November 23, 2024 • 55 mins
Episode 41 A Predator in Riverside?
In this episode, Mike and Richard are joined by special guest Zodiac Expert; Drew Gray. Together, they discuss an attack in Riverside, CA around the time Cheri Jo Bates was killed there. In the attack that is reminiscent of the attack on possible Zodiac victim, Kathleen Johns, the assailant referenced the Bates murder. The question remains; was the attacker connected at all to the Bates case. and/or the Zodiac case?
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Visit Mike Morford's Zodiac site at:
https://zodiackiller.net/
And Richard Grinell's Zodiac site at:
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/
In this episode, Mike and Richard are joined by special guest Zodiac Expert; Drew Gray. Together, they discuss an attack in Riverside, CA around the time Cheri Jo Bates was killed there. In the attack that is reminiscent of the attack on possible Zodiac victim, Kathleen Johns, the assailant referenced the Bates murder. The question remains; was the attacker connected at all to the Bates case. and/or the Zodiac case?
To listen to every episode of this show AD-FREE and get benefits like bonus and early-access episodes of every other show on the AbJack Network, consider an AbJack Insider subscription from Apple Podcasts.
For all things Zodiac Speaking, check out our homepage:
https://www.abjackentertainment.com/zodiac-speaking
Follow Zodiac Speaking on Facebook at:
https://www.facebook.com/Zodiac-Speaking-Podcast-105911481547105
or on Twitter at:
https://twitter.com/PodcastZodiac
Visit Mike Morford's Zodiac site at:
https://zodiackiller.net/
And Richard Grinell's Zodiac site at:
https://www.zodiacciphers.com/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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(00:21):
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Speaker 2 (00:54):
This is Zodiac Speaking, all right, so we'll come back
to another episode of Zodiac Speaking. This is Mike Morford,
one of the hosts here with the Coast Richard, and
we also have a special guest on, Drew Gray. You
know him as Druser from the Zodiac forums. He's here
(01:14):
and we're gonna talk some interesting stuff today and I
will just turn it right over to Drew, our special guest,
and he can fill us in on what we're going
to chat about.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Howdy folks, nice too, nice to be here. Favorite Zodiac podcast.
I wanted to jump into an article that I assume
I was put onto it through Richard, because that's how
I learned everything. This was in the Riverside Press Enterprise
(01:45):
on November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty six, and that date's
going to be important, So this would be it's dealing
with an incident which occurred two days previously, so November
twenty second, and that would be about a week before
(02:07):
the infamous typed confession letter was sent regarding the murder
of Sherry Joe Bates. And there are a number of
intriguing things in this article that will I think be
immediately apparent to our listeners. Here this was the headline,
(02:35):
is man tried to rape her, talked of slain co
ed written by John Montgomery, and I think I'm just
gonna read this and then we can interject some commentary.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Sounds good.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
A nineteen year old, You see, our girl subjected to
an apparent attempted rape. Tuesday was questioned at length by
detective seeking a possible connection with the murder of Shary Bates. Quote.
There is a possibility of a connection between this incident
and the Shary Jays Bates murder, said Captain Irvin Cross,
(03:12):
head of the Police Detective Division. The girl told detectives
a man from whom she accepted a ride made numerous
references to the Shary Bates murder and attempted to attack
her when she refused his advances. The Sheriff's office was
called at eight thirty pm Tuesday, after the girl was
apparently held captive for more than two hours before making
(03:33):
her escape. The girl was taken to the Riverside police
station after Sheriff's Deputy Ron Teshler contacted her at home
in the High Grove area following the ordeal. There quote,
there are a lot of cooks running around. She quoted
the man as saying, you heard about that girl at
(03:55):
the City College, didn't you. The girl gave police the
FOT following account of the incident. She left her apartment
in the UC Riverside area to meet her boyfriend at
a nearby pizza parlor. The man offered her a ride
as she was walking west on Linden. When she refused,
he said, well, after all, I'm not Jack the Ripper.
(04:19):
She then recognized him as a man whose name she
didn't know, who had given her a ride about three
weeks ago, and accepted the ride. He dropped her off
at the pizza parlor. When she was unable to locate
her boyfriend, she started walking again towards the UCR library.
The man drove up behind her again and told her
he would take her to the library. However, instead of
(04:42):
dropping her off at the library, he drove her up
a dark, lonely road, apparently near Pitch and Pass. She
became frightened, jumped out of the car, and ran down
the road until she fell to the ground. I'm not
going to kill you, she quoted him as saying, as
he picked up a stick of wood, if I wanted
(05:03):
to kill you, I could just hit you in the
head with this piece of wood. When he agreed to
take her home, she got back in the car, but
he immediately grabbed her around the neck. Now, if I
wanted to kill you, I could just snap your neck,
she said. He told her, shall I kill you now
or are you going to take off your clothes? When
(05:25):
he grabbed her sweatshirt, she managed to wriggle free of
the garment and again bolted from the car. She hid
in the woods until he left, and then received a
ride to the house in Highgrove area, from where the
Sheriff's office was called. She was upset and crying, and
she had scratches on both her upper and lower arms.
The police report noted the girl said she left her
(05:47):
sweatshirt and her purse containing her wallet and two paperback
books in the car. The girl described the suspect as
about thirty five years old, five foot nine inches with
a chunky proach truding stomach. He was dressed in a
light plaid shirt and light trousers and jacket, she said.
(06:07):
And that's all we have from this incident. But obviously
that description sounds familiar, does it not.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, it's it's sort of to me. It's mixing a
little bit of surete debates because you're talking about a
library and then you're also definite shades of Kathleen John's.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Absolutely. Now we see this throughout the Zodiac case and
the Riverside case is we have this possible connection, which,
if true, means a whole lot more. We don't know
that the Zodiac was a sex predator, but it's certainly possible.
(06:56):
We don't know that he attempted to abduct Kathleen John's.
I don't personally think he did. But if it's, it's
it's we're combining ifs. If this guy was the Riverside killer,
then that probably means that he was the Zodiac. And
(07:16):
if both of those things are true, then he probably Well,
it certainly makes the Kathleen Johnson incident a lot more compelling.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, go ahead, Richard, I say, I was going to
say to Drew. Do you think it's fair to say
that the confession letter author was mimicking that article.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
There are Well, let's let's let's go over the consistencies
and and and see what we think.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Hmm, okay, Well I spoke to Mike earlier about it.
But quick, just in quick summary. The newspaper article stated
that the man grabbed her around the neck, and the
confession letter said I grabbed her on the neck. The
newspaper article said I would just hit you in the
head with his piece of wood, and the confession letter
(08:07):
said she let outis green once and I kicked it
in the head. Then we have the jack the ripper,
and I will deposit her body parts for the whole
city to see. And then the assailant in the newspaper
article offered to take her home, and the confession letter
said he would give her a lift home.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, And of course the sexual deviance implied in
both incidents is another link. Some of those are generic
and and and some of them not so much. The
Jack the Ripper comment is certainly interesting considering the confession
(08:52):
letter a week later would speak of depositing, sending, sending
her what was female parts?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I believe was the deposit the female parts for the
whole city to see. I'll cut off her female parts.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, it's hard not to read that as a Jack
the Ripper.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Citation mentioned as the word shell, and it's in the
confessional Hodder.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
As well, exactly exactly, there's there's so many little things
and you know, a two hour abduction. Yeah, and really
seems to foreshadow of the Kathleen John's story and.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
What you've got to remember. Michae also, like I said,
the article that was released on April the thirtieth, nineteen
sixty seven, said there would be more. It referenced in
the article and he said Bates had to die, there
will be more. So not only do we have mimicry
(10:00):
in the confession letter, but we have it also in
the three Baits letters, both times from the Press Enterprise newspaper,
which we know that the killer sent his letters to
the Press Enterprise on two occasions.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yes, so both set of both sets of mailings related
to the Shay Joe Bates murder seemed to mimic or
at the very least reference articles from days days earlier.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Yeah, and also, as we pointed out, the Riverside desktop
poem may have been authored shortly after the November The
third article that mentioned the attempted murder of the woman
in Riverside on a Riverside campus in nineteen sixty five
(10:52):
on April or thirteenth, Rosalin Atwood.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, So at what point is this not a coincidence?
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Exactly? It all, it all tends to line up now.
But I would love to I would love to contact her.
I can't get her email.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
M hm hmmm. Well maybe we can dig into a
little bit more and come up with a way to
contact her.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And I maybe I missed it. But was her description
of that vehicle?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
No, that was That was one of at least two
key pieces of information that was not contained in this article.
But I would be surprised if it wasn't in the
initial police report. Why it wouldn't be transferred to this
article seeking help from the public, I don't really know.
(11:45):
But there was no description of the car, and there
is no description of the man's hair.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
That seems like a glaring missed opportunity to get information.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
She spent two hours with this man. Apparently, certainly she
has she knows what color is hair was, whether it
was long hair short, One would one would assume that
she could say whether it was an old car resembling
the Studa Baker for example, or at least a color.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
You know, is it a big car, a small car,
is it blue?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Is it yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Kind of detail would help to some degree.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
You think there's a y. Then she gave a good
description of the car, and they were keeping it under
wraps so the person didn't get rid of it.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
That's a possibility too. There could be strategy in it.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
But you know, this is the same same police force
that thought the confession letter writer knew only information that
that wasn't released. Yet they released that very information in
Sherry's case, you know what I mean. So I don't
know how much thinking they went into, you know, what
(13:01):
they did and didn't share with the press.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah. Well, I think we've always found that curious that
they thought that the description in the confession letter of
how the car was disabled was proved that he was
the killer. And the only thing that I can but
obviously it came out immediately in the press in numerous articles.
