438 - True Crime Sommelier

This week, Georgia and Karen cover the New York Zodiac Killer and the hijacking of Flight 855.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Last Hello, and welcome to my favorite murder.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
That's Georgia Hartstar, that's Karen Kilgariff. What a weekend.

Speaker 3 (00:24):
Oh oh the relief.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Oh go there, you're already there. It's Monday. We're recording
this on a Monday. I'm not at relief yet. Maybe
by the time this comes out on Thursday, I'll be there.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Yeah. I mean, look, it all takes. We have to
go at our own pace. Yeah. But the vibe, yes,
the vibe is. The vibe is great.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
The vibe is not an old white man anyway. Well,
what's going on with you personally?

Speaker 3 (00:47):
Personally? The thing I was upset that I couldn't remember
last year to bring up it was we lost Jannon Doherty,
who it's so sad, so sad, And that was really
surprising news to me too.

Speaker 2 (01:02):
It hit me harder than I thought it would. Yeah,
for sure, But I mean I grew up watching her
and being obsessed with her. We all were, yes, and
she's so young.

Speaker 3 (01:12):
Well that's just that was hard enough. And in the
same day Richard Simmons, I know, which then watching those
clips because Richard Simmons was like in the eighties, a
late night staple. Yeah, and yeah, so hilarious. He made
the week if he was on with Letterman, totally so funny.

(01:32):
Did I ever tell you my Richard Simmons's story. No,
I don't want to brag.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
I want you to brag about Richard Simmon.

Speaker 3 (01:37):
But this is the best brag of all time. So.
I used to work at a talk show, and so
you'd walk around backstage and try to do your job.
The guests would be there, in and out of their
dressing rooms, whatever, and the rules you had to act like, yes,
of course, hello, you're here, Can I get you anything?
And you don't linger, no.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Matter how famous they are, just like act normal.

Speaker 3 (01:57):
You just want to bug them. You don't want to
make it, yeah, even harder for them to do. It's
you know.

Speaker 2 (02:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
So I came around this corner and I knew he
was there, and I was excited he was there, but
I was pretty sure I wouldn't get to see him.
And I came around a corner and started walking down
the hall, and he came around the other corner on
the other end of the hall started walking toward me.
And this was at the height of my like, I
worked sixteen hour days, incredibly miserable. Sallow skin, you know,

(02:27):
by four o'clock, no more makeup on, just like eaten
Eminem's by the handful, trying to get through every day.
Come around, he comes on the corner and does his
thing where he goes up on his tiptoes and puts
his hands on his cheeks like this and goes it's
snow why.

Speaker 2 (02:42):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (02:44):
It was everything I could do not to break into
full sobs.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
What an angel? I want a thing to say to
someone who needs it so bad? And you do look
like snow white. You got the black hair and the
pale skin. Oh my god, that's like, who do.

Speaker 3 (02:59):
I thought of that?

Speaker 2 (02:59):
I mean, I'm knowing you wait and half years and
I've never thought of that. And he watch her in
the corner and fucking sees it.

Speaker 3 (03:03):
He sees it. Yes, it was very generous. Yeah, it
was very generous. But it was also like that's that
was the vibe. Yeah, he was going to tell you
exactly how great he thought you were. For I didn't.
I was background people. Yeah, there was no need for it.
Sure sad that two icons got lost in a day.

(03:24):
And then yeah, and then there was an assassination attempt
and it all got.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
Erased crazy, so crazy. Yeah, I have a book, have
a self help book. You get another, do you need
another one? It's called Atomic Habits by James Clear, and
it's just about how to create and stick to habits easily.
You're not lazy, just haven't formulated the right habit, the

(03:49):
thing you want to do that works for your brain.
And so here's how. And I've been falling asleep to it,
which is really I feel like that's helpful. My brain
absorbs it, Yeah, falling asleep, but yeah, true, and it's
really good.

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Yeah. That one's been out for a little while.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:03):
The doctor taught me to do it to get in there. Yeah,
sometimes you just need a little basic advice.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:10):
Oh, speaking of there's a TikTok a woman, a creator
named Jessica Craven, and she popped up talking about where
everybody's getting a lot of texts now of like are
you excited about Kamala donate here? Yeah, and like that's
very random and you definitely know where you're donating. And
then she goes on to she's an activist and an

(04:30):
organizer herself, goes on to give like ten recommendations for
some of the best strategic places to give donations. So
I think we'll figure it out a way too. We'll
definitely retweet it on the Exactly Right TikTok, but then
we'll try to put other places too, because it's just
a great long list of like how to approach.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
It, yeah, and how not to get scammed.

Speaker 3 (04:51):
All right, should we go into some highlights.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
We have a podcast network called Exactly Right Media. Here
are some highlights. Well.

Speaker 3 (04:57):
Top of the list is of course that Georgia and
we are doing this series Rewind with Karen and Georgia,
where we re listen to old episodes, we talk about
the things that have changed since twenty sixteen, and we
provide case updates for the murders that we had that
we went over. Then. Episode three originally aired on January
thirty first, twenty sixteen, and so the episode where we

(05:21):
cover episode three is now available wherever you get your podcasts.

Speaker 2 (05:24):
I think some people didn't know that we're talking in it.
It's not just we're not just reposting the episode.

Speaker 3 (05:30):
I don't know how much more specifically to explain to
people exactly what goes on in things you got to listen.
We've said it every single time.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
And on Wicked Words, Kate Winkler Dawson talks to journalists,
podcaster and friend of Exactly Right Mandy Mattney, who you
remember daringly reported on the Murdoch murders.

Speaker 3 (05:49):
Over at this podcast will kill You. They're back this
week with another important episode on seliac disease. So go
listen to Aaron and Aaron. They are science explainers who
do all of their research so you don't have to.

Speaker 2 (06:00):
And then Danielle and Millie, hosts of I Saw What
You Did, our hilarious film podcast, go deep this week
into maybe two of the greats ever Headwig in the
Angry Inch from two thousand and one and Beyond the
Valley of the Dolls from nineteen seventy. Plus.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
You asked for new merch, so we delivered just for you.
My favorite Murder of Crows T shirts are now available
in the MFM store, so go to Exactly Right store
dot com and get one. Now there's charcoal gray unisex
style available in an expanded size range. And then there's
a women's slouchy tea in white that you can get

(06:36):
Crow merch.

Speaker 2 (06:36):
We finally did it. Yeah, and some exciting news for
listeners who like to shop. The promo codes for all
of our advertisers, for all the ads that we do,
and we quickly say the promo when you're driving and
you can't write it down. They're now available on our websites.
You never miss them. The website is my favorite. Murder
dot com slash promos.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
Get your percentage off.

Speaker 2 (06:55):
You deserve it first, right, yeah, okay, So it's two
in the morning on Thursday, May thirty first, nineteen ninety.
We're in Queens, New York. In the early nineties. Okay,
look at it. This is the year in New York
City's homicide rate peaked with two thousand, six hundred and five.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Killings nineteen ninety.

Speaker 2 (07:19):
Uh huh. And for context, in twenty twenty three, New
York had three hundred and eighty six homicides compared to
twenty two twenty six hundred.

Speaker 3 (07:28):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (07:29):
And it hasn't had more than five hundred since twenty eleven.
So that is a big old number.

Speaker 3 (07:35):
That's important to know.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Right. The early seventies through the early nineties are what
people called the battle days. And while there's currently a
lot of fear mongering about crime in New York, going
back to those levels. It's nowhere close right now.

Speaker 3 (07:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:48):
So in the wee Hours of Queens in nineteen ninety,
when an elderly man is shot in the back, a
special police unit devoted to violent robberies against the elderly
is dispatched to the scene. The seventy nine year old
man name Joseph Procy is alive when the first responders
arrive and he's rushed to the hospital. Joe is a
World War Two veteran and a retired ice truck driver,

(08:09):
and the assumption is that this was an attempted mugging.
That is until Detective Michael Cirovolo from the Senior Citizen's
Robbery Unit they had to have a whole unit on
serenier shows and robbery, He examines the crime scene a
little more closely. There are no fingerprints, but police do
recover a lead bullet and the sides of the bullet
are smooth, without the grooves that a barrel of a

(08:30):
traditional gun would make, and this tells police that the
weapon was a homemade zip gun they're called, which is
something that wouldn't be particularly accurate and would have to
be fired at a very close range. A zip gun
can be made from materials as simple as a length
of pipe, a nail, and a rubber band. It's like
an elaborate sling shop. But you got to be close up.

