake Berryessa stabbing
in any of his letters. This was his most iconic attack,
and for someone who seemed to delight in boasting about
his crimes, leaving it out seems odd. But Butterfield says
there's one real weakness in any Zodiac coax theory, the
murder of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stein. It's hard
(12:00):
to imagine a scenario where the letter writer wasn't at
least somehow connected to Stein's killing, because pieces of Stein's
bloody shirt were included in the next three Zodiac letters. Now,
it's possible that the Zodiac felt this was necessary because
there was a lot of speculation about crimes that he
had committed or crimes that were being linked to him
(12:20):
in the media. He may have felt it was necessary
to prove beyond any doubt that he was responsible for
that crime. So we can safely link the Zodiac letters
to the murder of cab driver Paul Stein. But could
the fixation on finding a single suspect responsible for all
of the crimes have led investigators to discount viable suspects
(12:43):
for some of the crimes. For example, is it possible
that prime suspect Arthur Lee Allen was actually a copycat killer.
He admitted to police he had bloody knives in his
car on the day of the Lake Barriesa stabbings knives
he leaned he used to slaughter chickens. Could it be
that Alan was responsible for the berries a static but
(13:06):
had nothing to do with the other Zodiac murders or
any of the letters. But I'm not the Zodiac killer.
I know that. I know that deep in my shoul.
When Valleo Place searched Arthur Lee Allen's home, they discovered
some clippings about the Zodiac case. Although we don't know
(13:28):
precisely what those were, some of them may have been
related to the book Zodiac. If I could go back
and give myself some advice, the very first piece of
advice I would give myself is be skeptical of everything. Ultimately,
(13:53):
Michael Butterfield believes in a simple explanation for the Zodiac crimes.
The Five Bay Area murders, the phone calls, and most
of the letters were the work of a single man,
a man we know only as the Zodiac. As I
have always said, I believe the fingerprints, the handwriting, the DNA,
the palm print, I believe those things belong to the killer.
(14:15):
And when they actually do find the killer, I believe
that evidence will match him and we will be able
to write the end of this story. But there are
many points of disagreement between different investigators, and there's still
debate about the scope of the Zodiac's crimes. Which letters
did the Zodiacs send and which were forgeries, how much
(14:36):
can we trust the witness identifications, and who are the
confirmed victims. You have to be careful when you're discussing
possible Zodiac crimes because once you assume that another crime
has been committed by the Zodiac, you're taking on all
the elements of that case, including the evidence. So in
a case like the Riverside murder of Sherry Joe Bates
(14:59):
in six, there is DNA associated with that case. And
if you assume that the Zodiac is responsible for the crime,
and then you have a suspect whose DNA does not
match the DNA and the Riverside case, you could mistakenly
exclude someone because it is possible that the Riverside case
is not connected to the Zodiac and therefore the Zodiacs
(15:20):
DNA would have nothing to do with the Riverside case.
The same applies to the failed abduction of Kathleen John's
in Vy. You have to be very careful because at
the end of the day, it's perfectly possible the Zodiac
was not involved at all. Even in a podcast of
this length. There are many theories and clues we haven't
(15:41):
been able to explore, like the water theory. Many Zodiac
killings occurred by bodies of water or at locations named
after water, Blue Rock Springs, Lake Herman, Lake Berriessa. Did
he intentionally pick these places for that reason? And could
this therefore be a clue. The water theory also seems
(16:04):
to fit the murders of Sherry Joe Bates in Riverside,
and of Robert Dominguez and Linda Edwards, who were killed
on a beach in Santa Barbara, and even Donna Lass
who disappeared from Lake Tahoe, and Dana Lull who was
dropped down a mine shaft off Mountain Springs Road. And
many wonder about the Zodiac's apparent fascination with the Makado,
(16:25):
a Gilbert and Sullivan opera. In three later letters, the
Zodiac paraphrased lyrics from the Macado as someday it may
happen that a victim must be found. I've got a
little list. I've got a little list of society offenders
who might well be underground, who would never be missed,
who would never be missed, there is the pestilential nuisances
(16:48):
who write for autographs, all people who have flabby hands
and irritating laughs, all children who were up in dates,
employee with implatte, all people who were shaking hands, shake
hands like that, and all third persons with spoiling kick.