(13:26):
The only thing I can make of that is that
although the true nature of how the car was disabled,
that being pulling the distributor wire, they also released false information,
intentionally or not, that the entire guts of the thing
were ripped out, which didn't happen. And the confession letter
(13:50):
author did not say that he ripped out the whole
engine or whatever they had said. He says little wire right, yeah,
which was which was correct, and he did not pair
it back the incorrect information that was also in the press.
M So that may have been part of it. They
(14:11):
also discussed the phone call, but again it was also
immediately released that there were several crank phone calls. I
think that they used the word crank phone calls that
happened in the immediate aftermath of the investigation. So what
(14:32):
call are they talking about?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Hmm. That's interesting And I think we, you know, it'd
be great to know more about this man that picked
up this girl, and you know, compare notes on what
matches what doesn't. But I think we talked a little
bit about what matched, you know, to the Bates case
or maybe some Mkathleen John's case. But the one thing
(14:57):
that I think we need to mention doesn't matches Zodiac.
Never any confirmed Zodiac attack, never sexually attacked or attempted
to undress any any victim. So that's a little bit
different here is intent seems to be are you gonna
(15:18):
get undressed? You know, that's that's definitely you know, maybe
Zodiac might have gone down that avenue, but in the
confirmed attacks, he didn't, So I think that's a little
bit different. And there's no even in Cherry's case, there's
no evidence she was sexually assaulted. So maybe could her
killer have been planning to try and do that, maybe,
(15:42):
but they definitely didn't. So I think that's where it's
a little bit different because this guy in the car
is mentioned taking off her clothes, and that's something we
just don't see in Cherry's case or any of the
Zodiac cases.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah, it's it's one if after another. I personally think
that the man who attacked Sherry did have an intention
to assault her, but you know, we can't prove it.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Did you watch the Nancy Drew YouTube channel, Mike.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I not recently. I've I've watched watched it before. I
haven't watched it recently. What did they have on.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Well, there was an interesting little connection, wasn't they drew?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, he certainly identified a creepy individual.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
That the In brief, there's a guy called Flake Crawford Castro.
He and his family actually lived at four one nine
five Via San Jose, the house that Cherry Joe Bates
eventually moved into with her father. He was He graduated
from Ramona High in sixty five. She graduated in sixty six.
(17:03):
She was a cheerleader. He was a varsity football player.
In the same years. She went to Saint Catherine's church
on the morning of a murder. He got married eight
days earlier in Saint Catherine's Church, and then they were
reported as living in Claremont in San Diego, and down
(17:29):
there in December sixty seven and January sixty eight he
was arrested on attempted two rapes of to college. Well,
the two women lived near the college, the University of California,
San Diego. And then in seventy four again he was
arrested for attempted two rapes in the actual dormitory of
(17:55):
University of California Riverside. So this guy, I only had
all the connections to Sherry Joe Bates. He's got four
attempted rapes, although he wasn't convicted of any of them.
He is classified today as a sex offender.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So a little bit about that guy. I actually, I
don't know where Nancy Drew found that information, but I
wrote about him years ago on my old forum. It's
been so long since I'd have to go back and
look on the forum and see what's there. I'm talking
the original Zodiac form motion form, I think is where
(18:34):
I originally wrote about him. I found out that he
had formerly lived in Cherry's house, so he was an
interesting guy to say the least. Anytime you have a
you know, somebody that's living in Cherry's you know, Sherry's house,
and he used to live there, went to the same
high school. They certainly could know each other. And then
(18:56):
he I think the term that I saw listed as
his name was mentally disordered sex offender, something along those
lines mentally criminally I think it said mentally disordered sex offender.
And you know, when I saw that, I was like, Okay,
here's a sex offender that was living in Sherry's house before,
(19:19):
went to the same school. This should be and I
think at the time I turned this into Riverside just
as a as a tip, and you know, never really
heard anything back from them at all. And who care.
You know, they already had Sherry's case, Saul, They already
know who did that, so I don't know even that
they would want to look any further. But but it's
(19:41):
interesting that somebody's talking about the same guy years later.
You know, he's definitely worth talking about and considering. And
you know, in her case.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I did a little bit more digging yesterday and found
that he lived at Claremont. He lived near Claremont in
San Diego. Who lived at twelve zero twenty one Pomarado Road.
That is only one and a half miles from the
murder site of Nicki Benedict, who has stabbed.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Who's been mentioned by some people as possibly.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Being possibly but it's another stabbing with a short bladed instrument.
Now I've never connected the two. Really, it's a bit
of a stretch, but I found it odd with his
connections to Sherry Joe Bates, that he would live only
a mile and a half from somebody who was connected
to Zodiac in the past.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Absolutely, this is a man who rapes teenagers.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, he should certainly have been checked out, and who knows,
maybe he was, you know, somewhere along the way. But
you know, in my mind, like in Sherry's case in particular,
if if it wasn't their suspect who they thought all
along was the killer, and I don't think they paid
(21:07):
that much attention to.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Him, which is which is the wrong approach, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Absolutely, yeah, it'd be interesting to know whether whether he
was investigated. Obviously they haven't released all their information yet
and probably never will.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
And he uh recently died by the way Casto did
all he did, and I forget who I was. Somebody
reached out to me maybe a month or two ago
and asked me about him. I think it was Ross.
I think Ross reached out to me, as a matter
of fact, that's what it was, and he was asking
me about him. He didn't say why he was asking
(21:48):
about him. Uh, And I you know, I think I
looked name in ages and then I found out that
he died recently, So you know, so he is dead.
There's not not any reason to avoid talking about his
(22:09):
name now.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
No, and certainly, certainly any sexual predator in the area
of Riverside or familiar with Jerry Joe Bates. All that
campus is certainly a suspect that you can't rule out.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Sure, Yeah, for for once the Nancy Drew channel identified
someone who is actually convicted of something. The tendency over there,
which really sickens me, is that someone with just the
initials our age will will be outed and put into
(22:42):
a ten minute video suggesting they're a serial killer. But yeah,
this this this guy certainly deserves a look.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
I think when he did the follow up video about
the father of Flake Castro Senior, he lost me a
little bit on that trying to connect him to the
Zodiac CA. But the initial video was really good.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, it's it's compelling information, for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I'm interested where he found that from. I'm wondering if
he's going back to my old I'm trying to log
into my old site. It's been so long since I
logged in and it's still actually up. This is the
Zodiac Killer sit that form motion dot com. I haven't
looked on the Satan ages. I remember what my login is.
It's been that long, but I think this is where
I originally posted about it, And maybe he's got an
(23:30):
old accountant can get in here.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
What is what's really good at and I'll give him
credit for is searching through records and finding people and
where they lived in the locations that I can't I
can't access from the UK. But he seems to find
a lot of stuff like that, a bit like Shake
delves back into the past and finds all this historical
information that is beyond me.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah. Absolutely. One other thing I wanted to mentioned, going
back to the Montgomery article of November twenty four, is
that this woman, who is this eighteen year old nineteen
year old who was abducted, said she had first got
a ride from this individual three weeks earlier, and that
(24:20):
would be like a day or two after the Sherry
Joe Bates attack.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So she's saying that she drove with this guy before.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Yeah, and it seems that it wasn't until she was
in the car going down the road three weeks later
and he mentioned Jack the ripper that she realized that
she then recognized him as a man whose name she
did not know, who had given her a ride about
three weeks ago, So that would be like November first.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, interesting but odd that he didn't do anything out
of the ordinary the first time.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Around exactly, and if he was the killer of Sherry
Joe Bates, we've been led to assume that this individual
would have scratches on their face.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Well, if he was young, he may have started just
after the Sherry Joe Bates murder and was mimicking what
he read in the newspapers. Who knows, But it does
seem a little bit odd. I mean, you thought that
maybe she was making this up, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Oh, I don't know about that. I mean, she may
have been mistaken. It's obviously very generalized to say, you know,
about three weeks ago.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
So maybe, but what do we know of Pigeon Pass that.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It's nowhere near the pizza parlor he was driving her to.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
No, it's quite a way away, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean that that has to be. That
drive from the intended location to Pigeon Pass has got
an account for the two hours that she was held.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
And we assume that if Sherry, if the intention of
the person who attached s Sherry Joe Bates was initially
to take her into his car and take her to
a secondary location, it would have been interesting to find
out where that would have been.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, I've never given much credence despite the missing time
in the Sherry Joe Bates murder. I've never given much
credence to the idea that she was taken to another
location and then for some reason, returned to the library. No,
but that.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Could have been his original intention to take up what
else for nefarious reasons. She fought back and ended there
in the alleyway, so we don't know his initial intentions.
Maybe that's what they were, to take her to a
secondary location, but things to rye because she fought back.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah. The only part of this young lady's story that
seems a little strange is that she escaped from the
car when she was afraid of him, and then he
seemed to talk her back into the car. Like at first,
she's running from the car. This guy is this guy
(27:23):
is a threat. I am running away. And then and
then after I guess he promised, no, I'll I will
take you where I initially told you I would take you,
and then she gets back in the car. So I
don't know if there's something that's being left out of
the story. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
It's terrible when there's you're not getting the whole complete story.
