Taxi Driver [05]

Zodiac moves to the City by the Bay 

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Episode Transcript

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, How
Stuff Works, or its employees. After the attack at Lake Berryessa,
the Zodiac fell silent. There were no more letters, there

(00:21):
were no more phone calls after that initial phone call
to the Napa Police Department, and we don't know why.
But two weeks after the attack at Lake Barriessa, the
Zodiac resurfaced in San Francisco. And while he had already
sent a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle establishing himself
as a link to San Francisco, he hadn't committed any

(00:44):
crimes there that we knew of in the news room,
you know, our ears perked up, obvious a little more
about this kind of case. Now you've got three cases
and one guy claiming responsibility and providing in some of
these letters details and only the police would know, so
they'd verify that he was at the actual scene. But

(01:05):
it wasn't until October eleven, when Zodiac first struck in
San Francisco, that I think the Chronicle went into full
on serial killer mode, if you will, For a couple
of reasons. One is, in this case, Zodiac hailed a
taxi in front of the theater Current Theater on Gary
Street in San Francisco. He has to be taken out

(01:28):
to a fairly upscale neighborhood called Prestidio Heights, where he
instructed the driver to stop, and once he stopped, he
asked him to go another block for reasons no one's
ever figured out. And when they got to the next corner,
Zodiac shot the guy in the back of the head
and killed him. And this cab driver's name was Paul Stein.

(01:55):
A man in a match robbed, tied and stabbed him,
leaving them for day. 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 the
knife and gun and intended to use them. They you
haven't arrested me because they can't prove it. Tame, I'm

(02:19):
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. Taxi drivers are the
unspoken experts of their cities. The unofficial tour guides per se.

(02:39):
In a big city like San Francisco, taxi drivers are ubiquitous,
They're everywhere, They were constant a given, and because of this,
they were also an easy target for the Zodiac. Think
about it. There are a few people more trusting of
strangers than a taxi driver. They pull over, pick you up,
drop you off. Some times you never even see their

(03:01):
face for exchange names. There's intimacy here. You are sharing
this small place, but the stranger. Do you really know
who's in the car with you. The Zodiac didn't stalk
his victims for weeks. He chose them at random because
of their environment, their unawareness, and in some cases, their occupation.
What's more frightening than someone who praised on the unexpecting.

(03:26):
San Francisco is directly linked to the Zodiac Killer. There's
no escaping it, which is ironic because it's not where
he started. He started in Vallet and Ponetia. This is
Zodiac expert Michael Butterfield. And maybe that was something that
he wanted. Maybe he lived in San Francisco. Maybe it
was easier to write to the San Francisco Chronicle and
make sure that he could read that newspaper than it

(03:47):
was to drive all the way to wherever he had
to go to get a Valio Times Harold. I don't know.
One thing that we know for sure is that the
Zodiac wanted the attention that he wanted when he wanted it. Now.
What he wanted in July of nine was for as
many people to see this as possible, to get as
much attention as possible, and to cement his image as

(04:09):
a real threat. And it worked. And then after that
I think one of the things that he started to
realize was, I'm going to do better if I keep
going to the Chronicle, then if I keep going to
another newspaper. And there's sub evidence that the Valo Times
Harold was not as willing to keep playing this game

(04:29):
with him. Maybe he sensed that maybe when he was
looking at their coverage he didn't like what he saw.
So after that he started focusing on the San Francisco
Chronicle and they were happy to play alone. Well, the
key papers and in San Francisco were the Chronicle and
the Examiner. They were very different. At the end of
the day, the Examiner was a kind of symbolic power,

(04:49):
but it was losing its circulation war with the San
Francisco Chronicle. Here's Peter Richardson, historian and lecturer at San
Francisco State University. The Monica was never a gray paper journalistically,
but they had some very interesting columness. It was kind
of a fun read for that reason. But the city

(05:10):
had never really distinguished itself journalistically. It didn't have a
paper during this time like the Los Angeles Times, much
less the Washington Posted the or the New York Times.
They were widely read, but they were not any great shakes.
Despite this, the San Francisco Chronicle had the highest readership
in the Bay Area, and Peter Richardson says that this

(05:32):
was the only thing that mattered to the zodiac. The
psychotic killer has already murdered five, one at a lover's
lane near a lake just north of San Francisco, three
others in nearby Vallejo, The latest a taxi driver in
San Francisco. He apparently was in the area of Mason
and Geary in San Francisco and hailed a cab, and

