January 28, 2026 • 26 mins
Who was Marvin Merrill? A deep dive into the suspect’s life reveals possible connections to unsolved cases from every place he ever lived. Learn more on KillerInTheCode.com
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
You're listening to Killer in the Code Solving the Black
Dalia and Zodiac Cases. I'm Michael Connolly and this is
chapter six. I want to begin today with a mini
profile the killer this podcast is focused on. This is
taken from the official records of the investigation. The crime
(00:24):
would indicate a person, to my estimation, who had a
mania for publicity. They wanted to gloat over the fact
that they have been successful in their crime and got
a kick out of it. Okay, so I think I
know what you were thinking. That's got to come from
the Zodiac case files, right, He's the one who wrote
all the letters to the newspapers and authored the tantalizing ciphers, etc.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Etc.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, yes, and no, you could call it an early
profile of the Zodiac, but it's actually from the sworn
testimony of the lead detective in the Black Dahlia case,
spoken to a grand jury in nineteen fifty, almost twenty
years before the Zodiac killings took place, and the self
proclaimed Zodiac began using publicity to gloat and taunt the
(01:11):
public and to hold it in the grip of fear.
A mania for publicity. That detective certainly got that right there.
Are people who think these cases are so dramatically different
they could never be linked, but on a psychological level
they are much more the same than not. And today
(01:32):
we are going to reveal as best we can, the
man who is behind all these crimes. Marvin Margolis aka
Marvin Merrill, among many other names, the man who wrote
the letters and constructed the ciphers, the man who was
a cipher himself. A quick recap here Alex Baber, Citizen Slewice,
(01:55):
an amateur cryptologist, broke Disease thirteen code, the thirteen characters
said to reveal the name of the Zodiac Killer, but
also thought to be unbreakable for more than a half
a century. The name hidden in the code was Marvin Merrill,
the primary alias adopted by Marvin Margolis after he was
identified more than twenty years earlier as a suspect in
(02:19):
the murder of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dallion.
Baber's methodology and solution to Z thirteen has been independently
confirmed by some of the top cryptanalysts in the world.
Other evidence gathered by Baber and a team of veteran
cold case detectives has been documented in the previous episodes
(02:41):
of this podcast. The bottom line is Margolis, who died
in nineteen ninety three, checked all the boxes, and now
we want to attempt to track his movement across time
and geography. It's not an easy task. Margolis at times
is a bit of a ghost. He changed names and
moved about like a man looking over his shoulder to
(03:02):
see who might be on his trail.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
This is Alex Baber.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
His own family would call him Skippy because he would
skip out for long periods of time that he'd be
unaccounted for. The Skippy nickname was obviously a player on
his middle name, skip Day.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
He also changed occupations and careers as often as he
moved geographically. At various times, he was an artist, an
auto mechanic, an engineer, an insurance salesman, a car racing promoter,
a computer programmer, and an urban planner. His son called
him a serial entrepreneur, with most of his endeavors seeing
(03:38):
very little success.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
It appears that he did many things, but he wasn't
good at any of thom Throughout the years, in decades,
he would often change his expertise or field of employment.
Some of them. Members told me that you know a
lot of stuff that he did, He taught himself, and
he wouldn't stay long within that field of expertise.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
This is veteran homicide detective of Rick Jackson.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
My initial thoughts on his moving around a lot as
well as the changing of names. The first of all,
the moving around the lot. There are people that do that.
There are people that are lost, they can't find jobs,
they go from one place to another. That's one thing,
but when you couple that with constantly changing names, then
it brings it to a higher level of concern about
(04:22):
why that's being done. That's a quick patty answer, but
that's that's my reaction to what we see with Margolis
slash meow.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
In addition to changing names as he moved, Margolis also
appropriated the histories of others will embellishing his own. The
biggest task here was trying to determine what was real
about Marvin Margolis.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And what was not.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
One thing we know for sure is that he was
born in Chicago to immigrant parents. In nineteen twenty five,
his own father changed his name from Isaac Margolands to
is A we Are Margolis, something that many immigrants do,
but it early on exposed Marvin Margolis to the idea
that identity was malleable. Before we go on here, let
(05:12):
me say that the timeline and the biographic details we
have put together here come from official records, newspaper articles,
and interviews with members of Margolis's family. We have agreed
not to name members of the family in exchange for
their cooperation. Margolis enrolled at the University of Illinois in
(05:33):
nineteen forty two, but left after one semester with failing grades.
At the time, the country is in the middle of
a world war, and in nineteen forty three, Margolis walked
into a Navy recruiting office in Chicago and joined up.