It always uh always bugs me?
Speaker 3 (27:58):
And can you.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Stay again? What was the date and name of the
paper that this article ran.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
In the Riverside Press Enterprise November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty
six by John Montgomery.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, And I wonder if there's any other articles around
the time of the attack that somehow haven't made it
to our attention that are out there. Maybe there are
articles that have more information about it. I wonder if
it'd be worth checking with the Riverside Library and getting
(28:40):
copies of the different Riverside papers from around that time.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Sure, sure, it sounded like an introduction like it doesn't
sound like a follow up article that we're reading here,
But it's possible.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Like I said, the only one we do know of
is the November the third article linkin Cherry Joe Bates
to Russelyn Attwood. But we know that Rolin Taft was
in jail at the time. But they did compare the
two crimes because they both happened on the campus. And
don't forget I mean what I found curious as well
a week or so ago was the knife used was
(29:16):
four and a half inches in the attempted murder of
Rosslyn Atwood, and the knife found fifty feet from where
Sherry's body was found on the day after the library reconstruction.
Was also a buried knife for four and a half inches. Now,
I'm not implying it was the same knife, of course,
because that was probably still in custody somewhere, but it's
(29:39):
possible the person was playing a prank.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, and Benedict was killed with a small blade as well.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Yeah, a small bladed knife. I can't remember the dimensions,
but I know the Rosslyn Atwood one the year before
and was exactly four and a half inches, just like
the knife buried close to where Sherry's body was found
two weeks earlier. And I'm assuming that was buried recently
because that gardener must have gone over that and to
(30:12):
rake it up. It couldn't have been buried that deep,
which gives you the impression the person who buried it
wanted it to be found. I doubt it was just
dropped there and buried itself. And the timing is uncanny
as well.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
There's so many cases that are loosely connected to Zodiac either.
You know, what's the reason that Nikki Benedict was even
brought up as a potential Zodiac victim is it because indeed,
and I think I think somebody said too that Jim
(30:56):
Phillips lived down there in that area at that time
or something among the designs.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Basically it came out the day after the letters threatening
there will be more.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, So the problem ISDI Zodiac or you know, we
don't know the Zodiac, but in the Zodiac conversation, almost
anybody that got killed in California can loosely be connected
to Zodiac and some some capacity.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
It seems like, Yeah, the only thing that really interests
me about the Sherry Joe Bates murder and the letters
and the communications to be connected to Zodiac is the
fact of the mimicry of all the newspaper articles which
we know the Zodiac killer had a fascination with most
(31:53):
of the times when we look at the Zodiac letters,
we only have to go back a week or so
at most to find out where he's quoted the news
paper articles. So from that this the aspect of these
these letters and communications mimicking recent press enterprise articles is
a thing that makes me wander. I know this isn't
(32:15):
unusual for killers to do, but it's something that Zodiac did.
He focused in on one newspaper generally and mimicked what
he read from a few days earlier.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Well, the frustrating thing about the Riverside case is, and
I'm not saying that the Bates letters were a hoax
as as the Riverside police suggest without evidence, but it
seems clear that there was a lot of nefarious hoaxer
(32:49):
type material people in the area, Like there was a
bunch of calls that were presumably from Oaxer's you know,
it's really incense satively in the in the days following
Sherry's murder, and then obviously a bunch of a bunch
of bb I guess we'll call them their prime suspect,
(33:14):
people who knew him, uh, did everything they could to
throw him under the bus. And yet it seems forensics
have have all but dispelled that notion.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Mm hmm. Yeah. And then we have all.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
These uh murder confessions that seem to be mimicking articles
from the paper.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Yeah, that's what interests me, the communications, and it's parallel
with the with the newspapers.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah, at the end of the day, the the all
of the links that the typed confession letter authors went
to two disguise their hand writing the typewriter used. They
may have gotten a print or to off it, but
(34:07):
they can't be certain they were from the writer. That
suggests to me that it actually was from the killer.
This was a lot of effort, a lot of correct information.
It aligns with the autopsy. It doesn't align with the
screen that was heard hours later. But I've been flip
(34:31):
flopping about this for ten years and I'll probably continue
to do so. But at the moment, I think that
the confession letter was from the killer.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, I mean, to me, the Riverside piece has always
been it's either a major clue to who Zodiac was
or it's the biggest red airing in the universe. Yeah,
you know, there's no rule in between. It's it's either
(35:02):
a smoking gun and will help you should help us
identify a Zodiac, or it's totally not related to Zodiac
at all, and it's got everybody chasing their you know,
their their tails for the last you know, sixty years.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Sorry, come well, I was just gonna go through the
the the basics of what we have from the Riverside case.
We have a partial footprint, a heel print I believe
that was measured between they could say it was between
size eight and ten and and and and Zodiac left
(35:47):
a footprint of ten and a half. No one in
the right mind would write it off for that inconsistency.
But they also had a bunch of greasy fingerprints in
the Riverside case, and we know that they were compared
to what they had in the Zodiac case. Unfortunately, with
(36:08):
the Zodiac case, we don't know that any of the
prints recovered we're actually from the killer. It's kind of
insane to believe that Zodiac wasn't wearing gloves, but Zodiac
may have been insane, so it's hard to say, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, you know, those greasy fingerprints, I wonder if they
if they're in a database someplace, and if they or
if they're not, they're checked every so often to see
if they've ever come up with anything else, you know,
because you know, if they checked them decades ago, that
(36:51):
doesn't mean that later on they won't show up, you know,
in a database someplace. So I hope they're they're looking
at them. But then again, I go back to it
didn't match their favorite suspect in Cheri's case. I don't
think they really cared oh it doesn't match him, then
it's it can't be related to her murder. Let's move on, right.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I think they I think they strongly believe they were
from the killer, but they have not written off the
possibility that there was more than one assailant, which I
think kept BB in their in the mix.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, and in their mind for him to be involved
like they think he is, there has to be somebody
else because the DNA doesn't match the DNA that's most
likely from the killer, so they have to say, well,
he had a partner. And then you know, that reminds
me the whole story of the the one guy that
supposedly said they went back there searching with flashlights or
(37:50):
something like that, and that guy was, you know, sort
of backtracking on his account of what happened and retracting
statement and just a row mess.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
It's not very believable going back and searching for the
watch that was only ten feet from the body. I
can't believe they would not have found that with a flashlight.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah, and that would be around the same time that
he allegedly confessed sobbing in public to having killed her.
I think all of those anonymous, well anonymous to us.
All of those testimonies has got to be incorrect.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
And once upon a time I was like you, Mike,
I didn't believe there was anything in those confession letters
that told us that he was the killer. But I
think when you look at the autopsy reports, there are
many things in the autopsy report that supports what the
confession letter author is saying.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
M hm, yes, you know. The I'd love to you know,
I interviewed Phil Sins, the guy that contacted Paul Avery,
and you know, his story was amazing, you know, the
(39:18):
fact that he recognized that the letters sounded a whole
lot like Yeah. Also, I'd love to talk to BB
to hear what he has to say and hear his
(39:39):
side of the story, if you'd ever talk.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
Yeah. The most curious thing about that Phil Sins thing
I find is that immediately after the Halloween card, there
was the newspaper articles on November the sixteenth that CA
came out linking Riverside to the Zodiac killer and mentioning
(40:05):
the Z style symbol, and the Halloween card was the
only time the Zodiac up to that time had used
the Z symbol in his communications. That's what I found
very curious. Curious timing, let's put it that way.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yeah, a little over two weeks earlier.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Mm hmm, yeah, that is interesting.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
Now we don't think it was as I don't think
it was a Z or a Z, but nevertheless that's
what they interpreted interpreted it as. And so it was
curious timing, especially when you think the previous little this
letter parroted certain words from the confession letter.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Also, the interesting thing about this so now we're we're
a lot with a lot of questions, and again we
finding other newspaper articles might provide more answers. But you know,
we have a guy in Riverside that uh, you know,
(41:11):
is connecting himself or talking about Sherry's case anyway, threatening
this girl giving a ride in a situation that sounds
remarkably like Kathleen John's. And you know, just like with
Kathleen John's, we don't know for sure she was a
Zodiac victim. I mean, I maybe she had that experience
(41:34):
with somebody, but you know, he never said I'm Zodiac.
You know, the only reason it got connected to Zerdik
because she saw his picture and Alan said that's the guy.
You know. Besides that, there's nothing, you know, we just
Zodiac never abducted anybody that we know of. So the
(41:55):
fact this is very interesting in that it mirrors the
Kathleen John's key so much. Could just be yet another
red hearing because this, unfortunately might not even be related
to Kathleen Johns or a Zodiac.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Well.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
The problem with the Kathleen John's story, in my opinion,
is she stated she was abducted for about one and
a half maybe two hours, and ended up three hundred
meters away from her car at the end of this abduction.
So I don't know, it's not a very successful abduction
(42:30):
to take her around for two hours and then to
deposit her back where she escaped out of the vehicle,
let's put it that way, at virtually the identical place
her car was originally abandoned.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Well, and that was one of the odd things about
the case, because if her accounts correct, the killer went back,
put that wheelback on the car and moved it a
little ways to where it was set on fire.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
But it was.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Yeah, and and Zodiac of course parroted back what he
what we believe he had just read in the newspaper.
