January 23, 2020 • 29 mins
More suspects bring more questions.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Monster is back with a brand new series, Monster d
C Sniper. Here's a teaser for the show. While you're listening,
search for Monster DC Sniper and subscribe. New episodes are
available every Thursday. I don't think America has ever gone
back to the way that it was before nine eleven
(00:22):
and the anthrax attacks. The fear was really that there
would be a second wave of attacks, and then along
comes the DC Sniper and all of the country's worst
fears are realized. I think it's fair to say all
help broke this. I don't know. The gunman, most likely
(00:46):
a skilled marksman, fired six times in the courts of
sixteen hours. They killed the five people on one day
and then went on the rampage for the next month.
The police say they have never had a crime quite
like this. It is quite a mystery. It was scary
to go to the grocery store or fill up your
car with gas, and as the DC Sniper case unfolded,
(01:07):
that terror only group from My Heart Radio and tender
Foot TV. This is Monster DC Sniper. The views and
opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the
podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
(01:30):
not necessarily represent those of I Heeart Media Stuff Media
for its employees. In the spring of the Valeo Police
Department announced it had submitted two pieces of evidence for
DNA testing, two envelopes that once contained letters sent from
the Zodiac Killer to local newspapers. Although similar DNA tests
(01:51):
had been performed in this case with no results, this
attempt was different. The testing method was more advanced, and
if a via DNA sample was produced this time, it
would be used to create a genetic profile for forensic genealogy.
In its simplest form, forensic genealogy maps and individual's DNA
(02:12):
profile and then compares it to other previously existing profiles.
It's a way to build family trees, and it's what
companies like twenty three and me, Ancestry and jed match do.
Forensic genealogy is the method that caught the Golden State Killer,
the man who murdered at least thirteen people and committed
more than fifty rapes. After more than forty years, Joseph
(02:35):
James de'angelo was charged and convicted of his crimes. While
DNA and forensic genealogy was able to close the Golden
State Killer case, it's so far has not been able
to identify the Zodiac Killer, and unfortunately, there hasn't been
an official update from the Valeo Police Department since that
spring of While we hope forensic genealogy will eventually unmask
(02:59):
the Zodiac, for now the trail seems cold. The best
evidence were left with remains circumstantial. Throughout the season, we
examined the people we considered the most likely suspects. Since then,
we've had many listeners calling in with questions about other
individuals that we haven't fully investigated. Today, we're going to
(03:21):
take a closer look at some of those people. A
man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them, leaving
them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder,
no a double murder. I did it. A man who
(03:42):
wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried a knife and
gun and intended to use them. They have an arrestipe
because they can't cove a m I'm not damn Zodiac.
Who is the Zodiac and where is he? From my
Heart radio and under Foot TV, this is Monster, the
(04:03):
Zodiac Killer. According to an estimate by the Los Angeles Times,
more than twelve hundred people have claimed to know the
Zodiac's identity, but only a few of those claims seem viable.
In two thousand nine, Deborah Perez held a sidewalk conference
claiming that her father, guy Ward Hendrickson, was the Zodiac.
(04:23):
Perez claimed she helped write some of the letters the
Zodiac sent to the media. She also claimed to possess
the glasses of Paul Stein, the Zodiac's last confirmed victim. However,
after inspection, police determined that the glasses were not Paul
Stein's and that guy Ward Hendrickson was not the Zodiac.
(04:45):
Another accusation came from Jack Kaufman, a man who believed
his stepfather, Jack Torrence, was the Zodiac. Kaufman gave police
a black hood similar to the one the Zodiac war
when he attacked the couple at Lake Berryessa. Kaufman also
gave police a bloody knife resembling the weapon from the
same attack. He claimed that both of these items were
(05:06):
his stepfather's. Additionally, Kaufman provided stamps his stepfather had licked
for DNA testing in hopes the police could finally prove
his suspicions. While both of these accusations caught the attention
of the police and the media, there is one claim
that overshadows the rest, the claim of Gary Stewart. In
(05:27):
May of fourteen, Gary Stewart's book debuted across the United States.
It was called the Most Dangerous Animal of All Searching
for My Father and Finding the Zodiac Killer. The book
was a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller.
It follows Stuart's decade long journey to find his biological father.
It began when Stewart's biological mother reached out to him
(05:50):
when he was thirty nine years old. Their reunion was successful,
and Stewart decided he also wanted to meet his father,
Earl Van Best Jr. But he would soon learned that
Earl had a police record for some very serious crimes.
In fact, according to Stewart, the San Francisco Police Department
told him to stop looking for his dad. It wasn't
(06:11):
long after this that Stewart would turn over the first stone,
leading him to believe that Earl Van Best Jr. His father,
was the Zodiac Killer. The clips you're about to hear
are from an interview with Gary Stewart on the I
Heart radio show Rover's Morning Glory, in talking about his
story and his book. One day, I'm watching an Ante
(06:33):
Coal case file special on the Zodiac Killer. The wanted
poster from San Francisco nineteen sixty nine of the Zodiac
Killer pops up on the screen and I can't breathe.
My son, here's whatever noise I make. And he runs
into the room and he looks at the television. He says, Dad,
it's you. I went in my office and got this
(06:55):
old d m V photo that I've been given by
the FFPD, which turns out it was his actual mug shot.
And I said, no, Zach's not me, it's my father.
The likeness between Van Best and the police sketch of
the Zodiac suspect was only what started Stuart's theory. Gary
also believes that his father's name appears in the cipher's
(07:15):
the Killer sent to Bay Area newspapers. My father signed
his name E. V. Best Jr. In particular, in the
four oh eight cipher that was mailed to the San
Francisco Examiner. I just looked at it one day to
see if I could see anything, and out off the
page popped E. V. Best Junior altogether in a row backward,
(07:40):
forward and up. After the police did not pick that up.