He was trained as a corpsman and sent overseas to
the battle in the Pacific. He was attached as a
(05:55):
medic to the marine battalion that made the first landing
on the island of Okinawa. What ensued was one of
the bloodiest and costliest battles of the war. Over ten
thousand American soldiers died on Oakanalwa. We documented Margois's time
there in chapter one of the podcast, but suffice it
to say his experiences there, including one near death experience
(06:18):
in particular, was harrowing. Upon returning from the war. He
was given a fifty percent disability for mental neurosis what
would now be diagnosed as post traumatic stress disorder. Family
members have told us he was treated for this the
rest of his life and.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He was put on medication.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And we discovered through the family members that when he
would disappear for these lengthy periods of time, they would
reach out to his younger brother, Milton, who lived in Chicago,
who had a connection at the local BA and what
he would do, apparently was contact this connection and he
would look up where the last description was filled, and
then Milton would hunt Marvin Dowell and ask him, what
(06:58):
are you doing. You have a family about legations, You
needed needed to get back to where you belong.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
This is MITCHI. Roberts, veteran homicide detective and former supervisor
of the LAPD cold case unit.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
All you have to really do is review the testimony
at the grand jury as well as a review, you know,
any of his documents that came out of his time
at the war to know that you know, what he
saw over Okinawa was the worst of the worst, and
I think they've been mentioned mingled bodies, and you know
(07:34):
he was working in the medical.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Field, so he saw them up.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
It wasn't just seen your buddy, you know here get
you know, severely injured. He's actually trying to save lives.
And from everything I've read, he came back from that
war just a damaged man, for sure, mentally just damaged.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Margos landed in Los Angeles after the war, and in
nineteen forty six enrolled at the University of Southern California
as a pre med student. During a grand jury investigation
that would delve into the Black Value case. Four years later,
it was revealed by the deputy district attorney who led
the probe that Margois had taken part in a body
(08:18):
dissection just months before Elizabeth Short's bisective body was found.
We could find no independent confirmation of this. While it
was unlikely that a pre med student would have a
class in which cadavers were dissected, Margolis's wartime experiences may
have opened doors at USC for him to take part
(08:39):
in what was likely something reserved for more advanced to
med students. As one of his veterans, administration evaluators reported
in giving him the mental disability, he had dealt with
many quote mangled.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Bodies on Okinawa.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Either way, Margolis was attending classes at the time he
had a res relationship with Elizabeth Short, and subsequently when
she was found murdered on January fifteenth, nineteen forty seven.
At some point Margous changed his focus and started pursuing
a pharmacy degree. Records show that in nineteen forty eight
he was elected as an officer in the Pharmacy School's
(09:19):
service organization. A transcript of his grades from that year
showed him to have been a good student, getting mostly
a's in pre med and pharmacy classes and only won
C in piochemistry. Curiously, he had registered at the school
under the name Marvin Henry Margolis. His actual middle name
(09:40):
was Skipton, and this is the earliest point where we
see him.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Engage in identity deception.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Margolis was in the class of forty nine, but he
apparently didn't finish at USC. Instead, he left town and
picked up a degree in commerce from Roosevelt College in
his hometown of Chicago. Why did he leave town and
change schools? At the time, it had been two and
a half years since the murder of Elizabeth Short, and
(10:10):
no arrests had been made in the case. Early on
in that investigation, Margois had been interviewed twice by the police,
and though he initially lied about his relationship with Elizabeth Short,
he offered an alibi that his new wife confirmed. Phinnis Brown,
the lead detective on the case, would later testify that
(10:32):
it was impossible to throw him out as a suspect,
it was impossible to tie him in. But nineteen forty
nine was also when a new police chief took the
reins at the Los Angeles Police Department. William Morton was
a hard charging former marine who declared in a widely
publicized media statement that the Black Dalley investigation had been
(10:55):
run poorly and been bungled by the original team on it.
He called for a grand jury investigation of the murder
to refocus the case, but by the time that grand
jury was impaneled that year, Margolis was gone. Investigators with
the grand jury tried to find him and enlisted the
help of the Chicago Police Department, but to no avail.
(11:18):
Dennis Brown was left to testify that Margolis was quote
possibly a very good suspect. How diligently authorities searched for
Margolis in Chicago is not clear, but they missed their chance.
Three years later, when he was working in Chicago as
a used car salesman and was charged with defrauding customers
(11:41):
by tricking them into paying higher prices than agreed to
for their car. Margois avoided jail time and the apparent
notice of the LAPD by paying a fine and restitution
to several customers. But it was at this point that
he left town once again, and when he re emerged,
he had a new profession and.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
A new name.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
He was now in Atlanta and he set up shop
as Marvin Merrill, insurance salesman. Merrill spent at least three
years in Atlanta and even started a side gig, which
was an auto club for teenagers. He corded membership and
publicity with the inclusion of a NASCAR racing champion named
(12:22):
Tim Flock as a partner. But eventually Merrill moved on
from Georgia and made even shorter stops in Ohio and
Arizona before landing in Kansas. By this time, his first
marriage was over and he reinvented himself once again, this
time as an artist and an art dealer in the
small town of Wellington, thirty eight miles south of Wichita.