I took a woman and her baby for a couple
of hours.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Mm hmm, Yeah, without providing any solid information that could
confirm us him.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, if if we can, if we feel confident that
the John's incident, whatever it may be, was not in
fact a multi hour incident, then I then I think
we can Then I think we can write off the
(43:38):
entire claim.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
If if the Halloween car did exist that was sent
to John's mentioning a blue car, then this story may
have a little bit more credibility because I don't think
the color of a car was mentioned in any newspapers.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Yeah, that scenario has has been offered it. It sure
is a shame that the card was lost in the mail.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
If it existed.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah, that's the thing with this case. There's a lot
of things that, according to hearsay, things existed, but we've
yet to see them with our own eyes.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Yeah. I've never liked to suggest that Kathleen was was lying.
I assume that she was incorrect.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
You want to give people, you want to give people
the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Of course, Yeah, especially people who seem to be victims
of nefarious individuals.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah. Well, so any final thoughts before we wrap up.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Well, what I've been doing recently, I've been trying to
lick because as Zodiacs spoke of the Most Dangerous Game,
I was trying to find something in the confession letter
that the reference the Most Dangerous Game or one of
its offshoots. And I looked at the line, I am
not sick, I am insane, but that will not stop
(45:08):
the game. And what I found was, in nineteen forty
five there was a copycat movie, effectively of the Most
Dangerous Game, called a Game of Death. And when you
think both of these characters in the nineteen forty five
film and the nineteen thirty two film were both described
as insane, heartless, psychopathic men, I found it quite curious
(45:32):
when he said I am not sick, I am insane,
but that will not stop the game. In other words,
was that mimicking the Game of Death and the Most
Dangerous Game? And his initial these were his initial thoughts
back down in Riverside, let alone, when he wrote the
Three Trinity of letters to the three newspapers in the
(45:54):
Bay Area. And so I'm trying to link the two,
the two Riverside and the Bay Area together through the language.
I mean, that's not compelling, but that's what I'm attempting
to do. At the moment.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, it's the signature that seems to be shared between
the killer of Cherry Your Base and the Zodiac. If
we assume that the confession the type confession was from
the killer, clearly both individuals, whether the same or not,
this was a game, an unusual game.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
And also, Mike, nowhere in Richard Connell's short story or
the movie or any subsequent movie have I ever seen
the phrase man is the most dangerous animal at all.
Apart from I've found now three or four newspaper articles
that has that exact quote, and it was from Mary
(46:54):
and C. Cooper, who was the associate producer of the
Most Dangerous Game film. He said this on the release
of that movie. He's the only person I've ever seen
quoted as saying those exact words. So in ninety years,
I've found three newspaper articles with this exact quote, and
I'm staggered to work out how the Zodiac found this
(47:18):
exact quote, if indeed he wasn't just lucky in stumbling
across this quote.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, I mean it's possibly, it was definitely you know
a movie buffer read a lot and read this guy's quote.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
Well to read the quote. This is why I went
into the idea that to read this quote, the easiest
way to do it back then without newspapers, dot com
and stuff like that, is to go into a library
and go through the microfiche and before you prepare your letters.
In other words, put a lot of effort into what
you're doing. And this sort of played me into the
(47:54):
riverside angle and the desktop poem. Was this person a historian?
Did he was he a regular of the library? Did
he work in a library and had access to all
this material?
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Fascinating a lot of a lot of questions that we
just don't know exactly.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
The question I would try to try to leave the
audience with is whether, if we assume that the that
the killer wrote the letter, was he being honest about
his affiliation with the victim. You know that he had
known her for years and she had brushed him off,
(48:34):
and that this was essentially a revenge or would that
be the opposite of what truly happened and that she
was in fact a stranger to him. It seems odd
to me that that you would take revenge on a
(48:55):
woman for this kind of behavior and then essentially tell
the police what your motivation was, you know, to me.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
The thing that's always bothered me about the confession letter
of him saying for all the brush offs over the years,
To me, that seems like it's trying to mislead the police,
you know. I I equate that to the Zodiac when
he called from the Vleophoam booth saying, you know, they
saw the guy that saw my car. You know, he
(49:28):
was a black guy and my car was brown. You know,
I feel like that was an obvious attempt to misdirect
the police and get him looking in the wrong direction.
So in this confession letter, where you know the writer's
write writing for all the brush offs over the years,
I mean, if that's true, that would make police look
(49:51):
at people in her circle, you know, and that would
more of a chance the police might catch the person
if he was in her orbit. And you know, one
of her friends said, hey, so and so I used
to ask her out. She used to brush them off
all the time, which to me makes it seem like
it's an attempt at misleading the police. But then again,
(50:15):
if you're a stranger, you're not connected to share at all,
what would be the need to misdirect the police. You
just don't send that letter at all to mislead them,
because you're not tied to share Joe bats in any way.
So I always found that that weird, that letter sort
of a you know, which which side of the fence
do you fall on? As far as it being, you know,
(50:36):
really from somebody that she know or a total stranger.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
You can take you can take it both ways. It
could be a double bluff. He expected the police to
disbelieve it when it was in fact the truth.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Yeah, and around we go.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, and we're still talking about it sixty years later.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yeah. I mean, the confession seems like a mixture between
a suggestion that he was a student who had known
her for years. He said, you know, he followed her
into the library, and then it evolves into clearly a
serial killer type of message. You know, I'm stalking your girls.
(51:15):
Now you know there will be more. Yeah, and then
days later, it seems days days later, they find a
very creepy poem inside the school. We may never know, guys,
we may never know.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Yeah, Riverside is just that frustrating piece of the zodiac case.
It's either hold some smoking gun clue someplace that we
just haven't found, or it's not related to the Zodiac
case at all. It's just we've all been chasing down
the wrong road.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
I think if Zodiac is connected to Riverside in any way,
either the murder or the or the letters or communications,
I think we'll we will find the answer eventually.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, I'm not so sure. I think that would have
come out by now, because I think a lot of
people have been scoured. You know, who was in the
Valleo San Francisco Bay that had previously been in Riverside,
And I think a lot of people have been looked
(52:26):
at and and would have been ruled out hopefully, but
you know who knows in this case, nothing would surprise me.
Speaker 4 (52:38):
Well, new stuff is coming up all the while, so
you never know.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Fingers crossed either way. I went to Zodiac nad. I'd
love to see Sherry's case solved, and then if you
could who that killer was, then maybe you could link
him to some of these other things, like the girl
that was you know, jumped out of the car. You know,
could he have been the guy responsible for her? And
(53:04):
might there be other victims?
Speaker 4 (53:05):
And the one thing that will help that is a
release of the police reports.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Absolutely well, you know it's it's been sixty years, so
maybe in another twenty they'll be ready to release it. Yeah. Well, anyhow,
you know, it's great having you Andrew. Always great to
talk to you, and just for listeners out there, if
they want to check out what you're doing or you know,
pick your brain a little bit, where can they find
(53:31):
you and where do you hang out?
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Yeah? Well I wanted to do I've wanted to come
onto this podcast, cas and as soon as you guys
started it, I guess you could find me on the
Zodiac Killer discord channel or on Tom Voyd's Tapa Talk
forum and on Mondays at four pm Eastern time. I
(54:01):
all right, Actually I think they're doing it at three
o'clock now. I do a YouTube panel discussion about the
Zodiac Killer on a channel called Mysteries with mister Beljkue.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
And I was recently a guest on there. It was
nice to have best to be on there, and it's
good to have you on. I hope we can have
you on again sometime too.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
Oh yeah, anytime, guys.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
All right here, that's I guess we'll wrap up and
we're gonna try and come back with some more discussion
in another episode, So stay up subscribe to the channel
and we'll we'll see you back here soon with another Zodiac.
Speaker 4 (54:38):
Talk kas then by night by.
Speaker 5 (54:43):
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Zodiac Speaking.
Please make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you're
listening now so you don't miss a single episode. New
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(55:06):
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Speaker 4 (55:09):
And don't forget. You can get plenty of Zodiac details
twenty four to seven by visiting my site at zodiacsiphers
dot com or by going to Mike's site at Zodiac
Killer dot net.
Speaker 5 (55:23):
If you'd like to help more people find Zodiac Speaking,
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Speaker 2 (55:33):
On behalf of Rich. This is Mike Morford and i'd
like to say thanks again for listening and we'll see
you on the next episode of Zodiac Speaking.
You're listening to Zodiac Speaking, brought to you by Abject Entertainment.
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(00:21):
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Speaker 2 (00:54):
This is Zodiac Speaking, all right, so we'll come back
to another episode of Zodiac Speaking. This is Mike Morford,
one of the hosts here with the Coast Richard, and
we also have a special guest on, Drew Gray. You
know him as Druser from the Zodiac forums. He's here
(01:14):
and we're gonna talk some interesting stuff today and I
will just turn it right over to Drew, our special guest,
and he can fill us in on what we're going
to chat about.
Speaker 3 (01:24):
Howdy folks, nice too, nice to be here. Favorite Zodiac podcast.
I wanted to jump into an article that I assume
I was put onto it through Richard, because that's how
I learned everything. This was in the Riverside Press Enterprise
(01:45):
on November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty six, and that date's
going to be important, So this would be it's dealing
with an incident which occurred two days previously, so November
twenty second, and that would be about a week before
(02:07):
the infamous typed confession letter was sent regarding the murder
of Sherry Joe Bates. And there are a number of
intriguing things in this article that will I think be
immediately apparent to our listeners. Here this was the headline,
(02:35):
is man tried to rape her, talked of slain co
ed written by John Montgomery, and I think I'm just
gonna read this and then we can interject some commentary.