(05:56):
that cab was being driven by Paul Stein, who was
a student and a husband. The plan was to direct
Paul Stein to the intersection of Washington and Maple which
was in an upscale neighborhood at San Francisco known as
Presidio Heights. So from what we know, paul Stein took

(06:16):
the passenger to that location. What we don't know is
why the cab eventually ended up one block further west
at Washington and Cherry Streets. Some kids were in a
house across the street and they heard some kind of
commotion and looked out the window and they saw a

(06:36):
man in the front seat doing something to the cab driver.
They thought that he was stabbing him or doing something
to him, and they watched as the man handled the driver,
and then they called the police. And apparently while they
were talking to the police dispatcher and they were describing

(06:58):
what they were seeing, something went wrong. Instead of describing
the killer as a white man, the radio dispatched to
responding officers described the killer as a black man. The

(07:19):
witnesses watched as the man finished whatever he was doing
in the cab. He got out of the cab. He
walked around at the driver's side and appeared to have
some sort of light colored cloth in his hand as
he was wiping down the cab or doing something on
the driver's side of the cab. He then turned and
walked north up Cherry Street. Two days later, the Chronicle

(07:45):
received a letter and only the Chronicle from the Zodiac.
This is former reporter Duffy Jennings. He was there when
the San Francisco Chronicle received this now infamous letter. As
the woman opened it in the editorial department of he's
of bloody shirt fell out with the letter. This is

(08:06):
the Zodiac speaking, I am the murderer of the taxi
driver over by Washington Street and Maple Street last night.
To prove this, here's a blood stained piece of his shirt.
I am the same man who did in the people
in the North Bay area, so they knew that this
was Paul Stein's killer. And now he's again taunting police

(08:28):
to catch him, and the fear factor went way up.
But now he's in San Francisco. Captain Lee at this
particular time is satisfied that the individual who sent this
piece of shut in on the letter to the Chronicle

(08:49):
wasn't connected with the is the person who killed the
cab driver. Let me put it that way. They contents
all the letters. The language of the matters in other
cases are very similar to the language and the form
of the letters. In this particular case, and because of
the fact that the shirt matches the shirt as I

(09:11):
understand it, we would have to assume that there is
validity to the claim of this individual. That was San
Francisco Police Chief Thomas Cahill. The SFPD confirmed the killer
was in fact the Zodiac. They knew this because the
striped cloth found in the letter matched the striped shirt
paul Stein was wearing, and when investigators checked paul Stein's shirt,

(09:34):
they found that a rectangular portion was missing. With the
San Francisco Police Department involved, this crime now crossed over
multiple cities and jurisdictions, and those individual departments weren't necessarily
working together. In Napa, where the last murder occurred at
Lake Berryessa sheriffs had made their own assessment of the
murder in San Francisco, but pulmonary tests of certain evidence

(09:58):
such as fingerprint and handwriting have been made to where
we are certain that the man that we're looking for
is the same man responsible for the killing of the
cab driver in San Francisco, plus the shooting deaths in
Salono County in Leo. For sheriff, what type of person

(10:21):
is this man? We have reason to believe that he's
a maniac. He however, he is a cunning man. He
knows just exactly what moves he's going to make. He
knows uh where he's going to be from one minute
to the next. He knows where he's going to start

(10:41):
and when he's going to end. He plans these things out,
and he knows just exactly how this thing is going
to turn out. We think it's it appears to us
that he is killing just for the thrill of killing.
So how did the killer avoid the police in Presidio Heights?

(11:04):
In the Bloody Shirt letter, the Zodiac gave his own
account of what happened that night. The San Francisco police
could have called me last night if they had searched
the park properly. Instead of holding road races with their
motorcycles seeing who could make the most noise. The car
drivers should have just parked their cars and sat there
quietly waiting for me to come out of cover. But

(11:26):
there was more. In another letter sent just a few
weeks later, Zodiac gave even more details about what happened
after Paul Stein's murder. If you wonder why I was
wiping the cab down, I was leaving fake clues for
the police to run all over town with. As one
might say, I gave the cops some busy work to

(11:47):
do to keep them happy. I enjoy needling the blue pigs. Hey,
blue pig. I was in the park. You were using
fire trucks to mass the sound of your cruising prowl cars.
The dogs never came within two blocks of me, and
they were to the west, and there was only two
groups of parking about ten minutes apart. And then the

(12:08):
motorcycles went by about one and fifty ft away, going
from south to northwest ps. Two cops pulled a goof
about three minutes after I left the cab. I was
walking down the hill to the park when this cop
car pulled up and one of them called me over
and asked if I saw anyone acting suspicious or strange
the last five to ten minutes, and I said, yes,

(12:31):
there was this man who was running by waving the gun,
and the cops peeled rubber and went around the corners.
I directed them, and I disappeared into the park a
block and a half away, never to be seen again.