(12:46):
He was now known as Skip Meryll, and a profile
of the artists that ran in the local newspaper offered
some insight into how Meryll blended fact and fiction into
a new PERSONA paper reported that he had studied under
Salvador Dolly, the master of surrealism at USC. I learned
(13:07):
a lot of realism from Dolly. Merrill was quoted as saying,
he paints the clock. It may be distorted, but it
looks like a clock. The Baber team found no evidence
that Dolly ever taught painting or lectured at USC, so
the record is clear that Dolly was in Los Angeles
at the time Merrill, as Margolis, attended USC. Perhaps what
(13:30):
is most intriguing about the profile in the Wellington Daily
News is Merrill's embellishment of his war record. Here was
a man who could truthfully say he was with the
Marines on Okinawa, one of the bloodiest and most important
battles of World War Two. He could talk about building
a field hospital in a cave on that island, but
(13:51):
apparently that wasn't good enough for him. Instead, he told
the newspaper that he had been a member of the
Flying Tigers, the legendary group of pilots who flew missions
over China during the war. Why did he lie? It
almost seems to me as though Merrill used the newspaper
(14:11):
profile to leave hands or clues about the Black Dahlia case.
He told the newspaper that he had been a newspaper correspondent,
but the truth was the only correspondence was his courting
the media in Atlanta and his letters and phone calls
to the Los Angeles newspapers as the Black Dahlia Avenger.
(14:32):
Then the mentions of the Flying Tigers and Salvador Dali.
The reference to the legendary air squadron seemed to be
a direct reference to Elizabeth Short and her lost fiance.
During the war, she was engaged to pilot Matt Gordon,
who flew missions over China and was credited with shooting
down five Japanese planes in aerial dogfights. Those plans tragically
(14:58):
changed when Gordon was killed in a plane crash in
nineteen forty five. Was it Gealousy that made merilynbellish his
record or was he intentionally dropping a clue into the story.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
He was indeed a war hero in his own account right.
He's on the front lines as a naval corman. He's
out there attempting to rescue people. You know, he's tending
to be wounded, and he comes back and then you
have this fourteen year gap between the time the murder
of Elizabeth Swore took place in the time he did
this interview in well it was in Kansas, and instead
(15:33):
of just saying I was a naval corman on the
front line and said, you know, held a medical unit
and took care of my comrades, you know, under fire,
he injects this stolen valor as we call it, where
he's a Flying Tiger, which is a very unique unit
(15:53):
during World War Two. There's no reason for him to
claim to be a Flying Tiger as rare as that
you know unit was, and for it to be directly
connected to Elizabeth Short through her only fiance, Matt Gordon,
is a very unique and obvious connection that he's making
(16:14):
to Elizabeth and himself. In my opinion, that's a dirty deed.
That's something, you know, that's him being jealous. That's him
and having some kind of envy towards towards Matt, you know,
and his relationship with Elizabeth long before he knew her.
That's obsession.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And Dolly was a surrealistic painter, while Merrill said he
was a realistic painter. His work was even described as
being closer to the impressionist master of Benson van God
than Dolly. But Dolly created several paintings that depicted women
in ways similar to the Black Dahalia crime scene. Was
Merrill hinting that he was influenced by Dolly as a
(16:55):
killer or a painter? These are a questions that obviously
can't be answered. You can take a look at some
of Dolly's work on the Killer and the Code website.
Though in the newspaper profile, Meryll said he was so
inspired by Kansas that he could paint there forever. Things
soured for him when a local art association he had
(17:18):
created split into two factions and voted in new leadership.
Merrill once again packed his bags. This time he headed west,
back to California. Merrill landed in the town of Oceanside
in San Diego County in early nineteen sixty two. On
an evening, shortly after his arrival, a man called the
(17:41):
police department anonymously and said he was about to commit
a crime that would baffle the police and never be solved.
The next night, a taxi cab driver named Raymond Davis
was shot to death in his cab and his body
was dumped in an alley behind the mayor's house. The
cab was later found abandoned fifteen blocks away. The next night,
(18:04):
the anonymous man called the police again. He took credit
for the murder of Davis and said he was going
to shoot a bus driver next. This, in turn gripped
the community and fear, and marines from a nearby military
base were used to ride in buses and taxis for
added security. The murder of Davis, the dumping of his
(18:25):
body behind the mayor's house, and the subsequent threat to
kill a bus driver drew massive media attention, seemingly underlying
the unknown killer's mania for publicity. To use a phrase
from the Black Dahia Killer's profile. Eight years after the
Davis murder, the killing of San Francisco cab driver Paul
(18:46):
Stein by the Zodiac would draw comparisons, but like the
Sherry Joe Bates case in Riverside, that Davis killing was
never formally declared a Zodiac case. Perhaps it was because
authorities did not know what we can now reveal. On
the night Davis was murdered in Oceanside. His killer abandoned
(19:08):
his cab in the four hundred block of Pacific Street,
which was an eight hundred foot walk to the house
on Elm Street where Marvin Merrill was living following his
recent move from Kansas.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I do believe that paul Stein was, in a likelihood
a piece of a puzzle to connect him back to
his earlier letter of Ray Davis.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
It does make sense paul Stein was the first.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
It was such a brazen attack because it was done
right in the middle of a major city in front
of people.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
He walked away.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
It was a brazen attack, and I think that was
done intentionally to shake things up a little bit. And
why not shake things up a little bit by doing
something that you've done before in nineteen sixty two with
the cab driver or in ocean Side. Why not do
the same thing again. It could be part of the
game wondering, Okay, are they're gonna be able to put
(20:02):
this all together? That it's need the Zodiac working before
I became the Zodiac, and then seven years later you
do the paul Stein case to bring it right back
into your new hunting grounds, if you will.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
It just kind of proves that this guy evolves in
his emma.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
I mean he doesn't.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
It doesn't fit quite exactly with of course, the Black
Dadia and the Zodiac, but it's just an evolution, and
it's the two.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Are the same. Baber notes that the investigation has established
that Margolis Merrill wasn't either close or close enough proximity
to the murders of Elizabeth Short, Ray Davis, Sherry, Joe Bates,
and the five Zodiac victims, all of which remain cases
officially unsolved, all of which involved a perpetrator who showed
(20:56):
a mania for publicity.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
He's either most I'm not guy on the planet, or
he's the killer. He's the perpetrator of these crops.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Marvin Merrill's professional apex may have come briefly in the
middle sixties, when he had left the art world for
the business world and was president and chief engineer of
Pacific Project's Consultants, a company planning the construction of a
ten story hotel on the beach in Oceanside. Merrill called
a press conference to announce his plans and got a
(21:26):
good run from it, but the project never came to fruition,
and Meryll was eventually sued by his investors, who wanted
their money back. According to members of Merrill's family, other
real estate ventures and development plans followed, but none led
to success, like the speculative purchase of land near a
projected freeway interchange that never came to be. Meryl's son
(21:51):
described home life at this time as always being tense,
with the family living hand to mouth and his father
often moody and physically abused, even though money was sure.
