Domingos/Edwards and Ray Davis

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (00:54):
This is Zodiac Speaking.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
Hey, Ross, thanks for coming on Zodiac Speaking. This is
the first time having you on, and you know, I've
been looking forward to talking to you.

Speaker 2 (01:05):
Hey, thank you very much more for really appreciate it.

Speaker 3 (01:08):
You're one of my favorite people to listen to to
talk about this case because you're not always trying to
force something down somebody's throat or you know, trying to
buy in on one theory or another. You're pretty open minded,
it seems, and pretty neutral.

Speaker 2 (01:23):
I like that.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
So look forward to talking with you, and if you can't,
just for listeners that aren't familiar with you, tell us
a little about yourself, what you do, what you talk about,
and where they can find you.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah. Absolutely, so I guess the main place would be
my channel Planet x Filmworks that I could be found
at YouTube dot com slash planet xfilm That's where I
do my main series deep dives and on location shooting
of the so far the non canonicals but morph and
I can get into where that's going to go. I'm
also on x I'm on Facebook, but yeah, the most

(01:57):
place is mostly just my YouTube and that I do
have a patron as well where I do deep dives
of some of the possibly Zodiac related movies.

Speaker 3 (02:06):
Awesome, Awesome, So you know, along those lines. One case
it's always gotten a lot of traction as a possible
a Zodiac case is the nineteen sixty three Domingo's Edwards
murders in Southern California and Santa Barbara. You've got the
elements the parallels to Lake Barry Essa, and I think

(02:27):
there's some differences too, but we can sort of talk
about some of that stuff. But you know, just you know,
you've spent time there, you've gone there, You've spent a
lot of time digging into that case. Just give listeners
if you want a brief overview in your estimation of
the case there of what happened how it went down.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
Yeah. Absolutely, So it starts out the events are on
the June fourth, nineteen sixty three. As Morph said, it's
to high school sweethearts, Robert Domingo and Linda Fay Edwards.
There's a lot of kind of like interesting kind of
catalyst things leading up to it, Morph and I can

(03:08):
get into that as we deep dive it. But essentially
they go down there on what is supposed to be
senior skip day, have a chance to go to a
different beach with Linda's best friend, uh, and they they
can't do it due to work priorities, so they end
up going alone. You know. There's that's what's so interesting
about this story is because there's kind of all these

(03:28):
little things that could have completely changed the timeline forever,
but ultimately they end up going down there by themselves.
Landscape has changed a little bit, so Bobby parks on
what's kind of like a median parking lot of the
highway there. They go down there, they obviously and get
there's what's called the George Gill Shack, is this kind

(03:49):
of lean to uh you know, transient shack that is
down there on the creek. And they counter this and
sale assailant. They're they're both shot about twenty times eleven
and nine seemingly escaping. So they're just down there sunbathing
and they seemingly get attacked for no reason. Obviously some

(04:10):
possible zodiac parallels there, as morph said, Their bodies are
dragged into the shack and kind of piled on top
of each other. The shack is possibly attempted to set
on fire, although there's no real you know, timeline on that,
as rich as articles say, and then it's just from
there on out, it's kind of the investigation afterwards, which
is Bobby's father. I mean, most of us in California,

(04:34):
and I think most of us in the States, we're
all kind of familiar with this. George Hutch Bobby's father,
reaches out to police almost right away, but they give
him the old, hey, it hasn't been twenty four hours yet,
run around, which is like the worst thing any of
us here in this type of situation. He goes down
there with Bobby's friend and they encounter highway patrolman Schultz,

(04:57):
who you know, They kind of flag him down. I
think I think he had someone pulled over if I
remember correctly. They kind of flag him down. He goes
down there, investigates the shack, he tells them basically, yeah,
you don't want to go in there, and then for
then on out it's felt like I'm you know, Morph
is obviously familiar with this, a month and month and
months long investigation looking into the ammunition that's found there,
which is a Western super X twenty two l R,

(05:20):
which we know, you know, very familiar in the Zodiac community.
That's obviously what Zodiac uses as a call sign in
some of his later letters referring to Lake Herman Road.
So that's kind of one of the stronger connections, I guess.
And yeah, it's just a very difficult investigation. You know.
From there, Morph and I can break it down point
by point, but they exhaustively look into the amo where

(05:41):
it's available, and you know, how it could have been
purchased and things of that nature, and it just kind
of seems everything becomes a dead end at that point.
You know, we can get into the the Read and
Coleman crime spree culminating with the Verne Charles Smith murder
which occurs the day before, and then you know, the
infamous sand It's kind of this h essentially a ghost

(06:02):
in the true crime world, this is this character that
everybody sees, but no one's ever really able to nail
nail them down. It just this this particular case, it
just spiles into all these kind of random rabbit holes
which come out as dead ends, which in my opinion,
i'd say probably the most frustrating of the chnicals. I
don't know if you the non cononicals, I don't know
if you'd agree more.

Speaker 3 (06:21):
Yeah, it's you know, whether it's Zodiac or not, it's
an interesting case just on its own, with all the
different pieces of the puzzle that are attached to it.
You know, the mystery Sandy, there were some sniper activity
in the area leading up to this, just other little

(06:41):
nuggets that you think, Okay, maybe they're connected, maybe they're not.
But there's just you know, the shack, you know, all
this these little tidbits that you wonder, Okay, what's what's
important here, what's not? What could be Zodiac related? What

(07:03):
doesn't match some of the Zodiac things? I think for
you know, the for most Zodiac listeners of the show
are pretty familiar with this case. But just for somebody
that's listening, that's not the most common belief amongst law
enforcement here is that they were they were when they

(07:27):
were assaulted. Linda was forced at gunpoint to tie Bobby
up using pre cut links of bindings, and that is
precisely what Zodiac did at Lake Berryessa. So for any
new listeners aren't familiar with this case, that's the main
thing that you know, obviously, have lone teenagers on a beach,

(07:51):
nobody else around that kind of matches, But it's it's
that specific mo that that really, you know, makes this
case a possible Zodiac case. And I think the one
thing that people look at now. I had heard something
two years ago from a source that I at this
point and I don't even remember who it was, but
I can't say they were reliable. But I was told

(08:13):
that there was a wing Walker bootprint found at the scene,
which is another reason Santa Barbara is so confident that
that was Zodiac. And of course there was a wing
Walker boot track found at Lake berry Ess, and again
that's not verified. I don't know at this point. I
can't remember who told me that, but I can't even

(08:34):
say it was accurate. It could have been something somebody
heard secondhand, but obviously if that was true, that would
make a you know, a really interesting thing, had you
heard anything about those kinds of things, only.

Speaker 2 (08:49):
The same rumor that you heard. I've tried to push
jb Averett a little bit. He is, you know, a
PhD sergeant, and he has kind of read the files
form what I've heard, and I'm sure I've seen him
post on the forum or that he has tried to
push to get the to get at least something released,
and basically nothing has been released. So what I do
know is they do know the boots size. I would

(09:12):
still find that pretty interesting if it was ten and
a half, you know, even if it wasn't wing Walkers
as Morph said, if it was wing Walkers, I think
that would be quite a bit stronger. I think that
would probably be enough for me to say, you know,
it's close to a slam dunk. But again, this one's
really all over the place. I'm not sure if Morph knows,
but I did try to foil it. I just got

(09:33):
the same, the usual response. I'm sure Morph's gotten it
with a million cases, which is it's an open case.
It can't be foid. So yeah, in California.

Speaker 3 (09:40):
Unfortunately, California is a tough state for getting a lot
of Floyer request too. I've run into several roadblocks, but yeah,
obviously I understand it's an open investigation. You don't want
to spoil the opportunity to solve it. But here we are.
I'm terrible at math sixty two years later, So that perpetrator,

(10:04):
even if they were on the young side, even if
they were seventeen or eighteen years old, they're what eighty
years old, So the chances are likely that the person
that did this or not alive or they're really up
there in age. My thinking with law enforcement on a
case that old is what do you have to lose
by releasing something now that you've been holding back for
all these years because you've been holding it back, and

(10:26):
what has that got you. It's got you an ice
cold case with nothing being solid. So I'm of the
belief that whatever they have in this case, it's time
to really share it and release it. And to your
point too, about John Avert, he's probably one of the
people that supplied the most information on this crime and

(10:49):
this crime scene. He's got a good series of videos
out there on YouTube that people should check out to
really get an idea of the lay of the land.
And I know you went there in some two and
you went down and checked that area. Tell us about
going there and what it was like navigating the area,
and I obviously I know it's changed a little bit,

(11:10):
but what was the area like? And if you're somebody
sneaking up on somebody down there, what does it look like?
What are you seeing?

