January 5, 2026 • 42 mins
Alex Baber finds a clue in the last Zodiac cipher that unlocks a direct connection to the Black Dahlia. Learn more on KillerInTheCode.com.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
This is Michael Connolly and you're listening to Killer in
the Code Solving the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases. This
is chapter three. We originally said we would be back
with this episode on January fifteenth, but this has become
a fast moving story and we decided to push things up.
So here we are. But before we get into it,
(00:23):
I just want to give what I guess is a
preface here. We dropped the first two episodes a couple
weeks ago and named Marvin Margolis aka Marvin Merrill aka
Skip Merrill as the killer in both the Zodiac and
Black Dahia cases. It created quite a stir on the
Internet on various sites and threads dedicated to one or
(00:44):
both of these infamous cases. As predicted in our first episode,
people sniped at our findings, mostly without bothering to listen
to them first or wait for the rest of the podcast.
I feel I made a mistake in those opening episodes
by not operately introducing a couple members of the team
who have been involved in the investigation and fully support
(01:06):
its findings. So briefly, let me introduce two of the
cold case homicide investigators who are part of this team. First,
there is Missy Roberts. She spent twenty nine years with
the Los Angeles Police Department, most of it working homicides,
before retiring last year as the detective in charge of
(01:26):
the Cold Case Unit. During the last half of her
career with the LAPD, she was assigned to the murder
of Elizabeth Short that are known as the Black Dahlia.
During that time, she was able to review almost all
of the records and evidence still in the custody of
the police department. This included a four drawer file cabinet
(01:47):
and a trunk containing Elizabeth's longings. During that time with
the case, she was able to review and debunk the
theories and claims by some of the people now upset
by this podcast. Example, there are those out there who
say Marvin Margolis was cleared in the Black Dahlia case
by the LAPD. Roberts assuredly says he was not. And
(02:11):
I think what you should know is that, without question,
Roberts knows more about the Dahlia case than any investigator alive.
But the Dahlia case was only one assignment. She worked
dozens of murders and made dozens of arrests As a
homicide investigator. Probably most notably, she apprehended Sam Little, a
serial killer who had a near fifty year run until
(02:33):
Roberts caught the case and in turn finally caught him.
The FBI says Little, who confessed to killing ninety three people,
is the most prolific serial killer on record. Though he
left bodies in his way from coast to coast, he
ultimately was only convicted of three murders, all cases put
together in Los Angeles by Detective Roberts. Also a member
(02:59):
of this team is Rick Jackson, who spent thirty four
years with the LAPD, most of them in homicide. He
retired from the department's cold case unit a few years back,
moved up to the Bay Area in northern California, and
promptly realized he couldn't give it up. He's a man
on a mission, a mission to bring justice to victims.
He became a cold case investigator for the San Mateo
(03:22):
County Sheriff's Department. He and his partner, Dave Tresmontin, also
a member of this team, saw three murders in the
last couple of years, one of which dated all the
way back to the time of the Zodiac killings. I
should also mention here that both Jackson and Roberts serve
as inspirations for characters I write about in my novels.
(03:43):
That would be Harry Bosh and Renee Baward. They are
the living embodiment of the homicide detectives Creed. Everybody Counts
or Nobody counts. These are people who solve murders in
real life, not on the Internet, not on YouTube. They
gather I must rely on real evinue. It's when they
make cases, and that dedication to the truth is what
(04:04):
they bring to this investigation. At the end of the
run of this podcast, we're going to have a roundtable
discussion with Alex Baber and all the investigators, and we
will answer questions sent to our website killerndecode dot com
and take on all critics of the work they have done.
I think it's going to be fun. Now one to
(04:30):
chapter three. I don't think we need to start with
another recap. But before we get into a new decoding
and interpretation of the zodiacs last cipher, I want to
talk about checking boxes. While the investigation by the team
led by cold case consultant Baber is built on his
reveal of the suspect's name in the Ze thirteen cipher.
(04:52):
That is only a starting point. That's not evidence of anything.
To make the case that Margolis Merrill, as I've taken
a call in him, was indeed both the Zodiac killer
and the Black Dalua Avenger, he need to check many boxes,
and each of those boxes is a piece of a
puzzle that, when completed, will prove the case. This is
(05:13):
Missy Roberts.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I had a murder case and one of the closing arguments,
the DA would actually in a PowerPoint, would take a
piece of evidence and put and had like a puzzle
board and would put that in a piece of the puzzle.
And once the last piece of the puzzle, which was
a major piece of evidence was placed into the puzzle,
the picture of the actual person.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
That did it.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And it was such a cool thing because it's just
one she put all the evidence together. The picture is
clear and it leads to the person that did it.
And in this case, I think it's very clear that
that's Margaret Margolis.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Okay, so let's start check in boxes. Some of these
will pertain to only one of the cases for obvious reasons,
but some will need to be checked in both cases
to be valid. Let's begin with what is perhaps the
easiest one, the physible aspects of the killer. Since there
were no known witnesses to Elizabeth Short's abduction or the
(06:19):
discarding of her body, this is pretty much a Zodiac box.
The final killing officially attributed to the Zodiac was the
murder of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stein on October eleventh,
nineteen sixty nine. A description of the killer who shot
Stein was obtained from three children who looked out a
(06:39):
window in their home and saw the fleeing man, as
well as two police officers who passed him while responding
to the shooting call. The police put out a description
of a white male thirty five to forty five years old,
with a stocky build and height between five eight and
six foot. He wore glasses and had a crew cut,
(07:00):
adding descriptors from surviving victims of the earlier attacks, The
Zodiac was known to be right handed as well. This
is Alex Baber.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Okay, so here's what we know.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
We know that he's within the height bracket, which is
a five eight to six foot.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
We know he's right at five ten some accounts of
five nine. O. There's a five ten, depending on what
account you go by.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
We know that he's right handed, sign verified that as
well as some images show him using his right hand
which would imply such.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
We also know that he wore glasses all the time.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
You know, there's there's an account where his son says
in an audio, Yeah, my dad wore glasses all the time.
He had two bears of glasses he wore. You know,
he's very very clear about that. And also we discovered
when we went through the evidence that he shared with
us with the detective Jackson and Mitzi, we discovered a
(07:55):
Vai prescription that we have in our possession that also
verified I said he needed glasses. And then we know
his physical characteristics fit as well his weight at that
time approximate weight, which he can't really depend on because
people fluctuate, but we do know from the photograph that
was shared with us the additional photograph that he fits
(08:15):
the script as far as the barrel chested and built
that was described by not only the three children from
the elevated position, but as well as the police officer.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Listeners can go to our website to see a side
by side comparison of the suspect sketch distributed by police
after the Stein murder and an enhanced image of margois Merril.
Let me repeat it is enhanced and clearly marked, so
so no one has to claim subterfuge on our part.
How is it enhanced? Eyeglasses were added and the hair
(08:49):
was shortened to the length described by the witnesses. So
we added eyeglasses to the photo. But it is a
fact that Margolis Merrill wore glasses, and on this you
can find the suspects prescriptions for eyeglasses issued by the
VA under his real name Margolis. Okay. Next, let's go
with medical skill, another easy box to check. Detectives investigating
(09:13):
the Elizabeth Short murder concluded that it took a degree
of medical knowledge and skill to carry out the bisection
of her body, as well as some of the other
tortures visited upon her, but they didn't conclude that it
was someone with expert surgical skills, as some have claimed
over the years. While it is clear from the investigative
(09:33):
records that they approached local hospitals and made inquiries about
surgeons acting suspiciously, they also asked about nurses acting suspiciously.
They also went to the University of Southern California, located
near where the black Dahia's body was found, and asked
for a list of students enrolled into medical school at
the time of the murder.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Well, from the get go, the corner surgeon.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Clearly that he believed it was somebody had medical knowledge
or knowledge of human anatomy, which is present if you
look at the mutilation. But for them to believe there
was only a skilled surgeon is outlandish, and the reason
being is they themselves were a going to USC medical school.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Get he listed three hundred students that they were checking individually.