Speaker 3 (08:49):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
Yeah. On Joe's front steps, there's a piece of paper
held down by three rocks, and at the top of
the paper. Of the first paper, there is a circle
with three wedges drawn in the lower left corner, almost
like a pie chart, with three little areas in each area.
In each little slice there's a symbol. They're crudely drawn

(09:11):
astrological signs. Scorpio, Gemini, and Taurus stand.

Speaker 3 (09:15):
For them, right, Gemini, that's me. That's me. Oh my god,
get ready.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
At the bottom of the piece of paper is a
familiar image, a circle with crosshairs drawn through it.

Speaker 3 (09:26):
Oh, I know what that's from.

Speaker 2 (09:28):
Yep. In between the two pictures the two drawings is
the sentence this is the zodiac. The twelfth sign will
die when the belts in the heaven are seen elt.
I don't know, it doesn't make any sense. This is
the story of the New York Zodiac. What.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
Yeah, I've never heard of this, I know. So.

Speaker 2 (09:47):
The main sources are an episode of the Netflix show
Catching Killers and reporting from the New York Times. The
rest of the sources can be found in the show notes,
So Detective Cravello sends a copy of the note to
California to be compared with the notes from the known
Zodiac killer. The Zodia Killer hadn't been active as far
as anyone knows, in about twenty years, so this is
a surprise to everyone. And from the hospital where he's

(10:09):
fighting for his life, Joe a Proachey tells the police
that the man who had shot him had asked for
a glass of water and possibly money. Joe had tried
to brush him off and walk into his apartment when
the man shot him from behind, but he can't tell
them anything about what the guy looked like. The police
basically move on, you know, it's the precinct is Queens
and Brooklyn Border. Obviously, it's overwhelmed with new homicide cases

(10:31):
that keep coming in, so they don't linger on this case. Then,
almost three weeks after this shooting, another note materializes. This
one had been sent to the New York Post and
a similar one is sent to sixty Minutes. The notes
are a lot like that first one and have the
same picture with the three Zodiac signs. And this letter
also includes a list of victims. Like the first one,

(10:53):
it contains some spelling and grammatical errors, and it kind
of just explains and gives dates and times of when
he when the New York Zodiac attacked other people. It
turns out that all three of the shootings in the
note correspond with real shootings. Oh yeah, he had already
done them. So there was two that happened in March.
They had not been on the police's radars being connected

(11:14):
at all, but in each shooting, the victim had actually survived,
and each shooting had taken place in pretty much the
same area of Brooklyn, in a neighborhood called East New York,
with Joe's shooting being just over the border in Queen's.
So all in the same area and now they're all connected.
Every time the men who were shot had been vulnerable
in some way. The first shooting victim on March eighth

(11:35):
was a fifty year old man who used a cane
named Mario o'rosco. Mario had been walking at night and
was shot in the back as well. He had told
police that the shooter had worn a mask, and the
shooter then held a gun to his head after he fell,
but he didn't pull the trigger. The second victim, on
March twenty ninth, had been a thirty four year old
man named Jermaine Montenestro. Jermaine had been out with friends

(11:59):
that night, he had been drinking. He was walking back
to his father's house in the same area of Brooklyn,
and couldn't really give a description of the shooter. So
it just seems like the shooter had been prowling around
for people who seem vulnerable until the police make one
additional discovery. Each victim's birthday coincides with the astrological signs

(12:19):
that were drawn on the note. Oh whoa so yeah
what Yeah, isn't that creepy?

Speaker 3 (12:27):
That is so it's not random and it's not like
just somebody wandering around.

Speaker 2 (12:33):
In case unless it's a huge coincidence. But he's saying, it's,
you know, not okay. Mario's a Scorpio, Jermaine is a Gemini,
and Joe is a Taurus. And it seems to police
that this shooter's plan is to try and kill one
person from each of the twelve signs of the zodiac,
but they have no idea how the shooter would have
known his victims, none of them we call a stranger

(12:54):
ever asking for their birthday, and all of them were
conscious when the shooter fled, so they wouldn't he didn't
take how they're will and look at their birthday, I mean,
which would have been a crazy coincidence. Still, right after
the police make these realizations, authorities from San Francisco get
in contact and they analyze the letters and they are
not from the original zodiot killer obviously, ear I mean,
that would have been huge.

Speaker 3 (13:14):
Yeah, we would have known about that for sure.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
Exactly each of the three shootings is twenty one days apart.
The New York PD brings in an astronomer and an
astrologer to analyze the patterns between the shootings.

Speaker 3 (13:28):
They did, huh.

Speaker 2 (13:29):
The astronomer notes that each of the three shootings took
place on days and times when three specific constellations were
visible in the night sky Oriyan seven Sisters, and Taurus
your favorites. The astronomer says that the next time the
stars will all be visible will be the very early
hours of June twenty first, which is only a few
days away from that point. So there's a fucking pattern

(13:52):
with astrology.

Speaker 3 (13:53):
That can basically anticipate what's going to happen next. That's
like straight out of a nineties movie.

Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah, it's very what was the movie What's Someone With?
What's in the Box? That is seven seven? Yeah, got
those vibes. The police have been begging the press, particularly
the New York Post, not to run any big stories
on the case and the theory of the Zodiac links
between the shootings. They don't care. They run a huge
story and publish all the notes and all the details.

(14:20):
So people start to freak out. Obviously. The police chief
gets on TV and tells New Yorkers to just be
cautious if anyone approaches them and ask them for their birthday,
and then also on that specific night when it's predicted
he'll strike again. Yeah, So on that evening on June
twentieth into the morning of June twenty first, police flood
into East New York hoping to catch the shooter. And

(14:43):
the story here, it could be its own story. It's
a lot about the discriminatory stop in frisk policing that
becomes a huge part of New York City for the
next thirty years or so. That happens a lot that night,
and they kind of just stop anyone who looks suspicious,
you know, which, of course ends up being a lot
of people of color. Yeah, you know, right, So the

(15:04):
sun rises on East New York and a lot of
men have been stopped and frisked, but the shooter hasn't
been found, and no one has been shot in a
way that matches the New York Zodiac's m O. It's
like people have been shot, that's for sure. Absolutely. That
is until later that morning, when Detective c Rabello gets
a call from a detective in Manhattan who tells him

(15:25):
that somebody in Central Park had been shot. The most
recent victim is an unhoused man who had been sleeping
on a bench in Central Park named Larry param He
had been shot in the torso. And there is another
note at the crime scene, much like the others, but
this one has extra lines insisting that he is in
fact the San Francisco Zodiac. He's like no, no, no,
I swear I am oh.

Speaker 3 (15:46):
He's communicating now directly with like the media, yeah, and
the cops going like you're wrong, yeah, you have the
theory wrong.

Speaker 2 (15:54):
Right. So then there's another slice of that you know,
pie chart, and in it is a cancer symbol And
it turns out Larry the unhouse man who had been
shot on the twenty first, just like they predicted, just
in a different area because he probably knew they were
going to be there was a cancer how I don't
know he survives the shooting. I can't tell the police anything.

(16:15):
He had been asleep. He does, however, remember a stranger
asking him his birthday in the days or weeks leading
up to being shot. Oh yeah, which, like I don't know,
would you notice that? Yeah, if someone asked you your birthday,
for sure, Hey wind your birthday, like a random person
on the street.

Speaker 3 (16:31):
Because truly, if you moved to a city, yeah, this
is the thing of just being from a farm down
just anyone says anything to you, who needs to know?
It's the first thing back, what do you need my
birthday for?

Speaker 2 (16:44):
Absolutely? But there also the thing of like you're in
a big city, there's all kinds of you know, personalities
going on, and you're interacting with the city and some
guy on the streets like, hey, wind your birthday. I
can tell you like about you know what I mean.
But then you remember like it though.