Speaker 2 (11:19):
I mean, it's it's basically a golden gift if you're
trying to ambush some you know, random couple that's just
you know, sunbathing or whatever, maybe has their backs to
the inland and you know, isn't seeing you coming. Of course,
morph knows there's the cow tunnel down there, because the
creek does go up, you know, through under the mountain there.
I believe that's changed. I couldn't give you the exact

(11:41):
dates of one that was constructed, but then obviously there
was the shack down there. This is definitely the most
expansive location I've been to. Obviously, Ray Davis is just
simply a back alley. Ocean Beach is just basically one
street that butts up against the bluff there. That would
be the Swindles. And then obviously you guys are all
familiar with our CC and the Riverside campus, but this

(12:03):
is by far the most expansive. It's actually a hilarious story, Morpho.
We all kind of got lost when we were hacking
through the bush down there to the trails, so they're
pretty long trails. I mean, it's it's definitely an effort
to get down there. It's not just a quick, probably
two or three minute stroll, which is what most people
think looking back, you know, looking at the maps. It's

(12:24):
actually quite a stroll down there. And yeah, we were
lost for I think nearly forty five minutes hacking through
the bush of machetes until we actually find the real
trail to get down there. Once you get down there,
it's very rocky on that beach, and I couldn't tell
you how much has changed. All I've seen is like
kind of the same basic crime crime scene photos that
we've all seen. I think, you know, there's like maybe

(12:45):
two or three of them of the beach from back then,
morph But yeah, it's extremely rocky beach. The creek was
pretty high when we were there. As my understanding, it
kind of ebbs and flows with you know, the California
drought and then that that wooden platform that you guys
can all see in the History Channel series, which was
like I think further out on the beach that actually

(13:08):
got washed into the creek, so it was kind of
floating in the water. So that's kind of where we
did that scene in my episode was us kind of
standing on it. What I really wanted to do Morph
was kind of walk you guys up the creek and
just kind of like get up to the site of
the shack and that I know people years ago have
gone up there and kind of like found a brief
from the shacks. That was my goal. It was kind of,

(13:28):
you know, to get up there and get a piece
of the SHACKO. We didn't really get that far in
once we started shooting. You know, we've got to do
our thing with the drones and the cameras and stuff,
so it's just a lot of effort. But yeah, that
was that was my goal, was I really want to
get in there. The Shaka is you know, Morph and
I were coming to it was burned down and destroyed,
burned down and destroyed after the crime, so that is
no longer there now.

Speaker 3 (13:49):
It's an interesting scene because you know, I'm from New Jersey.
We have some nice beaches in New Jersey and I'm
now I'm in Florida. We have some nice beaches here.
The beaches I'm used to, nice clean, sandy beaches that
are wide open that you could walk on and hurt
your feet. Everything I've ever seen of this beach, it
looks kind of rocky, as you mentioned, not to me

(14:10):
sometimes that'd be the ideal swimming spot. But yeah, obviously
you know in that area, if they want to go
swimming bad, that's where they went. And it sounds like
it was a popular place. And if I'm not mistaken,
they had met there with friends before in that same
exact spot.

Speaker 2 (14:26):
Is that correct? Uh, Yeah, I believe that's the case.
Is it was familiar. I mean, it wasn't just familiar
to them either, Like I think it was like kind
of familiar to that whole senior class, like people had
gone gone down there all the time. And as you know,
as MORPH said before, there was the surfers down there
who you know, basically got shot at by the random sniper.
And then I believe there was like basically two cases

(14:48):
of that. So and you know, we'll come to that.
That's kind of another reason why I don't think Sandy
had anything to do. I mean we haven't even covered
Smith yet, but we'll get to it. Why Sandy has
anything to do with the mingus Edwards, because it sounds
much more like a person that was kind of like
staked out down there already. That was kind of like plotting.

(15:09):
I mean, Richard does a really good job, and he's
got three or four articles on this, but one of
them he discusses, like, you know, the hunter type character
maybe shooting small game. I mean, because there's all these
AMMO boxes kind of left in the shack, So like
that says to me it was like somebody waiting in ambush.
I mean, that's quite a bit different than the Zodiac
crimes because he obviously just drives up in a car

(15:29):
real quick, does the job and drives away. But again
we don't know how much. You know, his EMO could
have changed from sixty three to sixty eight to sixty nine.
So yeah, there's just the ankle busters down there. It
is really rocky. I like MorphOS saying, I assume it
was smoother back then. Otherwise, why would people go down
there all the time? When Gabot to State Beach is like,
you know, just a few miles due north. It's like

(15:51):
a whole you know, beautiful state park. So and it's
actually called Canada del Molino. I sure, I'm sure. At
one point morph and I will discuss the recent Netflix
documentary and what they did there when they actually didn't
even name the right beach, but we can save that
for later more if it's not more.

Speaker 3 (16:08):
Yeah, and I think maybe maybe, as you mentioned, there
was better swimming areas not far away, but maybe this
is someplace that gave them some privacy which they wanted.
And I'm assuming too that you mentioned having to cut
your way down there with machetes, but back then, I'm
assuming that it was much clearer, easier to get down
to that without having to you know, go through the brush.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, I would assume. So I know there was like
some flooding later on that kind of further washed it out.
So it's kind of just you know, a lot of
natural activity going on there, even coming back up the
hill on the trails. The way to have it right
now is like there's there's some pretty steep parts where
there's ropes where you actually have to pull yourself up
the rope. So it's not My point is like it's

(16:52):
not easy terrain guys, Like in these these four non
canonicals I've covered, I'd say this is probably, without a doubt,
the most difficult. And you know, you can get a
pretty good idea in my episode where we shot the
cliffs with the drones and stuff. But I mean, once
you get down there, like Morph said, it couldn't be
more secluded, you know, very of course, the whole creek there,

(17:13):
and then just like I don't and then obviously what's
about you got the ocean out there, like Morph was saying,
and then above that you got the highway. So I'm
really not sure anyone would really hear much even you know,
the twenty ish gunshots, you know what I mean, you know,
whereas it's getting close tonight and maybe if that's you know,
almost around rush hour. I couldn't obviously tell you how

(17:34):
traffic was back then, but I assume not much would
be heard at all.

Speaker 3 (17:39):
Yeah, and you've got the trains coming through there too. Yeah,
I don't know how frequently they ran, but you've got
that cliff area with the wide open ocean right there,
the highway as you mentioned the train. I mean, that's
all a lot of camouflage for gunshots, and I sort
of want to go back for a second. And it's
been a while since I read about these, but if

(18:01):
you've got this beach or surrounding beaches right in this
area in the days and weeks leading up to it,
that had multiple sniper incidents where kids on the beach
were shot at, it's pretty serious. It's not something you
start shooting at people. That's dangerous. And you know, I

(18:21):
can see that leading to Okay, let me go further,
let me just not let me not stop here, Let
me go down and try and talk to these people,
or get closer to them and assault them. My gut
feeling is I'm pretty sure in my mind that the

(18:42):
person that was doing that sniper shooting was the same
person that killed them. Again, it's been a while since
I read about how many incidents there were, and but
to me, you know, I can't. I find it hard
to believe there's two somebody capable in that area of
shooting at people and another person capable of doing this

(19:05):
double murder in that same little vicinity. I have a
hard time believing that's not the same person.