During these times, Merrill kept a second residence in San Jose,
where he did work for Intel, the microchip company. Efforts
(22:12):
to confirm this through Intel were unsuccessful, but in documents
turned over to the Baber team by Meryll's son, there
are Intel business cards and W two tax forms issued
by the company to Merrill. It's unclear whether this was
a side job or another career change, but by the
(22:32):
early seventies, Merrill was back in the car business, operating
an auto repair and tire shop called Buck Savers. He
was also back in trouble with the law. Four days
before Christmas nineteen seventy one, Merrill was jailed on multiple
charges of defrauding his customers at the shop. Two months later,
(22:52):
he was found guilty in court and sentenced to thirty
days in jail and three years probation. Those three years
coincided with three years of silence from the Zodiac, a
period of time when no letters and no ciphers were
sent to the media.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
During this investigation. From the time it starts to the
time he's arrested, to the time he's given probation to
the time probation ends, the Zodiac doesn't appear again. There's
no letters, no phone calls.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
No attacks.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
As soon as Marvin Merrill's probation ends early, all of
a sudden, that same month he reappears, and then we
have this first letter in thirty four months.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Merril's second marriage came to an end in nineteen seventy
eight after what family members told us was a physical
altercation with a teenage child. After that, the family began
to lose track of Merrill. His son told us he
had lost touch with his father for nearly a decade.
After the divorce, records show that Merrill eventually moved north
(23:55):
toward the middle of California, with the addresses in Ascadero
and Creston, before finally landing in Santa Barbara. Copies of
tax returns from these years show him making very little
money and alternately listing his occupation as engineer, ex engineer,
and shopkeeper. During his last decade, it appears, at least
(24:18):
through banking records, that he used all variations of his
aliases and kept separate checking.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Accounts under each name.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
In nineteen ninety two, while he was facing a terminal
cancer diagnosis, Margos rented an art studio in Santa Barbara
for seven hundred dollars a month. He used the name
Marty Merrill and signed a five year lease commencing on
April first. Perhaps that was an April fool's joke from
a man who had little.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
More than a year to live. It was likely in.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
That rented studio on Monticito Street that Marty Merrill created
a sketch titled Elizabeth and depicting the upper half of
nude woman with dark hair and the word Zodiac hidden
in the shading. It would be the last of the
many clues left behind by a human cipher.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
I believe that his final days, knowing that his life
was coming to an end, and I have to say
this for Marvin having an understanding of him that I
believe he may have had some some regret for what
he did to Elizabeth. And the reason I say that
is that that sketch of particular isn't one that I
(25:33):
think is him bragging. I think it's his calling card
so that some days someone would come along and discover
it and put the pieces together, maybe for his own reason,
for some reasons, meaning that he would get he finally
have his name and face attached to these crimes officially,
so he can go down, you know, in history as
being the Zodiac and the Black Avenger. But I also
(25:55):
believe that he wanted he wanted the world to know
that he hadn't forgotten Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I'm Michael Conley, and you have been listening to Killer
in the Code Solving the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases.
This chapter was written and produced by Michael Conley. It
was edited by Teroll Lee Langford, with sound design, music
and post production services by Mark Henry Phillips. Go to
our website killerindecode dot com for more information on the investigation.
(26:28):
Send us questions and we will try to answer them
in an upcoming roundtable discussion, and be sure to subscribe
to the podcast so you will know when new chapters
are available. We'll be back soon of chapter seven.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Thank you for listening.