(12:56):
Paul Stein, unlike the other victims, became a victim because
of his job. That seems very unfair to me, and
I know that's an odd way to describe it, but
you know, he didn't have a chance, He had no idea.
He was just doing what he thought he was supposed
to do. He thought he would take this person where
he wants to go and go on his way. He
didn't know that the passenger he picked up had other plans.

(13:18):
This is Michael Butterfield again. He's interviewed numerous people who
were on the scene that night and while the kids
were watching, the first responding police officers arrived and that
was Frank Peter and Armand Pealisetti. And Armand Pealisetti told

(13:39):
me and several interviews I did with him over the years,
that he arrived at the scene, he saw the kids
coming out of the house. He directed them to stand back.
He asked his partner to watch the area to guard
the crime scene, and he approached the cab with a flashlight.
He said that when he got or the driver's side,

(14:01):
he could see some sort of impression on the outer
door that appeared to be blood and maybe fingerprints. He
then looked inside the cab and he saw Paul Steyn's
body laying in the driver's seat, and according to armand Palacetti,
it was obvious that he was dead. Palisetti then walked

(14:25):
north on Cherry Street in pursuit of the killer, and
at some point he encountered two other police officers who
were responding officers Don Falk and Eric Zones. At some
point the description of the killer was corrected to that
of a white man. According to the new witness description,

(14:47):
the killer was a white male in his early forties.
He was about five eight with a heavy build. He
had reddish blonde hair, a crew cut, and he wore
eyeglasses in a dark park of jacket. And when that happened,
apparently Don Falk realized that that was a man that
they had driven past on their way to the crime scene.

(15:09):
So Falcon his partner turned around and went back and
went looking for the killer. They did not find him.
Pelissetti kept walking and didn't see anything. By that time,
then the fire department and other investigators were arriving. They
did find some fingerprints in that area where armand Pealiesetti
thought he had seen some fingerprints, and those prints were

(15:32):
found in the exact area where the killer was last
seen making contact with the cab. According to the witnesses,
no one touched that cab in between the time that
the killer walked away and armand Pelissetti arrived, So that's
a strong indication that those fingerprints did belong to the killer.

(15:58):
I had a lot of questions about the murder of
Paul Stein. Why would the killer change his m o
so dramatically Again, the Zodiac had previously focused on young
couples in isolated areas, and his weapon of choice was
a handgun. He escalated his attacks when he wore a costume,
then tied up and stabbed the couple at Lake Berryessa.

(16:19):
This time he went back to his regular clothes and
back to his gun to kill a lone mail cab driver.
It just didn't make sense to me to better understand.
I first wanted to retrace the Zodiacs steps that night,
to take the same route in the back of a taxi.
So I started where he did, near the intersection of
Mason and Geary in the Tenderloin district. There's a theater nearby,

(16:41):
but the Zodiac may have gone into My name is
Oliver Sutton. I am hate of security for the A
c Q Theater for more than twenty years. I've I've
known this area virtually all the time I've lived in
San Francisco. The Zodiac, the first murderer to kick place
in San Francisco. A patron came out of the a

(17:06):
CT theater at that time, it was the Geary and
the a C T American Conservatory Theater. I don't know
what show is going on at that time, but he
could have got just going into the lobby, used it
as a backdrop, or he could actually have been a
patron of a CT that came out head of taxi
and murdered him. I'll take you into the lobby, turn

(17:27):
the lights on and give you a chance to see
where you know where to place m this this ung
so the the killer, he would have these double doors.
That's how they filmed it that way for the movie.