Those who insist they'd none of them be missed, they'd
none of them be missed. In fact, the Zodiac's letters
(17:09):
alluded to many works of popular culture. When he talked
about shooting victims with an electric flashlight attached to the
barrel of a gun, that might have come from an
episode of Alfred Hitchcock presents. Another thing that he wrote
on a letter about methods of killing by knife, by fire,
by gun and rope might have come from an old
comic book. You know. He referred to the Blue Meanies
(17:31):
in the movie Yellow Submarine. And it appears that at
a certain point the Zodiac started writing letters as a
media critic. He complained that the movie The Exorcist was
a satirical comedy. He complained about the glorification of violence
in the movie The bad Lands, and in turn, the
Zodiac greatly impacted pop culture himself. For example, consider the
(17:54):
Zodiac school bus threats. He almost goes to a symbol
of innocence school children, not of us. That's like, you know,
killing a grandmother. It's particularly diabolical. That's Peter Richardson, historian
and lecturer at San Francisco State University. And interestingly, that's
the part that creates the afterlife for the Zodiac as well,
(18:18):
because that incident is what gets Clinton Eastwood's first big movie,
Going Dirty, Harry his first big star turn. I know
what you're thinking, Bitty by her six shots are only five?
Being this supporting for Magnet, the most powerful handgun in
the world, you get to ask yourself one question, Do
I feel lucky? Well? Do your bunker? The influence of
(18:42):
pop culture may explain why there are so many theories
and so much misinformation about the Zodiac case, But why
has the Zodiac in particular fascinated the public for the
last fifty years. Here's San Francisco Chronicle reporter Kevin Fagan.
I've covered a lot of killers with a lot higher
body counts and a lot more sick, twisted ways of
(19:03):
killing people. William Bond on the freeway killer. That guy
killed forty boys, raped him in a van tortured him,
killed him in horrible ways, and throw him out naked
on the freeway. That's a little worse than what the
Zodiac did. I find it kind of sad because the
thing that makes it interesting is this guy was theatrical
that if it hadn't been for the ciphers and the
(19:25):
taunting letters in particular, no one would remember this guy.
The Zodiac's killings are theatrical. They almost feel ripped from
the pages of crime fiction. There's a masked villain cryptic
codes said to contain his identity in the murders of
teenagers who made the tragic mistake of going to a
lover's lane. Michael Butterfield thinks this helped sustain the Zodiac's infamy.
(19:51):
That's always been part of the horror story lexicon, the
idea of the lover's lane killer, you know, the guy
with the hook and all those stories. So that just
it into that and it was terrifying on a whole
new level because, unlike those other stories that you hear
about the hook man or whatever, this guy actually shows up.
One of the things that was most terrifying about it
was the fact that these people were selected at random,
(20:13):
that they were young kids who had so much going
for them. I think people can understand more when you
know it's I hate to say it, when someone's raped
and murdered, you can understand why the person did it,
what their motive was. And maybe our hesitancy to talk
about sexual violence helps explain his prominence as well. Maybe
the fact that the Zodiac was just a killer who
(20:36):
didn't torture or sexually assault his victims made his crimes
easier to discuss. In a culture obsessed with violence but
squeamish about sex, we are surrounded by violence all the time,
but we're not aware of that. If you want proof,
just look at the television listings for any given day
of the week and think about how many of the
(20:56):
shows revolve around homicidal by lence. David Schmidt is an
English professor at the University of Buffalo. He's an expert
on the intersection of crime and popular culture. We spoke
with him to try and understand America's fascination with violence.
You will find that it's everywhere, and yet we don't
see it because we've become so used to it now.
(21:19):
Part of the reason for this is that popular culture
that deals with violence is always faced with a problem,
how do you make violence entertain him but also make
it possible for the viewer not to feel guilty about
enjoying violence, and popular culture has been incredibly successful in
(21:40):
coming up with a variety of ways to quite frankly,
let viewers off the hook. So, for example, big fans
of C. S I. They will tell you, well, I
don't really like the violence. I just watch it because
I'm interested in forensic technology. Or fans of the Law
and Order franchise will say, yeah, it's very violent, but
I learned so much about the legal process from watching it.