You're listening to Killer in the Code Solving the Black
Dalia and Zodiac Cases. I'm Michael Connolly and this is
chapter six. I want to begin today with a mini
profile the killer this podcast is focused on. This is
taken from the official records of the investigation. The crime
(00:24):
would indicate a person, to my estimation, who had a
mania for publicity. They wanted to gloat over the fact
that they have been successful in their crime and got
a kick out of it. Okay, so I think I
know what you were thinking. That's got to come from
the Zodiac case files, right, He's the one who wrote
all the letters to the newspapers and authored the tantalizing ciphers, etc.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
Etc.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
Well, yes, and no, you could call it an early
profile of the Zodiac, but it's actually from the sworn
testimony of the lead detective in the Black Dahlia case,
spoken to a grand jury in nineteen fifty, almost twenty
years before the Zodiac killings took place, and the self
proclaimed Zodiac began using publicity to gloat and taunt the
(01:11):
public and to hold it in the grip of fear.
A mania for publicity. That detective certainly got that right there.
Are people who think these cases are so dramatically different
they could never be linked, but on a psychological level
they are much more the same than not. And today
(01:32):
we are going to reveal as best we can, the
man who is behind all these crimes. Marvin Margolis aka
Marvin Merrill, among many other names, the man who wrote
the letters and constructed the ciphers, the man who was
a cipher himself. A quick recap here Alex Baber, Citizen Slewice,
(01:55):
an amateur cryptologist, broke Disease thirteen code, the thirteen characters
said to reveal the name of the Zodiac Killer, but
also thought to be unbreakable for more than a half
a century. The name hidden in the code was Marvin Merrill,
the primary alias adopted by Marvin Margolis after he was
identified more than twenty years earlier as a suspect in
(02:19):
the murder of Elizabeth Short, better known as the Black Dallion.
Baber's methodology and solution to Z thirteen has been independently
confirmed by some of the top cryptanalysts in the world.
Other evidence gathered by Baber and a team of veteran
cold case detectives has been documented in the previous episodes
(02:41):
of this podcast. The bottom line is Margolis, who died
in nineteen ninety three, checked all the boxes, and now
we want to attempt to track his movement across time
and geography. It's not an easy task. Margolis at times
is a bit of a ghost. He changed names and
moved about like a man looking over his shoulder to
(03:02):
see who might be on his trail.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
This is Alex Baber.
Speaker 3 (03:07):
His own family would call him Skippy because he would
skip out for long periods of time that he'd be
unaccounted for. The Skippy nickname was obviously a player on
his middle name, skip Day.
Speaker 1 (03:17):
He also changed occupations and careers as often as he
moved geographically. At various times, he was an artist, an
auto mechanic, an engineer, an insurance salesman, a car racing promoter,
a computer programmer, and an urban planner. His son called
him a serial entrepreneur, with most of his endeavors seeing
(03:38):
very little success.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
It appears that he did many things, but he wasn't
good at any of thom Throughout the years, in decades,
he would often change his expertise or field of employment.
Some of them. Members told me that you know a
lot of stuff that he did, He taught himself, and
he wouldn't stay long within that field of expertise.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
This is veteran homicide detective of Rick Jackson.
Speaker 4 (04:01):
My initial thoughts on his moving around a lot as
well as the changing of names. The first of all,
the moving around the lot. There are people that do that.
There are people that are lost, they can't find jobs,
they go from one place to another. That's one thing,
but when you couple that with constantly changing names, then
it brings it to a higher level of concern about
(04:22):
why that's being done. That's a quick patty answer, but
that's that's my reaction to what we see with Margolis
slash meow.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
In addition to changing names as he moved, Margolis also
appropriated the histories of others will embellishing his own. The
biggest task here was trying to determine what was real
about Marvin Margolis.
Speaker 2 (04:45):
And what was not.
Speaker 1 (04:47):
One thing we know for sure is that he was
born in Chicago to immigrant parents. In nineteen twenty five,
his own father changed his name from Isaac Margolands to
is A we Are Margolis, something that many immigrants do,
but it early on exposed Marvin Margolis to the idea
that identity was malleable. Before we go on here, let
(05:12):
me say that the timeline and the biographic details we
have put together here come from official records, newspaper articles,
and interviews with members of Margolis's family. We have agreed
not to name members of the family in exchange for
their cooperation. Margolis enrolled at the University of Illinois in
(05:33):
nineteen forty two, but left after one semester with failing grades.
At the time, the country is in the middle of
a world war, and in nineteen forty three, Margolis walked
into a Navy recruiting office in Chicago and joined up.
He was trained as a corpsman and sent overseas to
the battle in the Pacific. He was attached as a
(05:55):
medic to the marine battalion that made the first landing
on the island of Okinawa. What ensued was one of
the bloodiest and costliest battles of the war. Over ten
thousand American soldiers died on Oakanalwa. We documented Margois's time
there in chapter one of the podcast, but suffice it
to say his experiences there, including one near death experience
(06:18):
in particular, was harrowing. Upon returning from the war. He
was given a fifty percent disability for mental neurosis what
would now be diagnosed as post traumatic stress disorder. Family
members have told us he was treated for this the
rest of his life and.
Speaker 2 (06:35):
He was put on medication.