He later came back and sent the infamous three forty cipher,
which the amateur sleuths in the Zodiac community around the
world say is still unsolved. He insisted that his identity
was in that cipher and my father's name complete name
(08:03):
is in that ciphering. Michael Butterfield, the creator of the
website Zodiac Killer Facts, doesn't agree. These ciphers were constructed
in blocks of seventeen symbols. Gary Stewart found each letter
in his father's name in one of the lines. Now,
(08:24):
normally a cipher is a series of symbols which are
deciphered into other texts, but Gary believed that the actual
text of the cipher was the message that it didn't
need to be deciphered, that you could just read his
father's name by finding the letters in his father's name
in each one of these lines. Now, of course some
people might find that compelling, but as David ran Shacking,
(08:47):
Zodiac cipher expert, pointed out, you can use the same
method to find many other names, which means that that
cannot be the only solution. Gary also claimed that handwriting
from the zodiac matched his father's handwriting, and this was
based on the notion that several marriage certificates and documents
from a certain church bore the handwriting of Earl vand Best,
(09:11):
And Gary Stewart hired an expert who came in and
he even wrote a book about how this was the
end of the Zodiac mystery because he had matched the
handwriting to Gary Stewart's father. Now, after that happened, a
Zodiac theorist named micro Delli contacted that church and found
out that the handwriting on those documents does not belong
to Earl band Best. The handwriting was apparently that of
(09:34):
the reverend at this church, So that cast doubt not
only on Gary Stuart's claims, but on the credibility of
his handwriting expert, who had apparently concluded that the handwriting
of three different individuals was all earlband Best. And then,
of course there's the fingerprint pulled from the crime scene
of the Zodiac's last confirmed kill, the murder of Paul Stein.
(09:58):
He basically claims that there's a fingerprint from one of
the Zodiac crime scenes which he claims looks like his
father's fingerprint when it's reversed, Apparently his father had a
scar out of finger and there's some sort of line
on the fingerprint which he believes go insides to the scar,
but of course the police don't think this is a
valid theory. The likeness, the fingerprint, the ciphers, all of
(10:23):
these are common threads throughout many zodiac theories. But there
is one detail that sets Gary Stewart's claims apart. His
biological parents had several connections to the case. The first
connection is to journalist Paul Avery, through a series of
articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle called The ice
(10:43):
Cream Romance. These articles detailed how his parents met and
focused on their significant age difference. In nineteen sixty one
nineteen sixty two, When you're twenty seven and you're running
off with a fourteen year old and the cops catch
you and you just happened in eating in an ice
cream parlor, good journalists are gonna say something like he
(11:04):
found love in an ice cream parlor. Ice cream romances
bitter in. The problem was he was twenty seven and
his young bride was only fourteen. I found out through
contacting the Chronicle and the archivist at the San Francisco
Library that Paul Avery was the author of the ice
Cream romance, the Zodiac Killer came back and targeted Paul
(11:29):
Avery as part of his taunting the media Paul Avery specifically. Basically,
Stewart is claiming that his father, Earl Van Bess Jr.
Wrote the Zodiac letters to Paul Avery because he was
angry with him for writing the ice cream romance articles.
There is currently no evidence that's been made public that
(11:51):
directly links Earl Van Best Jr. To those Zodiac letters.
The second connection to the case is through his mother's
second sent After her marriage with Earl Van Best Jr.
Was annulled, Gary Stewart's mother, Judy Chandler, remarried a man
named Rotea Guildford. He was an inspector with the San
Francisco Police Department and worked on the Zodiac case. Gary
(12:15):
Stewart wanted law enforcement to take his DNA for comparison
against a Zodiac sample. He hoped a partial match would
confirm his theory about his father. However, the San Francisco
Police Department declined to run this test. Stewart believes this
is because of a conflict of interest. My mother believes
(12:36):
that it's because of her late husband's involvement in the
Zodiac case. You know, they're allegedly suspects in the Zodiac case.
If my father happened to be interviewed and cleared because
he was a very intelligent, smooth talking salesman, maybe even
(12:57):
by Rotea Guildford, how would that look. I don't know.
I'm just speculating. Stewart believes that the police refused to
test his DNA because if there was a match, it
would mean the police had made a mistake if they
had previously cleared Earl Van Best Jr. If true, that
(13:18):
scenario would certainly be embarrassing to the whole department. But
we have to ask ourselves would embarrassment be enough to
stop law enforcement from running those tests and possibly confirming
the Zodiac's identity. It's also important to note that, according
to Butterfield, Judy did not believe her ex husband was
the Zodiac. According to the Zodiac Killer Facts website, Judy
(13:42):
reportedly referred to Stuart's Zodiac claims as fiction. Again, this
is all speculation, but if the evidence didn't match up,
then how did this book gain so much traction. Normally
a book is presented up for review, but this book
was withheld until the day was released, so it came
out to a lot of fanfare, and of course most
(14:04):
media outlets simply pick up the publicity information put out
by the publishers, so they will just repeat what the
book jacket says the most compelling evidence, you know, that
kind of thing. He went on a media tour, I
believe he was on Fox News and ABC This Morning
and things like that. He was asked a lot of questions,
(14:24):
but of course no one asked the pertinent questions about
the handwriting, about the fingerprint and other things. But if
you look at the way the book was released, in
the way it was received, it's kind of a harbon
copy of what's happened with other books in the past.