If they truly believed it was a skilled surgeon, who
would never have had that list generated for the.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
FBI either way. Marvin Check's at box he was attending
USC's medical school at the time of the killing, and,
according to police records, had engaged in a dissection of
a human body in the months before the Dallia murder,
and prior to that, he had been a Navy corman
attached to a marine unit during the World War II
(10:49):
battle on Okinawa. He dealt with wounded soldiers in the
battlefield hospital. As it says in the investigative records, he
cared for many quote mangled soldiers. Moving on, let's go
with firearms training. Remember three of the Zodiac attacks involved shootings.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Yeah, Marvin had plenty of training. He was a naval corman,
which their training is specific. Daring world War two was
with a forty five APC. The backstory this is is
Daring world War two the medics or the corman when
they were in action, they carried only a sidearm and
they had to.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Be proficient with it.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
And that being said, we know that Zodiac was extremely
proficient with Is he hit Jensen.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Running in the dark. He claims he had a flashlight
that he taped.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
To the barrel, But even at that point for him
to hit a moving target in the dark as as
it's going away from you is very impressive.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
And the five rounds are in close proximity of each
other in her back. So he did have some skill
as a marksman with a cyber.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
The victim Baber was referring to there was Betty Lou Jensen,
who was shot to death in the Zodiac Killer's first
known attack December twentieth, nineteen sixty eight. Our next box
is an important one cryptographic expertise. The Zodiac composed four
(12:22):
ciphers that were mailed to Bay Area newspapers. The first
was cracked in a week, but the next three stood
the test of time and were not broken for more
than fifty years. That shows some serious expertise. If margois
Merrill was the Zodiac, where did he get it?
Speaker 4 (12:40):
To be honest, I don't think we could ever positively
identify this background in cryptography, and the reason being is
unless we discover another piece of evidence or a cryptography
book in the storage or possession that he left behind, we.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Really can't be sure.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
What we do know is that being an autodiak polymaths
like myself, he would be able to teach himself and
it wouldn't have been very difficult, and he did make
mistakes which are our key that shows he is an amateur,
much like myself. But we also know that he had
a background with one of the World War Two soldiers,
(13:16):
Bill Robinson, who was selected by General MacArthur for the
Senate Unit which is turned into the NSA. You know,
it is the top tier of cryptography our cryptoanalysis. To
have that as a roommate and a friend at the time,
meaning just following World War Two, where it's fresh. He
(13:37):
just got out. You know, we don't know if he
could have had a manueghing around. He may have shared
it with Marvin. He was interested in cryptography.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
We will never know.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
What we do know is that it's there and it
was available, and at that point that opens a door
for us on a circumstantial level.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Is okay.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
He may have had or had been exposed to it
through Bill Robinson.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
In case you're wondering, Bill Robinson died of cancer in
nineteen fifty nine, but we'll have much more to say
about him down the line. In another episode of the podcast,
I also went to our team of former NSA cryptologists
to ask about Margolis Merrill's code making skills and how
he might have gotten them. Combined, these guys have more
(14:20):
than fifty years as classified codebreakers with the NSA. They
believe that the Zodiac ciphers have their origins in military
code making, and that there were books and other sources
that would have been available to Margolis Merrill. This is
Patrick Henry and Ed Georgio.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
So the book that I believe would have been the
most readily available was by Helen Gaines, and it's called
Cryptanalysis A study of cipher's and a solution and you
can see on the cover a sort of grid based
cipher right that the Omi fel Wild Manual on Basic Cryptography,
(15:03):
which was actually published in nineteen fifty after the war.
So it's not clear that he would have had access
to that specifically, but other materials, similar materials may have
been available to him during training, or he spent some
time living with a cryptographer, so he may have had
(15:26):
access to materials like that. And then the third is
from nineteen sixteen Manual for the Solution of Military Ciphers
by Papa hit and that was not quite so readily available.
It was never classified, but I don't think it was
particularly widely circulated, whereas Gaines' book was available widely and
(15:51):
we published several times.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
We also think that Bill Robinson might have had that
little technical article in his backpack or something, or his
duffel bag or should say that's pure speculation, but.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Absolutely so, there may have been other materials that basically
had the same kind of contents available that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
It's another box that has caused for possible debate is
modus operandi and more specifically, the question surrounding how different
the murder of Elizabeth Short was from the Zodiac killings.
Elizabeth Short's murder was, by all counts, a personal and
passionate attack. Every profiler who has looked at the case
(16:36):
has concluded that she knew her killer. The Zodiac killings,
more than twenty years later were likely random stranger killings
and most involved firearms. How do we account for these
changes in mL do we have to account for them?
I went to our veteran homicide detectives of this one.
Missy Roberts told me that Margolis Merrill was smart and
(16:59):
had aoute mind for murder, and that is changing m
does not bother or change her conclusions at all.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Yeah, it really doesn't because for numerous reasons.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
But one of the biggest ones is if you look
at just the Zodiac case, his MO switches in just
that case alone, Like if you don't even look at
the Black Dahia, you know, like the taxi cab drivers
is completely random.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
To the case.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
And I think it's one of the reasons why it's
always been so hard to catch this guy is because
he was so unpredictable and all over the place, and
maybe you know, it was part of the game that
he played. I would say that it's no doubt that
the Zodiac and the Black Dahlia, they left these little
clues and this mystery, and so though it wouldn't surprise
(17:47):
me that one of the things he decided to do
to sort of enhance that mystery would be to change his.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Mo Rick Jackson suggests there are more things binding the
cases together in terms of mo than separating them, starting
with the taunting of the public.
Speaker 9 (18:06):
Here's my take on the taunting, the letter sending the
police to the media in this matter. I have worked
homicide for thirty six years, twenty eight with LAPD in
the last eight in cold cases in San Mateo County.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
I have never had.
Speaker 9 (18:27):
One case where a killer taunted communicated with like in
these two cases, the Zodiac and the Black Dalu. I've
never had that happen in any of my cases. And
I've worked with hundreds of investigators over those years, and
I've never known of any of them to have a
(18:48):
case that this type of thing happened. It is so rare.
It's an amazing thing. Actually, it's really kind of interesting.
And you have to have the right mindset to be
able to do that, and the confidence are arrogance to
be able to do that, because you're just increasing the chances,
especially nowadays and getting caught. The conting is just another
(19:13):
piece of circumstantial evidence that really is very, very strong.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I was wondering, when you have the Dahia reaching out
to the media and the Zodiac reaching out, what about
Marvin Merrill himself. Did he have a pension for courting
the media as himself Alex Babers says the answer is
an unequivocal yes, that he often sought media attention for
himself and the many businesses he operated in the course
(19:43):
of his life.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
That was another thing that surprised me when we dug
into his background.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Is this guy was a media account.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
He loved his face or name in the newspaper, and
he would he would write the editors of newspapers and
make these strange comments. You know, the one that he's
sent locally to San Diego when you lived in the
Oceanside was about violent demonstrations being statements. You know, used
to be the demonstrations or there res demonstrations that gets violence,
(20:14):
but now violence becomes the demonstration itself, and that kind
of you know, I'm like, is he talking about what
he's doing? Or what he's going to do here, and
then we found out also in his nineteen sixty one Wellington,
Kansas article, he admits in the article that he loves poetry,
he loves antique books, and by the way, he's a
(20:34):
former newspaper correspondent. He literally states that in his interview.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Was calling himself a newspaper correspondent, a subtle hint to
his correspondence as a Black Dahia avenger. One has to
think Merrill had a good laugh to himself about that.
You can see a sampling of his correspondence as Marvin
Merrill on the podcast website. Related to the discussion of
it is what I call the interval box, meaning how
(21:03):
do we account for the almost twenty two years between
the Black dalli and murder and the Zodiac killings. We'll
check this box later in the podcast when we reveal
evidence that sadly, there wasn't an interval at all, that
there were murders committed by Margolis Merrill in between Elizabeth
Shorts killing and the five murders officially credited by law
(21:26):
enforcement to the Zodiac. Next time, the list is the
engineering box. There's a bit of a contradiction here the
Zodiac showed a high level of skill when it came
to his last cipher and its use of measurements of
radians and degrees on a map, but he also supplied
(21:46):
the schematic drawing of a bomb he allegedly planted that
showed a basic knowledge of electric circuitry, yes, but was
also almost childlike and flawed.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
We identified that he had a background in engineering and surveying.