Speaker 2 (19:10):
What do you think. I think you're one hundred percent right.
I think it's obviously the killer trying to psyche themselves
up to do the job. I think, you know, apparently
it was like eleven surfers I think that first time,
which you know, again, that's much more difficult a crime
than a boyfriend and girlfriend kind of with their backturn
that aren't really you know, look at you or see

(19:30):
you coming out of the shack or the tunnel or wherever.
Interesting enough. More, if I'm sure you're familiar with the
Lake bury Essa sniper article August eleventh, Yeah, and so
you know, in my mind, I always wonder if you
know that now. Again, Rich does have a few articles
about these kind of random, kind of angry teen type
characters that I guess were you know, unfortunately shooting at

(19:53):
cars on the highways and in California in the sixties,
which I guess was a thing from the articles I've written.
So there's really no way to know if this is
just random activity. But you know, if I myself and
more for write about, you know, the sniper trying to
kind of psyche themselves up to do this kill, and
then I don't know if that is possibly an another
Lake Barriessa parallel.

Speaker 3 (20:14):
Yeah, it's just you know, if you're going to start
shooting at people on a beach, that tells me you're
capable of doing something worse, you know what I mean,
Because it's not that much of a jump to go
to the next step of of doing what happened to
Bobby and Linda on the heels of this Obviously, this

(20:40):
was a big double murder shocked that community, but it
was on the heels of the other murder committed by
two young boys in this mysterious Sandy. Now, as you mentioned,
he's been sort of a ghost. He's sort of you know,
there's a sketch of him, and that's all tell us
a little about that whole how that ties into this case.

Speaker 2 (21:03):
Yeah, so the sheriff started looking into that because that
murder of Vern Charles Smith is the night before. But
you know, I can kind of give you the breakdown
and also why I don't personally think it's related, and
that's because the Sandy Prime spree with Reed and Coleman
starts at the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, which is nearly four
hours north. And I'd also like to point out that

(21:26):
like where that is in Lompoc. So in my episode,
when I do the Vern Charles Smith story. You can
kind of see me standing in that canyon. I think
it was San Megalito Canyon Road, I believe, and I
don't know if I butchered that pronunciation. Morph it's really
a narrow road that is stuck between these two mountain passes.
There's a small park there, but it's all kind of

(21:47):
wedged and really tight. So that was actually kind of
where I was standing when I was telling that story.
Is kind of the exact location of Vern Smith's trailer.
It didn't actually say that in the episode, but it's
like a very like claustrophobic location. I think it's thirty
forty miles north of that beach. Obviously, we traveled by car,
so it you know, when people kind of you know,
what people kind of come to is like, Okay, Vern

(22:09):
Smith got stabbed the night before, and Sandy supposedly had
a twenty two rifle, So Sandy's the killer of Bobby
and Linda. I think that's kind of a kind of
a reach, you know what I mean, I personally, I mean,
and again, anything's possible, but I just don't really think
that the evidence points that way. And one thing I
need to clean up quickly morph is. On my episode,
I took a giant megaphone and screamed to everybody that

(22:31):
Sandy got cleared. But morph did a much better job
on that on the Criminology podcast. So there was a
suspect of Sandy who semily matched the description, and that
is actually who was cleared by the Santa Ana detective.
So I kind of doubled down on that pretty strongly
morph in it. It wasn't actually Sandy himself, but I mean,

(22:52):
that's a whole other problem is, like, there's there's several
people matching this Sandy description. Basically a Sandy, blondehaired kid
that around sixteen seventeen, around one hundred and forty one
hundred and fifty pounds, and the amount of kind of
postal surfer kids that looked like that in the Greater
area is like a massive amount. So that's kind of
another problem with Sandy. But basically, these guys link up randomly.

(23:16):
They steal some sandwiches from YMCA, and their crime spree
kind of escalates. They break into a woman's house and
steal some money from her. They steal this Sunbeam convertible
and that kind of takes them down to the Longpalk
area where one of their mothers works at a diner.
So when they're eating there and she pays for their meal,

(23:36):
that's when they encounter Verne Charles Smith. I don't know
if it's her or one of the patrons there that
tells them like, hey, this guy is a miner. I
don't know if if more found more unburned, but there's
really not much other than him than he's like this
kind of minor dude. And what they tell him is
or what they're told is, he carries a bunch of
cash on him. So they pretty much come up with

(23:57):
the conspiracy to murder him, will actually not murder and
basically just rob him. And they say that their car
is out of gas. They go to his trailer late
at night and he fills up. I think, I don't
know if it's Sandy. He goes to with the gas station,
he fills up a can of gas for them, comes
back and he's about to fill it up. And then
again I want to caution that this is according to

(24:19):
read in Coleman, while Vern is filling up the gas tank,
Sandy supposedly pulls out the pocket knife stabs him in
the back, which penetrates his heart basically instantly kills him.
It's just unfortunate that the only you know, version of
it we have, or the two guys with the supposed
guy we can't find committing the crime spree. So I

(24:39):
don't know how you know, legit that their their opinion
is obviously, if two sixteen and seventeen year old kids get,
you know, incarcerated, what are they going to say more
for Well, it wasn't us. It was the third guy
with us that we can't find. Now, you know, it's
just a mystery Sandy.

Speaker 3 (24:52):
Yeah, and it's and you would think, okay, you know,
maybe if they made that mistake, because teenagers did some
dumb shit and commit some bad crimes, sometimes they would
think now as adults that have had time to reflected.
I don't know if they're still alive, but during their

(25:13):
time as adults, you think they might have owned up
to and said, okay, it was us, we did it.
We made a mistake. There was no Sandy, but that
never happened. So was or a Sandy And maybe there was,
but he's been sort of a figment of sort of
a ghost, and there was a name that they thought
was possibly him and I forget. I think I had

(25:33):
something to do with shredded clothes or something.

Speaker 2 (25:36):
Yeah, so there's uh, yeah, we know Sandy was real.
And mind you, they cover They recovered the knife and
I think the wallet and a bunch of things they
threw out the window. They were able to recover that stuff.
I believe they also had the sun being morphed. So
it was also like beyond me that they can't just
print the car and you'd it'd be hard to believe
that Sandy sat in the back seat and literally didn't

(25:57):
touch anything. But he had these Army fatigues that he
was said to have stolen from Army Navy store, and
then I think it had notes here. So he used
two names, Robert Kaufman and William Carr. One of those
he used at the Arroyo Grande Hotel when he was
dropped off there, and the lady there did say, you know,

(26:20):
someone of that description matched, And then they also went
on this kind of weird adventure with some random girls too,
I think a dump and Sandy was supposed to be
hiding in the back of the girl's car, and I
think left the jacket there, So I think that's what
what morph is referring to and I'm not sure which name,
but again, the name written was SHARPI and the jacket
literally could have been on it when he bought it,

(26:41):
So I don't know how much how much that does
for him.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
Yeah, that and that's true. And I think the name
that was I know he used a couple of different names.
I think the name that was on the jacket was
Robert Kaufman, if I remember correctly. But you know, just
freezing here for a second, whether this case is related
to Zodiac or to Mingos Edwards. It might not be
related at all. But you mentioned there's some things with evidence.

(27:05):
The knife was recovered, that's huge. Why not check that
for DNA? Why not check that for you know, maybe
cut himself. Maybe he's just touching it. He left DNA
in the in the blade area, in the handle area.
That seems like something they should be doing, or should
have tried anyway. I don't know if they have, but

(27:26):
it seems like a no brainer to try and see
if there's DNA on there that could be from the killer.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
I mean, prince, I mean, if he's the stabber according
to read and Callman, I mean, I mean, obviously, maybe
they handled it after and whoever law enforcement. Obviously we're
talking about a time essentially of you know, pretty much
you know, pre historic forensics, you know what I mean,
by our modern standard, But yeah, i'd expect it to
be something. I mean, So the articles doubled down on
that hard because they call him like the laughing boy,

(27:53):
laughing killer because when he was like stabbing vern in
the back, he was laughing while doing it, and honestly,
like the whole thing doesn't really sound believable to me.
And then apparently Read and Coleman asked him why he
did it after and he said he said he didn't know.
It's just like there's not any reasoning for anything that
you hear about this story, you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, and and collecting the evidence you mentioned back then
nineteen sixty three, they didn't know about d NA obviously,
you know, they knew about Prince and stuff. But I'm
assuming that knife went straight into an evidence bag and
stayed in there. You know, we hear about evidence that's
not stored properly, not handled well. But you know, even
after that long, if that went into an evidence storage bag,

(28:36):
they could be worth testing. With today's technology and see
what's on there if they can do that.