People see the book, they assume it's nonfiction. Then they
repeat what's in the book as if it's fact. And
if you only go by that, Gary Stuart's theory seems
(14:47):
very compelling. It's not until you start to ask some
serious questions and get into the nitty gritty details that
you'll find that there is some serious problems. I think
that one of the reasons people accepted it so quickly
and why it became so popular, it's because it's a
story that a lot of people like to hear. A
man in search of truth about his own life finds
(15:09):
his father, and then he finds out horrible secrets about
his father. It's very compelling family drama, but it doesn't
necessarily translate into an actual true crime story. Days after
this book was released, the theory was already being unraveled
by another theorist, Mike Rodelli. He was the guy who
(15:33):
contacted the church about Van Best's handwriting. He didn't believe
Gary Stewart's claim about Earl van Best, Jr. Because he
already had his own suspect, a man who ran a
car dealership in San Francisco. If you're well acquainted with
(16:01):
luxury cars, you may be familiar with this next suspect.
He's responsible for introducing brands like Jaguar and Rolls Royce
to the United States. Although his name now circulates across
zodiac forms, when the book The Hunt for Zodiac was released,
he was simply referred to as Mr. X. More than
(16:22):
twenty years ago, a theorist named Microdelli came up with
the idea that the Zodiac may have written letters to
the editor at several local newspapers using his real name
or an assumed name, so, Mike Rodelli and others began
checking on the files of the local newspapers in the
Bay area and they came across one letter from a
(16:44):
man named Shell Caballi. This letter apparently referred to children
lying in the streets and was written sometime before the
first Zodiac murders on Lake Herman Road. Prodeli thought this
sounded compelling and he decided to check into this individual.
Very quickly, he discovered that this man lived approximately one
block north of the scene of the Zodiac's last murder
(17:07):
in San Francisco. For people who are familiar with the case,
they'll know that the killer walked away from the crime
scene and headed off in a direction and was seen
in the vicinity of this man's house. There was the
theory that this man was the killer and that he
had simply gone into his own residence after the murder.
Microdelli became convinced that this might be a serious lead
(17:30):
and began investigating this individual, and over the years he
came up with some points of interest which he believed
implicate this man in the Zodiac crimes. Now, Microdelli has
found some other people, including some investigators, who believed that
he may be onto something. He apparently resembled the composite
sketch of the Zodiac, but then again, there are thousands
(17:52):
of men who matched that description, especially in the nineteen sixties,
and Microdelli had some other interesting tidbits of what you
might called trivia. Cavali was a car dealer, and the
Zodiac crimes revolved around cars, Prodelli believed that there was
some sort of link there. Cavally also participated in a
(18:13):
race in Riverside, California, where there was a suspected Zodiac murder,
so there was some belief that this might be a
link as well. But at the end of the day,
when you look at the information that Rodelli has presented,
there's not a whole lot there. But let's go back
to the point about Cavalli having lived a block from
where Paul Stein was murdered, because that's the main link
(18:35):
Rodelli's theory hinges on. One of the things that has
been a major problem with this story over the years
is that Microdelli contacted Armand Pelissetti, the police officer who
was the first to arrive at the crime scene in
San Francisco, and he was telling Armand Pellistti about his suspect,
(18:57):
and apparently Pellisetti was not impressed, and he was looking
for a quick and easy way to make Microdelli go away.
He appears to have told Microdelli that he stopped Cavalli
near the crime scene on the night of the murder,
that he spoke to him and cleared him as a suspect,
and therefore he had nothing to do with it and
(19:18):
Microdelli could just move on now. Cavali himself has denied
being that individual. Cavalli said, I was not stopped that night.
I was not spoken to by the police. I had
nothing to do with that. And he wasn't even sure
that he was in San Francisco that night. He was
being asked about this some decades later, so it's possible
(19:40):
that he could have been mistaken. But when I interviewed
armand Pealisetti myself, I asked him point blank, how did
you know that this was the individual in question that
you talked to that night? He had no recollection of
that specific name, He had no records, and he said,
at best, I think I told the instigators about it
(20:01):
that night. So there's no credible evidence that Cavalli was
at the crime scene that night, or that he was
seen or spoken to by anyone near the crime scene.
And if he was, the timing doesn't seem to support
the version of events as him being the murderer. In
(20:22):
order for him to have been out on the sidewalk
and talking to armand Pealisetti shortly after the murder, he
would have to have run inside his home, changed his clothes,
wipe the blood off his hands and his clothes or
whatever else, and then dashed back outside to beyond the
street in time to meet armand Pealisetti. There's no evidence
to support that claim, and there are many reasons to
(20:42):
doubt it. I interviewed shell Cavali several years before he died,
and he was very friendly. He was very polite, and
he was very happy to talk to me about this.
He made it clear to me that he was not
the Zodiac, that he didn't even understand and why he
was suspected in the first place. And then he said,
(21:03):
you know, if I could talk to this person who's
accusing me, I have no doubt that I could disabuse
him of this idea if we could just sit down
and he could get to know me. Here's a clip
of Michael Butterfield's interview with Cavali. Hen he thinks is me?
He does. Unfortunately, it's so silly and so ridiculous. It's
(21:28):
if it wasn't so insulting, it would be laughable, you know.
Christ So my idea, what would you say to him
if you did have him on the off? I don't
know where you get touch goofy idea? Why don't you
come out here and spend a few days with me
and see what kind of a person I am. You know,
I've been in business here for fifty five years. I've
(21:49):
been busy as hell the whole time. I haven't got time.
The only thing I've ever heard of a fly. I
contacted Mike Rohdelli and I said, Hey, your suspect wants
to talk to you, and they apparently arranged a meeting
and Microdelli went out to San Francisco to talk to Cavalli.