Speaker 2 (02:50):
Sounds good.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
A nineteen year old, You see, our girl subjected to
an apparent attempted rape. Tuesday was questioned at length by
detective seeking a possible connection with the murder of Shary Bates. Quote.
There is a possibility of a connection between this incident
and the Shary Jays Bates murder, said Captain Irvin Cross,
(03:12):
head of the Police Detective Division. The girl told detectives
a man from whom she accepted a ride made numerous
references to the Shary Bates murder and attempted to attack
her when she refused his advances. The Sheriff's office was
called at eight thirty pm Tuesday, after the girl was
apparently held captive for more than two hours before making
(03:33):
her escape. The girl was taken to the Riverside police
station after Sheriff's Deputy Ron Teshler contacted her at home
in the High Grove area following the ordeal. There quote,
there are a lot of cooks running around. She quoted
the man as saying, you heard about that girl at
(03:55):
the City College, didn't you. The girl gave police the
FOT following account of the incident. She left her apartment
in the UC Riverside area to meet her boyfriend at
a nearby pizza parlor. The man offered her a ride
as she was walking west on Linden. When she refused,
he said, well, after all, I'm not Jack the Ripper.
(04:19):
She then recognized him as a man whose name she
didn't know, who had given her a ride about three
weeks ago, and accepted the ride. He dropped her off
at the pizza parlor. When she was unable to locate
her boyfriend, she started walking again towards the UCR library.
The man drove up behind her again and told her
he would take her to the library. However, instead of
(04:42):
dropping her off at the library, he drove her up
a dark, lonely road, apparently near Pitch and Pass. She
became frightened, jumped out of the car, and ran down
the road until she fell to the ground. I'm not
going to kill you, she quoted him as saying, as
he picked up a stick of wood, if I wanted
(05:03):
to kill you, I could just hit you in the
head with this piece of wood. When he agreed to
take her home, she got back in the car, but
he immediately grabbed her around the neck. Now, if I
wanted to kill you, I could just snap your neck,
she said. He told her, shall I kill you now
or are you going to take off your clothes? When
(05:25):
he grabbed her sweatshirt, she managed to wriggle free of
the garment and again bolted from the car. She hid
in the woods until he left, and then received a
ride to the house in Highgrove area, from where the
Sheriff's office was called. She was upset and crying, and
she had scratches on both her upper and lower arms.
The police report noted the girl said she left her
(05:47):
sweatshirt and her purse containing her wallet and two paperback
books in the car. The girl described the suspect as
about thirty five years old, five foot nine inches with
a chunky proach truding stomach. He was dressed in a
light plaid shirt and light trousers and jacket, she said.
(06:07):
And that's all we have from this incident. But obviously
that description sounds familiar, does it not.
Speaker 2 (06:18):
Yeah, it's it's sort of to me. It's mixing a
little bit of surete debates because you're talking about a
library and then you're also definite shades of Kathleen John's.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
Absolutely. Now we see this throughout the Zodiac case and
the Riverside case is we have this possible connection, which,
if true, means a whole lot more. We don't know
that the Zodiac was a sex predator, but it's certainly possible.
(06:56):
We don't know that he attempted to abduct Kathleen John's.
I don't personally think he did. But if it's, it's
it's we're combining ifs. If this guy was the Riverside killer,
then that probably means that he was the Zodiac. And
(07:16):
if both of those things are true, then he probably Well,
it certainly makes the Kathleen Johnson incident a lot more compelling.
Speaker 4 (07:26):
Yeah, go ahead, Richard, I say, I was going to
say to Drew. Do you think it's fair to say
that the confession letter author was mimicking that article.
Speaker 3 (07:37):
There are Well, let's let's let's go over the consistencies
and and and see what we think.
Speaker 4 (07:44):
Hmm, okay, Well I spoke to Mike earlier about it.
But quick, just in quick summary. The newspaper article stated
that the man grabbed her around the neck, and the
confession letter said I grabbed her on the neck. The
newspaper article said I would just hit you in the
head with his piece of wood, and the confession letter
(08:07):
said she let outis green once and I kicked it
in the head. Then we have the jack the ripper,
and I will deposit her body parts for the whole
city to see. And then the assailant in the newspaper
article offered to take her home, and the confession letter
said he would give her a lift home.
Speaker 3 (08:26):
Yeah. Absolutely, And of course the sexual deviance implied in
both incidents is another link. Some of those are generic
and and and some of them not so much. The
Jack the Ripper comment is certainly interesting considering the confession
(08:52):
letter a week later would speak of depositing, sending, sending
her what was female parts?
Speaker 4 (09:02):
I believe was the deposit the female parts for the
whole city to see. I'll cut off her female parts.
Speaker 3 (09:12):
Yeah, it's hard not to read that as a Jack
the Ripper.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Citation mentioned as the word shell, and it's in the
confessional Hodder.
Speaker 3 (09:23):
As well, exactly exactly, there's there's so many little things
and you know, a two hour abduction. Yeah, and really
seems to foreshadow of the Kathleen John's story and.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
What you've got to remember. Michae also, like I said,
the article that was released on April the thirtieth, nineteen
sixty seven, said there would be more. It referenced in
the article and he said Bates had to die, there
will be more. So not only do we have mimicry
(10:00):
in the confession letter, but we have it also in
the three Baits letters, both times from the Press Enterprise newspaper,
which we know that the killer sent his letters to
the Press Enterprise on two occasions.
Speaker 3 (10:16):
Yes, so both set of both sets of mailings related
to the Shay Joe Bates murder seemed to mimic or
at the very least reference articles from days days earlier.
Speaker 4 (10:32):
Yeah, and also, as we pointed out, the Riverside desktop
poem may have been authored shortly after the November The
third article that mentioned the attempted murder of the woman
in Riverside on a Riverside campus in nineteen sixty five
(10:52):
on April or thirteenth, Rosalin Atwood.
Speaker 3 (10:56):
Yeah, So at what point is this not a coincidence?
Speaker 4 (11:00):
Exactly? It all, it all tends to line up now.
But I would love to I would love to contact her.
I can't get her email.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
M hm hmmm. Well maybe we can dig into a
little bit more and come up with a way to
contact her.
Speaker 4 (11:18):
You know.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
And I maybe I missed it. But was her description
of that vehicle?
Speaker 3 (11:23):
No, that was That was one of at least two
key pieces of information that was not contained in this article.
But I would be surprised if it wasn't in the
initial police report. Why it wouldn't be transferred to this
article seeking help from the public, I don't really know.
(11:45):
But there was no description of the car, and there
is no description of the man's hair.
Speaker 2 (11:50):
That seems like a glaring missed opportunity to get information.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
She spent two hours with this man. Apparently, certainly she
has she knows what color is hair was, whether it
was long hair short, One would one would assume that
she could say whether it was an old car resembling
the Studa Baker for example, or at least a color.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
You know, is it a big car, a small car,
is it blue?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
Is it yeah?
Speaker 2 (12:24):
Kind of detail would help to some degree.
Speaker 4 (12:27):
You think there's a y. Then she gave a good
description of the car, and they were keeping it under
wraps so the person didn't get rid of it.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
That's a possibility too. There could be strategy in it.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
But you know, this is the same same police force
that thought the confession letter writer knew only information that
that wasn't released. Yet they released that very information in
Sherry's case, you know what I mean. So I don't
know how much thinking they went into, you know, what
(13:01):
they did and didn't share with the press.
Speaker 3 (13:04):
Yeah. Well, I think we've always found that curious that
they thought that the description in the confession letter of
how the car was disabled was proved that he was
the killer. And the only thing that I can but
obviously it came out immediately in the press in numerous articles.
(13:26):
The only thing I can make of that is that
although the true nature of how the car was disabled,
that being pulling the distributor wire, they also released false information,
intentionally or not, that the entire guts of the thing
were ripped out, which didn't happen. And the confession letter
(13:50):
author did not say that he ripped out the whole
engine or whatever they had said. He says little wire right, yeah,
which was which was correct, and he did not pair
it back the incorrect information that was also in the press.
M So that may have been part of it. They
(14:11):
also discussed the phone call, but again it was also
immediately released that there were several crank phone calls. I
think that they used the word crank phone calls that
happened in the immediate aftermath of the investigation. So what
(14:32):
call are they talking about?
Speaker 2 (14:34):
Hmm. That's interesting And I think we, you know, it'd
be great to know more about this man that picked
up this girl, and you know, compare notes on what
matches what doesn't. But I think we talked a little
bit about what matched, you know, to the Bates case
or maybe some Mkathleen John's case. But the one thing
(14:57):
that I think we need to mention doesn't matches Zodiac.
Never any confirmed Zodiac attack, never sexually attacked or attempted
to undress any any victim. So that's a little bit
different here is intent seems to be are you gonna
(15:18):
get undressed? You know, that's that's definitely you know, maybe
Zodiac might have gone down that avenue, but in the
confirmed attacks, he didn't, So I think that's a little
bit different. And there's no even in Cherry's case, there's
no evidence she was sexually assaulted. So maybe could her
killer have been planning to try and do that, maybe,
(15:42):
but they definitely didn't. So I think that's where it's
a little bit different because this guy in the car
is mentioned taking off her clothes, and that's something we
just don't see in Cherry's case or any of the
Zodiac cases.