(22:03):
Popular culture provides them with reasons to justify their interest
in violence, and so after a while that violence becomes
just an invisible part of the background. We don't want
to think about it, we're not made to think about it,
so there's no reason for us to see it. And
Schmidt says media often popularizes or even glorifies serial killers.
(22:26):
Not long after I moved to the US, the Science
of the Lamb's film came out, and the Night of
the Oscars broadcast began with Billy Crystal being wheeled out
onto the stage with a hockey mask on like Hannibal
Lector in the film, and now your host, Mr Billy Crystal,
I'm having some of the academy over for dinner. Care
(22:48):
to join me? And the entire broadcast was basically a
tribute to that character. So I'm sitting there watching this
and I'm thinking to myself, what does it say about
temporary American society that this type of event is dedicated
to a fictional, cannibalistic serial killer. And I realized at
(23:09):
that point. The popularity of the film version of the
Silence of the Lambs can be explained, among other things,
by the fact that the film is very, very clever
in allowing us to maintain some kind of identification with
Hannibal Lectera. He's highly educated, he is apparently a genius,
(23:29):
and in the film he quite literally walks off into
the sunset, almost like you know, the hero walking off
into the sunset. I do wish we could chat lander,
but I'm having an old fan for dinner, and it's
true he is the hero of the film. To some extent.
There are parallels between the depictions of the Zodiac in
(23:50):
Hannibal Lecter. The Zodiac is often presented as a criminal mastermind,
an expert marksman, and a crafter of uncrackable codes and stories,
often for us on him to the exclusion of telling
the stories of his victims or examining why his story
is important to tell. Now, if you can trast a
film like Signs to the Lambs with a film like
(24:11):
Natural Born Killers, it deals with many of the same issues,
but rubs on noses in the fact that we make
serial killers celebricies. That's not something the audience wants to
be reminded of because it makes us feel guilty, It
makes us feel uncomfortable, and it makes us have to
ask difficult questions of ourselves about why we find this
(24:36):
entertain him. Popular culture about serial killers is not dedicated
to making us ask difficult questions. Instead, it gives us
easy answers. That's what we find appealing about it. Criminologist
James Fox says most people's fascination with serial killers comes
in three forms. There are some who are fascinated because
(24:59):
they had iify with the victims, and they want to
make sure that they're not the next one. And and
then you have a few who enjoy fantasizing about what
it would be like to do what that person did.
The other form of fascination, which is the most common,
is it's just so different from everyday life. People can
(25:21):
be entertained by real stories of real serial killers in
the same way they get entertained by someone like Hannibal Elector,
who's a fictional character. The serial murder is so out
of the ordinary that it might as well be fiction.
Then for most people true crime and crime fiction it
feels the same, and it's just for them entertainment because
(25:44):
they don't feel personally threatened. Most people will never ever
encounter someone like the Zodiac. Having covered crime for decades,
reporter Kevin Fagan avoids glorifying the Zodiac. I think it's disgusting. Glamora,
someone of freaking kills people come on. When I was
a young reporter, I thought, oh wow, this is really fascinating.
(26:06):
I've watched people burned to death. I've stood over bleeding
bodies while they bled out. I've been shot at the
Glamor goes away. I can't even watch TV crime shows.
It's like, oh, let's have entertainment with the death. When
you talk to survivors of victims have been killed, you
get it. You get that this is not fun. There's
nothing fun about murder and you know wacky ciphers and
(26:30):
letters that you know taunt and say, I like hunting
the most dangerous game. Yeah, great, the guy belongs in
freaking prison. America was going through big changes around the
(26:55):
time of the Zodiac murders. Between nineteen sixty and nineteen seventy,
America's violent crime rate more than doubled, and, aside from
a few temporary dips, violent crime continued to increase until
it peaked in Since then, it's fallen dramatically, and today
violent crime levels are actually about where they were when
(27:15):
the Zodiac's Bay Area crimes started. The number of serial
killers has followed a similar trend as violent crime overall,
rising dramatically in the nineteen sixties and peaking in the
eighties and nineties before dropping off. There are still serial
killers out there, but because of advancements in technology from
(27:35):
cell phones to forensic DNA techniques, most serial killers get
caught after just a few crimes and so rarely make
the headlines. Despite our society getting much safer, our fears
about crime have heightened. Gallop Poles show that over the
last two decades, most Americans have felt crime was increasing,
(27:57):
when in fact the opposite was true. Here's Michael Butterfield.