But that's when things went wrong. Cavally denied being the
(22:10):
man who was stopped on the street that night. According
to Microdelli, at least through his perception of things, that
was just proof that Cavali was lying there. So he
didn't listen to anything that Cavali said. Really after that,
the evidence indicates that Cavally was probably telling the truth
that he wasn't there that night, but through the eyes
of his accuser, that was just another reason to cast
(22:32):
suspicion on him. In two thousand two, Cavally voluntarily gave
a sample of his DNA to be compared to suspected
Zodiac data, and that DNA did not match. I just
did the DNA test and the police, my guy, who
was a friend of mine, a retired guy, said it's negative.
(22:53):
Forget it, and that's the end of it. That's all
I ever heard. The whole thing. Negative. You can forget it,
and a ship police forgot about me, and and that's it.
Now there are people who claim that that is not
really Zodiac DNA, and therefore the fact that it didn't
match a suspect doesn't mean much. But on the other hand,
(23:15):
you have to look at the fact that this was
the nineteen sixties. People didn't even know about DNA, and
they certainly didn't know the extent to which they might
have possibly left some evidence behind. There is a thing
called touch DNA where they can find DNA and something
just because you've touched it. So the fact that cavally
offered up a sample of his DNA for comparison. Can
(23:37):
be viewed as exculpatory and if you believe that, you know,
an innocent person would just say here's my d n A,
but a guilty person might have more reservations about handing
over that DNA if he knew that he was guilty.
In the end, Rudeli couldn't present any significant evidence to
implicate Cavalli. This is what Butterfield has to say about him. Well,
(23:59):
he isn't an incredibly interesting person if you look at
his background. He had an amazing life. He sent me
a copy of his memoir and I read it. It
was an incredible story. But he was also very happy
to talk to people about this and say, hey, I'm
not the zodiac. After this one all over the internet
(24:19):
for several years, I think he was maybe a little
more reluctant to talk about it because he didn't want
to add Field of the fire. But when he talked
to me, he was very open and he was very
surprised that someone could think he was a murderer. I
couldn't be any more innotentive. Newborn baby died, but speculation
(24:41):
about him continues. However, just a year before his death,
another theorist published a book that contained a different, unnamed suspect.
This time, the cover up in scandal was focused on
the Valleo Police Department. The next suspect comes from Lyndon Lafferty,
(25:15):
a longtime Valleo resident who took interest in the case.
His story, unlike many others, implicated the police. His suspect
was never named. Still, Lafferty wrote a book about his findings.
Butterfield explains the main reasons that Lyndon Lafferty thought this
individual could be the Zodiac was number one, of course,
(25:36):
that he looked like the infamous composite sketch of the Zodiac.
He apparently had some military background and some training in codes,
and there was the theory that he had known one
of the Zodiac victims, Darlene Barren. Darlene Barren had been
stalked by a mysterious stranger in the weeks and months
before she was killed, and some of Darlene's sisters identified
(25:58):
Grant as that individual. Darlene's sisters also have a long
and documented history of telling some pretty tall tales about this,
and they have identified at least five or six different
individuals as being the same individual stalker. There's not a
lot of reason to believe that this man did know
Darling Baron, but that was one of the reasons that
(26:20):
was presented to the police in the nineteen seventies when
they were examining this suspect, and there were some other
things like Lyndon Lafferty believed that some of the Zodiac
letters contained clues to Grant's identity. There was a Zodiac
letter in which he mentioned something about a basement and
being swamped out. Grant had a basement which was apparently flooded.
(26:43):
This individual owned a nineteen one white Chevrolet, which was
said to be similar to the car used by the
Zodiac at the Valeo attack, and this individual apparently hung
around a rest stop in the Valo area. At one
time he had some to face off with a highway
patrol officer and this was one of the reasons that
(27:04):
he came to the attention of Lyndon Lafferty. The Valeo
Police Department investigated this suspect in the late nineteen seventies
and did not find any evidence to implicate him in
the Zodiac crimes. Lyndon Lafferty and others who believed that
Grant was the Zodiac were not satisfied. They claimed that
(27:24):
there was some sort of cover up or interference from
a local judge, and that's why the title of Lyndon
Lafferty's book is The Silenced Badge, the notion that they
had identified the Zodiac but were somehow silenced by this
cover up in conspiracy. So it doesn't appear to be
any evidence to support that claim. It's understandable why people
(27:52):
become captivated with the Zodiac case. After fifty years, it
still hasn't been solved and continues to puzzle the police
and public alike. But what exactly separates police investigations and theories.
It's important to note that many Zodiac theorists who are
confronted with the fact that they really don't have any
(28:14):
credible evidence to implicate their suspects, are often asked, well,
if you're right, how come the police haven't arrested this person.
The familiar refrain seems to be, well, there was a
cover up. You see this with Gary Stewart and so
many other people who have accused their fathers. At the
end of the day, there's really no evidence there, but
(28:36):
they can't explain that away without having some sort of
conspiracy from the police department. Essentially, what they're saying is,
I'm right, my suspect was the Zodiac, but the police
refused to investigate. That becomes a handy excuse when you're
being criticized for the lack of evidence. Monster the Zodiac
(29:04):
Killer is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Matt Frederick
and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick
and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I
Heart Radio alongside producers Miranda Hawkins, Josh Thane, ben Kybrick,
and Trevor Young. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive
producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Steadman
(29:27):
and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Make sure to catch the new season Monster DC Sniper.