Speaker 3 (06:37):
And we discovered through the family members that when he
would disappear for these lengthy periods of time, they would
reach out to his younger brother, Milton, who lived in Chicago,
who had a connection at the local BA and what
he would do, apparently was contact this connection and he
would look up where the last description was filled, and
then Milton would hunt Marvin Dowell and ask him, what
(06:58):
are you doing. You have a family about legations, You
needed needed to get back to where you belong.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
This is MITCHI. Roberts, veteran homicide detective and former supervisor
of the LAPD cold case unit.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
All you have to really do is review the testimony
at the grand jury as well as a review, you know,
any of his documents that came out of his time
at the war to know that you know, what he
saw over Okinawa was the worst of the worst, and
I think they've been mentioned mingled bodies, and you know
(07:34):
he was working in the medical.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
Field, so he saw them up.
Speaker 5 (07:36):
It wasn't just seen your buddy, you know here get
you know, severely injured. He's actually trying to save lives.
And from everything I've read, he came back from that
war just a damaged man, for sure, mentally just damaged.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
Margos landed in Los Angeles after the war, and in
nineteen forty six enrolled at the University of Southern California
as a pre med student. During a grand jury investigation
that would delve into the Black Value case. Four years later,
it was revealed by the deputy district attorney who led
the probe that Margois had taken part in a body
(08:18):
dissection just months before Elizabeth Short's bisective body was found.
We could find no independent confirmation of this. While it
was unlikely that a pre med student would have a
class in which cadavers were dissected, Margolis's wartime experiences may
have opened doors at USC for him to take part
(08:39):
in what was likely something reserved for more advanced to
med students. As one of his veterans, administration evaluators reported
in giving him the mental disability, he had dealt with
many quote mangled.
Speaker 2 (08:52):
Bodies on Okinawa.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
Either way, Margolis was attending classes at the time he
had a res relationship with Elizabeth Short, and subsequently when
she was found murdered on January fifteenth, nineteen forty seven.
At some point Margous changed his focus and started pursuing
a pharmacy degree. Records show that in nineteen forty eight
he was elected as an officer in the Pharmacy School's
(09:19):
service organization. A transcript of his grades from that year
showed him to have been a good student, getting mostly
a's in pre med and pharmacy classes and only won
C in piochemistry. Curiously, he had registered at the school
under the name Marvin Henry Margolis. His actual middle name
(09:40):
was Skipton, and this is the earliest point where we
see him.
Speaker 2 (09:44):
Engage in identity deception.
Speaker 1 (09:49):
Margolis was in the class of forty nine, but he
apparently didn't finish at USC. Instead, he left town and
picked up a degree in commerce from Roosevelt College in
his hometown of Chicago. Why did he leave town and
change schools? At the time, it had been two and
a half years since the murder of Elizabeth Short, and
(10:10):
no arrests had been made in the case. Early on
in that investigation, Margois had been interviewed twice by the police,
and though he initially lied about his relationship with Elizabeth Short,
he offered an alibi that his new wife confirmed. Phinnis Brown,
the lead detective on the case, would later testify that
(10:32):
it was impossible to throw him out as a suspect,
it was impossible to tie him in. But nineteen forty
nine was also when a new police chief took the
reins at the Los Angeles Police Department. William Morton was
a hard charging former marine who declared in a widely
publicized media statement that the Black Dalley investigation had been
(10:55):
run poorly and been bungled by the original team on it.
He called for a grand jury investigation of the murder
to refocus the case, but by the time that grand
jury was impaneled that year, Margolis was gone. Investigators with
the grand jury tried to find him and enlisted the
help of the Chicago Police Department, but to no avail.
(11:18):
Dennis Brown was left to testify that Margolis was quote
possibly a very good suspect. How diligently authorities searched for
Margolis in Chicago is not clear, but they missed their chance.
Three years later, when he was working in Chicago as
a used car salesman and was charged with defrauding customers
(11:41):
by tricking them into paying higher prices than agreed to
for their car. Margois avoided jail time and the apparent
notice of the LAPD by paying a fine and restitution
to several customers. But it was at this point that
he left town once again, and when he re emerged,
he had a new profession and.
Speaker 2 (12:01):
A new name.
Speaker 1 (12:02):
He was now in Atlanta and he set up shop
as Marvin Merrill, insurance salesman. Merrill spent at least three
years in Atlanta and even started a side gig, which
was an auto club for teenagers. He corded membership and
publicity with the inclusion of a NASCAR racing champion named
(12:22):
Tim Flock as a partner. But eventually Merrill moved on
from Georgia and made even shorter stops in Ohio and
Arizona before landing in Kansas. By this time, his first
marriage was over and he reinvented himself once again, this
time as an artist and an art dealer in the
small town of Wellington, thirty eight miles south of Wichita.
(12:46):
He was now known as Skip Meryll, and a profile
of the artists that ran in the local newspaper offered
some insight into how Meryll blended fact and fiction into
a new PERSONA paper reported that he had studied under
Salvador Dolly, the master of surrealism at USC. I learned
(13:07):
a lot of realism from Dolly. Merrill was quoted as saying,
he paints the clock. It may be distorted, but it
looks like a clock. The Baber team found no evidence
that Dolly ever taught painting or lectured at USC, so
the record is clear that Dolly was in Los Angeles
at the time Merrill, as Margolis, attended USC. Perhaps what
(13:30):
is most intriguing about the profile in the Wellington Daily
News is Merrill's embellishment of his war record. Here was
a man who could truthfully say he was with the
Marines on Okinawa, one of the bloodiest and most important
battles of World War Two. He could talk about building
a field hospital in a cave on that island, but
(13:51):
apparently that wasn't good enough for him. Instead, he told
the newspaper that he had been a member of the
Flying Tigers, the legendary group of pilots who flew missions
over China during the war. Why did he lie? It
almost seems to me as though Merrill used the newspaper
(14:11):
profile to leave hands or clues about the Black Dahlia case.