Speaker 3 (15:59):
Yeah, it's it's one if after another. I personally think
that the man who attacked Sherry did have an intention
to assault her, but you know, we can't prove it.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
Did you watch the Nancy Drew YouTube channel, Mike.
Speaker 2 (16:24):
I not recently. I've I've watched watched it before. I
haven't watched it recently. What did they have on.
Speaker 4 (16:30):
Well, there was an interesting little connection, wasn't they drew?
Speaker 3 (16:35):
Yeah, he certainly identified a creepy individual.
Speaker 4 (16:39):
That the In brief, there's a guy called Flake Crawford Castro.
He and his family actually lived at four one nine
five Via San Jose, the house that Cherry Joe Bates
eventually moved into with her father. He was He graduated
from Ramona High in sixty five. She graduated in sixty six.
(17:03):
She was a cheerleader. He was a varsity football player.
In the same years. She went to Saint Catherine's church
on the morning of a murder. He got married eight
days earlier in Saint Catherine's Church, and then they were
reported as living in Claremont in San Diego, and down
(17:29):
there in December sixty seven and January sixty eight he
was arrested on attempted two rapes of to college. Well,
the two women lived near the college, the University of California,
San Diego. And then in seventy four again he was
arrested for attempted two rapes in the actual dormitory of
(17:55):
University of California Riverside. So this guy, I only had
all the connections to Sherry Joe Bates. He's got four
attempted rapes, although he wasn't convicted of any of them.
He is classified today as a sex offender.
Speaker 2 (18:12):
So a little bit about that guy. I actually, I
don't know where Nancy Drew found that information, but I
wrote about him years ago on my old forum. It's
been so long since I'd have to go back and
look on the forum and see what's there. I'm talking
the original Zodiac form motion form, I think is where
(18:34):
I originally wrote about him. I found out that he
had formerly lived in Cherry's house, so he was an
interesting guy to say the least. Anytime you have a
you know, somebody that's living in Cherry's you know, Sherry's house,
and he used to live there, went to the same
high school. They certainly could know each other. And then
(18:56):
he I think the term that I saw listed as
his name was mentally disordered sex offender, something along those
lines mentally criminally I think it said mentally disordered sex offender.
And you know, when I saw that, I was like, Okay,
here's a sex offender that was living in Sherry's house before,
(19:19):
went to the same school. This should be and I
think at the time I turned this into Riverside just
as a as a tip, and you know, never really
heard anything back from them at all. And who care.
You know, they already had Sherry's case, Saul, They already
know who did that, so I don't know even that
they would want to look any further. But but it's
(19:41):
interesting that somebody's talking about the same guy years later.
You know, he's definitely worth talking about and considering. And
you know, in her case.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
I did a little bit more digging yesterday and found
that he lived at Claremont. He lived near Claremont in
San Diego. Who lived at twelve zero twenty one Pomarado Road.
That is only one and a half miles from the
murder site of Nicki Benedict, who has stabbed.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
Who's been mentioned by some people as possibly.
Speaker 4 (20:18):
Being possibly but it's another stabbing with a short bladed instrument.
Now I've never connected the two. Really, it's a bit
of a stretch, but I found it odd with his
connections to Sherry Joe Bates, that he would live only
a mile and a half from somebody who was connected
to Zodiac in the past.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
Absolutely, this is a man who rapes teenagers.
Speaker 2 (20:47):
Yeah, he should certainly have been checked out, and who knows,
maybe he was, you know, somewhere along the way. But
you know, in my mind, like in Sherry's case in particular,
if if it wasn't their suspect who they thought all
along was the killer, and I don't think they paid
(21:07):
that much attention to.
Speaker 4 (21:08):
Him, which is which is the wrong approach, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
Oh?
Speaker 3 (21:12):
Absolutely, yeah, it'd be interesting to know whether whether he
was investigated. Obviously they haven't released all their information yet
and probably never will.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
And he uh recently died by the way Casto did
all he did, and I forget who I was. Somebody
reached out to me maybe a month or two ago
and asked me about him. I think it was Ross.
I think Ross reached out to me, as a matter
of fact, that's what it was, and he was asking
me about him. He didn't say why he was asking
(21:48):
about him. Uh, And I you know, I think I
looked name in ages and then I found out that
he died recently, So you know, so he is dead.
There's not not any reason to avoid talking about his
(22:09):
name now.
Speaker 4 (22:10):
No, and certainly, certainly any sexual predator in the area
of Riverside or familiar with Jerry Joe Bates. All that
campus is certainly a suspect that you can't rule out.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Sure, Yeah, for for once the Nancy Drew channel identified
someone who is actually convicted of something. The tendency over there,
which really sickens me, is that someone with just the
initials our age will will be outed and put into
(22:42):
a ten minute video suggesting they're a serial killer. But yeah,
this this this guy certainly deserves a look.
Speaker 4 (22:50):
I think when he did the follow up video about
the father of Flake Castro Senior, he lost me a
little bit on that trying to connect him to the
Zodiac CA. But the initial video was really good.
Speaker 3 (23:04):
Yeah, it's it's compelling information, for sure.
Speaker 2 (23:08):
I'm interested where he found that from. I'm wondering if
he's going back to my old I'm trying to log
into my old site. It's been so long since I
logged in and it's still actually up. This is the
Zodiac Killer sit that form motion dot com. I haven't
looked on the Satan ages. I remember what my login is.
It's been that long, but I think this is where
I originally posted about it, And maybe he's got an
(23:30):
old accountant can get in here.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
What is what's really good at and I'll give him
credit for is searching through records and finding people and
where they lived in the locations that I can't I
can't access from the UK. But he seems to find
a lot of stuff like that, a bit like Shake
delves back into the past and finds all this historical
information that is beyond me.
Speaker 3 (23:55):
Yeah. Absolutely. One other thing I wanted to mentioned, going
back to the Montgomery article of November twenty four, is
that this woman, who is this eighteen year old nineteen
year old who was abducted, said she had first got
a ride from this individual three weeks earlier, and that
(24:20):
would be like a day or two after the Sherry
Joe Bates attack.
Speaker 2 (24:25):
So she's saying that she drove with this guy before.
Speaker 3 (24:28):
Yeah, and it seems that it wasn't until she was
in the car going down the road three weeks later
and he mentioned Jack the ripper that she realized that
she then recognized him as a man whose name she
did not know, who had given her a ride about
three weeks ago, So that would be like November first.
Speaker 2 (24:52):
Yeah, interesting but odd that he didn't do anything out
of the ordinary the first time.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
Around exactly, and if he was the killer of Sherry
Joe Bates, we've been led to assume that this individual
would have scratches on their face.
Speaker 4 (25:12):
Well, if he was young, he may have started just
after the Sherry Joe Bates murder and was mimicking what
he read in the newspapers. Who knows, But it does
seem a little bit odd. I mean, you thought that
maybe she was making this up, didn't you.
Speaker 3 (25:31):
Oh, I don't know about that. I mean, she may
have been mistaken. It's obviously very generalized to say, you know,
about three weeks ago.
Speaker 4 (25:43):
So maybe, but what do we know of Pigeon Pass that.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
It's nowhere near the pizza parlor he was driving her to.
Speaker 4 (25:52):
No, it's quite a way away, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (25:54):
Yeah, Yeah, I mean that that has to be. That
drive from the intended location to Pigeon Pass has got
an account for the two hours that she was held.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
And we assume that if Sherry, if the intention of
the person who attached s Sherry Joe Bates was initially
to take her into his car and take her to
a secondary location, it would have been interesting to find
out where that would have been.
Speaker 3 (26:24):
Yeah, I've never given much credence despite the missing time
in the Sherry Joe Bates murder. I've never given much
credence to the idea that she was taken to another
location and then for some reason, returned to the library. No,
but that.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Could have been his original intention to take up what
else for nefarious reasons. She fought back and ended there
in the alleyway, so we don't know his initial intentions.
Maybe that's what they were, to take her to a
secondary location, but things to rye because she fought back.
Speaker 3 (27:03):
Yeah. The only part of this young lady's story that
seems a little strange is that she escaped from the
car when she was afraid of him, and then he
seemed to talk her back into the car. Like at first,
she's running from the car. This guy is this guy
(27:23):
is a threat. I am running away. And then and
then after I guess he promised, no, I'll I will
take you where I initially told you I would take you,
and then she gets back in the car. So I
don't know if there's something that's being left out of
the story. Hmm.
Speaker 2 (27:45):
It's terrible when there's you're not getting the whole complete story.
It always uh always bugs me?
Speaker 3 (27:58):
And can you.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Stay again? What was the date and name of the
paper that this article ran.
Speaker 3 (28:07):
In the Riverside Press Enterprise November twenty fourth, nineteen sixty
six by John Montgomery.
Speaker 2 (28:17):
Yeah, And I wonder if there's any other articles around
the time of the attack that somehow haven't made it
to our attention that are out there. Maybe there are
articles that have more information about it. I wonder if
it'd be worth checking with the Riverside Library and getting
(28:40):
copies of the different Riverside papers from around that time.
Speaker 3 (28:44):
Sure, sure, it sounded like an introduction like it doesn't
sound like a follow up article that we're reading here,
But it's possible.
Speaker 2 (28:52):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:53):
Like I said, the only one we do know of
is the November the third article linkin Cherry Joe Bates
to Russelyn Attwood. But we know that Rolin Taft was
in jail at the time. But they did compare the
two crimes because they both happened on the campus. And
don't forget I mean what I found curious as well
a week or so ago was the knife used was
(29:16):
four and a half inches in the attempted murder of
Rosslyn Atwood, and the knife found fifty feet from where
Sherry's body was found on the day after the library reconstruction.