New episodes are available every Thursday. Search for and subscribed
Monster DC Sniper on the i Heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Monster is back with a brand new series, Monster d
C Sniper. Here's a teaser for the show. While you're listening,
search for Monster DC Sniper and subscribe. New episodes are
available every Thursday. I don't think America has ever gone
back to the way that it was before nine eleven
(00:22):
and the anthrax attacks. The fear was really that there
would be a second wave of attacks, and then along
comes the DC Sniper and all of the country's worst
fears are realized. I think it's fair to say all
help broke this. I don't know. The gunman, most likely
(00:46):
a skilled marksman, fired six times in the courts of
sixteen hours. They killed the five people on one day
and then went on the rampage for the next month.
The police say they have never had a crime quite
like this. It is quite a mystery. It was scary
to go to the grocery store or fill up your
car with gas, and as the DC Sniper case unfolded,
(01:07):
that terror only group from My Heart Radio and tender
Foot TV. This is Monster DC Sniper. The views and
opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the
podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
(01:30):
not necessarily represent those of I Heeart Media Stuff Media
for its employees. In the spring of the Valeo Police
Department announced it had submitted two pieces of evidence for
DNA testing, two envelopes that once contained letters sent from
the Zodiac Killer to local newspapers. Although similar DNA tests
(01:51):
had been performed in this case with no results, this
attempt was different. The testing method was more advanced, and
if a via DNA sample was produced this time, it
would be used to create a genetic profile for forensic genealogy.
In its simplest form, forensic genealogy maps and individual's DNA
(02:12):
profile and then compares it to other previously existing profiles.
It's a way to build family trees, and it's what
companies like twenty three and me, Ancestry and jed match do.
Forensic genealogy is the method that caught the Golden State Killer,
the man who murdered at least thirteen people and committed
more than fifty rapes. After more than forty years, Joseph
(02:35):
James de'angelo was charged and convicted of his crimes. While
DNA and forensic genealogy was able to close the Golden
State Killer case, it's so far has not been able
to identify the Zodiac Killer, and unfortunately, there hasn't been
an official update from the Valeo Police Department since that
spring of While we hope forensic genealogy will eventually unmask
(02:59):
the Zodiac, for now the trail seems cold. The best
evidence were left with remains circumstantial. Throughout the season, we
examined the people we considered the most likely suspects. Since then,
we've had many listeners calling in with questions about other
individuals that we haven't fully investigated. Today, we're going to
(03:21):
take a closer look at some of those people. A
man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them, leaving
them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report a murder,
no a double murder. I did it. A man who
(03:42):
wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried a knife and
gun and intended to use them. They have an arrestipe
because they can't cove a m I'm not damn Zodiac.
Who is the Zodiac and where is he? From my
Heart radio and under Foot TV, this is Monster, the
(04:03):
Zodiac Killer. According to an estimate by the Los Angeles Times,
more than twelve hundred people have claimed to know the
Zodiac's identity, but only a few of those claims seem viable.
In two thousand nine, Deborah Perez held a sidewalk conference
claiming that her father, guy Ward Hendrickson, was the Zodiac.
(04:23):
Perez claimed she helped write some of the letters the
Zodiac sent to the media. She also claimed to possess
the glasses of Paul Stein, the Zodiac's last confirmed victim. However,
after inspection, police determined that the glasses were not Paul
Stein's and that guy Ward Hendrickson was not the Zodiac.
(04:45):
Another accusation came from Jack Kaufman, a man who believed
his stepfather, Jack Torrence, was the Zodiac. Kaufman gave police
a black hood similar to the one the Zodiac war
when he attacked the couple at Lake Berryessa. Kaufman also
gave police a bloody knife resembling the weapon from the
same attack. He claimed that both of these items were
(05:06):
his stepfather's. Additionally, Kaufman provided stamps his stepfather had licked
for DNA testing in hopes the police could finally prove
his suspicions. While both of these accusations caught the attention
of the police and the media, there is one claim
that overshadows the rest, the claim of Gary Stewart. In
(05:27):
May of fourteen, Gary Stewart's book debuted across the United States.
It was called the Most Dangerous Animal of All Searching
for My Father and Finding the Zodiac Killer. The book
was a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller.
It follows Stuart's decade long journey to find his biological father.
It began when Stewart's biological mother reached out to him
(05:50):
when he was thirty nine years old. Their reunion was successful,
and Stewart decided he also wanted to meet his father,
Earl Van Best Jr. But he would soon learned that
Earl had a police record for some very serious crimes.
In fact, according to Stewart, the San Francisco Police Department
told him to stop looking for his dad. It wasn't
(06:11):
long after this that Stewart would turn over the first stone,
leading him to believe that Earl Van Best Jr. His father,
was the Zodiac Killer. The clips you're about to hear
are from an interview with Gary Stewart on the I
Heart radio show Rover's Morning Glory, in talking about his
story and his book. One day, I'm watching an Ante
(06:33):
Coal case file special on the Zodiac Killer. The wanted
poster from San Francisco nineteen sixty nine of the Zodiac
Killer pops up on the screen and I can't breathe.
My son, here's whatever noise I make. And he runs
into the room and he looks at the television. He says, Dad,
it's you. I went in my office and got this
(06:55):
old d m V photo that I've been given by
the FFPD, which turns out it was his actual mug shot.
And I said, no, Zach's not me, it's my father.
The likeness between Van Best and the police sketch of
the Zodiac suspect was only what started Stuart's theory. Gary
also believes that his father's name appears in the cipher's
(07:15):
the Killer sent to Bay Area newspapers. My father signed
his name E. V. Best Jr. In particular, in the
four oh eight cipher that was mailed to the San
Francisco Examiner. I just looked at it one day to
see if I could see anything, and out off the
page popped E. V. Best Junior altogether in a row backward,
(07:40):
forward and up. After the police did not pick that up.