He told the newspaper that he had been a newspaper correspondent,
but the truth was the only correspondence was his courting
the media in Atlanta and his letters and phone calls
to the Los Angeles newspapers as the Black Dahlia Avenger.
(14:32):
Then the mentions of the Flying Tigers and Salvador Dali.
The reference to the legendary air squadron seemed to be
a direct reference to Elizabeth Short and her lost fiance.
During the war, she was engaged to pilot Matt Gordon,
who flew missions over China and was credited with shooting
down five Japanese planes in aerial dogfights. Those plans tragically
(14:58):
changed when Gordon was killed in a plane crash in
nineteen forty five. Was it Gealousy that made merilynbellish his
record or was he intentionally dropping a clue into the story.
Speaker 3 (15:11):
He was indeed a war hero in his own account right.
He's on the front lines as a naval corman. He's
out there attempting to rescue people. You know, he's tending
to be wounded, and he comes back and then you
have this fourteen year gap between the time the murder
of Elizabeth Swore took place in the time he did
this interview in well it was in Kansas, and instead
(15:33):
of just saying I was a naval corman on the
front line and said, you know, held a medical unit
and took care of my comrades, you know, under fire,
he injects this stolen valor as we call it, where
he's a Flying Tiger, which is a very unique unit
(15:53):
during World War Two. There's no reason for him to
claim to be a Flying Tiger as rare as that
you know unit was, and for it to be directly
connected to Elizabeth Short through her only fiance, Matt Gordon,
is a very unique and obvious connection that he's making
(16:14):
to Elizabeth and himself. In my opinion, that's a dirty deed.
That's something, you know, that's him being jealous. That's him
and having some kind of envy towards towards Matt, you know,
and his relationship with Elizabeth long before he knew her.
That's obsession.
Speaker 1 (16:33):
And Dolly was a surrealistic painter, while Merrill said he
was a realistic painter. His work was even described as
being closer to the impressionist master of Benson van God
than Dolly. But Dolly created several paintings that depicted women
in ways similar to the Black Dahalia crime scene. Was
Merrill hinting that he was influenced by Dolly as a
(16:55):
killer or a painter? These are a questions that obviously
can't be answered. You can take a look at some
of Dolly's work on the Killer and the Code website.
Though in the newspaper profile, Meryll said he was so
inspired by Kansas that he could paint there forever. Things
soured for him when a local art association he had
(17:18):
created split into two factions and voted in new leadership.
Merrill once again packed his bags. This time he headed west,
back to California. Merrill landed in the town of Oceanside
in San Diego County in early nineteen sixty two. On
an evening, shortly after his arrival, a man called the
(17:41):
police department anonymously and said he was about to commit
a crime that would baffle the police and never be solved.
The next night, a taxi cab driver named Raymond Davis
was shot to death in his cab and his body
was dumped in an alley behind the mayor's house. The
cab was later found abandoned fifteen blocks away. The next night,
(18:04):
the anonymous man called the police again. He took credit
for the murder of Davis and said he was going
to shoot a bus driver next. This, in turn gripped
the community and fear, and marines from a nearby military
base were used to ride in buses and taxis for
added security. The murder of Davis, the dumping of his
(18:25):
body behind the mayor's house, and the subsequent threat to
kill a bus driver drew massive media attention, seemingly underlying
the unknown killer's mania for publicity. To use a phrase
from the Black Dahia Killer's profile. Eight years after the
Davis murder, the killing of San Francisco cab driver Paul
(18:46):
Stein by the Zodiac would draw comparisons, but like the
Sherry Joe Bates case in Riverside, that Davis killing was
never formally declared a Zodiac case. Perhaps it was because
authorities did not know what we can now reveal. On
the night Davis was murdered in Oceanside. His killer abandoned
(19:08):
his cab in the four hundred block of Pacific Street,
which was an eight hundred foot walk to the house
on Elm Street where Marvin Merrill was living following his
recent move from Kansas.
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I do believe that paul Stein was, in a likelihood
a piece of a puzzle to connect him back to
his earlier letter of Ray Davis.
Speaker 4 (19:31):
It does make sense paul Stein was the first.
Speaker 6 (19:34):
It was such a brazen attack because it was done
right in the middle of a major city in front
of people.
Speaker 2 (19:40):
He walked away.
Speaker 6 (19:42):
It was a brazen attack, and I think that was
done intentionally to shake things up a little bit. And
why not shake things up a little bit by doing
something that you've done before in nineteen sixty two with
the cab driver or in ocean Side. Why not do
the same thing again. It could be part of the
game wondering, Okay, are they're gonna be able to put
(20:02):
this all together? That it's need the Zodiac working before
I became the Zodiac, and then seven years later you
do the paul Stein case to bring it right back
into your new hunting grounds, if you will.