Speaker 3 (16:59):
Yes, almost like they've gotten smart enough so that they're
doing it in a way that's hidden in something that's normalized.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Yes, but what would be normal?

Speaker 3 (17:07):
Does it? People guessing your birthday or asking your birthday
besides like a nurse or something like.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
Pick a card, any card? Okay, what's your birthday? Okay?
Put it back in the deck and then they run away.
But you'd remember that, you would. I don't know.

Speaker 3 (17:21):
Well this guy did, yeah, but.

Speaker 2 (17:23):
It's still not a lot to go on. Even though
he does remember this person, he doesn't remember any details
about him. Right after Larry's shot, Joe Procy, the elderly
man who had been shot in the back and the
beginning of our story, dies in the hospital, succumbing to
his internal injuries. So in one of the recent shootings,
the letter that appeared has some additional drawings in it,
occult stuff, some sketches, six six six is written on them.

(17:46):
It's kind of hard to see what the shooter is
getting out with all these additional occult references. But one
of the letters does bring a break a partial fingerprint,
and there had been no prints on any of the
previous letters or scenes. So New Yorkers obviously are freaked out.
It's only thirteen years after David Berkowitz was arrested for
the Sun of Sam murders, so it kind of has

(18:07):
that mo as well, which freaks everyone out.

Speaker 3 (18:09):
Yeah, just the wandering shooter, the night wandering night.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
Shooter with maybe like who's maybe got some premonition about
birthdays too, Yeah, which makes it seem supernatural and even
more scary.

Speaker 3 (18:22):
Right that there's some kind of theory behind it that
we couldn't understand. But you know, yeah, a smart criminal,
you know that's scary. An astrological criminal, yeah, such a virgo.

Speaker 2 (18:36):
So at the end of the next twenty one day
cycle in July, people hold their breath. Police again ramp
up their presence across the city and because now they
know this that they could strike anywhere, but no shooting comes.
It doesn't come the next month either, and the shooter
just disappears. Police officers know he hasn't been arrested for
another crime because they have a print on file now

(18:57):
they would have found him. So both of the main
detectives on the case, Mike Ciravallo and Larry Milanesy, retire
feeling like they let the shooter get away. They wonder,
you know, did he die, where did he go? And
then in August of nineteen ninety four, so we're being
fast forwarded like four years or so. The New York
Post gets another letter and sends it to the police,

(19:20):
so the detectives originally on the case have retired. The
new lead detective in the East New York precinct is
named Joe Herbert. The new letter takes credit for five
additional attacks that had already happened, starting in August of
nineteen ninety two, so two years after their original spree.
None of the people in the letter I'm mentioned by name,

(19:41):
but just by physical details and time and place they
were killed, and a brief description of the crime. So
the detection have to go back and identify those exact
crimes and do they match them. The attacks don't follow
the twenty one day schedule the previous ones had. They're
kind of random.

Speaker 3 (19:58):
Now.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
The letter does not include any mentioned of the victims signs,
although among them there will only be one repeat sign
uh huh oh, a second taurus in addition to Joe
pro sheet Karen is pumped because she's stories it is.

Speaker 3 (20:15):
A silent pump for some reason. That's uh yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:19):
So the first attack on the list is from August
of nineteen ninety two. It's the most brutal one, and
it's immediately recognizable to police as one of their unsolved murders.
A thirty nine year old woman named Patricia Fonte had
been killed while walking late at night in Highland Park,
which is near that same part of the Brooklyn Queen's
Border where the first shootings happened. Patricia had been stabbed

(20:39):
more than a hundred times.

Speaker 3 (20:41):
Oh my god, I know.

Speaker 2 (20:42):
And at the time her murder was investigated, no one
found a gunshot wound, and no one found a bullet.
But in this letter they're saying I shot and stabbed
this woman.

Speaker 3 (20:51):
I mean a hundred times. Oh I know.

Speaker 2 (20:55):
And Patricia had been a leo. Her neighbors remember her
as a lovely person. And at this point the MIPD
is overwhelmed with somewher around five homicides every day, so
Patricia's murder had tragically just been added to a growing
pile of open investigations. In addition to Patricia's murderer, the
letter takes credit for four other shootings, all a year
later in nineteen ninety three, an all in or near

(21:17):
the same area Highland Park. In June of ninety three,
a forty year old man named Jim Weber, a Libra,
was shot in the leg while he was walking. He survived.
In July of that year, a forty seven year old
man named Joseph dia Cone was shot in the neck
at point blank range on a pedestrian walkway, and he died.
He was a Virgo. So they're all different except for

(21:39):
the it's just like then. In October of ninety three,
a forty year old woman named Diane Ballard was shot
in the neck. She survived but was paralyzed, and Diane
is the only repeat that she was a Taurus as well,
So the letter reference is a fifth victim also shot
in Highland Park in June of ninety four. All the
other victims had been easily matched to the police reports,

(21:59):
but this this one doesn't match anything the police have
on file. They search Highland Park extensively with like dogs
and helicopters, and they never find any trace of this
last unknown victim, which is so eerie. So at the time,
there's no computer database to match fingerprints, so investigators go
through manually comparing prints to the print from the letter,

(22:20):
recovering Central Park. Can you imagine it's.

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Just it's just wild to think about that that anyone
got anything done at all.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
Totally horrifying, totally, they don't find anything. The case is
tabled yet again, and Detective Joe Herbert, who was the
now the lead on the case, he moves on in
his career and he becomes a hostage negotiator. Oh wow,
and because of this one decision, this isn't a cold case.

Speaker 3 (22:45):
Wow, it's wild.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
So a year later after that letter, in the summer
of ninety five, it's time for Joe Herbert to do
his very first hostage negotiation. He had been trained, this
was his first on the job. Actual thing. What a day.

Speaker 3 (23:00):
I know.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
He's Carrie Right's big yeah. Yeah. And it's the summer
and like in New York and everyone's you.

Speaker 3 (23:06):
Know, everyone's in a bad man it's humid.

Speaker 2 (23:08):
Yeah. A twenty eight year old man named Edriberto Sda
has shot his seventeen year old's sister, Gladys and is
holding her boyfriend hostage in an apartment in East New York.
Hundreds of police officers swarm the area, and after basically
several hours of back and forth exchanging some gunfire, Joe
urging Seeda to come out of the apartment and let

(23:29):
his sister get medical attention. Aroberto finally surrenders and comes out,
so Joe, of course, is thrilled his first hostage negotiation
was a success. No one has gotten additionally hurt. The
sister's taken to the hospital for surgery. She's expected to survive.
The bomb squad goes into the apartment, removes two pipe bombs,
and Sda writes out a confession saying he shot his

(23:52):
sister and held her boyfriend hostage. End of story, right,
except when Joe takes a look at the confession, his
blood pressure drops. At the bottom, there's a little cross.
There's no circle around it, but it does look like crosshairs.
Then he reads the confession again and it's written in
handwriting that he's looked at a thousand times before.

Speaker 3 (24:13):
No way.

Speaker 2 (24:14):
Yeah. He shows it to one of his colleagues who
had also worked on the New York Zodiac shootings since
the beginning, and that colleague says, quote, it looked like
my wife's shopping list. That's how familiar that lettering was.
End quote. Wow, they just looked at the paper and
knew it was his handwriting. Yeah, that's good detective work.

Speaker 3 (24:31):
Well, also, it's a predator who is trying to like
brand himself with that writing. So why would you ever like,
why wouldn't you as that then uncaught serial killer just
use some cursive Well, because.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
He wouldn't think that this random people would connect him.
Why would they? It's such a different I mean, yeah,
it's a shooting, but it's like a different crime altogether.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Why not type I'm just curious, like he could have
made an effort. He deserves everything he's getting. Yes, maybe
he wanted to get caught. Who knows, Maybe he didn't,
you know.