(17:48):
That he walked out of these double doors and held
down a yellow taxi yellow cabby. Being a hat and
in this city is tough because if you don't know
who's getting in the back seat of car. According to
the story, he didn't. The victim was not chosen. It
was just a random crime of opportunity. From there, the

(18:09):
killer called a taxi and was picked up by Paul Stein,
so I called a cab two. I asked to be
taken to the corner of Washington and Cherry Street in
the Presidio Heights neighborhood. It was about three miles west,
fifteen minutes by car, and oddly enough, my cab driver's
name was also Paul. She lives over now Stein. Paul

(18:33):
and I got to talk. He had heard about the
Zodiac case but didn't know much of the details. He
asked me how many people the Zodiac had killed. I
told him how many of the police had confirmed. He
wasn't impressed and small potatoes. He found a ton of people.
The reason why it's it's such a big deal is
because he was constantly writing to the chronicles. He was

(18:54):
one of the first one. I mean, he was one
of the first, and he was in the paper. So
when when he did something he made should that the
police knew he it was him that did it, right, Yeah,
he would send You want him to really claim I
did that one. I don't want nobody has to try
to claim that as the glory. This is me, I

(19:15):
did it. Well. Here's where it gets crazy, though, man,
because he like in the beginning, like with that one
Paul Stein. Yeah, he sent a piece of the guy's
cloth with his blood on it in his letter to
the chronicle. Right, and it was a cab driver. He
was a cab driver, yeah, named Paul Kisney. I got
spooky man, right, I got bumped. I got goose bumps

(19:36):
on me. You know, I mean the Zodiac are you?
When we arrived on the scene of Paul Stein's final moments,
I got out and just listened for a while. A
few cars drove by, but there wasn't much, if any,
foot traffic. It felt like a different universe from the
bustling city that was just a few blocks away. That's

(19:56):
when I realized the Zodiacs sought out these types locations, quiet,
unassuming areas, places that seem almost peaceful, miles away from
anywhere you might consider dangerous. A country road, a public
park in a popular vacation spot on a lake, in
this case, a beautiful, upscale neighborhood in San Francisco. It

(20:19):
maybe wonder did Zodiac want to strip away the feeling
of safety from these places? And as I'm standing there,
lost in this thought, I see a man walking towards me.
He's carrying some take out. He asked me what I
was doing, and we got to talking. The man requested
we not use his name, and we altered his voice
for privacy, because it turns out he was related to

(20:41):
someone who witnessed Paul Stein's murder. So it was my father,
who was actually since past. He was he was just
a kid. He was kid, and he was just playing downstairs,
and he just you know, looked outside the window and
saw yellow cab and it's being kids their nosey and
they looked in it. And I guess, for my memory

(21:03):
of what I was told, I saw someone slouch over
in the car who you know, come to find it
was a culprit of the zodiac. And you called the police,
and his family or his mom and dad were down
the street at a party, and you know, they called him,

(21:25):
he's crazy. You know, I think someone just got murdered.
Police came and that's what they came to find. And
he's been hassled. You don't buy every investigator since trying
to solve it. But I don't think they ever found him.
He'd liked talking about it that much. But I think
it was either from that window there the bought the

(21:46):
first floor or was from the third floor. Pretty sure
it was from the first floor. But I think he
did feel some sort of weight of responsibility of, you know,
give back her information to help solve this crime. You know,
I'm he was young. I think it was only twelve.

(22:13):
The Zodiacs moved to San Francisco meant there would be
a lot of changes in the investigation. One of them
was that that was the first time he had struck
in a major metropolitan city, which meant that a major
metropolitan police force would be assigned in the case. Two
of the investigators assigned to the case who arrived at
the crime scene that night where David Toski and Bill Armstrong.

(22:36):
Dave Tasky was sort of known as a celebrity cop.
He liked media attention. People who lived in San Francisco
were accustomed seeing his name in the newspaper or his
face on television, and when the Zodiac crime started, that
just naturally increased because now he was in charge of
the hunt for the biggest serial killer in California history.