We located an article where he's a otion side in
the early sixties and he's a engineer architect and he
runs this company called the Project Consultants is what it's called.
And knowing that and digging deeper into it, his knowledge
(22:20):
of ratings and degrees would have been necessary in order
to hold that position. And that's very interesting when he
took it into in delight the Z thirty two and
the letter that says, you know, the Mount Diablo map
concerns ratings and inches in particular. So we knew that
he had the background to do this, and for the
first time we have a suspect that has that background
(22:45):
that the block needs to be checked, and Marvin does that.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
We will have further discussions about this when we get
to the Z thirty two cipher in a few minutes.
There are many more boxes to check, and we will
get to them all in the course of the podcast.
But the last box to discuss today is proximity. This
is an important one. Can we place Margolis Merrill in
geographic proximity to the killings with the Dahlia murder? That's easy.
(23:15):
He briefly lived with Elizabeth Short just three months before
her murder. Police records call him her last known boyfriend.
He lived in the Guardian Arms apartments on Hollywood Boulevard
and was known to be taking pre med's classes at USC.
So the challenge with this box is in putting Meryl
Margolis in the Bay Area at the time of the
(23:37):
Zodiac killings. Records indicate Meryl kept a home near San
Diego through the late sixties and into the seventies, but
records also placed him in San Jose in nineteen sixty nine,
where he rented a house under the name Skip Merrill,
another alias that draws on his birth name of Marvin
Skipton Margolis. It appears he rented the house while still
(24:01):
maintaining a home near San Diego where his family lived.
This coincides with a period of time when, according to
his son, he was working as an engineer for Intel,
the semiconductor chip company located in Santa Clara. In one
of the boxes of documents the Sun turned over to
the investigation, we found Intel business cards in the name
(24:23):
of Skip Merrill. Intel's headquarters would be a twenty five
minute drive from the house Merril rented in San Jose.
We'll come back to Intel and whether Merrill actually worked
there in a later episode. Getting back to the proximity box.
The question is whether San Jose was too far from
the killing zone for us to check the box. It
(24:45):
was about seventy miles from the San Jose house to
Solano County, where the first two Zodiac attacks took place.
With traffic, that could be a ninety minute drive. The
location of the Paul Stein murder in San Francisco would
have been a much shorter drive. The homicide detective is
involved in this investigation. Don't see the distance as being
(25:06):
an impediment to checking the box.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I mean, seventy miles is not that far of a
distance for somebody to travel because they don't want to
hunt in their own backyard.
Speaker 9 (25:19):
Well, I don't have any problem. I mean, that's that's
an hour, hour and fifteen minute drive. And it's what
you have to look at is look beyond that, is
look at the evidence that connects him, not just the location.
And when you take all those things into into your
(25:40):
you know you're viewing as the detective, all those things
together amount to so much more than just a location.
It's not like it's you have to get on a
plane and go there or drive four or five hours.
It's it's a short drive and in general, and I
don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
The next question about proximity that up his why Solano County.
If Margolis Merrill was in San Jose and didn't want
to hunt in his backyard, why did he then pick
Ballejoe and nearby places in the North Bay area. Well,
the investigation conducted by Baber and his team uncovered an
intriguing set of facts that might hold an answer. The
(26:21):
second Zodiac attack came early in the morning of July fifth,
nineteen sixty nine, in the parking lot of Blue Rock
Springs Park in Ballejo. A couple was shot multiple times
as they sat in a car. The woman, Darlene Fahren, died.
The man, Michael Maggud survived. I should note here that
(26:42):
July fifth happened to be the birthday of Margolis Merrill's
youngest child. Directly after the shooting at the park, the
Zodiac called the Vallejo Police Department and claimed responsibility. He said,
and I quote, I want to report a double murray.
If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway
(27:03):
to the public park, you will find the kids in
a brown car. They were shot with a nine millimeter luger.
I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye. That call
marked the beginning of the Zodiac's reign of terror in
the Bay Area. It was straced to a payphone at
a gas station at the corner of Tulamay Avenue and
(27:24):
Springs Road, so the location appeared to be significant. The
police plotted two possible routes from the park to the
phone booth the Zodiac used, and going either way, he
would have passed several payphones before getting to the one
he stopped at. Why stop at that particular phone? Was
it a random choice or was there something significant about
(27:47):
that intersection? Perhaps the answer is this, That payphone happened
to be less than five hundred feet from the house.
Where Elizabeth Short lived with her father when she first
moved to California five years before her murder.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
If you were to stand where the phone booth was
at the time he placed that phone call, you could
see the front door of where Elizabeth resided when she
first came to California.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
It had been twenty two years since the Black Dallia murder.
How could Marvin Merrill the Zodiac have known that address
and understood its significance, especially when the original investigators had
listed the wrong the Lahill address in case records. Well,
obviously Elizabeth could have told him when he was Marvin
Margolis and they lived together in Hollywood three months before
(28:41):
her death. But also remember that after her murder, the
Black Dahlia Avenger mailed the contents of her purse to
a Los Angeles newspaper. This included an address book with
several pages torn out. Investigators learned that Elizabeth had a
habit of writing her current address or phone number down
in the book and then tearing out the page to
(29:02):
give who acquaintance that she'd meet. That accounted for some
of the missing pages, but there are also pages that
have been removed with a straight edge. Her killer likely
took those pages and whatever information they may have contained.
Investigators had learned that Elizabeth liked to journal. Could she
have written about her journey from Massachusetts to California in
(29:24):
those missing pages? Could she have included the Springs Road
address in Vallejoe. Possibly, but detectives traced the address book
to a Hollywood acquaintance and sometime benefactor, So Elizabeth did
not have that book with her on her journey to
California in nineteen forty two. But speaking of that journey,
(29:45):
here's another interesting connection between the Dahlia case and the Zodiac.
According to records obtained by baber And from the original investigation,
Elizabeth left Boston on a bus to California on December fifteenth,
nineteen forty two. Her destination was Vallejo, where she would
live with her father, Cleo Short on Springs Road. According
(30:08):
to bus schedules from that time, the trip west would
have taken five days. This would put her arrival on
Vallejo on December twentieth, nineteen forty two. The first known
Zodiac attack occurred in a lover's Lane not far from
Balleo on December twentieth, nineteen sixty eight. Was December twentieth
(30:28):
merely a coincidence. Was the first attack on July fifth,
the birthday of Meryl Margolis's child, a coincidence? And was
the zodiac chusing that particular payphone just the coincidence or
was it all part of what detectives call a fact pattern.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
The thing about coincidence starts out with just one, and
so you kind of.
Speaker 8 (30:49):
It's easy to discard. It's easy to sort of say, ah,
that's just wow, that's weird. But then you get.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Another one, and then you get another one, and then
you get another one, and all of a sudden, it's like,
this is not coincidence anymore. This is more this is
more evidentiary, this is more fact. I feel like when
you get a coincidence after a coincidence, that leads to
the same conclusion that it's no longer coincidence.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
It's a fact.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And that seems what's happening in this case for sure,
and in law enforcement in these kind.
Speaker 8 (31:22):
Of cases, that's what they say fact patterns. So, yeah,
patterns of factual things that occurred, and so it's no
longer a coincidence, it's a fact pattern.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
When you come up and come upon coincidence. As an investigation,
you definitely become alerted to those and you need to
follow up see is there more to this or is
it just a one a one item coincidence, if you will.
In this case, it's totally irrelevant because, and it's a
(31:57):
saying that we've all heard as detectives and just in
life in general, a coincidence followed by a coincidence, followed
by a coincidence in maybe ten or fifteen or twenty
other coincidence is at some point no longer become a coincidence.
It's it's just a percentage of things that just can
(32:19):
happen randomly. After a while, and that stuff becomes very important.