Speaker 2 (25:05):
Sata's fingerprint is quickly determined to be a match to
the fingerprint from the Central Park letter, but under questioning,
he denies being the Zodiac killer. And it's only when
detectives show him pictures from Patricia Fonte's murder, the woman
who had been stabbed, that he finally confesses to her murder,
and then he confesses to all the other shootings in order,
and authorities find at least thirteen homemade guns in his apartment.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Oh my god, also the two pipe bombs that were
just thrown in there, Like, did they know that was
in there? I wonder if he'd like threatened people about it, right,
but good god.

Speaker 2 (25:37):
Yeah. Over the course of the investigation, several other frustrating
details emerged. For one thing, Sata had sent his very
first haunting letter to the police in way back in
nineteen eighty nine before he had shot anybody, and the
police had dismissed it as a hoax, which I mean,
being so bogged down, I bet they get you like
that all the time. You got to look into it.
But what would they have found? Nothing?

Speaker 3 (25:58):
I mean, there's a lot of that kind of where
it's just like and then they threw it into the
pile and it's just like, I wish they had him, Yeah,
I wish it mattered. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (26:06):
Secondly, he was known to police officers in his neighborhood
not as a criminal, but as a sort of vigilante.
He tipped them off about local drug dealers, and he
was known to recite Bible verses to them sometimes. But
that's the thing where these killers sometimes want to involve
themselves in the police department's actions or you know, want
to be part of it. He had been expelled from

(26:26):
school and had tried to join the Green Berets but failed.
The entrance exam and moved back home with his mom
in New York as an angry loaner. He says he
saw a documentary on PBS about the Zodiac Killer, and
he said, quote, holy smokes, this guy terrorized a whole
city and never got caught. I got nothing to live for.
I don't got no job. I already got those skills.

(26:47):
I could be famous. I could do that. End quote.
Oh and the weird thing about him asking for people's
birthdays that I didn't want to say is that he's
conventionally attractive. He's a young man, he looks clean cut.
If he had come up to someone on the street,
I don't they wouldn't have equated him with a murderer, you.

Speaker 3 (27:05):
Know, Yeah, especially if he was being charming.

Speaker 2 (27:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
Yeah, good looking people get away with.

Speaker 2 (27:09):
A lot they fucking do. It's very true. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (27:12):
I mean I told you that story. But at the time,
I was like, how much we talk about like lock
your fucking door and everything on this podcast. I was
walking the dogs one day and this guy walked up
and he was like he I think he said one
thing about the dogs that was complimentary, and then I
was like, I live up there and I gave the
whole game away and then walked away going what is
wrong with you?

Speaker 2 (27:32):
It's so easy.

Speaker 3 (27:33):
It's very like there's a lot of human psychology involved
in that. I mean still, Yeah. He could have also
said what sign are you? Which was like part of
the day in the seventies.

Speaker 2 (27:44):
It didn't have to be birthday, it didn't have to
be exact, Yeah, what's your sign? Yeah? And then in
March of ninety four, Seda had been arrested for possession
of a homemade gun and was fingerprinted, like two of
the things I could have connected him, yeah, But the
charges were dismissed before the fingerprints had been filed.

Speaker 3 (28:03):
Why.

Speaker 2 (28:04):
I don't fucking know. And that had been after all
of the attacks except the last one, which is the
unknown male victim in Highland Park that they never found.
So Sata's trial is an intel nineteen ninety eight, and
over the course of the six week trial he acts orratically,
yelling at the judge multiple times. The prosecution connects him
to the crimes with DNA evidence from one of the

(28:26):
stamps on one of the letters he sent. They also
present evidence from the tools down in his home, linking
them to the guns and bullets use in the shootings.
Sata is convicted of three murders and six attempted murders
and is currently serving multiple life sentences in the Clinton
Correctional Facility in Dana Mora in upstate New York. He
has since said that he really doesn't know anything about astrology, just.

Speaker 3 (28:48):
A construct for the character of this killer.

Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah, exactly. No one has ever figured out if he
asked all of the victims their birthdays at some point,
or if almost all of them having different signs was
just a coincidence. I doubt it, right, especially when he's
calling himself the Zodiac killer, right right, right, That doesn't
make any sense anyways. That's the story of the New
York Zodiac who tragically killed three people, possibly one more,

(29:12):
and wounded six others. Wow, New York Zodiac, New York.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
Well, I gotta say, first of all, that was really good,
and I do love when there's a serial killer that's
just like brand new, especially one that's like a copycat
like that. But it is actually kind of great that
I've never heard of him, because that's what he did
it for, exactly, That's what he wanted.

Speaker 2 (29:34):
That's why we know, Yeah, we know now don't chanel
light on these fuckers.

Speaker 3 (29:38):
Right, all right, great job, thank you. You're gonna like
this because my story today is similar to dB Cooper's OO,
which you covered in episode to seventy two. So if
you haven't listener, if you haven't heard Georgia tell the
story of d B. Cooper, please go back and do that.

(30:00):
You don't have to. It's a recommendation, like wine with dinner.
It was at a live show in Seattle.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Okay, you're like a true crime Somalia.

Speaker 3 (30:08):
Really, I'll stand next to your table with white gloves
on and hold shit up for you to read and
pretend that you know the difference. Yeah, when I pour
it in a little glass?

Speaker 2 (30:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:16):
Have you ever seen people send bottles of wine back? No?

Speaker 2 (30:19):
And every time someone does that to me, I want
to be like, you don't have to, we don't have
to do this.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
We're not like that.

Speaker 2 (30:23):
I will drink any wine. I don't know the difference.
I don't care. Maybe one time when it was like
clear from my own personal experience that the bottle had
been sitting out for days and days and had corks
and stuff in it, and I was like, can I
just can you just get a bit different.

Speaker 3 (30:39):
Can't get a new one?

Speaker 2 (30:40):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (30:41):
And they're like absolutely, yeah. We just thought we'd be
able to pass this off on somebody.

Speaker 2 (30:45):
Right the one time. And I don't. I don't send
shit back. I'm not that girl.

Speaker 3 (30:48):
I just would love to be there. When it's like
someone takes a gulf, I was like, oh no, this.

Speaker 2 (30:53):
Is not what it's supposed to taste. Like sometimes when
I order wine at a bar, I'll say, what have
you opened recently? Nice?

Speaker 3 (30:59):
Yeah, let's make this simple. I don't fucking care, okay,
I'll be like, this tastes like it's a little bit off.
Can you pour some seven up in there or something?
I'll be fine.

Speaker 2 (31:12):
Can you put some ice in this red wine? This
is terrible.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
This is not good red wine. Can pep a little
Jack Daniels in there?

Speaker 2 (31:19):
You're okay.

Speaker 3 (31:20):
So the story begins in Provo, Utah on April ninth,
nineteen seventy two, and this wording made me laugh so hard.
That afternoon, a teenage boy only known by the FBI
alias Peter Fanning is playing outside, which I think was
just like you could just see Maren putting that sentence

(31:42):
together and being like playing outside a teenage boy is
standing around with his arms crossed a rumping outside and
he sees something over in the culvert, and then Maren
wrote note to Karen, I had to look up what
a culvert was.

Speaker 2 (31:56):
Yeah, I could guess, but I don't think i'd be right.

Speaker 3 (31:58):
Give me a guess.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Well, like, you know, like a one way street that
is like, what's the called one that's like a culled
a sack? Yeah, I'm thinking called a sack.

Speaker 3 (32:05):
No, A culvert is the thing that goes usually under
a road, and it's a big silver tube that the
water goes. So it's basically making the water got over
here and like under a road, okay, kind of directing it.

Speaker 2 (32:18):
So it's like a creek bed. It's like a.

Speaker 3 (32:20):
Ditch with directed water, you know. And then the big
steel tube part comes into play because that's where Peter
was looking when he found this thing lying in the culvert.
He pulls it out and he believes that he's just
found a parachute, so he picks it up takes it home.
When he gets there, his dad is working on a

(32:42):
car outside, so he brings it up to his dad
and the dad inspects it and yes, in fact, it
is a parachute. So the Fannings get this weird feeling
about this discovery, so they call this sheriff, and soon
after they turned the parachute over, detectives announced Peter has
just found a piece of evidence tied to a dangerous fugitive.