Was also a buried knife for four and a half inches. Now,
I'm not implying it was the same knife, of course,
because that was probably still in custody somewhere, but it's
(29:39):
possible the person was playing a prank.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, and Benedict was killed with a small blade as well.
Speaker 4 (29:52):
Yeah, a small bladed knife. I can't remember the dimensions,
but I know the Rosslyn Atwood one the year before
and was exactly four and a half inches, just like
the knife buried close to where Sherry's body was found
two weeks earlier. And I'm assuming that was buried recently
because that gardener must have gone over that and to
(30:12):
rake it up. It couldn't have been buried that deep,
which gives you the impression the person who buried it
wanted it to be found. I doubt it was just
dropped there and buried itself. And the timing is uncanny
as well.
Speaker 3 (30:26):
It sure is.
Speaker 2 (30:33):
There's so many cases that are loosely connected to Zodiac either.
You know, what's the reason that Nikki Benedict was even
brought up as a potential Zodiac victim is it because indeed,
and I think I think somebody said too that Jim
(30:56):
Phillips lived down there in that area at that time
or something among the designs.
Speaker 3 (31:04):
Basically it came out the day after the letters threatening
there will be more.
Speaker 2 (31:09):
Yeah, So the problem ISDI Zodiac or you know, we
don't know the Zodiac, but in the Zodiac conversation, almost
anybody that got killed in California can loosely be connected
to Zodiac and some some capacity.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
It seems like, Yeah, the only thing that really interests
me about the Sherry Joe Bates murder and the letters
and the communications to be connected to Zodiac is the
fact of the mimicry of all the newspaper articles which
we know the Zodiac killer had a fascination with most
(31:53):
of the times when we look at the Zodiac letters,
we only have to go back a week or so
at most to find out where he's quoted the news
paper articles. So from that this the aspect of these
these letters and communications mimicking recent press enterprise articles is
a thing that makes me wander. I know this isn't
(32:15):
unusual for killers to do, but it's something that Zodiac did.
He focused in on one newspaper generally and mimicked what
he read from a few days earlier.
Speaker 3 (32:27):
Well, the frustrating thing about the Riverside case is, and
I'm not saying that the Bates letters were a hoax
as as the Riverside police suggest without evidence, but it
seems clear that there was a lot of nefarious hoaxer
(32:49):
type material people in the area, Like there was a
bunch of calls that were presumably from Oaxer's you know,
it's really incense satively in the in the days following
Sherry's murder, and then obviously a bunch of a bunch
of bb I guess we'll call them their prime suspect,
(33:14):
people who knew him, uh, did everything they could to
throw him under the bus. And yet it seems forensics
have have all but dispelled that notion.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
Mm hmm. Yeah. And then we have all.
Speaker 3 (33:30):
These uh murder confessions that seem to be mimicking articles
from the paper.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
Yeah, that's what interests me, the communications, and it's parallel
with the with the newspapers.
Speaker 3 (33:46):
Yeah, at the end of the day, the the all
of the links that the typed confession letter authors went
to two disguise their hand writing the typewriter used. They
may have gotten a print or to off it, but
(34:07):
they can't be certain they were from the writer. That
suggests to me that it actually was from the killer.
This was a lot of effort, a lot of correct information.
It aligns with the autopsy. It doesn't align with the
screen that was heard hours later. But I've been flip
(34:31):
flopping about this for ten years and I'll probably continue
to do so. But at the moment, I think that
the confession letter was from the killer.
Speaker 2 (34:42):
Yeah, I mean, to me, the Riverside piece has always
been it's either a major clue to who Zodiac was
or it's the biggest red airing in the universe. Yeah,
you know, there's no rule in between. It's it's either
(35:02):
a smoking gun and will help you should help us
identify a Zodiac, or it's totally not related to Zodiac
at all, and it's got everybody chasing their you know,
their their tails for the last you know, sixty years.
Speaker 4 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (35:19):
Sorry, come well, I was just gonna go through the
the the basics of what we have from the Riverside case.
We have a partial footprint, a heel print I believe
that was measured between they could say it was between
size eight and ten and and and and Zodiac left
(35:47):
a footprint of ten and a half. No one in
the right mind would write it off for that inconsistency.
But they also had a bunch of greasy fingerprints in
the Riverside case, and we know that they were compared
to what they had in the Zodiac case. Unfortunately, with
(36:08):
the Zodiac case, we don't know that any of the
prints recovered we're actually from the killer. It's kind of
insane to believe that Zodiac wasn't wearing gloves, but Zodiac
may have been insane, so it's hard to say, yeah,
I don't know.
Speaker 2 (36:29):
Yeah, you know, those greasy fingerprints, I wonder if they
if they're in a database someplace, and if they or
if they're not, they're checked every so often to see
if they've ever come up with anything else, you know,
because you know, if they checked them decades ago, that
(36:51):
doesn't mean that later on they won't show up, you know,
in a database someplace. So I hope they're they're looking
at them. But then again, I go back to it
didn't match their favorite suspect in Cheri's case. I don't
think they really cared oh it doesn't match him, then
it's it can't be related to her murder. Let's move on, right.
Speaker 3 (37:11):
I think they I think they strongly believe they were
from the killer, but they have not written off the
possibility that there was more than one assailant, which I
think kept BB in their in the mix.
Speaker 2 (37:29):
Yeah, and in their mind for him to be involved
like they think he is, there has to be somebody
else because the DNA doesn't match the DNA that's most
likely from the killer, so they have to say, well,
he had a partner. And then you know, that reminds
me the whole story of the the one guy that
supposedly said they went back there searching with flashlights or
(37:50):
something like that, and that guy was, you know, sort
of backtracking on his account of what happened and retracting
statement and just a row mess.
Speaker 4 (38:03):
It's not very believable going back and searching for the
watch that was only ten feet from the body. I
can't believe they would not have found that with a flashlight.
Speaker 3 (38:13):
Yeah, and that would be around the same time that
he allegedly confessed sobbing in public to having killed her.
I think all of those anonymous, well anonymous to us.
All of those testimonies has got to be incorrect.
Speaker 4 (38:35):
And once upon a time I was like you, Mike,
I didn't believe there was anything in those confession letters
that told us that he was the killer. But I
think when you look at the autopsy reports, there are
many things in the autopsy report that supports what the
confession letter author is saying.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
M hm, yes, you know. The I'd love to you know,
I interviewed Phil Sins, the guy that contacted Paul Avery,
and you know, his story was amazing, you know, the
(39:18):
fact that he recognized that the letters sounded a whole
lot like Yeah. Also, I'd love to talk to BB
to hear what he has to say and hear his
(39:39):
side of the story, if you'd ever talk.
Speaker 4 (39:44):
Yeah. The most curious thing about that Phil Sins thing
I find is that immediately after the Halloween card, there
was the newspaper articles on November the sixteenth that CA
came out linking Riverside to the Zodiac killer and mentioning
(40:05):
the Z style symbol, and the Halloween card was the
only time the Zodiac up to that time had used
the Z symbol in his communications. That's what I found
very curious. Curious timing, let's put it that way.
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Yeah, a little over two weeks earlier.
Speaker 2 (40:23):
Mm hmm, yeah, that is interesting.
Speaker 4 (40:27):
Now we don't think it was as I don't think
it was a Z or a Z, but nevertheless that's
what they interpreted interpreted it as. And so it was
curious timing, especially when you think the previous little this
letter parroted certain words from the confession letter.
Speaker 2 (40:48):
Also, the interesting thing about this so now we're we're
a lot with a lot of questions, and again we
finding other newspaper articles might provide more answers. But you know,
we have a guy in Riverside that uh, you know,
(41:11):
is connecting himself or talking about Sherry's case anyway, threatening
this girl giving a ride in a situation that sounds
remarkably like Kathleen John's. And you know, just like with
Kathleen John's, we don't know for sure she was a
Zodiac victim. I mean, I maybe she had that experience
(41:34):
with somebody, but you know, he never said I'm Zodiac.
You know, the only reason it got connected to Zerdik
because she saw his picture and Alan said that's the guy.
You know. Besides that, there's nothing, you know, we just
Zodiac never abducted anybody that we know of. So the
(41:55):
fact this is very interesting in that it mirrors the
Kathleen John's key so much. Could just be yet another
red hearing because this, unfortunately might not even be related
to Kathleen Johns or a Zodiac.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Well.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
The problem with the Kathleen John's story, in my opinion,
is she stated she was abducted for about one and
a half maybe two hours, and ended up three hundred
meters away from her car at the end of this abduction.
So I don't know, it's not a very successful abduction
(42:30):
to take her around for two hours and then to
deposit her back where she escaped out of the vehicle,
let's put it that way, at virtually the identical place
her car was originally abandoned.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Well, and that was one of the odd things about
the case, because if her accounts correct, the killer went back,
put that wheelback on the car and moved it a
little ways to where it was set on fire.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
But it was.
Speaker 3 (42:59):
Yeah, and and Zodiac of course parroted back what he
what we believe he had just read in the newspaper.
I took a woman and her baby for a couple
of hours.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
Mm hmm, Yeah, without providing any solid information that could
confirm us him.