Speaker 2 (28:42):
One hundred percent? Yeah, I mean, and again, where did
the sunbeam go? Like I never heard anything about it
after this case, Like they must have impounded it at
some point or maybe they located the owner and returned it.
And there's just kind of no way.

Speaker 3 (28:53):
Yeah, that's probably a lost cause. But I guarantee that
knife has to be an evidence, so why not test it?
And then it moves me back to Dominga's edwards. So
what things do we know are in evidence that the
killer handled there, because there's bound to be a chance
of DNA on those two.

Speaker 2 (29:09):
Yeah, I mean we can unpack that a little bit more. So.
Obviously there's the am O boxes down there, the spent
the spent cartridges and the AMMO. I mean, I assume
they you know, picked up whatever spent casings they found.
I did have my little pocket metal detector down there.
I would have liked to have found, you know, a
casing or something, although you know, probably with all the flooding,

(29:29):
that's probably a tall order, right morph. But you know,
there was the Marlin hitch rope that you know, Rich
chronicles on his articles, and so I mean one thing
that we should get into is the story of the
bruises on Robert's fists and his face. Now there's kind
of I know, morphs done this case a couple of

(29:49):
time on pass pods, differing versions of this. You know,
he apparently broke up a fight at school. You know,
I don't know how violent of a fight that was.
You know, was Robert actually punching those guys to get
them to stop fighting, because that doesn't seem like how
you break up a fight, right, So it seems like
a lot more likely that it was Robert versus the assailant,
which is kind of what I think based on you know,

(30:12):
Linda running and then just kind of you know, the
basically this would be if this is the Zodiac, this
would by far be the messiest scene, right, because something
goes wrong. And then ultimately they find seventy five feet
up the bluffs, they find these blood spladders on the rocks,
which are said to be like from the assailant if

(30:32):
he got punched in his face by Bobby. So I
wonder if they were able to collect any of those rocks,
and then which case you would have? And again I
guess it's a question versus ana morph because I'm not
going to pretend to be the forensics guy. I know
literally nothing about it. But if it was collected and
they have an evidence, would they still be able to
test that because obviously a blood sample is not anything
we have from the canonicals.

Speaker 3 (30:53):
So yeah, and you know, back then, obviously I think
they could tell what blood type somebody was. At best,
they could tell if they were like a secretor or
a non screwt or things like that. But obviously they
had no idea about DNA, so they wouldn't have collected
that blood saying let's get some DNA because they didn't
know anything about that. But it would be interesting to

(31:14):
know if anything with blood other than you know, Bobby's
or Linda's is in evidence, because there's a very good
chance that could belong to their killer. But even beyond that,
you've got the bindings, you've got the shellcasings, you've got
the AMMO boxes like you mentioned, Plus who knows what

(31:35):
was held back. Maybe there's other things that were held
back that they have just seems like, I don't know,
I just feel like this case just should be given
a shot to be tested with all the new technology
and DNA and what they had to work with. Now,
even a single hair, a rootless hair now can yield

(31:58):
a DNA profile. It just seemed like this is a
case that they should try and clear using the leaves technology.
Maybe they have been working on it, but seems like
it's a frozen case sitting up on a shelf that's
not going anywhere. Unfortunately.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Of course, there was the
towel supposedly found over Linda's face, so did he did
the assailant handle that with you know, without gloves? You know,
it's kind of the same question we're always asking about Barry. Yes,
there was some sort of tarp or towel around around
the shack, so if he was trying to light it
on fire, did he did he touch the shack? I mean,
obviously they did light it on fire and destroyed it after,

(32:35):
so that might take care of that. But yeah, and
again the big story is holdback some you know, morph
and I can kind of come to the press release
in the early seventies of what they came out to
seemingly insinuating Arthur Lee Allen because they thought he was
down at a Taska darrow which and my point is
still you know, in my view, it's still really not

(32:56):
that close to where this occurred. So I mean, yeah,
I guess if that's the best they could do them Again,
there's a bunch of these local suspects, which I break
down in my suspect segment at the end of my episode,
seemingly people who would fit the mold. George Gill is
the one who built the shack. He essentially I think
his polygraph is inconclusive, but he's mostly cleared. And then

(33:16):
Robert Lee Bell. There's you know, there's quite a few more,
you know, kind of like local guys than you know,
obviously Sandy, who I don't really think fits the mold.
I mean, Bobby being all American football player and a
you know, president of the Farmers Association of America. You know,
a guy as small as Sandy. I don't think Bobby
would have had much difficulty handling him, to be honest,

(33:37):
that's my view. But you know, anything's possible.

Speaker 3 (33:40):
Yeah, and I mean this, and this could be somebody
that knew them, that knew they would be there that
day and knew that they'd be alone, could have happened
upon them more. You know, where they parked.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
The killer could just.

Speaker 3 (33:53):
Drove right by, saw their cards that I know where
they're at. They're down on the beach, got out, park
next to them, and walk down to the beach and
you know, surprise them. So that's that's tough with this case.
You don't know if it's somebody that they knew, somebody
that had a beef with them, or somebody that was
just a total stranger looking to you know, do this
to them, you know, And going back to the sniper

(34:16):
for a second, the sniper, you know, assuming they didn't
know who they were shooting at, they're just shooting at
random people on the beach far away. So it's very
possible that sniper didn't know who they were aiming at,
and they were staying at whoever they could see out
there and had a chance to shoot at. So that's
I think part of the problem with this case that
makes it so difficult is not knowing if this was

(34:38):
random or you know, if this was something that was
pre planned or something where they knew you know, the
victims and this started out as a personal type matter. Now,
one thing that is interesting is that Linda's bathing suit
was cut, exposing her breast. There's a you know, sort
of a sexual element to that that we don't really

(34:58):
see with the zodiac. Zodiac never really try to undress
anybody or anything along those lines. What do you think
of that clue?

Speaker 2 (35:10):
Yeah, I mean it's definitely interesting. The only problem is
we don't know was it cut before or after, you know,
she expired, which you know, there's kind of no way
to know that at I'm not sure how they verified
it even it was a cut, I guess just from
the look of like a straight you know, kind of
a straight line. Because I had also thought of, you know,
did the assailant grab her top when she ran and

(35:32):
maybe it maybe it ripped when he pulled it. I mean,
if it's one hundred percent verified, you know, you know
he cut it, and you know it seems like by knife,
you know, in my scenario, I was kind of thinking
that's what triggered Bobby is you know, he went after
the girl or Bobby thought that's where he was going,
so he kind of took matters into his own hands
at that rate. And then again, you know, kind of

(35:54):
something that doesn't really at least that we know of
fit Zodiaccmo, at least not in the canonicals, is dragging
those bodies about you know, thirty feet and kind of
piling them on top of the each other in the
shack and then you know, perhaps supposedly trying to create
the funeral pyre. But I mean, Rich does make a
great point. I mean maybe in the youngest Killer mind,

(36:14):
you know, lighting the bodies on fire is covering evidence,
but also creating that smoke is also like you know,
pretty much putting a spotlight on you know, the exact location.
And you know, again, if you can't get out of
their fast, you're kind of just drawing attention to the area.
So it's again it's baffling. Not everything makes sense. And
you know, again definitely some zodiac parallels is morph said,
and then a lot of extra with Gaviota Beach.

Speaker 3 (36:38):
Yeah, and that's what's so frustrating about this case. You
just you have some good clues, some interesting evidence, but
you don't know exactly that ties together.

Speaker 2 (36:54):
You know.

Speaker 3 (36:55):
One clue was the AMA. We talked about it being
similar to Ammo that zodiac, but I mean twenty two
long rifle AMMO was pretty common and the brand was
kind of common too. But I think the clue, the
biggest clue was where it was bought. Tell us a
little bit about the Ammo where it was bought.