He later came back and sent the infamous three forty cipher,
which the amateur sleuths in the Zodiac community around the
world say is still unsolved. He insisted that his identity
was in that cipher and my father's name complete name
(08:03):
is in that ciphering. Michael Butterfield, the creator of the
website Zodiac Killer Facts, doesn't agree. These ciphers were constructed
in blocks of seventeen symbols. Gary Stewart found each letter
in his father's name in one of the lines. Now,
(08:24):
normally a cipher is a series of symbols which are
deciphered into other texts, but Gary believed that the actual
text of the cipher was the message that it didn't
need to be deciphered, that you could just read his
father's name by finding the letters in his father's name
in each one of these lines. Now, of course some
people might find that compelling, but as David ran Shacking,
(08:47):
Zodiac cipher expert, pointed out, you can use the same
method to find many other names, which means that that
cannot be the only solution. Gary also claimed that handwriting
from the zodiac matched his father's handwriting, and this was
based on the notion that several marriage certificates and documents
from a certain church bore the handwriting of Earl vand Best,
(09:11):
And Gary Stewart hired an expert who came in and
he even wrote a book about how this was the
end of the Zodiac mystery because he had matched the
handwriting to Gary Stewart's father. Now, after that happened, a
Zodiac theorist named micro Delli contacted that church and found
out that the handwriting on those documents does not belong
to Earl band Best. The handwriting was apparently that of
(09:34):
the reverend at this church, So that cast doubt not
only on Gary Stuart's claims, but on the credibility of
his handwriting expert, who had apparently concluded that the handwriting
of three different individuals was all earlband Best. And then,
of course there's the fingerprint pulled from the crime scene
of the Zodiac's last confirmed kill, the murder of Paul Stein.
(09:58):
He basically claims that there's a fingerprint from one of
the Zodiac crime scenes which he claims looks like his
father's fingerprint when it's reversed, Apparently his father had a
scar out of finger and there's some sort of line
on the fingerprint which he believes go insides to the scar,
but of course the police don't think this is a
valid theory. The likeness, the fingerprint, the ciphers, all of
(10:23):
these are common threads throughout many zodiac theories. But there
is one detail that sets Gary Stewart's claims apart. His
biological parents had several connections to the case. The first
connection is to journalist Paul Avery, through a series of
articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle called The ice
(10:43):
Cream Romance. These articles detailed how his parents met and
focused on their significant age difference. In nineteen sixty one
nineteen sixty two, When you're twenty seven and you're running
off with a fourteen year old and the cops catch
you and you just happened in eating in an ice
cream parlor, good journalists are gonna say something like he
(11:04):
found love in an ice cream parlor. Ice cream romances
bitter in. The problem was he was twenty seven and
his young bride was only fourteen. I found out through
contacting the Chronicle and the archivist at the San Francisco
Library that Paul Avery was the author of the ice
Cream romance, the Zodiac Killer came back and targeted Paul
(11:29):
Avery as part of his taunting the media Paul Avery specifically. Basically,
Stewart is claiming that his father, Earl Van Bess Jr.
Wrote the Zodiac letters to Paul Avery because he was
angry with him for writing the ice cream romance articles.
There is currently no evidence that's been made public that
(11:51):
directly links Earl Van Best Jr. To those Zodiac letters.
The second connection to the case is through his mother's
second sent After her marriage with Earl Van Best Jr.
Was annulled, Gary Stewart's mother, Judy Chandler, remarried a man
named Rotea Guildford. He was an inspector with the San
Francisco Police Department and worked on the Zodiac case. Gary
(12:15):
Stewart wanted law enforcement to take his DNA for comparison
against a Zodiac sample. He hoped a partial match would
confirm his theory about his father. However, the San Francisco
Police Department declined to run this test. Stewart believes this
is because of a conflict of interest. My mother believes
(12:36):
that it's because of her late husband's involvement in the
Zodiac case. You know, they're allegedly suspects in the Zodiac case.
If my father happened to be interviewed and cleared because
he was a very intelligent, smooth talking salesman, maybe even
(12:57):
by Rotea Guildford, how would that look. I don't know.
I'm just speculating. Stewart believes that the police refused to
test his DNA because if there was a match, it
would mean the police had made a mistake if they
had previously cleared Earl Van Best Jr. If true, that
(13:18):
scenario would certainly be embarrassing to the whole department. But
we have to ask ourselves would embarrassment be enough to
stop law enforcement from running those tests and possibly confirming
the Zodiac's identity. It's also important to note that, according
to Butterfield, Judy did not believe her ex husband was
the Zodiac. According to the Zodiac Killer Facts website, Judy
(13:42):
reportedly referred to Stuart's Zodiac claims as fiction. Again, this
is all speculation, but if the evidence didn't match up,
then how did this book gain so much traction. Normally
a book is presented up for review, but this book
was withheld until the day was released, so it came
out to a lot of fanfare, and of course most
(14:04):
media outlets simply pick up the publicity information put out
by the publishers, so they will just repeat what the
book jacket says the most compelling evidence, you know, that
kind of thing. He went on a media tour, I
believe he was on Fox News and ABC This Morning
and things like that. He was asked a lot of questions,
(14:24):
but of course no one asked the pertinent questions about
the handwriting, about the fingerprint and other things. But if
you look at the way the book was released, in
the way it was received, it's kind of a harbon
copy of what's happened with other books in the past.