I know I'm terrified of serial killers, even though the
odds of me being killed by one are extremely low.
But I think that some way, it's a way in
which we confront our fears. It's easier to look at
a true crime case from afar than it is to
(28:18):
be in it yourself. When I was a kid, I
was interested in true crime, but people used to think
that was weird. Now true crime is very popular. It's
very trendy, and I don't know why, but I think
that we all need to remember that this is not entertainment,
that it is a tragedy and treated as such. There
(28:39):
might be some fascinating and sensational elements of the case.
It certainly is compelling, but it's also a very real,
human tragedy that continues to affect real people today. Over
the years, I've talked to some of the friends and
family of the victims, and it has a tremendous impact
on them, even to this day. It's bad enough to
(29:01):
have a loved one or friend murdered and have that
murder remain unsolved, to go through life without any kind
of closure, but it's another thing to see that murder
repeated in re enactments over and over and over again
for decades, and to have every aspect of the crime,
every aspect of the victim's life, scrutinized under a microscope,
(29:22):
and every time it comes up, nothing comes of it.
So that kind of frustration, that kind of grief, is
unique in many ways. I don't think a lot of
us can really understand what that's really like unless we
go through it ourselves, and hopefully we won't. Dean Farren
(29:42):
was the husband of Darlene Farren, the woman who was
shot and killed on July nine, sixty nine at Blue
Rock Springs. It was difficult. I had a girl take
care of one thing that I remembered. It my boss
and we were friends at the time, but we turned
out to be best friends over the years. We went
through a lot of weddings and divorces and deaths and stuff,
(30:06):
and I worked for him for twenty years. So but anyway,
he came over that next morning and banging on my
door and I said, I don't want to get up.
I got nothing to live for, you know, I just
all depressed. And he said, get up off you're lazy ass.
You gotta eat today because you gotta ship tomorrow. It
was his way to day life goes on. You know,
you gotta make the best of what you got. And
(30:30):
I'm reading that kind of kickstarre to me. I guess
got me going and said, okay, okay, I gotta go on.
I'll but we did so at that time, I I
didn't know where I was gone. Okay, I'm angry about
the situation, But who'd you get mad at her? How
(30:53):
do you express that angry? You can't just punch anybody,
or there's really nothing you can do, and it's kind
of wait, now, okay, the police will take care of
this and then we'll find out what what happened. Here
we are fifty years later and nothing yet. Last episode,
(31:17):
we spoke to investigator Paul Holes about his work on
the Golden State Killer case. He's spoken with many survivors
of horrific crimes when we caught the Golden State Killer.
For these victims, for some of them, there was that
instant peace of mind that he is not going to
(31:39):
come back, and for many of them, they at least
had an answer as to who. But it doesn't erase
the trauma, and it doesn't bring the loved one back.
This term closure, you know, which is a controversial term.
These people don't experience closure like that part of my
life is over. It will live with them for the
(32:01):
rest of their lives. If the Zodiac is identified, I
would expect that those who survived the Zodiac's attacks, or
those victims families, they're not going to get a sense
of closure. And they know that. These people know that
they're not going to be okay, I can now just
erase that chapter out of my life and be happy.