Speaker 2 (37:12):
Yeah, okay, so we don't actually know. So it's a
lot number TL twenty one and it is sold at
Vandenberg Air Force Base. What Avrett covers in his five
part series, as morph said, is that it's theorized it
could have been like a battle pack, and that's basically
like a bulk order, like a thousand plus rounds. So

(37:33):
each box is not necessarily going to be stamped with
you know, like a like a price or something like that.
It's probably just sealed all in one. And then there's
another Santa Barbara AMMO shop that also sold it, So
I think that lot number kind of got sold to
local kind of distributors. And again the law enforcement spent
months and months investigating that, hoping that it would pan out,

(37:55):
hoping that people could report people with that had Ammo
of that lot number. I just don't think there was
really enough there to follow up on anything. But again,
what it says to me is, you know, okay, so
the sniper event is reported by James L. Summer where
they were shot at by two bullets from the train tracks,

(38:17):
and then that was June's second, several teens said a
sniper fired shots at them while surfing. They could not
see the shooter, you know. And then, like Morph said,
all the boxes kind of left in the shack. It
bespeaks like to someone waiting in there, you know, taking
these pot shots of people, like Morph said, and then

(38:37):
trying to ambush someone. And people make a big deal
of Sandy supposedly attaining the twenty two rifle, and it's like,
I just don't see Sandy down there shooting at these
random people going up there, then stabbing Vern Smith for
no reason and killing him for three hundred and sixty bucks.
Wouldn't he have just took the gun and then just

(38:58):
shot Vern and just got it over with and instead
of dealing with the you know, the unnecesscessity of the
of the knife. You know. That's kind of where I'm
at on it.

Speaker 3 (39:07):
And the one thing that was reported was the you
know the fact that the police believed that this gun
that was used was a rifle, twenty two rifle. And
I don't know if that's mainly based on the AMMO

(39:28):
that it was twenty two long rifle AMIL, but as
we know, that can also be shot out of a handgun.
Do you know anything more about why the police believed
that it was an actual rifle, not as opposed to
a handgun that was used.

Speaker 2 (39:44):
Only so the articles say an automatic rifle like as
anyone knows more of, especially when you read through these articles,
there's so many misspellings and wrong names and things that
are incorrect, so it's kind of like hard to just
go off of an article itself. Baker believed it was
a rifle. I do know that he came on as
the cold case detective later after the events, and as

(40:05):
morph just said, twenty two long could be fired from
a twenty two long pistol just as easily as a rifle.
But based on like I said, this being the widest, longest,
most expansive landscape of any of these non canonicals, I
personally do think it was a rifle as well. And
I also think that's what could have hindered the assailant

(40:26):
when Bobby started hitting him. Because somebody walks up to
you and starts throwing, you know, fists in your face,
It's pretty easy to quick draw a pistol and just
put it to their chest. But if you've got the
rifle between you and you're trying to line up that
shot down the site, you know, and someone gets closer
than you know, long range, it could definitely you know,
make a difficulty. And then also the reloaded after he

(40:48):
dropped the bodies, he deliberately reloaded and continued shooting them.
That does like insinuate some sort of anger of something
going wrong after he you know, possibly just got knocked
down with the punchers or something like that. So yeah,
to the point, and it still would react a lot faster,
you know what I mean.

Speaker 3 (41:04):
As I said, Yeah, and there's less of a chance
that the rifles longer Bobby could have reached out for
it and grabbed onto the end of it versus he'd
have to reach a lot further for a handgun.

Speaker 2 (41:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (41:15):
And then and then we go back to if this
is a sniper, likely was a rifle because they're probably
not going to be firing pistols shots out into the
out into the surf area, so you know, it makes
sense that would be a rifle. And and maybe over time,
if this was Zodiac, maybe he learned from this. Hey,
I'm never going to use a rifle again for this
kind of attack. But then we go to Lake Beris

(41:35):
and if that is a rifle. Then maybe he sort
of went back. But when he uh, you know, assuming
it is him for a second, you know, maybe when
he actually decided to attack somebody at likeke Barris, he said,
I'm not going to use the rifle when he use
a handgun. It's definitely a case that you know the
police back then at least, and what they're thinking is

(41:57):
today it seems like they've gone pretty quiet about this case.
But it's like back in the day they were gung
ho that this was a Zodiac crime. I'd love to
talk to somebody there now and see what their thoughts
are and help and they are and find out if
they've done anything, if they're willing to try anything with
new technology. Have you talked to anybody there with the

(42:19):
law enforcement recently?

Speaker 2 (42:21):
Yeah. When I did the FOYA, I reached out to
the cold case detective and he did just kind of
give me that answer that you know, open case doesn't
you know, can't be foid. And I did try to
reach out to get you know, a few more questions answered,
and then I think that detective I was talking to you,
I think retired this Monday. So I'm going to try
to afford those to someone else. I was I was
hoping to reach out and kind of get a statement,

(42:42):
you know, for my episode of the main series from
SB Sheriff's Department. Again, I was never really expecting much
because again literally since Mark said literally since this press
release when they said was like, hey, you know, it's
a strong link to the zodiac, and due to him
being in the area, it seems like to him was

(43:03):
certainly Arthur Lee Allen. So once he dropped off the map,
and this was I think Sheriff Webster at the time,
we essentially never get another update. Ever, again, as Morph
was saying, so, I mean I have to look, I
think with the press release, I think was that like
seventy one or seventy two or something like that, morphs.

Speaker 3 (43:19):
Yeah, I mean early seventies.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
I mean, geez, you know, I would expect literally anything.
I mean, as not a fan of all of us
are of Riverside. Riverside gave me more than that on
my FOYA, which was just a few pictures and like
a press release. But that's what Santa Barbara gave me.

Speaker 3 (43:36):
So let's let's get the elephant out of the room
here and talk about Arthur Lee Allen. You know that
recent Netflix documentary that we covered on the podcast. Yeah, yeah,
to me, it was not from to it, but obviously
there was some some trying to connect Arthur leale On

(44:00):
to this area and trying to make him look guilty
by being them. Seria, what are your thoughts about Arthur
Lee Allen being involved at all with this?

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah? I mean this is gonna sound selfish, pretentious, but
I would have loved if they would have reached out
to me and gotten a statement on Gaviota Beach because
I think what they did on that documentary was totally embarrassing.
They spin this yarn that Allen goes to Vandenberg Air
Force Base, buys a massive chunk of AMMO right in
front of the seawater kids, and then drives down there

(44:33):
to what they call Tahigus Speech, which is a totally
different beach as you could all see from Richard Grenelle's
articles and maps. So it just I found the whole
thing to be sloppy and in an insane reach. As
well as him going to RCC. I mean it is
semi verified right that he went to the races near Riverside,
but the way they did Riverside in that documentary, was like, yeah,

(44:56):
he has a basically a motel room full of children
with a and wake up, wake up in the morning.
We got a run and then the cop lights are
coming in as they're driving out. Like the Riverside thing
was totally unbelievable. The Gaveoda Beach story was totally unbelievable.
They're essentially saying that he was out of Tascadero, which,
like I said, is not super close. It's still I
think seventy eighty miles away. Whereas you know, as I mentioned,

(45:19):
we have several local you know, suspects, George Gill who
made the shack, Robert Lee Bell who was a classmate.
You know, Sandy is not that close, but he's at
least somewhat down there. So it just it didn't make
any sense to me that he goes down there, buys
the amo right in front of a bunch of witnesses,
leaves children in his car. I want everyone to pay

(45:42):
attention to this statement. I'm making parks. You know what
they called the train tracks. I'm not even sure they
got that right, and then go leaves them in the car.
You know, I guess locked or unlocked playing in the car,
goes down there and commits a murders. It was a
bit like watching the crime on fast forward, MORPH, because
you know, my understanding is, you know, we have a

(46:02):
guy that's a sniper days before, two days before, a
shack full of AMMO. They don't account any of that stuff,
Like they hardly mentioned the shack. I don't even think
other than him buying the AMMO at Vandenberg, which isn't
even confirmed, as I said, they don't really mention much
about that. So like I don't even another thing. As
Morph said earlier, Morph basically started off with Robert's car

(46:24):
the chief Camachie. I think I have it written at Camanche.
I have it written down somewhere. I don't even think
they mentioned Robert's car being up there. So if they said, okay,
Alan would have seen the car and gone down there, okay,
there would have been like establishment there for going down
the bluff. But they kind of just said that he
used to take them on random vacation trips for a reason,

(46:44):
and it's like, okay, so was it a Tuesday, Morph,
So he showed up on a random school day where
the kids apparently didn't need to be in school, somehow
knew it was a local Longpok senior skip day and
somehow came across them without mentioning Bobby's car. You know,
I'm sure I'm not the only one that has a
problem with all that morph It was.