It's a basis for circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Okay, let's move on now to a discussion of the
Zodiac's last cipher, known as the Z thirty two. We
need to first start with the Zodiac note that included
the Z thirteen code. It also included a sketch of
a bomb the Zodiac claimed he would plant in order
to take out a school bus. You can check it
out on our website, but essentially it's a crew drawing
(32:50):
of a Rube Goldberg sort of device that would involve
a bus driving by an unknown spot and blocking sunlight
from reflecting on a mirror, thus closing an electric circuit
and detonating a string of bombs as the bus drove by.
It does not take into consideration that a vehicle like
a truck driving by could also detonate the bomb, or
(33:13):
that there could be any number of reasons for the
sun's connection to the mirror to be interrupted, let alone
the idea that a mirror positioned on the side of
the road would go unnoticed. Though it was likely just
a hollow threat, if not a joke, the threat served
the Zodiac's purpose of stoking the grip kafir he held
on the Bay Area. Parents literally started driving their kids
(33:36):
to school. The bomb threat was followed on June twenty sixth,
nineteen seventy, with a letter from the Zodiac to the
San Francisco Chronicle. It contained the Z thirty two cipher,
along with a Phillip sixty six map of the Bay Area.
The familiar Zodiac symbol, the circle with the crosshairs, was
(33:57):
centered on the peak of Mount Diablo in the e
Pay area. The message from the Zodiac read the map
coupled with this code will tell you where the bomb
is set. You have till next fall to dig it
up on the map. The Zodiac noted that the crosshair
logo should be set to magnetic north. The Z thirty
(34:19):
two proved difficult to crack, largely because there were only
three repeating symbols, leaving twenty six variables a codebreaker's nightmare,
especially in nineteen seventy one, computer technology and processing power
was nothing like it would become in the decades ahead.
A month later, with Z thirty two unbroken, the Zodiac
(34:41):
offered a sizeable hint in a new letter to the Chronicle.
He quoted the Mikado, the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera,
and ended the note with ps. The Mount Diablo code
concerns radians and numbers of inches along the radians.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Note.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
It also included two versions of the Zodiac Killer's standard
crosshairs symbol and is repeating Zodiac versus Police scorecard, which
was now thirteen to zero, apparently meaning that his kill
count was now up to thirteen while the police were
scoreless in their attempts to identify and capture him. There
(35:21):
was one curious difference in the score. This time one
of the crosshair circles contained a zero that was round
instead of oval, and was also deeply outlined. It was
inside the circle and positioned at about eight if it
were a clockface. To many decoders, this meant something in
addition to the clues about inches and radians. It took
(35:47):
many years, but the hint from the zodiac helped the
code Z thirty two. The interpretation was that if the
Zodiac said it was about inches and radians, then the
fuller variation of those two words would be in the code.
A radian is a measurement of the arc of a circle.
Roughly six radians of equal length complete a circle. They
(36:07):
are technically measured in degrees, with three hundred and sixty
degrees being the full circle, but going by the face
of a clock, for example, two radians would generally put
you at four, while four radians would put you at
the eight. I want to try to avoid being two
technical here, but a radian is basically two times pi,
(36:29):
and because Pi is a number that can go on
to infinity, radians are often measured in estimates, and so
the word estimate or its abbreviation was assumed by a
cryptologists to also be somewhere in the Z thirty two cipher.
In the last few years, various codebreakers have come out
with their interpretation of the Z thirty two. One solution
(36:52):
that fit the cipher was estimate four radians and five inches.
When that formula was applied to the Phillip sixty six
sixth map with the crosshairs turned to the coordinates for
magnetic north in nineteen seventy, the radiant tracks the line
from the peak of Mount Diablo five inches to a
spot on the map where there is a police station. However,
(37:15):
in fifty five years since the Zodiac made his bomb threat,
no bomb was ever found near that police station or
anywhere else in the Bay Area. What was the Zodiac
trying to say, there is no bomb and the jokes
on the police That seems hardly worth the effort to
provide the map and coded coordinates. Then along came Alex Baber,
(37:37):
the self styled cold case investigator, who had just cracked
the Z thirteen cipher. He had information none of those
codebreakers before him had. He had the name Marvin Merrill.
He knew Merrill's real name was Marvin Margolis and that
he was a prime suspect in the murder of the
Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short. He knew that on the night
(37:59):
of the second Zodiac attack, the killer called the police
from a gas station that had a view of Elizabeth
Short's one time front door. It seemed to him that
Elizabeth Short was at the nexus of these cases, armed
with this intel. Baber thought that maybe it wasn't a
(38:19):
map to a bomb. The bomb schematic, after all, was ludicrous.
It wasn't just a hoax. It was a joke played
on the public by a killer who had a history
of taunting the public. Baber thought about the heavily outlined
zero that was inside the circle of the crosshair, positioned
at eight o'clock, the same as for Radiant. He thought
(38:40):
about going short of the perimeter armed off all this,
he tried a different decryption of the Z thirty two
estimate for Radiant and three inches it fit into cipher
and when it was fitted to the crosshair symbol set
to nineteen seventy magnetic north, the darkened round zero covered
place on the map called Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland,
(39:05):
the final resting place of the Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
There was never a bomb. If he's referencing Elizabeth as
the bomb. That makes sense now again, it is a
part of his game. He's always there's always this thing
about him. It's moreoty like. It's as if there's this
hidden agender layer that you have to discover to identify
what his cluer plan is.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
It was a game that he described it himself.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
He was playing chess with everybody else, including law enforcement
in the public, but nobody could beat him at his
own game.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
If the zodiac was mariarity like, did that put Baber
in the role of Sherlock Holmes. It seemed that everywhere
he looked as he investigated, that he found clues that
showed the cunning detail that went into every move the
killer made, even the choice of a Phillips sixty six map.
Elizabeth Short was buried by her family at Mountain View
Cemetery in early nineteen forty seven. It was a spot
(40:01):
close to her nearest family member, a sister who lived
in Oakland. Visitors to her grave in the vast cemetery
will find it in section sixty six. Now is Baber's
proposed solution to Z thirty two and exercise in confirmation bias?
(40:22):
Perhaps I'm sure there will be many who will claim that,
while others will see it as part of the fact pattern.
Mitzie Roberts spoke of Baber readily admits he came to
the last cipher from a starting point that was Elizabeth Short.
But it is a piece of the puzzle that irrefutably
fits into place with the cipher and other factors as well.
(40:43):
And as we end this episode, let me add one
other thing to that fact pattern and puzzle. As I
mentioned before, in the note that carried the Z thirty
two cipher, the Zodiac quoted from the Mercado opera when
the night Elizabeth Short was murdered in Los Angeles, the
Mikado was performed on stage on Hollywood Boulevard, not far
(41:05):
from the Hollywood apartment she once shared with Marvin Margolis,
and the quote the Zodiac used in his message with
the Z thirty two was this, as someday it may
happen that a victim must be found. I've got a
little list of society offenders who might well be underground. Underground,
(41:28):
think about that, and you decide whether confirmation bias led
this investigation astray. In our next episode, coming Thursday, we
are going to sit down with our independent cryptology team
and tell the story of their investigation within the investigation
and how it led not only to a confirmation of
(41:50):
Alex Baber's work, but also connected Marvin Merrill to another murder.
It's a thrower. I'm Michael Connolly and you've been listening
to Killer in the Code solving the Black Dali and
Zodiac cases. This chapter was written and produced by Michael Connolly.
(42:12):
It was edited by Teroll Lee Langford. Sound designed by
Michael Odemark with music by Mark Henry Phillips. Go to
Killerinthecode dot com for more information on the investigation. Thank
you for listening.
This is Michael Connolly and you're listening to Killer in
the Code Solving the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases. This
is chapter three. We originally said we would be back
with this episode on January fifteenth, but this has become
a fast moving story and we decided to push things up.
So here we are. But before we get into it,
(00:23):
I just want to give what I guess is a
preface here. We dropped the first two episodes a couple
weeks ago and named Marvin Margolis aka Marvin Merrill aka
Skip Merrill as the killer in both the Zodiac and
Black Dahia cases. It created quite a stir on the
Internet on various sites and threads dedicated to one or
(00:44):
both of these infamous cases. As predicted in our first episode,
people sniped at our findings, mostly without bothering to listen
to them first or wait for the rest of the podcast.