(22:57):
He was identified primarily as the Zodiac Hop In the
movie Bullet, Steve McQueen supposedly based a lot of his
character on Dave Toski, including the way he held his
gun and things like that. And there's also stories that
the movie Dirty Harry was inspired by the battle between
Tsky and the Zodiac's a madman loose. Give the message

(23:19):
at the chronicle, we'll agree to pay. We'll tell them
we need time to get the money together. Wait a minute,
do I get this right? You're gonna play this creep scheme.
It'll get a some more breathing space so I might
get somebody chilled. Toski and Armstrong investigated the scene and
at a certain point those fingerprints were discovered. There was

(23:39):
also a pair of gloves that were found underneath one
of the seats, I believe, as well as the shell
case thing that appeared to have come from the Zodiac's weapon.
The bullet came from a nine millimeter pistol, but it
was not the same nine millimeter used to kill Darlene Farron.
Tossky and Armstrong would also discover that the gloves belonged
to a pre be As customer of Paul Stein. All

(24:02):
of this evidence was gathered, the witness statements were taken,
and a composite sketch of the killer was drawn up
with the assistance of these witnesses TASKI and Armstrong. At
the time, I thought that they were investigating what you
might call a routine robbery. It was not unusual for

(24:23):
cab drivers to be robbed or even shot in San Francisco,
So when they were investigating those first two days, they
thought they were looking for a career criminal, somebody with
a record who probably committed this kind of crime before,
and someone who could be readily identified by searching through
the pool of usual suspects. They had no idea that

(24:45):
in two days the San Francisco Chronicle would receive a
letter from the Zodiac taking responsibility for the murder of
Paul Stein, which also included a piece of Paul Stein's
shirt to remove any and all doubt that he was
actually responsible. Since the release of the latest letter yesterday,
our office has received additional phone calls from persons in

(25:08):
the Bay Area who feel that they can be helpful
in the apprehension of the Zodiacs aspect. This is Inspector
David Toski speaking with kpi X News in My partner,
Inspector Armstrong and I, who were handing the case, have
received several phone calls this morning. In this afternoon on

(25:28):
various informants who have given us some information as to names, addresses,
and locations that we have checked out and are checking
out at the present time. It's generally stirred up quite
a bit of interest. This, of course changed the entire investigation.
Tuski and Armstrong thought it was a simple crime, and

(25:48):
now they were involved in what was possibly the most
explosive manhunt in California history. So obviously moving to San Francisco,
changing his victim preference, acting out a much different kind
of crime, sending scraps of victims clothing and the mail.
This was all a new level, the next step for
the Zodiac. It was much more terrifying than where it

(26:10):
was before. But also it sort of began this feud
between the San Francisco Police Department and the Zodiac. Part
of that seems to have come from the fact that
the Zodiac did escape the police that night, and if
he did remain in the area and watch them searching
for him and watching them fail, that must have done

(26:30):
a lot for his ego. He must have felt very powerful,
he must have felt invincible. But this was just the
beginning of the San Francisco chapter. In the last part
of the bloody shirt letter. Zodiac had one more threat,
school children make nice targets. I think I shall wipe
out a school bus some morning, Just shoot out the

(26:51):
front tire and then pick off the kiddies as they
come bouncing out. Signed Zodiac, school children are nice targets.
I shall wipe out a school bus all morning, shoot
out the tires and then pick off the kiddies as
they come bounding out. Back was the threat of the
Zodiac Killer. Now every day police cars follow the buses,

(27:15):
which would be likely targets. Officers aren't with shotguns take
the threat seriously. I think that was the thing that
ratcheted up the paranois and the fear around this Zodiac guy, who,
by now was you know, a mythical figure of a
culking guy walking around the streets who could not just

(27:36):
kill a couple of kids at a lover's lane, but
anybody could be the next victim. Next time on Monster

(28:07):
the Zodiac Killer, we have a number of plane blows.
Officers following busses in the morning and evening. I remember
as a kid having a cop car followed behind us,
And I remember that because as kids we would all
kind of run to the back of the bus and
wave at the cop. The media frenzy that resulted predictable

(28:28):
as it was, it was a huge part of the
story itself. So in some ways we start to see
the media become a player in the stories that they're covering.
It's just a sense of not knowing what would happen next,
especially after these letters start coming threatening to sort of
escalate the violence, and people not knowing whether that was

(28:48):
serious or not. You're not afraid, No, I know too afraid.
That wasn't enough for him. Then he moved on to
the next level where he started threatening to blow up
a school bus full of the children, the death machine
he has already made. Monster the Zodiac Killer is a

(29:15):
fifteen episode podcast produced by I Heart Radio, How Stuff
Works and Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright and 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,

(29:35):
Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and Josh 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 Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders from the
late seventies to the early eighties. Download the ten episode

(29:57):
season right now. Have questions or comments, email us at
Monster at how stuff works dot com, or you can
call us at one eight three three two eight five
six six six seven. Thanks for listening.