Speaker 3 (47:02):
It was very hard to swallow for me, just just
too convenient the way everything unfolded and randomly went there,
went out to the beach, and randomly found two victims
to presumably kill. So I don't want to spend too
much time talking about Alan because I think it's the
biggest waste of time ever, but it, you know, it's

(47:24):
worth mentioning.

Speaker 2 (47:31):
So as much as this case.

Speaker 3 (47:33):
Has some similarity to Zodiac case, especially Lake barry Essa,
there's another case you've spent a lot of time on
that I admittedly have spent very little time on, and
that's because I know people like yourself are really digging
into it, and that's the murder of Ray Davis. Tell
us a little bit about Ray Davis's case and how
that's similar to Zodiac.

Speaker 2 (47:53):
Yeah, one hundred percent. So what I would have liked
to have done in my series has done them chronologically
in order, and I can count years for anybody who
needs to know, but ultimately we just ended up doing
what was closer to where I live in San Diego.
So I started with the Swindles, which was sixty four.
We did Ocean Side in episode two, which is Ray
Davis in sixty two, and then obviously we did sixty six,

(48:15):
which is Sherry Joe Bates, and then I did Gaviota,
which was sixty three. So I didn't exactly do them
in order as I would have liked to. If, as
more of said, if Gaviota Beach is the parallels to
Lake Barriessa, then Ray Davis is absolutely the blueprint and
the parallel to Paul Stein. And that's I suppose I've
kind of, you know, somewhat become the face online of

(48:36):
the of the non canonicals because I pushed it the hardest.
And this kind of full full circle theory, which I know,
you know, like I've talked to Void and he tends
to think that the full circle theory, you know, has
something to it. So this Ray Davis crime and again,
like you know, we'll break down the Ray Davis and
the similarities to Paul Stein, which is actually something I,
you know, had wanted to do in my episode two

(48:56):
and I ended up kind of just getting stuck on Davis,
and I didn't really get much into the Stein stuff,
but I, you know, I definitely will down the line
is the fact that I don't understand why Zodiac would
just like look up random local ocean side crimes and
Santa Barbara crimes. I mean, unless he lived like very
close to and just kind of read the local newspaper

(49:17):
and heard about it. Because it doesn't seem like something
he would take with him to the Bay Area for
no reason. You know, in my opinion, I know there's
other people that look at it and they're just like, oh, yeah,
he just kind of paralleled all these other random crimes
and used him as a blueprint like that. That doesn't
really make that much sense to me, especially with the
fact with Ray Davis, you get a phone call before

(49:38):
a threat, a threatening phone call before, and essentially a
phone call after where he threatens a bus driver. You know,
it sounds a lot like Zodiac's you know, school bus
you know, threatening school children on the school bus threat
and it was taken seriously, you know when he when
he much like in the Bay Area, when they put
all these deputies and police on the school bus, they

(50:00):
essentially did the same thing down around Camp Pendleton. We
could mention that Pendleton is a is a base nearby
ocean Side, much like you know, Vandenberg is near to Gaviota.
So it's you know, people are always bringing up the
Zodiac military connection and and what the nearby basis could be.
But there's there's quite a bit more, uh to Davis.

(50:21):
So with this seemingly you know, political threat. Where Ray's
body is dumped is between the former and current mayors
of Ocean Sides houses, and it's just kind of a
random back alley. Morph mentioned the kind of sound buffering
and the train at Gaviota Beach. This is actually right
near train tracks at Ray Davis. And I know, you know,

(50:42):
people on the forums and other people have brought up, like,
you know, is there's some kind of train connection in Zodiac,
at least with the non canonicals. But I obviously interviewed
Christy Hawthorne in the episode. She's a local ocean Side
historian and amazing research. She kind of found this. She
thought it was maybe, you know, some kind of conspiracy
of rich people killing each other and stuff, until she

(51:03):
was kind of reminded of Paul Stein, which is you know,
kind of the mirror image of this crime, and so
she kind of pointed that out to me, like exactly
what Morph was saying. If Zodiac would have waited until
this train ran by an ocean side to pull the
trigger on Ray Davis, I'm not sure anyone would have
heard anything, even in this kind of semi congested beachside alleyway,

(51:24):
you know, with the houses so close. It's like if
you're standing right next to a train, I mean, and
Morph could tell you, anyone could tell you, like, it's
pretty loud. So if the gunshots are kind of secluded
in this taxi, I don't know that anybody would have
heard it. But yeah, there's you know, there's some different differences.
Of course, Ray's wallet and and stuff, and the cash
is still on him, so it's not robbery. The car

(51:46):
does get driven a few blocks north, so I always
wondered if that wasn't kind of similar to how Stein
stopped at Maple and kept going to Cherry, like it
was some kind of you know, nod to this northern
direction of the of the Davis crime. Just could be
totally wrong. That's just me speculating, But yeah, there's a
lot of stuff there. I think it's it's a similar
shot to the left side of Ray Davis's head. A

(52:09):
third shot I think is possibly like a warning or
a miss or whatever through the through the windshield and
then Ray's body is dumped. And I know you interviewed
us Susannah Morph and she did say that seemingly the
killer did touch Ray's belt when he was kind of
lifted out of the cabin dumped and dumped in that alleyway.
And I know, I guess she did the testing or
they did investigate that one son. As Morph and I

(52:31):
were saying about Gaviote, another thing we would love to
know is, uh, what came back on that belt? Did
the killer use gloves? And you know that's kind of
another opportunity right there for some touch DNA.

Speaker 3 (52:41):
Yeah, And that's that's the tough thing with these cases,
especially when with that case, we know that they've tried
to work on it, and you know, I want to
speak for Susannah, so where her you know, clarify one
one time maybe when he comes on as she does.
But you know, there's things that can be done, there's

(53:04):
things that are you know, possible that some agencies don't
have the budget to do. They don't have the the
thought to do. And that's why you turn it over
to an expert, somebody like Susannah and you can say, hey,
what are options, what can we do, what can we find?
What are our best chances to identify who did this

(53:24):
and let them do it. I know San Diego has
got to have a good budget. You know, it's a
pretty wealthy area, so I'm thinking they have resources to
be able to do some of this stuff. And you know,
it's frustrating in some of these cases. And I know
they're older, but it's frustrating to not have, you know, results,

(53:49):
and maybe they have done some work behind the scenes,
they just don't want to say anything. But until you
hear that they've done it for sure and they give
you some kind of answers, it's very frusht trading with
some of these cases.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
Yeah, and I couldn't agree more. And and again that's kind
of why I decided to go this route of deep
diving the canonicals. For one. You know, when I put
up the Swindles episode and kind of started my series,
there's basically nothing on YouTube about these A lot have
popped up since since Zodiac's gotten more traction online and
people started looking at the non canonicals more. But I
mean there's there was other than like AVERTZ five part

(54:24):
series when they made that DVD way back when there
was you know, basically nothing about these Davis included. But yeah,
so again it's twenty two long AMMO, and again I
can't help but think, I know, it's the cheapest AMMO
and probably maybe you know, most popular at the time,
as Morph was saying. But I couldn't help but thinking Swindles,