Speaker 3 (43:18):
Yeah, if if we can, if we feel confident that
the John's incident, whatever it may be, was not in
fact a multi hour incident, then I then I think
we can Then I think we can write off the
(43:38):
entire claim.
Speaker 4 (43:40):
If if the Halloween car did exist that was sent
to John's mentioning a blue car, then this story may
have a little bit more credibility because I don't think
the color of a car was mentioned in any newspapers.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
Yeah, that scenario has has been offered it. It sure
is a shame that the card was lost in the mail.
Speaker 4 (44:06):
If it existed.
Speaker 2 (44:08):
Yeah, that's the thing with this case. There's a lot
of things that, according to hearsay, things existed, but we've
yet to see them with our own eyes.
Speaker 3 (44:18):
Yeah. I've never liked to suggest that Kathleen was was lying.
I assume that she was incorrect.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
You want to give people, you want to give people
the benefit of the doubt.
Speaker 3 (44:33):
Of course, Yeah, especially people who seem to be victims
of nefarious individuals.
Speaker 2 (44:41):
Yeah. Well, so any final thoughts before we wrap up.
Speaker 4 (44:47):
Well, what I've been doing recently, I've been trying to
lick because as Zodiacs spoke of the Most Dangerous Game,
I was trying to find something in the confession letter
that the reference the Most Dangerous Game or one of
its offshoots. And I looked at the line, I am
not sick, I am insane, but that will not stop
(45:08):
the game. And what I found was, in nineteen forty
five there was a copycat movie, effectively of the Most
Dangerous Game, called a Game of Death. And when you
think both of these characters in the nineteen forty five
film and the nineteen thirty two film were both described
as insane, heartless, psychopathic men, I found it quite curious
(45:32):
when he said I am not sick, I am insane,
but that will not stop the game. In other words,
was that mimicking the Game of Death and the Most
Dangerous Game? And his initial these were his initial thoughts
back down in Riverside, let alone, when he wrote the
Three Trinity of letters to the three newspapers in the
(45:54):
Bay Area. And so I'm trying to link the two,
the two Riverside and the Bay Area together through the language.
I mean, that's not compelling, but that's what I'm attempting
to do. At the moment.
Speaker 3 (46:09):
Yeah, it's the signature that seems to be shared between
the killer of Cherry Your Base and the Zodiac. If
we assume that the confession the type confession was from
the killer, clearly both individuals, whether the same or not,
this was a game, an unusual game.
Speaker 4 (46:31):
And also, Mike, nowhere in Richard Connell's short story or
the movie or any subsequent movie have I ever seen
the phrase man is the most dangerous animal at all.
Apart from I've found now three or four newspaper articles
that has that exact quote, and it was from Mary
(46:54):
and C. Cooper, who was the associate producer of the
Most Dangerous Game film. He said this on the release
of that movie. He's the only person I've ever seen
quoted as saying those exact words. So in ninety years,
I've found three newspaper articles with this exact quote, and
I'm staggered to work out how the Zodiac found this
(47:18):
exact quote, if indeed he wasn't just lucky in stumbling
across this quote.
Speaker 2 (47:25):
Yeah, I mean it's possibly, it was definitely you know
a movie buffer read a lot and read this guy's quote.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
Well to read the quote. This is why I went
into the idea that to read this quote, the easiest
way to do it back then without newspapers, dot com
and stuff like that, is to go into a library
and go through the microfiche and before you prepare your letters.
In other words, put a lot of effort into what
you're doing. And this sort of played me into the
(47:54):
riverside angle and the desktop poem. Was this person a historian?
Did he was he a regular of the library? Did
he work in a library and had access to all
this material?
Speaker 2 (48:07):
Fascinating a lot of a lot of questions that we
just don't know exactly.
Speaker 3 (48:13):
The question I would try to try to leave the
audience with is whether, if we assume that the that
the killer wrote the letter, was he being honest about
his affiliation with the victim. You know that he had
known her for years and she had brushed him off,
(48:34):
and that this was essentially a revenge or would that
be the opposite of what truly happened and that she
was in fact a stranger to him. It seems odd
to me that that you would take revenge on a
(48:55):
woman for this kind of behavior and then essentially tell
the police what your motivation was, you know, to me.
Speaker 2 (49:06):
The thing that's always bothered me about the confession letter
of him saying for all the brush offs over the years,
To me, that seems like it's trying to mislead the police,
you know. I I equate that to the Zodiac when
he called from the Vleophoam booth saying, you know, they
saw the guy that saw my car. You know, he
(49:28):
was a black guy and my car was brown. You know,
I feel like that was an obvious attempt to misdirect
the police and get him looking in the wrong direction.
So in this confession letter, where you know the writer's
write writing for all the brush offs over the years,
I mean, if that's true, that would make police look
(49:51):
at people in her circle, you know, and that would
more of a chance the police might catch the person
if he was in her orbit. And you know, one
of her friends said, hey, so and so I used
to ask her out. She used to brush them off
all the time, which to me makes it seem like
it's an attempt at misleading the police. But then again,
(50:15):
if you're a stranger, you're not connected to share at all,
what would be the need to misdirect the police. You
just don't send that letter at all to mislead them,
because you're not tied to share Joe bats in any way.
So I always found that that weird, that letter sort
of a you know, which which side of the fence
do you fall on? As far as it being, you know,
(50:36):
really from somebody that she know or a total stranger.
Speaker 4 (50:40):
You can take you can take it both ways. It
could be a double bluff. He expected the police to
disbelieve it when it was in fact the truth.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Yeah, and around we go.
Speaker 2 (50:51):
Yeah, and we're still talking about it sixty years later.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yeah. I mean, the confession seems like a mixture between
a suggestion that he was a student who had known
her for years. He said, you know, he followed her
into the library, and then it evolves into clearly a
serial killer type of message. You know, I'm stalking your girls.
(51:15):
Now you know there will be more. Yeah, and then
days later, it seems days days later, they find a
very creepy poem inside the school. We may never know, guys,
we may never know.
Speaker 2 (51:36):
Yeah, Riverside is just that frustrating piece of the zodiac case.
It's either hold some smoking gun clue someplace that we
just haven't found, or it's not related to the Zodiac
case at all. It's just we've all been chasing down
the wrong road.
Speaker 3 (51:54):
Absolutely.
Speaker 4 (51:55):
I think if Zodiac is connected to Riverside in any way,
either the murder or the or the letters or communications,
I think we'll we will find the answer eventually.
Speaker 2 (52:06):
Yeah, I'm not so sure. I think that would have
come out by now, because I think a lot of
people have been scoured. You know, who was in the
Valleo San Francisco Bay that had previously been in Riverside,
And I think a lot of people have been looked
(52:26):
at and and would have been ruled out hopefully, but
you know who knows in this case, nothing would surprise me.
Speaker 4 (52:38):
Well, new stuff is coming up all the while, so
you never know.
Speaker 2 (52:41):
Fingers crossed either way. I went to Zodiac nad. I'd
love to see Sherry's case solved, and then if you
could who that killer was, then maybe you could link
him to some of these other things, like the girl
that was you know, jumped out of the car. You know,
could he have been the guy responsible for her? And
(53:04):
might there be other victims?
Speaker 4 (53:05):
And the one thing that will help that is a
release of the police reports.
Speaker 2 (53:10):
Absolutely well, you know it's it's been sixty years, so
maybe in another twenty they'll be ready to release it. Yeah. Well, anyhow,
you know, it's great having you Andrew. Always great to
talk to you, and just for listeners out there, if
they want to check out what you're doing or you know,
pick your brain a little bit, where can they find
(53:31):
you and where do you hang out?
Speaker 3 (53:35):
Yeah? Well I wanted to do I've wanted to come
onto this podcast, cas and as soon as you guys
started it, I guess you could find me on the
Zodiac Killer discord channel or on Tom Voyd's Tapa Talk
forum and on Mondays at four pm Eastern time. I
(54:01):
all right, Actually I think they're doing it at three
o'clock now. I do a YouTube panel discussion about the
Zodiac Killer on a channel called Mysteries with mister Beljkue.
Speaker 2 (54:15):
And I was recently a guest on there. It was
nice to have best to be on there, and it's
good to have you on. I hope we can have
you on again sometime too.
Speaker 3 (54:23):
Oh yeah, anytime, guys.
Speaker 2 (54:26):
All right here, that's I guess we'll wrap up and
we're gonna try and come back with some more discussion
in another episode, So stay up subscribe to the channel
and we'll we'll see you back here soon with another Zodiac.
Speaker 4 (54:38):
Talk kas then by night by.
Speaker 5 (54:43):
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Zodiac Speaking.
Please make sure you're subscribed to the show wherever you're
listening now so you don't miss a single episode. New
episodes of Zodiac Speaking will or every other Saturday. If
you want to follow or interact with us on social media,
we'd love to hear from you. You can find Zodiac
Speaking on Twitter with a handle at podcast Zodiac, or
(55:06):
you can search Facebook for Zodiac Speaking podcast.
Speaker 4 (55:09):
And don't forget. You can get plenty of Zodiac details
twenty four to seven by visiting my site at zodiacsiphers
dot com or by going to Mike's site at Zodiac
Killer dot net.
Speaker 5 (55:23):
If you'd like to help more people find Zodiac Speaking,
please take a moment to rate the show and leave
a review of it on your favorite podcast player or app.
Speaker 2 (55:33):
On behalf of Rich. This is Mike Morford and i'd
like to say thanks again for listening and we'll see
you on the next episode of Zodiac Speaking.
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