I feel I made a mistake in those opening episodes
by not operately introducing a couple members of the team
who have been involved in the investigation and fully support
(01:06):
its findings. So briefly, let me introduce two of the
cold case homicide investigators who are part of this team. First,
there is Missy Roberts. She spent twenty nine years with
the Los Angeles Police Department, most of it working homicides,
before retiring last year as the detective in charge of
(01:26):
the Cold Case Unit. During the last half of her
career with the LAPD, she was assigned to the murder
of Elizabeth Short that are known as the Black Dahlia.
During that time, she was able to review almost all
of the records and evidence still in the custody of
the police department. This included a four drawer file cabinet
(01:47):
and a trunk containing Elizabeth's longings. During that time with
the case, she was able to review and debunk the
theories and claims by some of the people now upset
by this podcast. Example, there are those out there who
say Marvin Margolis was cleared in the Black Dahlia case
by the LAPD. Roberts assuredly says he was not. And
(02:11):
I think what you should know is that, without question,
Roberts knows more about the Dahlia case than any investigator alive.
But the Dahlia case was only one assignment. She worked
dozens of murders and made dozens of arrests As a
homicide investigator. Probably most notably, she apprehended Sam Little, a
serial killer who had a near fifty year run until
(02:33):
Roberts caught the case and in turn finally caught him.
The FBI says Little, who confessed to killing ninety three people,
is the most prolific serial killer on record. Though he
left bodies in his way from coast to coast, he
ultimately was only convicted of three murders, all cases put
together in Los Angeles by Detective Roberts. Also a member
(02:59):
of this team is Rick Jackson, who spent thirty four
years with the LAPD, most of them in homicide. He
retired from the department's cold case unit a few years back,
moved up to the Bay Area in northern California, and
promptly realized he couldn't give it up. He's a man
on a mission, a mission to bring justice to victims.
He became a cold case investigator for the San Mateo
(03:22):
County Sheriff's Department. He and his partner, Dave Tresmontin, also
a member of this team, saw three murders in the
last couple of years, one of which dated all the
way back to the time of the Zodiac killings. I
should also mention here that both Jackson and Roberts serve
as inspirations for characters I write about in my novels.
(03:43):
That would be Harry Bosh and Renee Baward. They are
the living embodiment of the homicide detectives Creed. Everybody Counts
or Nobody counts. These are people who solve murders in
real life, not on the Internet, not on YouTube. They
gather I must rely on real evinue. It's when they
make cases, and that dedication to the truth is what
(04:04):
they bring to this investigation. At the end of the
run of this podcast, we're going to have a roundtable
discussion with Alex Baber and all the investigators, and we
will answer questions sent to our website killerndecode dot com
and take on all critics of the work they have done.
I think it's going to be fun. Now one to
(04:30):
chapter three. I don't think we need to start with
another recap. But before we get into a new decoding
and interpretation of the zodiacs last cipher, I want to
talk about checking boxes. While the investigation by the team
led by cold case consultant Baber is built on his
reveal of the suspect's name in the Ze thirteen cipher.
(04:52):
That is only a starting point. That's not evidence of anything.
To make the case that Margolis Merrill, as I've taken
a call in him, was indeed both the Zodiac killer
and the Black Dalua Avenger, he need to check many boxes,
and each of those boxes is a piece of a
puzzle that, when completed, will prove the case. This is
(05:13):
Missy Roberts.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
I had a murder case and one of the closing arguments,
the DA would actually in a PowerPoint, would take a
piece of evidence and put and had like a puzzle
board and would put that in a piece of the puzzle.
And once the last piece of the puzzle, which was
a major piece of evidence was placed into the puzzle,
the picture of the actual person.
Speaker 1 (05:37):
That did it.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
And it was such a cool thing because it's just
one she put all the evidence together. The picture is
clear and it leads to the person that did it.
And in this case, I think it's very clear that
that's Margaret Margolis.
Speaker 1 (05:58):
Okay, so let's start check in boxes. Some of these
will pertain to only one of the cases for obvious reasons,
but some will need to be checked in both cases
to be valid. Let's begin with what is perhaps the
easiest one, the physible aspects of the killer. Since there
were no known witnesses to Elizabeth Short's abduction or the
(06:19):
discarding of her body, this is pretty much a Zodiac box.
The final killing officially attributed to the Zodiac was the
murder of San Francisco cab driver Paul Stein on October eleventh,
nineteen sixty nine. A description of the killer who shot
Stein was obtained from three children who looked out a
(06:39):
window in their home and saw the fleeing man, as
well as two police officers who passed him while responding
to the shooting call. The police put out a description
of a white male thirty five to forty five years old,
with a stocky build and height between five eight and
six foot. He wore glasses and had a crew cut,
(07:00):
adding descriptors from surviving victims of the earlier attacks, The
Zodiac was known to be right handed as well. This
is Alex Baber.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
Okay, so here's what we know.
Speaker 4 (07:11):
We know that he's within the height bracket, which is
a five eight to six foot.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
We know he's right at five ten some accounts of
five nine. O. There's a five ten, depending on what
account you go by.
Speaker 4 (07:22):
We know that he's right handed, sign verified that as
well as some images show him using his right hand
which would imply such.
Speaker 3 (07:31):
We also know that he wore glasses all the time.
Speaker 4 (07:35):
You know, there's there's an account where his son says
in an audio, Yeah, my dad wore glasses all the time.
He had two bears of glasses he wore. You know,
he's very very clear about that. And also we discovered
when we went through the evidence that he shared with
us with the detective Jackson and Mitzi, we discovered a
(07:55):
Vai prescription that we have in our possession that also
verified I said he needed glasses. And then we know
his physical characteristics fit as well his weight at that
time approximate weight, which he can't really depend on because
people fluctuate, but we do know from the photograph that
was shared with us the additional photograph that he fits
(08:15):
the script as far as the barrel chested and built
that was described by not only the three children from
the elevated position, but as well as the police officer.
Speaker 1 (08:28):
Listeners can go to our website to see a side
by side comparison of the suspect sketch distributed by police
after the Stein murder and an enhanced image of margois Merril.
Let me repeat it is enhanced and clearly marked, so
so no one has to claim subterfuge on our part.
How is it enhanced? Eyeglasses were added and the hair
(08:49):
was shortened to the length described by the witnesses. So
we added eyeglasses to the photo. But it is a
fact that Margolis Merrill wore glasses, and on this you
can find the suspects prescriptions for eyeglasses issued by the
VA under his real name Margolis. Okay. Next, let's go
with medical skill, another easy box to check. Detectives investigating
(09:13):
the Elizabeth Short murder concluded that it took a degree
of medical knowledge and skill to carry out the bisection
of her body, as well as some of the other
tortures visited upon her, but they didn't conclude that it
was someone with expert surgical skills, as some have claimed
over the years. While it is clear from the investigative
(09:33):
records that they approached local hospitals and made inquiries about
surgeons acting suspiciously, they also asked about nurses acting suspiciously.
They also went to the University of Southern California, located
near where the black Dahia's body was found, and asked
for a list of students enrolled into medical school at
the time of the murder.
Speaker 3 (09:55):
Well, from the get go, the corner surgeon.
Speaker 5 (10:00):
Clearly that he believed it was somebody had medical knowledge
or knowledge of human anatomy, which is present if you
look at the mutilation. But for them to believe there
was only a skilled surgeon is outlandish, and the reason
being is they themselves were a going to USC medical school.
Speaker 4 (10:20):
Get he listed three hundred students that they were checking individually.
If they truly believed it was a skilled surgeon, who
would never have had that list generated for the.
Speaker 1 (10:28):
FBI either way. Marvin Check's at box he was attending
USC's medical school at the time of the killing, and,
according to police records, had engaged in a dissection of
a human body in the months before the Dallia murder,
and prior to that, he had been a Navy corman
attached to a marine unit during the World War II
(10:49):
battle on Okinawa. He dealt with wounded soldiers in the
battlefield hospital. As it says in the investigative records, he
cared for many quote mangled soldiers. Moving on, let's go
with firearms training. Remember three of the Zodiac attacks involved shootings.