(33:02):
The man had recently hijacked a commercial plane, demanded a ransom,
and then parachuted out of the plane with that money.
And if that all sounds familiar, it's the exact samem
o that dB Cooper had in Georgia's story in episode two,
sony two. And if you don't know the dB Cooper store,
I'll just tell you super quick. It happened the year prior,

(33:24):
in nineteen seventy one. The flight was out of Portland, Oregon,
and once that flight was in the air, he hijacked
the plane. He demanded a ransom of two hundred thousand
dollars and four parachutes, and then once he got the money,
he jumped out of the plane money in hand, and
he parachuted his way into obscurity. And to this day,
that hijacker has never been found and the D. B.

(33:46):
Cooper case remains unsolved. So that's where this story is different.
This is the case of Richard Floyd McCoy Junior and
the hijacking of United Airlines Flight eight fifty five.

Speaker 2 (33:57):
Wo how mad is he that he's not as famous
as Stevie Cooper?

Speaker 3 (34:01):
Well, and also like you got calm, it's like there's
no legend, there's no romance. The sources Marin used today
on the story are various documents from the FBI, several
articles that ran in the Daily Herald newspaper in the
early seventies, and archival editions of the New York Times
and the Los Angeles Times, And the rest of the
sources are in our show notes. So it's around five

(34:24):
pm on April seventh, nineteen seventy two, and flight eight
fifty five from Newark, New Jersey is on a layover
in Denver, and it's about to take off again to
head for Los Angeles. This plane is a Boeing seven
to twenty seven. There are six crew members and around
eighty five passengers on board, and one of these passengers
is a white man wearing a pinstriped suit, leather golf gloves,

(34:48):
and mirrored sunglasses. Okay, once on board, the man immediately
disappears into the bathroom, which of course stands out to
the flight attendance. He also stands out because once all
the passengers have boarded the plane, an airport worker rushes
onto the plane with an envelope that someone left behind

(35:08):
in the boarding area. In nineteen seventy two, they love
for people to leave stuff behind so they can run
it back up to you and onto a plane right right.
So the flight attendants make an announcement trying to reunite
the letter with whoever left it behind. No one responds.
They're all kind of sitting there until the guy in
the pinstriped suit and the leather gloves in the bathroom

(35:30):
opens the bathroom door, grabs the letter and shuts the
door again.

Speaker 2 (35:33):
So he had left it out there as like a
ransom note or something.

Speaker 3 (35:36):
Well, he had left it out there. I'm perpectly not
sure if it's on purpose. So now the plane's about
to take off, so a flight attendant has to go
knock on the bathroom door to tell the man to
come take a seat. He does not. A passenger named
Mickey Lukoff, one of the many people on board that
day who witnessed this man in his weird behavior, would

(35:56):
later tell the Daily Herald that the man quote locked
himself in the men's room and a stewardess had to
unlock the door and get him out. Guy. So the
man comes out of the bathroom, he's clearly wearing a
dark wig that quote came down in front to eyebrow
level and combed back around over his ears end quote.
He also has a fake mustache and matching fake sideburns

(36:20):
that go down to quote the middle of his face
curving towards the mouth about one inch. So those big
seven sheeps.

Speaker 2 (36:28):
Yeah, so this guy isn't just immediately not as smooth
as dbe Cooper like right off the bat. No.

Speaker 3 (36:33):
He I think it's like, you know, the the old
fashioned rule where it's like you get ready and then
you take one thing off before you leave. He should
have done that in that bathroom. Flushed it, flush it
down in that blue liquid. So an interesting note is
only a handful of passengers correctly observed that this man

(36:53):
did a costume change in the bathroom. So he when
he came out and he had the weird wig and
stash and everything, a lot of people didn't notice because
they thought it was a different guy that went into
the bathroom, not because they weren't really paying attention. So
less than twenty minutes into the flight, at five to
eighteen PM, a passenger calls over a flight attendant in

(37:13):
a panic. They report to the flight attendant seeing a
man with fake hair and mustache and sideburns fumbling around
with a hand grenade. Okay, shit, So the flight attendant
immediately tells the pilot what's happening. The pilot basically has
to now figure out a safety strategy, but they remember
there's an off duty pilot who's on the flight. I

(37:36):
believe they call it dead heading when they get to fly,
So they tell him to go walk by and observe
the man and see what you know, get eyes on,
see what's actually going on. As the off duty pilot
approaches the mustache man's seat at the very back of
the plane, the man pulls out a pistol he aims
at squarely at the off duty pilot and hands over

(37:58):
that envelope that he'd left behind in the boarding area
that is clearly labeled hijack instructions.

Speaker 2 (38:05):
Wait it said that, and the person ran to the
plane to make sure that he got it.

Speaker 3 (38:10):
Well. Good catch. Aviation writer Sylvia Wrigley raises the valid
question of whether or not that envelope would have been
brought on board and hand it off. She writes, quote,
it's hard to believe that the envelope was so clearly
labeled when the gate agent brought it to him. It
must have been the case that there was a smaller
envelope in a big one, although none of the reports

(38:31):
mentioned this.

Speaker 2 (38:31):
Now we're going to go with envelope and side an envelope.

Speaker 3 (38:34):
As we're going with Sylvia's theory, because what Yeah, otherwise
there's no hope plans for attack. Why would you run
that anywhere?

Speaker 2 (38:42):
Oh?

Speaker 3 (38:44):
No, matter the detail. The mustache man now orders the
off duty pilot to bring this letter to the plane's pilot.
So the letters passed to a flight attendant, who then
brings it into the cockpit. The cruit stays calm and professional,
so much so, but many of the passengers have no
idea what's going on. They don't know. Somebody just had

(39:04):
gun pull them on them in their own flight.

Speaker 2 (39:06):
That's wild, because I'm always checking the flight attendants faces
for panic. Yes, so it's important they must learn that
don't panic.

Speaker 3 (39:14):
Absolutely. I was also nineteen seventy two, so they could
have been on any number of drugs that they ordered
from the back of Rolling Stone Agazin. So Jerry Hearn,
who's the pilot, reads the letter and he requests clearance
to immediately land in Grand Junction, Colorado, and then his
plan is once we're on the ground, he'll call for

(39:35):
police assistance. So to keep everyone as calm as possible,
Captain Hearn announces over the intercoalm that the flight is
being diverted because of a minor mechanical problem. Then the
captain opens the Hijack Instructions envelope and inside he finds
a grenade pin, a bullet, and two typed pages of

(39:55):
highly detailed directions. The letter instructs the captain to land
at Sand Francisco International Airport and park the aircraft at
runway nineteen Comma Left, where it would be somewhat isolated.
The letter states that no person or vehicle except the
truck that refills the plane's fuel tank is allowed anywhere
near the aircraft. It also stipulates that one passenger will

(40:18):
be assigned to retrieve the hijacker's checked bags from an
airline worker, so go into the belly of the plane
and get my checked bag and bring it up here.
They must be immediately handed over to him, And most critically,
the letter demands that four parachutes and five hundred thousand
dollars are to be delivered to the plane and then

(40:39):
handed over to the hijacker still while they're on the
ground in San Francisco. So it's nineteen seventy two, five
hundred thousand dollars is worth how much in today's money?

Speaker 2 (40:51):
Three point two million.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Three point seven million, three point seven million, high five across.

Speaker 2 (40:59):
The table all losses I've ever gotten?

Speaker 3 (41:01):
I mean that it wouldn't it be cool if you
now you won three point five million for them for
your trouble, trouble that what's on the line, the whole goal,
this entire time.

Speaker 2 (41:12):
And then like from our studio here, the money just
drops from the ceiling. It's real dirty money. Like they
didn't even get any bills.

Speaker 3 (41:17):
That's right. I just we should talk to them about
keeping up in a ball like squid game. Absolutely, don't
drop the money on us. Like. So, the last thing
the hijacker writes is that he wants all of these
written instructions returned to him. Nobody gets to keep any
of these little letters, and there are a ton of them.
Captain Hearn later says, quote, there was practically no verbal

(41:39):
communication with him. About ninety nine percent of his communication
was in written messages.