Speaker 5 (20:15):
It just kind of proves that this guy evolves in
his emma.
Speaker 4 (20:19):
I mean he doesn't.
Speaker 5 (20:22):
It doesn't fit quite exactly with of course, the Black
Dadia and the Zodiac, but it's just an evolution, and
it's the two.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Are the same. Baber notes that the investigation has established
that Margolis Merrill wasn't either close or close enough proximity
to the murders of Elizabeth Short, Ray Davis, Sherry, Joe Bates,
and the five Zodiac victims, all of which remain cases
officially unsolved, all of which involved a perpetrator who showed
(20:56):
a mania for publicity.
Speaker 3 (20:59):
He's either most I'm not guy on the planet, or
he's the killer. He's the perpetrator of these crops.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
Marvin Merrill's professional apex may have come briefly in the
middle sixties, when he had left the art world for
the business world and was president and chief engineer of
Pacific Project's Consultants, a company planning the construction of a
ten story hotel on the beach in Oceanside. Merrill called
a press conference to announce his plans and got a
(21:26):
good run from it, but the project never came to fruition,
and Meryll was eventually sued by his investors, who wanted
their money back. According to members of Merrill's family, other
real estate ventures and development plans followed, but none led
to success, like the speculative purchase of land near a
projected freeway interchange that never came to be. Meryl's son
(21:51):
described home life at this time as always being tense,
with the family living hand to mouth and his father
often moody and physically abused, even though money was sure.
During these times, Merrill kept a second residence in San Jose,
where he did work for Intel, the microchip company. Efforts
(22:12):
to confirm this through Intel were unsuccessful, but in documents
turned over to the Baber team by Meryll's son, there
are Intel business cards and W two tax forms issued
by the company to Merrill. It's unclear whether this was
a side job or another career change, but by the
(22:32):
early seventies, Merrill was back in the car business, operating
an auto repair and tire shop called Buck Savers. He
was also back in trouble with the law. Four days
before Christmas nineteen seventy one, Merrill was jailed on multiple
charges of defrauding his customers at the shop. Two months later,
(22:52):
he was found guilty in court and sentenced to thirty
days in jail and three years probation. Those three years
coincided with three years of silence from the Zodiac, a
period of time when no letters and no ciphers were
sent to the media.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
During this investigation. From the time it starts to the
time he's arrested, to the time he's given probation to
the time probation ends, the Zodiac doesn't appear again. There's
no letters, no phone calls.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
No attacks.
Speaker 3 (23:21):
As soon as Marvin Merrill's probation ends early, all of
a sudden, that same month he reappears, and then we
have this first letter in thirty four months.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
Merril's second marriage came to an end in nineteen seventy
eight after what family members told us was a physical
altercation with a teenage child. After that, the family began
to lose track of Merrill. His son told us he
had lost touch with his father for nearly a decade.
After the divorce, records show that Merrill eventually moved north
(23:55):
toward the middle of California, with the addresses in Ascadero
and Creston, before finally landing in Santa Barbara. Copies of
tax returns from these years show him making very little
money and alternately listing his occupation as engineer, ex engineer,
and shopkeeper. During his last decade, it appears, at least
(24:18):
through banking records, that he used all variations of his
aliases and kept separate checking.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Accounts under each name.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
In nineteen ninety two, while he was facing a terminal
cancer diagnosis, Margos rented an art studio in Santa Barbara
for seven hundred dollars a month. He used the name
Marty Merrill and signed a five year lease commencing on
April first. Perhaps that was an April fool's joke from
a man who had little.
Speaker 2 (24:48):
More than a year to live. It was likely in.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
That rented studio on Monticito Street that Marty Merrill created
a sketch titled Elizabeth and depicting the upper half of
nude woman with dark hair and the word Zodiac hidden
in the shading. It would be the last of the
many clues left behind by a human cipher.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
I believe that his final days, knowing that his life
was coming to an end, and I have to say
this for Marvin having an understanding of him that I
believe he may have had some some regret for what
he did to Elizabeth. And the reason I say that
is that that sketch of particular isn't one that I
(25:33):
think is him bragging. I think it's his calling card
so that some days someone would come along and discover
it and put the pieces together, maybe for his own reason,
for some reasons, meaning that he would get he finally
have his name and face attached to these crimes officially,
so he can go down, you know, in history as
being the Zodiac and the Black Avenger. But I also
(25:55):
believe that he wanted he wanted the world to know
that he hadn't forgotten Elizabeth.
Speaker 1 (26:04):
I'm Michael Conley, and you have been listening to Killer
in the Code Solving the Black Dahlia and Zodiac cases.
This chapter was written and produced by Michael Conley. It
was edited by Teroll Lee Langford, with sound design, music
and post production services by Mark Henry Phillips. Go to
our website killerindecode dot com for more information on the investigation.
(26:28):
Send us questions and we will try to answer them
in an upcoming roundtable discussion, and be sure to subscribe
to the podcast so you will know when new chapters
are available. We'll be back soon of chapter seven.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Thank you for listening.
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