People see the book, they assume it's nonfiction. Then they
repeat what's in the book as if it's fact. And
if you only go by that, Gary Stuart's theory seems
(14:47):
very compelling. It's not until you start to ask some
serious questions and get into the nitty gritty details that
you'll find that there is some serious problems. I think
that one of the reasons people accepted it so quickly
and why it became so popular, it's because it's a
story that a lot of people like to hear. A
man in search of truth about his own life finds
(15:09):
his father, and then he finds out horrible secrets about
his father. It's very compelling family drama, but it doesn't
necessarily translate into an actual true crime story. Days after
this book was released, the theory was already being unraveled
by another theorist, Mike Rodelli. He was the guy who
(15:33):
contacted the church about Van Best's handwriting. He didn't believe
Gary Stewart's claim about Earl van Best, Jr. Because he
already had his own suspect, a man who ran a
car dealership in San Francisco. If you're well acquainted with
(16:01):
luxury cars, you may be familiar with this next suspect.
He's responsible for introducing brands like Jaguar and Rolls Royce
to the United States. Although his name now circulates across
zodiac forms, when the book The Hunt for Zodiac was released,
he was simply referred to as Mr. X. More than
(16:22):
twenty years ago, a theorist named Microdelli came up with
the idea that the Zodiac may have written letters to
the editor at several local newspapers using his real name
or an assumed name, so, Mike Rodelli and others began
checking on the files of the local newspapers in the
Bay area and they came across one letter from a
(16:44):
man named Shell Caballi. This letter apparently referred to children
lying in the streets and was written sometime before the
first Zodiac murders on Lake Herman Road. Prodeli thought this
sounded compelling and he decided to check into this individual.
Very quickly, he discovered that this man lived approximately one
block north of the scene of the Zodiac's last murder
(17:07):
in San Francisco. For people who are familiar with the case,
they'll know that the killer walked away from the crime
scene and headed off in a direction and was seen
in the vicinity of this man's house. There was the
theory that this man was the killer and that he
had simply gone into his own residence after the murder.
Microdelli became convinced that this might be a serious lead
(17:30):
and began investigating this individual, and over the years he
came up with some points of interest which he believed
implicate this man in the Zodiac crimes. Now, Microdelli has
found some other people, including some investigators, who believed that
he may be onto something. He apparently resembled the composite
sketch of the Zodiac, but then again, there are thousands
(17:52):
of men who matched that description, especially in the nineteen sixties,
and Microdelli had some other interesting tidbits of what you
might called trivia. Cavali was a car dealer, and the
Zodiac crimes revolved around cars, Prodelli believed that there was
some sort of link there. Cavally also participated in a
(18:13):
race in Riverside, California, where there was a suspected Zodiac murder,
so there was some belief that this might be a
link as well. But at the end of the day,
when you look at the information that Rodelli has presented,
there's not a whole lot there. But let's go back
to the point about Cavalli having lived a block from
where Paul Stein was murdered, because that's the main link
(18:35):
Rodelli's theory hinges on. One of the things that has
been a major problem with this story over the years
is that Microdelli contacted Armand Pelissetti, the police officer who
was the first to arrive at the crime scene in
San Francisco, and he was telling Armand Pellistti about his suspect,
(18:57):
and apparently Pellisetti was not impressed, and he was looking
for a quick and easy way to make Microdelli go away.
He appears to have told Microdelli that he stopped Cavalli
near the crime scene on the night of the murder,
that he spoke to him and cleared him as a suspect,
and therefore he had nothing to do with it and
(19:18):
Microdelli could just move on now. Cavali himself has denied
being that individual. Cavalli said, I was not stopped that night.
I was not spoken to by the police. I had
nothing to do with that. And he wasn't even sure
that he was in San Francisco that night. He was
being asked about this some decades later, so it's possible
(19:40):
that he could have been mistaken. But when I interviewed
armand Pealisetti myself, I asked him point blank, how did
you know that this was the individual in question that
you talked to that night? He had no recollection of
that specific name, He had no records, and he said,
at best, I think I told the instigators about it
(20:01):
that night. So there's no credible evidence that Cavalli was
at the crime scene that night, or that he was
seen or spoken to by anyone near the crime scene.
And if he was, the timing doesn't seem to support
the version of events as him being the murderer. In
(20:22):
order for him to have been out on the sidewalk
and talking to armand Pealisetti shortly after the murder, he
would have to have run inside his home, changed his clothes,
wipe the blood off his hands and his clothes or
whatever else, and then dashed back outside to beyond the
street in time to meet armand Pealisetti. There's no evidence
to support that claim, and there are many reasons to
(20:42):
doubt it. I interviewed shell Cavali several years before he died,
and he was very friendly. He was very polite, and
he was very happy to talk to me about this.
He made it clear to me that he was not
the Zodiac, that he didn't even understand and why he
was suspected in the first place. And then he said,
(21:03):
you know, if I could talk to this person who's
accusing me, I have no doubt that I could disabuse
him of this idea if we could just sit down
and he could get to know me. Here's a clip
of Michael Butterfield's interview with Cavali. Hen he thinks is me?
He does. Unfortunately, it's so silly and so ridiculous. It's
(21:28):
if it wasn't so insulting, it would be laughable, you know.
Christ So my idea, what would you say to him
if you did have him on the off? I don't
know where you get touch goofy idea? Why don't you
come out here and spend a few days with me
and see what kind of a person I am. You know,
I've been in business here for fifty five years. I've
(21:49):
been busy as hell the whole time. I haven't got time.
The only thing I've ever heard of a fly. I
contacted Mike Rohdelli and I said, Hey, your suspect wants
to talk to you, and they apparently arranged a meeting
and Microdelli went out to San Francisco to talk to Cavalli.