Speaker 4 (11:10):
Yeah, Marvin had plenty of training. He was a naval corman,
which their training is specific. Daring world War two was
with a forty five APC. The backstory this is is
Daring world War two the medics or the corman when
they were in action, they carried only a sidearm and
they had to.
Speaker 3 (11:27):
Be proficient with it.
Speaker 4 (11:29):
And that being said, we know that Zodiac was extremely
proficient with Is he hit Jensen.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
Running in the dark. He claims he had a flashlight
that he taped.
Speaker 4 (11:39):
To the barrel, But even at that point for him
to hit a moving target in the dark as as
it's going away from you is very impressive.
Speaker 3 (11:49):
And the five rounds are in close proximity of each
other in her back. So he did have some skill
as a marksman with a cyber.
Speaker 1 (12:00):
The victim Baber was referring to there was Betty Lou Jensen,
who was shot to death in the Zodiac Killer's first
known attack December twentieth, nineteen sixty eight. Our next box
is an important one cryptographic expertise. The Zodiac composed four
(12:22):
ciphers that were mailed to Bay Area newspapers. The first
was cracked in a week, but the next three stood
the test of time and were not broken for more
than fifty years. That shows some serious expertise. If margois
Merrill was the Zodiac, where did he get it?
Speaker 4 (12:40):
To be honest, I don't think we could ever positively
identify this background in cryptography, and the reason being is
unless we discover another piece of evidence or a cryptography
book in the storage or possession that he left behind, we.
Speaker 3 (12:54):
Really can't be sure.
Speaker 4 (12:55):
What we do know is that being an autodiak polymaths
like myself, he would be able to teach himself and
it wouldn't have been very difficult, and he did make
mistakes which are our key that shows he is an amateur,
much like myself. But we also know that he had
a background with one of the World War Two soldiers,
(13:16):
Bill Robinson, who was selected by General MacArthur for the
Senate Unit which is turned into the NSA. You know,
it is the top tier of cryptography our cryptoanalysis. To
have that as a roommate and a friend at the time,
meaning just following World War Two, where it's fresh. He
(13:37):
just got out. You know, we don't know if he
could have had a manueghing around. He may have shared
it with Marvin. He was interested in cryptography.
Speaker 3 (13:44):
We will never know.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
What we do know is that it's there and it
was available, and at that point that opens a door
for us on a circumstantial level.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
Is okay.
Speaker 4 (13:54):
He may have had or had been exposed to it
through Bill Robinson.
Speaker 1 (14:00):
In case you're wondering, Bill Robinson died of cancer in
nineteen fifty nine, but we'll have much more to say
about him down the line. In another episode of the podcast,
I also went to our team of former NSA cryptologists
to ask about Margolis Merrill's code making skills and how
he might have gotten them. Combined, these guys have more
(14:20):
than fifty years as classified codebreakers with the NSA. They
believe that the Zodiac ciphers have their origins in military
code making, and that there were books and other sources
that would have been available to Margolis Merrill. This is
Patrick Henry and Ed Georgio.
Speaker 6 (14:39):
So the book that I believe would have been the
most readily available was by Helen Gaines, and it's called
Cryptanalysis A study of cipher's and a solution and you
can see on the cover a sort of grid based
cipher right that the Omi fel Wild Manual on Basic Cryptography,
(15:03):
which was actually published in nineteen fifty after the war.
So it's not clear that he would have had access
to that specifically, but other materials, similar materials may have
been available to him during training, or he spent some
time living with a cryptographer, so he may have had
(15:26):
access to materials like that. And then the third is
from nineteen sixteen Manual for the Solution of Military Ciphers
by Papa hit and that was not quite so readily available.
It was never classified, but I don't think it was
particularly widely circulated, whereas Gaines' book was available widely and
(15:51):
we published several times.
Speaker 7 (15:53):
We also think that Bill Robinson might have had that
little technical article in his backpack or something, or his
duffel bag or should say that's pure speculation, but.
Speaker 6 (16:07):
Absolutely so, there may have been other materials that basically
had the same kind of contents available that.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
It's another box that has caused for possible debate is
modus operandi and more specifically, the question surrounding how different
the murder of Elizabeth Short was from the Zodiac killings.
Elizabeth Short's murder was, by all counts, a personal and
passionate attack. Every profiler who has looked at the case
(16:36):
has concluded that she knew her killer. The Zodiac killings,
more than twenty years later were likely random stranger killings
and most involved firearms. How do we account for these
changes in mL do we have to account for them?
I went to our veteran homicide detectives of this one.
Missy Roberts told me that Margolis Merrill was smart and
(16:59):
had aoute mind for murder, and that is changing m
does not bother or change her conclusions at all.
Speaker 8 (17:08):
Yeah, it really doesn't because for numerous reasons.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
But one of the biggest ones is if you look
at just the Zodiac case, his MO switches in just
that case alone, Like if you don't even look at
the Black Dahia, you know, like the taxi cab drivers
is completely random.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
To the case.
Speaker 2 (17:25):
And I think it's one of the reasons why it's
always been so hard to catch this guy is because
he was so unpredictable and all over the place, and
maybe you know, it was part of the game that
he played. I would say that it's no doubt that
the Zodiac and the Black Dahlia, they left these little
clues and this mystery, and so though it wouldn't surprise
(17:47):
me that one of the things he decided to do
to sort of enhance that mystery would be to change his.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
Mo Rick Jackson suggests there are more things binding the
cases together in terms of mo than separating them, starting
with the taunting of the public.
Speaker 9 (18:06):
Here's my take on the taunting, the letter sending the
police to the media in this matter. I have worked
homicide for thirty six years, twenty eight with LAPD in
the last eight in cold cases in San Mateo County.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
I have never had.
Speaker 9 (18:27):
One case where a killer taunted communicated with like in
these two cases, the Zodiac and the Black Dalu. I've
never had that happen in any of my cases. And
I've worked with hundreds of investigators over those years, and
I've never known of any of them to have a
(18:48):
case that this type of thing happened. It is so rare.
It's an amazing thing. Actually, it's really kind of interesting.
And you have to have the right mindset to be
able to do that, and the confidence are arrogance to
be able to do that, because you're just increasing the chances,
especially nowadays and getting caught. The conting is just another
(19:13):
piece of circumstantial evidence that really is very, very strong.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I was wondering, when you have the Dahia reaching out
to the media and the Zodiac reaching out, what about
Marvin Merrill himself. Did he have a pension for courting
the media as himself Alex Babers says the answer is
an unequivocal yes, that he often sought media attention for
himself and the many businesses he operated in the course
(19:43):
of his life.
Speaker 4 (19:44):
That was another thing that surprised me when we dug
into his background.
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Is this guy was a media account.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
He loved his face or name in the newspaper, and
he would he would write the editors of newspapers and
make these strange comments. You know, the one that he's
sent locally to San Diego when you lived in the
Oceanside was about violent demonstrations being statements. You know, used
to be the demonstrations or there res demonstrations that gets violence,
(20:14):
but now violence becomes the demonstration itself, and that kind
of you know, I'm like, is he talking about what
he's doing? Or what he's going to do here, and
then we found out also in his nineteen sixty one Wellington,
Kansas article, he admits in the article that he loves poetry,
he loves antique books, and by the way, he's a
(20:34):
former newspaper correspondent. He literally states that in his interview.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Was calling himself a newspaper correspondent, a subtle hint to
his correspondence as a Black Dahia avenger. One has to
think Merrill had a good laugh to himself about that.
You can see a sampling of his correspondence as Marvin
Merrill on the podcast website. Related to the discussion of
it is what I call the interval box, meaning how
(21:03):
do we account for the almost twenty two years between
the Black dalli and murder and the Zodiac killings. We'll
check this box later in the podcast when we reveal
evidence that sadly, there wasn't an interval at all, that
there were murders committed by Margolis Merrill in between Elizabeth
Shorts killing and the five murders officially credited by law
(21:26):
enforcement to the Zodiac. Next time, the list is the
engineering box. There's a bit of a contradiction here the
Zodiac showed a high level of skill when it came
to his last cipher and its use of measurements of
radians and degrees on a map, but he also supplied
(21:46):
the schematic drawing of a bomb he allegedly planted that
showed a basic knowledge of electric circuitry, yes, but was
also almost childlike and flawed.