(54:44):
Ray Davis, Domingus Edwards are all twenty two long, that
that that Lake Herman Road couldn't be a nod to
those three non canonicals. I personally don't think that, you know,
Faraday and Jensen are the zodiacs, you know first first murders.
And again that could be debated, and you know it's
tough to have evidence going either way. But I always

(55:05):
felt like him making it, you know, writing those lists
of hey, this is how the bodies were. It was
you know, super the brand was super X. But he
also says, you know Western and the thing about the
the Winchester Western was you know it kind of got
there's kind of a buy out there, so you can
kind of find boxes that say Winchester super X, but
you could also find boxes that say Western kind of

(55:26):
like another little rabbit hole down the Amo, if anyone
cares to go down that. But yeah, the taxis found
two miles north of the body location. So it does
seem like he kind of jumped in the taxi and
kind of drove it up there for whatever reason, a
totally random thing that you know, none of us can
put our head into the mind of a killer and
kind of figure out what was going on there. The

(55:48):
first phone threatening phone call, it was something like, you know,
I'm gonna pull something here in ocean side that you
guys will never figure out. I mean that really bespeaks,
you know, zodiacs, blue rocks. This phone call that you know,
Morph's suspect is local too, and then later on the
obviously the Santa Barbara of phone call after Barry Essa,

(56:08):
and then another follow up you know, phone call afterwards
in which he says like, I'm gonna get me a
bus driver next time, and so you know, you think
bus bomb, you know, things of that nature. So yeah,
I mean, I think Davis is one of the one
of the stronger ones of the four I'm definitely the
lowest on Riverside, even though it has you know, of

(56:29):
course it has the letters and the confession letter and
all that stuff. It's a complete mess. You know, Morph
can and I can burn that bridge another time, but
just on face value, like there's you know, is Morph
was saying that the big story about Covida is holdbacks,
like Morph was saying, so do they know it's wind walkers?
Are there other evidence that he touched there? As Morph
was saying that they just for whatever reason, haven't literally

(56:51):
told us since sixty three? And then of course, like
Susannah said, if he did touch Davis's belt belt belt loops,
you know, is there touch DNA?

Speaker 4 (57:00):
There?

Speaker 2 (57:01):
There was a book left in the car. It just
seemed like a book Davis was reading. A lot of
it was called Dance with the Debt or something like that.
A lot of people make a big deal about that.
I don't know. I mean, there's not that much on Davis, guys.
There's only a few articles. You know, I pretty much
got everything out of Christie I could get out of her.
But I mean my big thing is that is the
Stein parallels, you know, like that, you know, if Davis

(57:23):
is the first non canonical. I always felt that Paul
Stein was a nod to hey, remember Ocean Side, you know,
another taxi driver, because you know, Voyd even said this,
You know, Zodiac knew he did what worked right, he
did Blue Rock Springs because he got away with it
at Lake Kerman Road. Lake Berryessa could be a redo
of whatever went wrong at Gaviota Beach. And then obviously

(57:45):
a taxi driver, well, you know, you just give them
an address and they go where, you tell them you're
you're alone in the car with them, bring them to
an isolated alleyway and it's pretty much like a victim.
You can kind of control their movement. So there's that.

Speaker 3 (57:59):
Do you know if Ray Davis's case ever was featured
in any of those detective magazines back in the day.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
I think I did try to look that up at
one point, and I think we spoke about that. Not
that I found but again that's just not that I
found it. It could be very possible.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
Okay, because that was always one thing too that I
always wondered, you know, could the Zodiac, even if he
wasn't responsible for these other crimes, could he have read
about them and duplicated things?

Speaker 2 (58:29):
He had read.

Speaker 3 (58:30):
But getting back to Davis, the fact he wasn't robbed,
to me makes it more Zodiac like because Zodiac wasn't
robbing people. I mean, he took Stein's keys and whatnot,
but I mean that was probably for more of a trophy.
And so somebody that's willing to kill somebody but not

(58:52):
rob them is more like a Zodiac type. So I
think that does, along with the you know, the taunts
of you know that he was going to do something
big in town, you know, sort of is very Zodiac Lake.
So I think it lends, you know, strength to the

(59:13):
possibility that it could be Zodiac or where the real
Zodiac at least was familiar with this case and it
inspired him. I'm curious as far as you know the

(59:36):
do we know? You mentioned that he was shot in
the left hand side of the head pracked yep, and
and was he shot while the killer was inside the cab?

Speaker 2 (59:48):
I think that's what it has to be, because he's
also shot in the back, which goes through his chest cavity.
So I think that kind of shows us that, you know,
both shots came from behind, and obviously that one shot
through the through the windshields. I don't really make I
don't know if it makes any sense that Zodiac would
be in front of the car shoot through the windshield

(01:00:10):
like that's a warning, because what they could drive the
car at you, or they could drive away. So it
just makes a lot more sense that he was he
was in the back there. But yeah, I mean, like
I said, the Davis is one, I'm pretty high. I mean,
I it seems to me that almost, you know, if
it's not Zodiac, like More said, than he almost would

(01:00:30):
have had to have known about this. I mean, I know.
The big thing is people say, like, well, he never
claims any of the other ones, why didn't he write
them all down on the on Brian Hartnell's car door.
I mean, I don't think any of that really mattered
to Zodiac to be honest, Like he's not going to
write a massive list of ten crimes on there and
give and what give them more evidence to go off of.
You know, if he did make mistakes at any of
these non canonicals, that's that's another thing too, if he

(01:00:52):
made mistakes or thought he let I mean, as More said,
DNA wasn't really a thing at a time, but maybe
he thought he left other evidence you know what I mean,
or you know, made other mistakes that could have tracked
back to him. I don't think he would go around
broadcasting these in my opinion. I mean, obviously never got
caught for the canonicals, so you know.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Yeah, why would he want to give any more information
that linked him to any additional crimes that he wasn't
already connected to.

Speaker 2 (01:01:15):
One hundred percent? You know, So that's that's a big one.
People say like, well, you never, you never. I mean,
if it's a younger Zodiac and you know, he's still
kind of making his bones here. You know, a lot
of these mistakes, you know, seemingly track for these early
times and then he tries to he makes the persona
he comes back in the Bay Area and tries to
do the you know, the master crime. It would seem well,

(01:01:37):
I think I think some people.

Speaker 3 (01:01:40):
In Zodiac circles want to connect every crime in California
to Zodiac, And you seem like you've really focused in
on a couple that have the most in common with Zodiac,
and you're not trying to link every crime on the
sun in California to him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:59):
Oh yeah, don't. I mean beyond these I really, I'm
not even big on the kind of post canonicals because
I just don't know what's going on there with you know,
Kathleen John's and Donna last is just the unknowns. The
only thing I think could be possible is like Molino
Rodriguez that Morph covered in his article, And again I
don't think that's as strong as these, but it's in

(01:02:19):
sixty seven. You know, some things fit about it. I know,
Hood Garcia got a really good comparison with Richer's article,
you know of why you know Damiga s Edwards, you know,
kind of gets all this shine because and a lot
of that is I think because of their press release.
They come out and literally say there's a strong link
to the Zodiac crimes due to say, if I could

(01:02:41):
maybe pull up the press release in the background, will
be and more for talking like due to something. The
wording is like undisclosed evidence, unreleased evidence, exactly what Morph
was alluding to. So yeah, once law enforcement makes an
announcement like that, everyone's going to gravitate to it, right.
I think that's pretty natural.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Yeah, and it's I mean I applaud everybody that digs
into the case. Now, I you know, dug into these
non canonical cases for a while, and you know, spend
a lot of time and went down a lot of
rabbit holes, and you finally focused on the canonical crimes
and found my suspect, why I believe is Zadek. But no,

(01:03:20):
I don't try and stop anybody else from digging down
these other avenues because that way you have all the
bases covered. You know, if I'm wrong, somebody else might
find the right guy. Digging down the some of these
other rabbit holes. You never know what you're going to find.
So you know, I think it's good work that you're doing,
and you know, your boots on the ground and getting
involved and reaching out with foyas and everything else, and

(01:03:44):
that's the right way to go about it. And you know,
I appreciate you sharing the information about these cases and
what you've done. And again, anyone listening that wants to
check these out and in depth. Ross's channels great, it's
got a lot of videos there and a lot of
Zodiac discussions of the Zodiac stuff do you discuss on
the channel?