But that's when things went wrong. Cavally denied being the
(22:10):
man who was stopped on the street that night. According
to Microdelli, at least through his perception of things, that
was just proof that Cavali was lying there. So he
didn't listen to anything that Cavali said. Really after that,
the evidence indicates that Cavally was probably telling the truth
that he wasn't there that night, but through the eyes
of his accuser, that was just another reason to cast
(22:32):
suspicion on him. In two thousand two, Cavally voluntarily gave
a sample of his DNA to be compared to suspected
Zodiac data, and that DNA did not match. I just
did the DNA test and the police, my guy, who
was a friend of mine, a retired guy, said it's negative.
(22:53):
Forget it, and that's the end of it. That's all
I ever heard. The whole thing. Negative. You can forget it,
and a ship police forgot about me, and and that's it.
Now there are people who claim that that is not
really Zodiac DNA, and therefore the fact that it didn't
match a suspect doesn't mean much. But on the other hand,
(23:15):
you have to look at the fact that this was
the nineteen sixties. People didn't even know about DNA, and
they certainly didn't know the extent to which they might
have possibly left some evidence behind. There is a thing
called touch DNA where they can find DNA and something
just because you've touched it. So the fact that cavally
offered up a sample of his DNA for comparison. Can
(23:37):
be viewed as exculpatory and if you believe that, you know,
an innocent person would just say here's my d n A,
but a guilty person might have more reservations about handing
over that DNA if he knew that he was guilty.
In the end, Rudeli couldn't present any significant evidence to
implicate Cavalli. This is what Butterfield has to say about him. Well,
(23:59):
he isn't an incredibly interesting person if you look at
his background. He had an amazing life. He sent me
a copy of his memoir and I read it. It
was an incredible story. But he was also very happy
to talk to people about this and say, hey, I'm
not the zodiac. After this one all over the internet
(24:19):
for several years, I think he was maybe a little
more reluctant to talk about it because he didn't want
to add Field of the fire. But when he talked
to me, he was very open and he was very
surprised that someone could think he was a murderer. I
couldn't be any more innotentive. Newborn baby died, but speculation
(24:41):
about him continues. However, just a year before his death,
another theorist published a book that contained a different, unnamed suspect.
This time, the cover up in scandal was focused on
the Valleo Police Department. The next suspect comes from Lyndon Lafferty,
(25:15):
a longtime Valleo resident who took interest in the case.
His story, unlike many others, implicated the police. His suspect
was never named. Still, Lafferty wrote a book about his findings.
Butterfield explains the main reasons that Lyndon Lafferty thought this
individual could be the Zodiac was number one, of course,
(25:36):
that he looked like the infamous composite sketch of the Zodiac.
He apparently had some military background and some training in codes,
and there was the theory that he had known one
of the Zodiac victims, Darlene Barren. Darlene Barren had been
stalked by a mysterious stranger in the weeks and months
before she was killed, and some of Darlene's sisters identified
(25:58):
Grant as that individual. Darlene's sisters also have a long
and documented history of telling some pretty tall tales about this,
and they have identified at least five or six different
individuals as being the same individual stalker. There's not a
lot of reason to believe that this man did know
Darling Baron, but that was one of the reasons that
(26:20):
was presented to the police in the nineteen seventies when
they were examining this suspect, and there were some other
things like Lyndon Lafferty believed that some of the Zodiac
letters contained clues to Grant's identity. There was a Zodiac
letter in which he mentioned something about a basement and
being swamped out. Grant had a basement which was apparently flooded.
(26:43):
This individual owned a nineteen one white Chevrolet, which was
said to be similar to the car used by the
Zodiac at the Valeo attack, and this individual apparently hung
around a rest stop in the Valo area. At one
time he had some to face off with a highway
patrol officer and this was one of the reasons that
(27:04):
he came to the attention of Lyndon Lafferty. The Valeo
Police Department investigated this suspect in the late nineteen seventies
and did not find any evidence to implicate him in
the Zodiac crimes. Lyndon Lafferty and others who believed that
Grant was the Zodiac were not satisfied. They claimed that
(27:24):
there was some sort of cover up or interference from
a local judge, and that's why the title of Lyndon
Lafferty's book is The Silenced Badge, the notion that they
had identified the Zodiac but were somehow silenced by this
cover up in conspiracy. So it doesn't appear to be
any evidence to support that claim. It's understandable why people
(27:52):
become captivated with the Zodiac case. After fifty years, it
still hasn't been solved and continues to puzzle the police
and public alike. But what exactly separates police investigations and theories.
It's important to note that many Zodiac theorists who are
confronted with the fact that they really don't have any
(28:14):
credible evidence to implicate their suspects, are often asked, well,
if you're right, how come the police haven't arrested this person.
The familiar refrain seems to be, well, there was a
cover up. You see this with Gary Stewart and so
many other people who have accused their fathers. At the
end of the day, there's really no evidence there, but
(28:36):
they can't explain that away without having some sort of
conspiracy from the police department. Essentially, what they're saying is,
I'm right, my suspect was the Zodiac, but the police
refused to investigate. That becomes a handy excuse when you're
being criticized for the lack of evidence. Monster the Zodiac
(29:04):
Killer is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Matt Frederick
and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick
and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I
Heart Radio alongside producers Miranda Hawkins, Josh Thane, ben Kybrick,
and Trevor Young. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive
producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Steadman
(29:27):
and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Make sure to catch the new season Monster DC Sniper.
New episodes are available every Thursday. Search for and subscribed
Monster DC Sniper on the i Heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
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Monster: The Zodiac Killer News
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Payne Lindsey
Matt Frederick
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