Speaker 4 (21:57):
We identified that he had a background in engineering and surveying.
We located an article where he's a otion side in
the early sixties and he's a engineer architect and he
runs this company called the Project Consultants is what it's called.
And knowing that and digging deeper into it, his knowledge
(22:20):
of ratings and degrees would have been necessary in order
to hold that position. And that's very interesting when he
took it into in delight the Z thirty two and
the letter that says, you know, the Mount Diablo map
concerns ratings and inches in particular. So we knew that
he had the background to do this, and for the
first time we have a suspect that has that background
(22:45):
that the block needs to be checked, and Marvin does that.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
We will have further discussions about this when we get
to the Z thirty two cipher in a few minutes.
There are many more boxes to check, and we will
get to them all in the course of the podcast.
But the last box to discuss today is proximity. This
is an important one. Can we place Margolis Merrill in
geographic proximity to the killings with the Dahlia murder? That's easy.
(23:15):
He briefly lived with Elizabeth Short just three months before
her murder. Police records call him her last known boyfriend.
He lived in the Guardian Arms apartments on Hollywood Boulevard
and was known to be taking pre med's classes at USC.
So the challenge with this box is in putting Meryl
Margolis in the Bay Area at the time of the
(23:37):
Zodiac killings. Records indicate Meryl kept a home near San
Diego through the late sixties and into the seventies, but
records also placed him in San Jose in nineteen sixty nine,
where he rented a house under the name Skip Merrill,
another alias that draws on his birth name of Marvin
Skipton Margolis. It appears he rented the house while still
(24:01):
maintaining a home near San Diego where his family lived.
This coincides with a period of time when, according to
his son, he was working as an engineer for Intel,
the semiconductor chip company located in Santa Clara. In one
of the boxes of documents the Sun turned over to
the investigation, we found Intel business cards in the name
(24:23):
of Skip Merrill. Intel's headquarters would be a twenty five
minute drive from the house Merril rented in San Jose.
We'll come back to Intel and whether Merrill actually worked
there in a later episode. Getting back to the proximity box.
The question is whether San Jose was too far from
the killing zone for us to check the box. It
(24:45):
was about seventy miles from the San Jose house to
Solano County, where the first two Zodiac attacks took place.
With traffic, that could be a ninety minute drive. The
location of the Paul Stein murder in San Francisco would
have been a much shorter drive. The homicide detective is
involved in this investigation. Don't see the distance as being
(25:06):
an impediment to checking the box.
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I mean, seventy miles is not that far of a
distance for somebody to travel because they don't want to
hunt in their own backyard.
Speaker 9 (25:19):
Well, I don't have any problem. I mean, that's that's
an hour, hour and fifteen minute drive. And it's what
you have to look at is look beyond that, is
look at the evidence that connects him, not just the location.
And when you take all those things into into your
(25:40):
you know you're viewing as the detective, all those things
together amount to so much more than just a location.
It's not like it's you have to get on a
plane and go there or drive four or five hours.
It's it's a short drive and in general, and I
don't have a problem with it.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
The next question about proximity that up his why Solano County.
If Margolis Merrill was in San Jose and didn't want
to hunt in his backyard, why did he then pick
Ballejoe and nearby places in the North Bay area. Well,
the investigation conducted by Baber and his team uncovered an
intriguing set of facts that might hold an answer. The
(26:21):
second Zodiac attack came early in the morning of July fifth,
nineteen sixty nine, in the parking lot of Blue Rock
Springs Park in Ballejo. A couple was shot multiple times
as they sat in a car. The woman, Darlene Fahren, died.
The man, Michael Maggud survived. I should note here that
(26:42):
July fifth happened to be the birthday of Margolis Merrill's
youngest child. Directly after the shooting at the park, the
Zodiac called the Vallejo Police Department and claimed responsibility. He said,
and I quote, I want to report a double murray.
If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway
(27:03):
to the public park, you will find the kids in
a brown car. They were shot with a nine millimeter luger.
I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye. That call
marked the beginning of the Zodiac's reign of terror in
the Bay Area. It was straced to a payphone at
a gas station at the corner of Tulamay Avenue and
(27:24):
Springs Road, so the location appeared to be significant. The
police plotted two possible routes from the park to the
phone booth the Zodiac used, and going either way, he
would have passed several payphones before getting to the one
he stopped at. Why stop at that particular phone? Was
it a random choice or was there something significant about
(27:47):
that intersection? Perhaps the answer is this, That payphone happened
to be less than five hundred feet from the house.
Where Elizabeth Short lived with her father when she first
moved to California five years before her murder.
Speaker 4 (28:04):
If you were to stand where the phone booth was
at the time he placed that phone call, you could
see the front door of where Elizabeth resided when she
first came to California.
Speaker 1 (28:17):
It had been twenty two years since the Black Dallia murder.
How could Marvin Merrill the Zodiac have known that address
and understood its significance, especially when the original investigators had
listed the wrong the Lahill address in case records. Well,
obviously Elizabeth could have told him when he was Marvin
Margolis and they lived together in Hollywood three months before
(28:41):
her death. But also remember that after her murder, the
Black Dahlia Avenger mailed the contents of her purse to
a Los Angeles newspaper. This included an address book with
several pages torn out. Investigators learned that Elizabeth had a
habit of writing her current address or phone number down
in the book and then tearing out the page to
(29:02):
give who acquaintance that she'd meet. That accounted for some
of the missing pages, but there are also pages that
have been removed with a straight edge. Her killer likely
took those pages and whatever information they may have contained.
Investigators had learned that Elizabeth liked to journal. Could she
have written about her journey from Massachusetts to California in
(29:24):
those missing pages? Could she have included the Springs Road
address in Vallejoe. Possibly, but detectives traced the address book
to a Hollywood acquaintance and sometime benefactor, So Elizabeth did
not have that book with her on her journey to
California in nineteen forty two. But speaking of that journey,
(29:45):
here's another interesting connection between the Dahlia case and the Zodiac.
According to records obtained by baber And from the original investigation,
Elizabeth left Boston on a bus to California on December fifteenth,
nineteen forty two. Her destination was Vallejo, where she would
live with her father, Cleo Short on Springs Road. According
(30:08):
to bus schedules from that time, the trip west would
have taken five days. This would put her arrival on
Vallejo on December twentieth, nineteen forty two. The first known
Zodiac attack occurred in a lover's Lane not far from
Balleo on December twentieth, nineteen sixty eight. Was December twentieth
(30:28):
merely a coincidence. Was the first attack on July fifth,
the birthday of Meryl Margolis's child, a coincidence? And was
the zodiac chusing that particular payphone just the coincidence or
was it all part of what detectives call a fact pattern.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
The thing about coincidence starts out with just one, and
so you kind of.
Speaker 8 (30:49):
It's easy to discard. It's easy to sort of say, ah,
that's just wow, that's weird. But then you get.
Speaker 2 (30:55):
Another one, and then you get another one, and then
you get another one, and all of a sudden, it's like,
this is not coincidence anymore. This is more this is
more evidentiary, this is more fact. I feel like when
you get a coincidence after a coincidence, that leads to
the same conclusion that it's no longer coincidence.
Speaker 6 (31:13):
It's a fact.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
And that seems what's happening in this case for sure,
and in law enforcement in these kind.
Speaker 8 (31:22):
Of cases, that's what they say fact patterns. So, yeah,
patterns of factual things that occurred, and so it's no
longer a coincidence, it's a fact pattern.
Speaker 9 (31:34):
When you come up and come upon coincidence. As an investigation,
you definitely become alerted to those and you need to
follow up see is there more to this or is
it just a one a one item coincidence, if you will.