Speaker 2 (41:44):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
So Captain Hearn follows the hijacker's demands, and after coordinating
with the airline and airport officials, Flight eight fifty five
lands at the San Francisco Airport. Meanwhile, authorities go get
the half a million dollars cash from Wills Fargo Bank.
They stuff it into two twenty pound bags, and then
they head down to the airport. Back on the plane,
a flight attendant gets on the intercom and announces they've

(42:07):
just landed not in Grand Junction, but at the San
Francisco International Airport because they're they're better equipped to handle
the plane's specific issues. The pilot then stops the plane
at the hijacker's designated area, and then once they basically
pull into that spot, any illusion of calm that these
passengers had left is shattered. The hijacker fully takes control

(42:31):
of the plane. He's brandishing a pistol. He takes the
crew hostage, and then he sends a passenger out to
go pick up the cash and the parachutes that an
airport employee has waiting. The passenger comes back delivers all that,
and while that's happening, a fuel truck is refilling the plane,
and the other passenger assigned to go grab the hijacker's

(42:54):
bags meets up with the airline worker who's taken them
out of the cargo hold. All the while the high
handing letters to one specific flight attendant who is summoned
on the intercom. So some of these letters appear to
have been pre typed, others have clearly just been written.
They all contain more and more instructions for the flight

(43:15):
crew and the passengers. So three hours after landing at SFO,
all the hijacker's requests seem to have been met, so
he hands over another letter, and in it he orders
the crew to open the doors and make sure every
single one of the passengers, one by one gets off
of the plane and plus one flight attendant okay. So

(43:37):
then through more notes, the hijacker tells the crew that
the doors must be shut and the plane should take off.
The crews ordered to huddle in the cockpit while the
hijacker will stay in the back of the plane. So
of course, Captain Hern has no choice but to follow
these demands, and once again he prepares for takeoff, but
then they hear the hijacker's voice over the intercom. He

(44:00):
asks the same flight attendant to meet him at the
back of the plane that he's been talking to or
Gary interacting with this whole time. Yeah, and there he
gives a last set of handwritten instructions. Captain Hern needs
to fly east towards Utah, maintaining an elevation of sixteen
thousand feet and keeping a speed of two hundred miles
per hour. And they need to pass over several specific

(44:22):
communities in Utah as they go, so they need to
be on a specific flight path. Okay, So the hijacker
then orders the cabin to be depressurized and the lights
to be turned down.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Oh my god, is he gonna fucking throw money to
his friends and family?

Speaker 3 (44:38):
I mean, well, no, but kind of. So he also
wants consistent updates on the wind speeds and the sky conditions,
and if the captain doesn't obey, the hijacker vows to
blow up the plane with that hand grenade that he
basically is messaged that they now have the pin for
and he's just holding on to Oh shit, it's an

(45:00):
active grenade.

Speaker 2 (45:01):
Oh okay, grenade's back in the seventies and eighties, like
bandied about Vietnam. All right, you stick. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
So flight eight fifty five takes off once again, this
time back east toward Utah. So at some point the hijacker,
which is so funny and devious, but he covers that
there's a peep hole in the cockpit and he covers
it with tape so they can't see him.

Speaker 2 (45:28):
Oh my god, and look at him.

Speaker 3 (45:29):
That's simple, or watch him? I know.

Speaker 2 (45:31):
Do you ever do that when you knock on someone's door?
I just I always do that, cover it with my finger,
Like you don't get a look at me, You don't
get it. Open the door, Open the fucking door.

Speaker 3 (45:38):
Didn't we make a plan? One forward thinking member of
the flight crew gets down on the ground and tries
to see what he's doing from the gap at the
bottom of the cockpit door, and that crew member can't
see the man's face, but they watch him open his
suitcase and then change into a jumpsuit, a helmet, and
a parachute pack. Moments later, the hijacker jumps out of

(45:59):
the plane, and he takes his bags of ransom money
with him. It's now been five hours since this whole
ordeal began, so after a few moments with no new
contact or correspondence from the back of the plane, the
crew opens the cockpit door and is overdoyed to see
that the hijacker is no longer on board, and with that,
Captain Hern lands the plane in Salt Lake City, and

(46:21):
later on that flight crew is flown back to la
which was their destination in the first place. According to
the Herald Examiner newspaper, they quote walked off the plane
at Los Angeles International Airport, tired, some dazed, A few
carrying cocktails.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
Yeah they did. They fucking made themselves a cocktail.

Speaker 3 (46:39):
Right, Yeah, one thousand tiny tanga ray bottles up to those.
I mean to know it's over, To factually know it's over,
by the fact that he jumped out of the plane,
You're just like, yeah.

Speaker 2 (46:51):
We're safe now, gee? Or did he hide a fucking
grenade somewhere?

Speaker 3 (46:55):
Like you can't that's the thing when you let go,
they explode.

Speaker 2 (46:58):
Yeah, but what okay, Yeah we can wedget somewhere. Yeah,
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
In the sky mall wedget into us coming. And I'm
sure there's many more details about how grenades explode that
somebody out there definitely wants to teach us about, please do.
According to a nineteen seventy two issue of The New
York Times, including the mysterious dB Cooper case, this will
be the seventh hijacking involving a parachute in the last

(47:26):
five months of nineteen seventy two alone.

Speaker 2 (47:29):
Five months. Yes, oh my god, it was a big
deal back then.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
I mean it was like it was a way people
were figuring out how to like effectively get their word
out there and make known the cause that they wanted
an international audience to know about.

Speaker 2 (47:46):
Yeah, we've done quite a few of those, yeah, wild.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
But this the hijacking of Flight eight fifty five, It
stands out as the highest paid ransom in an airplane hijacking.
So law enforcement came off yet another skyjacking investigation. So
first they searched the plane itself. The only thing they
find is one of the hijacker's handwritten letters, but since

(48:10):
he was wearing gloves, it's initially suspected there won't be
any fingerprints to find. Investigators interview the crew of flight
eight fifty five, and they pieced together that the hijacker
jumped out of the plane over Provo, Utah. Now, a
team made up of FBI agents, Provo Police, and cops
from the Utah County Sheriff's Department create a search triangle

(48:32):
that extends from Provo to Soldier's Summit to Nephi. Your
three favorite Utah cities. If you're out in Soldier Summit
right now listening to this podcast, what are you even doing?

Speaker 2 (48:43):
What are you even camping right now?

Speaker 3 (48:47):
I just I added the sentence these are all cities
in Utah. I was actually going to text Forger Bridgard
probably is familiar with all of them and could give reviews.
So they create this search tra Investigators go search in
that triangle for a full day, aided by two Air
Force helicopters and the Utah Highway Patrol who set up roadblocks.

(49:09):
Not a toime going out in Utah. They can't find anything.
Provo Police Chief Jesse Evans tells the Daily Herald, quote,
we found no human footprints and no sign of anything
out there. And the second day is when Peter Fanning,
the teenager, finds one of the hijackers. Four parachutes in
a provo culvert.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Why did he order four parachutes? Is that something that
guy jumpers know that I don't.

Speaker 3 (49:32):
I think because if they rig like they can't rig
them all, or it's something along those lines. If they're
left with one, they can just cut all of it.
But it's like they can basically say, don't mess with
the parachutes.

Speaker 2 (49:44):
They all look the same. I can tell if effect.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Something along those lines. But also they say. The theory
that got developed around B. Cooper and that's applied here
is that he as they go, they throw the parachutes
out the door. So it could be like, we found
the parachute here and that's over provo, but that's not
where he jumped out.