(32:22):
But they will at least get an answer, you know,
and maybe they'll get justice, but it's not going to
change the trauma. And and that's for the people that
have not lived that, you know, that's maybe the hard
thing for them to understand. People want endings. Endings are
(32:45):
psychologically satisfying. So I hope that the case will be
solved and that ending will be provided to us. The
alternative is to at least find out what the hell
actually happened, because as an investigator, and Arlow told me,
when you're doing a homicide investigation, the first thing you
have to do is find out what actually happened. I
(33:06):
think the best way to end the show is by
telling the truth, and that's not usually what happens. People
claim that they have solved the case. They say, this
is the killer. I've identified the killer, and then some
people are satisfied by that because ultimately, what people want
as an answer, and some people will take any answer
as opposed to the correct answer. Each passing anniversary of
(33:29):
the case means that we've lost another year with no resolution,
and it often means that we lose some of the
people who are involved in the case. We lose their insight,
their experiences, their memories, and a lot of information that
might help us understand that case. Today, there's often a
sentiment among people who are not involved in these cases
(33:52):
where they seem to think that there should be a
time where you move on, that you should let it go.
And I think that the families of the victims would
argue other wise. So what hope remains for the Zodiac case.
Someone could still come forward and confess on their deathbed,
revealing Paul Stein's driver's license as proof, or that evidence
(34:13):
could turn up in an attic or an estate sale.
The unsolved ciphers could still reveal an identity or some clue,
or they could just be gibberish. Maybe, as we discussed
last episode, DNA tests of a letter will finally pinpoint
a suspect, or maybe he'll be identified through DNA from
a seemingly unrelated case. I think it's very possible that
(34:36):
he committed other crimes under another persona. I don't think
most people would believe that someone like the Zodiac could
simply stop killing, So we have to take him at
his word that he continued to kill, only he made
his crimes look like accidents or robberies. If that's the case,
the Zodiac could have continued killing for a long time
(34:57):
and we wouldn't know anything about it, because the only
way we really knew he was attached to these crimes
in the first place was because he called up the
police or set letters to tell us. Regardless, we're running
out of time to set the record straight. People are
working on the case today. It's an active investigation. Police
(35:19):
are trying to find a DNA match. Reporters like Kevin
Fagan continue to cover developments, and the zodiologists chased down
every lead they can find. If he's still alive, he
might be watching all this and he might be terrified
because look what happened to Joseph Gangelo in the Golden
State Killer case. If they can find one relative of his,
(35:41):
it's all over. Then all they have to do is
just make out the family trees who fits the right
age the description boom. So he's probably very worried, and
he should be because people like me. I'm not gonna
stop people at did VPD, did San Francisco Police Department.
That would be the biggest thing they could ever do
(36:02):
is catch the Zodiac. And now that they know that
it can be done with the Golden State Killer, there's
every reason to keep trying. In Every Hope Monster, The
Zodiac Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced by iHeart
Radio How Stuff Works in Tinderfoot TV. Johnald Alright and
(36:25):
I are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot 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 Thane.
Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is our host.
(36:47):
Original music is by Makeup and Vanity set. If you
haven't already, make sure to check out the first season
of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders
from the late seventies to the early eighties. Download the
tin episode season right now. Have questions or comments, email
us at Monster at how Stuff Works dot com, or
(37:07):
you can call us at one eight five six six
six seven. Thanks for listening. If you feel ready to
keep going on this journey, you can go to Michael
(37:28):
Butterfield's website Zodiac Killer Facts dot com. You can connect
with the Zodiologists on Tom Void's forum at Zodiac Killer
dot com, and if you have a tip about the case,
you can call our number one eight three three to
five six six six seven. I think the most important
thing someone can do is cut the facts away from
(37:50):
the fiction and focus on the facts. And I think
this podcast has done a lot to help people in
that regard. But the simple fact is you should question everything.
There's a a great line by a journalist who said,
if your mother tells you that she loves you, you
should still do your research and check it out. Anyone
who is interested in learning more about the case, I
(38:11):
would recommend that they spend time reading the actual police reports,
the actual FBI files, and other official documents that they
spend time looking at the evidence and using common sense
and logic to examine all the information that's out there,
because the true story of the Zodiac case is right
(38:32):
there in those police reports. So that's it. Our regular
season is over, but we're going to continue following new
developments about the Zodiac and we'll be back soon with
a whole new case. Thanks for listening.
Monster: The Zodiac Killer News
Host
Payne Lindsey
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