In this case, it's totally irrelevant because, and it's a
(31:57):
saying that we've all heard as detectives and just in
life in general, a coincidence followed by a coincidence, followed
by a coincidence in maybe ten or fifteen or twenty
other coincidence is at some point no longer become a coincidence.
It's it's just a percentage of things that just can
(32:19):
happen randomly. After a while, and that stuff becomes very important.
It's a basis for circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 1 (32:27):
Okay, let's move on now to a discussion of the
Zodiac's last cipher, known as the Z thirty two. We
need to first start with the Zodiac note that included
the Z thirteen code. It also included a sketch of
a bomb the Zodiac claimed he would plant in order
to take out a school bus. You can check it
out on our website, but essentially it's a crew drawing
(32:50):
of a Rube Goldberg sort of device that would involve
a bus driving by an unknown spot and blocking sunlight
from reflecting on a mirror, thus closing an electric circuit
and detonating a string of bombs as the bus drove by.
It does not take into consideration that a vehicle like
a truck driving by could also detonate the bomb, or
(33:13):
that there could be any number of reasons for the
sun's connection to the mirror to be interrupted, let alone
the idea that a mirror positioned on the side of
the road would go unnoticed. Though it was likely just
a hollow threat, if not a joke, the threat served
the Zodiac's purpose of stoking the grip kafir he held
on the Bay Area. Parents literally started driving their kids
(33:36):
to school. The bomb threat was followed on June twenty sixth,
nineteen seventy, with a letter from the Zodiac to the
San Francisco Chronicle. It contained the Z thirty two cipher,
along with a Phillip sixty six map of the Bay Area.
The familiar Zodiac symbol, the circle with the crosshairs, was
(33:57):
centered on the peak of Mount Diablo in the e
Pay area. The message from the Zodiac read the map
coupled with this code will tell you where the bomb
is set. You have till next fall to dig it
up on the map. The Zodiac noted that the crosshair
logo should be set to magnetic north. The Z thirty
(34:19):
two proved difficult to crack, largely because there were only
three repeating symbols, leaving twenty six variables a codebreaker's nightmare,
especially in nineteen seventy one, computer technology and processing power
was nothing like it would become in the decades ahead.
A month later, with Z thirty two unbroken, the Zodiac
(34:41):
offered a sizeable hint in a new letter to the Chronicle.
He quoted the Mikado, the Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera,
and ended the note with ps. The Mount Diablo code
concerns radians and numbers of inches along the radians.
Speaker 3 (34:59):
Note.
Speaker 1 (35:00):
It also included two versions of the Zodiac Killer's standard
crosshairs symbol and is repeating Zodiac versus Police scorecard, which
was now thirteen to zero, apparently meaning that his kill
count was now up to thirteen while the police were
scoreless in their attempts to identify and capture him. There
(35:21):
was one curious difference in the score. This time one
of the crosshair circles contained a zero that was round
instead of oval, and was also deeply outlined. It was
inside the circle and positioned at about eight if it
were a clockface. To many decoders, this meant something in
addition to the clues about inches and radians. It took
(35:47):
many years, but the hint from the zodiac helped the
code Z thirty two. The interpretation was that if the
Zodiac said it was about inches and radians, then the
fuller variation of those two words would be in the code.
A radian is a measurement of the arc of a circle.
Roughly six radians of equal length complete a circle. They
(36:07):
are technically measured in degrees, with three hundred and sixty
degrees being the full circle, but going by the face
of a clock, for example, two radians would generally put
you at four, while four radians would put you at
the eight. I want to try to avoid being two
technical here, but a radian is basically two times pi,
(36:29):
and because Pi is a number that can go on
to infinity, radians are often measured in estimates, and so
the word estimate or its abbreviation was assumed by a
cryptologists to also be somewhere in the Z thirty two cipher.
In the last few years, various codebreakers have come out
with their interpretation of the Z thirty two. One solution
(36:52):
that fit the cipher was estimate four radians and five inches.
When that formula was applied to the Phillip sixty six
sixth map with the crosshairs turned to the coordinates for
magnetic north in nineteen seventy, the radiant tracks the line
from the peak of Mount Diablo five inches to a
spot on the map where there is a police station. However,
(37:15):
in fifty five years since the Zodiac made his bomb threat,
no bomb was ever found near that police station or
anywhere else in the Bay Area. What was the Zodiac
trying to say, there is no bomb and the jokes
on the police That seems hardly worth the effort to
provide the map and coded coordinates. Then along came Alex Baber,
(37:37):
the self styled cold case investigator, who had just cracked
the Z thirteen cipher. He had information none of those
codebreakers before him had. He had the name Marvin Merrill.
He knew Merrill's real name was Marvin Margolis and that
he was a prime suspect in the murder of the
Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short. He knew that on the night
(37:59):
of the second Zodiac attack, the killer called the police
from a gas station that had a view of Elizabeth
Short's one time front door. It seemed to him that
Elizabeth Short was at the nexus of these cases, armed
with this intel. Baber thought that maybe it wasn't a
(38:19):
map to a bomb. The bomb schematic, after all, was ludicrous.
It wasn't just a hoax. It was a joke played
on the public by a killer who had a history
of taunting the public. Baber thought about the heavily outlined
zero that was inside the circle of the crosshair, positioned
at eight o'clock, the same as for Radiant. He thought
(38:40):
about going short of the perimeter armed off all this,
he tried a different decryption of the Z thirty two
estimate for Radiant and three inches it fit into cipher
and when it was fitted to the crosshair symbol set
to nineteen seventy magnetic north, the darkened round zero covered
place on the map called Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland,
(39:05):
the final resting place of the Black Dahlia Elizabeth Short.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
There was never a bomb. If he's referencing Elizabeth as
the bomb. That makes sense now again, it is a
part of his game. He's always there's always this thing
about him. It's moreoty like. It's as if there's this
hidden agender layer that you have to discover to identify
what his cluer plan is.
Speaker 3 (39:27):
It was a game that he described it himself.
Speaker 4 (39:29):
He was playing chess with everybody else, including law enforcement
in the public, but nobody could beat him at his
own game.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
If the zodiac was mariarity like, did that put Baber
in the role of Sherlock Holmes. It seemed that everywhere
he looked as he investigated, that he found clues that
showed the cunning detail that went into every move the
killer made, even the choice of a Phillips sixty six map.
Elizabeth Short was buried by her family at Mountain View
Cemetery in early nineteen forty seven. It was a spot
(40:01):
close to her nearest family member, a sister who lived
in Oakland. Visitors to her grave in the vast cemetery
will find it in section sixty six. Now is Baber's
proposed solution to Z thirty two and exercise in confirmation bias?
(40:22):
Perhaps I'm sure there will be many who will claim that,
while others will see it as part of the fact pattern.
Mitzie Roberts spoke of Baber readily admits he came to
the last cipher from a starting point that was Elizabeth Short.
But it is a piece of the puzzle that irrefutably
fits into place with the cipher and other factors as well.
(40:43):
And as we end this episode, let me add one
other thing to that fact pattern and puzzle. As I
mentioned before, in the note that carried the Z thirty
two cipher, the Zodiac quoted from the Mercado opera when
the night Elizabeth Short was murdered in Los Angeles, the
Mikado was performed on stage on Hollywood Boulevard, not far
(41:05):
from the Hollywood apartment she once shared with Marvin Margolis,
and the quote the Zodiac used in his message with
the Z thirty two was this, as someday it may
happen that a victim must be found. I've got a
little list of society offenders who might well be underground. Underground,
(41:28):
think about that, and you decide whether confirmation bias led
this investigation astray. In our next episode, coming Thursday, we
are going to sit down with our independent cryptology team
and tell the story of their investigation within the investigation
and how it led not only to a confirmation of
(41:50):
Alex Baber's work, but also connected Marvin Merrill to another murder.
It's a thrower. I'm Michael Connolly and you've been listening
to Killer in the Code solving the Black Dali and
Zodiac cases. This chapter was written and produced by Michael Connolly.
(42:12):
It was edited by Teroll Lee Langford. Sound designed by
Michael Odemark with music by Mark Henry Phillips. Go to
Killerinthecode dot com for more information on the investigation. Thank
you for listening.
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