Speaker 2 (50:05):
Okay, that totally makes sense. Yeah, Or they could be like, oh,
they're going to take some of the crew with them,
we better leave them alone too, right.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
Maybe could be yeah, make somebody innocent use one of
those parachutes. Yeah. Yeah. It could also be that once
the hijacker landed, he just wanted to throw the parachute
in the air and get under it, like we used
to do in grammar school, in Montessori grammar school. So
of course the FBI is trying to figure out who
this hijacker is. His plane ticket says the initial T. Johnson,

(50:36):
immediately determined to be a fake name. When they talked
to the passengers and crew members on that flight, they
described this man as a white man around thirty years
old with a medium build, who was clearly wearing a wig,
a fake mustache, and fake sideburns. They also mentioned he
had a band aid on his left cheek, although it's
unclear why, and very short, very dirty fingernails. Look away

(50:59):
from my mine right. Captain Hearn and his co pilot,
a man named Ken Bradley, tell investigators that they believe
the hijacker must have had flying experience and could be
a pilot himself, since he clearly had a handle on
the logistics of air travel. He also seemed to know
Utah incredibly well from the sky, suggesting he might live there.

(51:19):
A United Airlines official is quoted in The Daily Herald
as saying, quote, it would seem that the hijacking was
well thought out, well planned, and he obviously had a
knowledge of parachutes.

Speaker 2 (51:29):
Yeah so.

Speaker 3 (51:30):
Less than two days after the hijacking, the FBI's office
in Salt Lake City gets the call it's been waiting for.
A man calls in with a tip, saying that one
of his best friends fits the hijacker's description to a t.
And not only that, but his friend had recently talked
about wanting to hijack a plane for a five hundred
thousand dollars ransom.

Speaker 2 (51:49):
Come on, narc like, can.

Speaker 3 (51:51):
You that's no friend, that's a lowercase F friend.

Speaker 2 (51:55):
In my opinion of view, friend.

Speaker 3 (51:57):
The friend that the friend was taught about is a
man named Richard Floyd McCoy.

Speaker 2 (52:02):
Was that easy? Yeah, that his friend fucking knarked on him?

Speaker 3 (52:06):
Well, but also he told on himself. Don't keep it
to yourself. Yes, you're overjoyed about this plan, but zip
it would.

Speaker 2 (52:14):
You have told on your friend though? Like depends on acquaintance.

Speaker 3 (52:18):
But well, I guess it would depend on the threat
level that you would feel like this person was at.
Oh yeah, so we'll talk about Richard Floyd McCoy junior.
In nineteen seventy two, he was a twenty nine year
old student at Brigham Young University in Salt Lake City.
He's a married father of two. He's an active member
of the Mormon Church, and he used to teach Sunday school.

(52:41):
One of his classmates, a Byu, tells a reporter quote
all he ever talked about.

Speaker 2 (52:45):
Was Sin Jesus. It was real fun to hang out with.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
There's two ways you can talk about saying. Either either
you're a total bore or you're the best. So Richard
McCoy Junior completed two tours of Vietnam. He served as
a helicopter pilot, and he was currently serving at the
time as a member of the National Guard. When FBI
agents arrive at the Molcoy home to interview Richard, they

(53:12):
noticed that he fits the basic description of the hijacker,
but he also has a limp, which he claims is
the result of a recent skiing accident. There Richard denies
having anything to do with the hijacking of Flight eight
fifty five, and he even claims to have an alibi.
He was with his wife during the incident. He allows
the agents to take his picture and search his car,

(53:33):
but he will not let them inside his home, and
before they leave, Richard hands over what the FBI will
describe as a limited amount of handwriting samples, so investigators
compare these samples with some of the handwritten documents that
they got from Richard's time in the military, and they
appear to be a match. Then investigators managed to pull

(53:54):
a latent print off an airline magazine from the seatback
pocket beside the hijackers a sign scene wow that when
they compare it to a print of Richards from his
military records, it's a match. So police then talked to
Richard's doctor. They confirm that he was in factorated for

(54:14):
a ski injury several weeks prior. However, his leg had
been placed in a cast which was no longer there.
They don't know if Richard removed it himself, either because
it would hinder his escape or it would be used
to identify him after the hijacking. Why he couldn't do
the hijacking after he was fully healed.

Speaker 2 (54:33):
Yeah, so he didn't get it jumping out of a plane.
He actually had had a.

Speaker 3 (54:37):
Okay, unless the doctor was like lying for him, yeah.

Speaker 2 (54:41):
Or he lied to the doctor. It doesn't sound like it.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Right because it said several weeks So I know, because
it was like, yet, you're going to jump out of
a plane and probably hurt yourself once you land, But
it didn't seem like that was the connection. Well, maybe
it's like he, you know, threw himself down skiing, had
to get treated by doctor and then how to cover.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (55:03):
Yeah, So when investigators shows some of the witnesses Richard's photograph,
they actually hit a stumbling block because it's hard for
anyone to make a positive ID because the hijacker was
wearing such a weird disguise. But then Richard's own sister
in law comes forward and she claims that he had
tried to pull her into this hijacking scheme. So no,

(55:25):
I think if everybody in Richard's life is narking on Richard,
then I think Richard's the problem.

Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, Richard left all the detailed instructions on the seat
beside him in the fucking waiting area. I mean, so
why would you try Like he's not someone you want
to make a plan with.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
No, I mean, those were what the pilot needed to
have to go forward and make the hijacking happen.

Speaker 2 (55:47):
That was an accident him leaving them behind.

Speaker 3 (55:49):
He've again left it out by the coffee machine hijacking
instructions on the outside. So soon after that, investigators get
a positive ID from one of the flight eight fifty
five passengers and it's one that really counts. It's the
passenger sent to pick up the ransom money and parachutes

(56:10):
from the airport worker and bring them back to Richard
on the parked plane. So this is a person who
actually directly interacted with him. So with that, police get
the green light to dig up the McCoy's yard looking
for that money, assuming that he buried it. They don't
find it, but they do find a few buried boxes

(56:31):
that contain quote unquote evidence. It's unclear what this evidence is,
but they basically because of that, get a search warrant
for Richard's home and that's where they find four hundred
and ninety nine thousand, nine hundred and seventy dollars stuffed
into two bags and a cardboard box. Oh shit, quick, math,
how much has he spent?

Speaker 2 (56:52):
Say it again, I wasn't listen. Ex.

Speaker 3 (56:54):
Four hundred and ninety nine, four ninety nine thousand, nine
hundred and seventy dollars. He has spent thirty dollars. Thirty dollars.

Speaker 2 (57:05):
Oh man, it's hilarious.

Speaker 3 (57:07):
So they also find in the house a parachute and
a pistol and that hand grenade, which turns out to
be fake. So less than a week after the hijacking,
Richard Floyd McCoy junior is arrested by the FBI. He
gets charged with air piracy, which carries a maximum penalty
of death.

Speaker 2 (57:27):
Is it like a federal offense?

Speaker 3 (57:28):
Uh huh. I don't know if that was always the
law or if they even It'd be interesting to know
when they came up with that law when they had to,
because I think this was a whole new world totally
for everybody. After Richard's preliminary hearing, a reporter asks if
he has any comment, and Richard replies, quote, well, it's embarrassing,

(57:49):
let's face it, which is maybe my favorite criminal quote
of all time. Yeah, let's just be real.

Speaker 2 (57:58):
This is embarrassing.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Look. So, Richard McCoy junior pleats not guilty, but by
the end of his trial in June nineteen seventy two,
which is only two months after this hijacking took place,
so they were like, you are going to be made
a lesson of totally, he's convicted and he's sentenced to
forty five years in prison. He files for an appeal.
Shortly after that appeal is denied. Richard's eventually sent to

(58:23):
a federal prison in Pennsylvania. Within two years of his
arrival at that prison, he and a group of inmates
mastermind a plan to overtake a garbage truck and drive
it through the prison gates. And they do. They succeed.
My god, the plan works. Richard is once again on
the lamb. It suspected that he and the other escapees
then go rob a bank. They make off with one

(58:45):
hundred thousand dollars. Wow worth about how much in today's money.

Speaker 2 (58:49):
Hundred thousand dollars is going to be worth?

Speaker 3 (58:51):
One point two six forty Oh, I mean six hundred
and forty thousand. Once they get away, they all vanish.
Agents now have to open yet another investigation centered around
Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. But Richard is tracked down a
couple months later at a house in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
He's staying there with another fugitive named Melvin Dale Walker

(59:14):
who's wanted for robbing banks. So the FBI basically go
into the house one day when the men aren't home,
and they stake out inside the house and the surrounding property,
and an agent named Gerald Cokeley will later say quote
McCoy entered the front door with a key, and one
of the agents identified himself and told him to hold

(59:35):
it right there. The fellow went for his gun, got
one shot off, and the agent returned fire. Oh wow,
So Richard Floyd McCoy Jr. Is shot and killed at
the scene. Melvindale Walker surrenders and he has arrested without incident.
In November of nineteen seventy four. Richard Floyd McCoy, Junior
is buried in his home state of North Carolina, and

(59:57):
he is just thirty one years old.

Speaker 2 (59:58):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:00:00):
So there's a few lingering questions about the McCoy case.
One is motive. Obviously it was money on the surface,
but Richard never explained why he chose such an extreme
way of getting that money. As for the missing thirty dollars,
the FBI has an idea of where at least some
of it went, because the write up in the case

(01:00:20):
includes this quote quote. When shown McCoy's photograph, an employee
at a roadside Hamburger stand said that she had sold
him a milkshake at about eleven thirty on the night
of the crime. In addition, a teenager stated that a
man fitting McCoy's description paid him five dollars for a
ride from the stand to a nearby town.

Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
Wow, he went and got a milkshake after jumping out
of a fucking hijacked plane.

Speaker 3 (01:00:42):
Yeah, but the biggest unresolved element in this case involves
the connection to D. B. Cooper. Back in nineteen seventy two,
an FBI spokesperson told the New York Times quote, we're
not working on the theory that Richard McCoy and D. B.
Cooper were the same person. Apparently the Bureau couldn't find
a solid link connecting the two hijackings, which is surprising

(01:01:05):
given how similar they are, right down to the four
parachutes requested by both men. Not to mention, the sketch
of DV. Cooper looks exactly like Richard Floyd McCoy. Shut up,
And in recent years, McCoy's own son, Rick, has identified
his dad as DV.

Speaker 2 (01:01:22):
Cooper. Oh my god, no way, yeah right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Rick is now working with the FBI to share whatever
information he has, and claims he's only just come forward
now because his mother, who Rick claims confess to being
a co conspirator, had recently passed away du deathbed. Confessions. Yeah,
we know that the FBI has requested a DNA sample

(01:01:45):
that they hope to compare with evanence found on the
airplane that dB Cooper hijacked, and Rick is cooperating with
the agents, but it's still in process, so no announcements
have been made.

Speaker 2 (01:01:56):
I feel like DV Cooper's was kind of smooth and flawless,
and this one wasn't. This one was like nervous, you know, yeah,
and flawed. Flawed well yeah, but who know.

Speaker 3 (01:02:11):
Hijack instructions piece, Yeah, really looks a bit green and
JV totally. But maybe he did it the one time
and then he used that money to take drugs, Oh
could be drugs. He used that money to sin as
much as he could. Meanwhile, naysayers point out that Richard

(01:02:31):
can't possibly be dB Cooper because he's too young, not
to mention that the witnesses on flight eight fifty five
were shown sketches of dB Cooper and denied he was
their hijacker.

Speaker 2 (01:02:41):
Yeah, but they kind of recognize him to begin with
because of his shit.

Speaker 3 (01:02:43):
What then, didn't I know people who don't support people
who don't support the theory that Richard and dB Cooper
are the same. Man believes that Richard simply ripped off
dB Cooper's act. If that's the case, he was a
very precise copycat. The sunglasses, the suit, the number of
parachutes listed in the demands. Investigators believe dB Cooper asked

(01:03:04):
for four parachutes so we could toss them out, as
I said, to throw off a ground search. So maybe
Richard was just repeating an effective strategy because he knew
DEBI Cooper never got caught.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:03:17):
Maybe someday, as the FBI continues to work on this case,
we'll have a clear answer. But for now, whether Richard
McCoy is in fact d B. Cooper remains a mystery.
And that is the story of Richard Floyd McCoy, Junior
and the hijacking of Flight eight fifty five.

Speaker 2 (01:03:32):
Wow. Do think we'll ever find out who dB Cooper was?
I can. I like this line of questioning.

Speaker 3 (01:03:39):
I do too. I love it when, and this has
happened a couple times in big true crime cases, the
children of the people come forward and they're like, well,
here's this, yeah, and.

Speaker 2 (01:03:49):
That's what I talked about this Yeah. Mom always fucking Also.

Speaker 3 (01:03:53):
The mom on a deathbed being like I'm a co conspirator,
but I have to tell you this, yeah, is very
convincing to me. I agree, I agree, or it's good writing,
but yeah, but it kind of adds up. Wow, great job,
Thank you. I love that one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:08):
Yeah. I love a hijacking that's just yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:04:11):
Wild right, also just that like a spate of hijackings,
Oh my god in the seventies, that's wild.

Speaker 2 (01:04:18):
I want like a podcast that explains why ye all that?
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:04:22):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:04:22):
Should we tell you, guys, what you're even doing right now?

Speaker 3 (01:04:25):
Yeah? I think we should.

Speaker 2 (01:04:27):
Okay, this is the hashtag what are you even doing
right now? Where you guys tell us what you even
do when you listen to my favorite murder kind of fun. Yeah,
we love to know. This one kind of hit me.
This is from Shelby ne Em from Instagram. I listened
to this episode well, ending an insomnia all nighter with
a five am walk to the beach an ocean swim.
Oh oh yeah, I'm impressed because my insomnia all nighters

(01:04:51):
I just stay in bed the whole time.

Speaker 3 (01:04:52):
Yeah, I mean that's a nice way to just kind
of try to do something different that sounds lovely near
the ocean. Sorry, about the insomnie.

Speaker 2 (01:05:01):
It's the word magnesium.

Speaker 3 (01:05:03):
Yeahs, I have magnesium lotion I put on my feet.
They say, let's put on some ocean, put on some socks.

Speaker 2 (01:05:13):
Great.

Speaker 3 (01:05:14):
This one's from an email and it says I'm helping
solve a murder right now. What Hey, Karen and Georgia,
I've got a story for your what are you even
doing right now? Segment? This one's a bit of a thriller.
I'm a GIS analyst, so my day usually revolves around
making maps and analyzing geographic data. But today things got
a whole lot more interesting. An investigator put in a

(01:05:35):
request with my department for a map to assist in
a murder investigation. Oh right now, I'm creating a detailed
map of the county boundary and city limits for them
to use. And it's not just any map. This one
will help investigators pinpoint crucial locations related to the case
and provide a clearer picture of the area. Who knew
my love for maps would lead me to assist in

(01:05:57):
a murder investigation. Talk about apply twist, stay sexy, and
don't get murdered. M Holy shit, So that's not what
they're supposed to be doing and suddenly it's like, well,
you need to.

Speaker 2 (01:06:10):
This is an episode of Bones for Sure.

Speaker 3 (01:06:14):
One a shy map maker hidden in the back room.
Yeah yeah, yeah, wow, Oh my god, that's exciting. Thanks
for letting us know what you guys are even doing
right now, and thanks for listening.

Speaker 2 (01:06:26):
Yeah, we appreciate you.

Speaker 3 (01:06:27):
Thanks for listening and multitasking and supporting us. Yeah, you're
really you're really going above and beyond and we appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
You're doing it all.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
And uh, congratulations on the future.

Speaker 2 (01:06:38):
Yeah, stay sexy, don't get murdered.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
Good Bye, Elvis.

Speaker 2 (01:06:42):
Do you want a cookie?

Speaker 3 (01:06:51):
This has been an exactly right production.

Speaker 2 (01:06:53):
Our senior producer is Alejandra Keck.

Speaker 3 (01:06:55):
Our managing producer is Hannah Kyle Crichton.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Our editor is Aristotle Ocibto.

Speaker 3 (01:07:00):
This episode was mixed by Leona Scualach.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Our researchers are Maren mcclashen and Ali Elkin.

Speaker 3 (01:07:06):
Email your hometowns to My Favorite Murder at gmail dot com.

Speaker 2 (01:07:09):
Follow the show on Instagram and Facebook at my Favorite
Murder and Twitter at my favee Murder. Bye Bye,