Speaker 2 (01:04:04):
Yeah, So we do the interview series kind of a
compliment to the main series. So we interview you know,
long time Zodiac researchers like Morph, Gurnell, We've basically had
everybody on there. I'd like to get Cole on there
once I read his trilogy coming up soon, you know,
I guess is a good place to announce it. So
episode five will be Lake Herman Road. So I think

(01:04:25):
kind of when my my eight episodes are done, we'll
kind of have the complete, you know, full circle investigation there.
Presidio Heights will be the last one. Guys, I'm not
gonna take it beyond that. And I don't, you know,
I don't want to, like, you know, do this thing forever.
I mean, if the if the interviews and some of
that other stuff continues on, that's cool. But as far
as like the main series, I've always envisioned it just

(01:04:45):
as you know, the four non canonicals I did, and
then just the four canonicals and kind of leave it on,
leave it at that. And as Morph was saying, what
kind of like led me down this path was, you know,
I saw this list of the of the of people
discussing the non canonicals on TAPA Talk and that just
got me thinking, because, like Morph said, what do we
really have from the canonicals? We have a bloody fingerprint

(01:05:06):
at Stein and and beyond that, we don't really get
told much else. We got, you know, a bunch of
evidence that was mishandled and handled by five hundred people
at Lake barri Essa, so I don't think much will
come from that. So I just got me thinking like, hey,
maybe you know, if there is blood at Gaviota Beach,
or there is touch DNA at Davis, maybe one of
these other ones could can break it. You know, they

(01:05:27):
could somehow link those you know a stronger you know,
kind of as morph is saying, either forensic link or
sort of undeniable link to the Bay area activity. You know,
maybe that's the way to go. Again. It's been a
long time since we got an update on Davis or Gabiota,
and we certainly don't want to talk about the last
update of Riverside because I still don't understand that more

(01:05:49):
if I don't think anyone does.

Speaker 3 (01:05:51):
Yeah, well, any of these cases, whether they turn up
to be Zodiac or not, I'd still like to know
who did it and find out more about it. But
the good I mean, the good thing is we do
see cases every week being sold. They're thirty, forty fifty
years old. So if there is evidence that's been stored
properly and they're able to get something off it using

(01:06:13):
the latest technology, then they might get answers. And I
hope that they have the resources to try and not
give up on that because I think, you know, I
think it's easy for the police to say, let me
work on the most freshest case that happened yesterday, because
it's easier to solve. You know, you've got fresh witnesses,
fresh you know, you can find camera footage that wasn't

(01:06:35):
available back in the sixties for these cases. So there's
all kinds of things that would make it an easier
solve than going back into giving to these old cases.
But you know, these victims that we're talking about deserve
justice too, despite their cases happen and happening so far
along back in the day. And you know, I'd love
to know the truth to any of these cases, whether

(01:06:56):
there's zero or not.

Speaker 2 (01:06:58):
Yeah, couldn't agree more so. The exact wording is several
significant similarities between our case and the others, as well
as other evidence which I am not at liberty to
disclose at this time, all tend to connect Zodiac with
this crime. So, as MORPH said, at whatever point, you know,
they were super hot on this. You know, you know,

(01:07:20):
Webster was in contact with Armstrong and Toski and there's
just a lot of back and forth. You know, they
did comparaballistics and stuff. I don't really think that that
came up with much. So that's that's kind of seemingly
what set off the firestorm there. It seems like, you know,
if Ala cooled, you know, maybe that that cooled press
release statements like this from coming out along with it.

(01:07:42):
And then you know, real quick, as Morph said, with
these kind of local suspects, like I said, George Gil
made the shack. If I'm not mistaken, I think they
did look at Gil for both Swindles and Gabotoviitch Morph
and again he has this inconclusive polygraph. I think he
in my episode. I think he had an alibi, which

(01:08:03):
I think he was up north and Santa Cruz or
whatever wherever. So that didn't pan out. This other kid,
Robert Lee Bell, who was a classmate of Domingus's, I
personally don't think it was a classmate of theirs, but
you know, and Averett doesn't think that either. But again,
like Morph said, anything's possible. But this kid shows up
with you know, scratches on his arms and kind of

(01:08:24):
like looks like he had been in some kind of scuffle,
so that would seemingly fit. But he said it was
from a puppy, and he had also stolen a twenty
two revolver and a twenty two rifle from a rancher.
George Gill also owned a twenty two rifle, and then
of course you have Sandy who supposedly had one. So
I mean, it's just kind of interesting, right. You have
all these local suspects who were kind of in the area,

(01:08:46):
they tracked most of their movements, they seemingly have the
right caliber firearm, but for whatever reason, none of them
stick that. In my opinion, that kind of leads me
to the Zodiac because I don't think Sandy is a
very strong suspect, and I know we were Davis, but
just real quick more, when the Santa and the detectives
interview this Sandy suspect, I would really like to know

(01:09:07):
more about that, like what kind of questions they asked him,
because if that was the Sandy that was with Reed
and Coleman, I don't think he's going to tell him like,
oh yeah, I was with reading Coleman doing that crime spree.
And yeah, then we went to go rob vern Smith
and we accidentally, you know, murdered him with a knife.
Because that's obviously not going to get him off, right,
So I'd kind of like to know more about that
suspect they questioned who was in the Orange County juvenile.

Speaker 3 (01:09:32):
Yeah, and that's still the frustrating thing. You know, did
they print him when they questioned him? Did they verify
his identity? I mean, he could have given any name,
and unless he had an idea or something, you know,
a lot harder back then probably to prove who somebody
was first today. But you're right, there's things that we

(01:09:54):
like to know that we just don't have the answers to.
But again, these are all fascinating cases. Whether they're Zodiac
or not, I want to know one way or the other.
If they're not, I still find these cases interesting, and
I hope, you know, people like you keep digging into
some of these cases so we can maybe find out
the answers one day and you can share more with us.

Speaker 2 (01:10:16):
Yeah, I mean, I honestly, I think people want me
to want like some link to come back, or law
enforcement to announce that A's zodiac, so I can go
tell everybody I was right. I mean, honestly, don't care
about that. Like Morph said, if they come up with
a local suspect or someone that fits and undeniably prove
it with forensics, just to get it knocked off the list,
And like Morph said, okay, now we focus on the canonicals.

(01:10:36):
Not not a single one of these panned out. Great,
I would just I'd be just as happy to knock
them off the list and have them you know, verified
and solved, you know, Zodiac or not. That that point
doesn't really matter to me. I mean, I guess if
that was the level we came to, then we'd be
down to some sort of detective magazine article scenario, like
Morph was saying, Because I guess if it was just

(01:10:56):
like a complete similarity, like a parallel, uh copycat type
of thing, I mean, I think that would be you know,
pretty random. But I mean, you know, again, it's the zodiac.
We know he was looking at, you know, films, movies, opera,
you know, maybe comic books and all the you know,
all these other types of things, So it's not totally
unrealistic that he would have looked at other crimes did

(01:11:17):
you do you ever find anything putting your suspect down
in Southern California?

Speaker 3 (01:11:20):
Morph No, never, not one one inkling of of stuff.
And again which which for me to be right, none
of this stuff could be him. So but I don't
mind that if I'm wrong. You're digging into this kind
of stuff. So one way or another, I know there's
people like you that are out here digging into these
non canonical crimes. And you know, I'll stick at looking

(01:11:44):
at my guy and trying to find more about him,
knowing that other people are digging into these other crimes.
And and I think it would be good to when
they know if any of these Southern California crimes, if
they could all be solved and we get a name
and all those cases are not connected at all the zodiac,
it just makes this mystery, the zodiac mystery, easier to

(01:12:07):
solve because now we're not run around looking for a
guy that was down in southern California on X, Y
and Z dates. Now we just focus on somebody that
was where the canonical crimes, you know, happened. So for me,
if any of those cases or all of them get solved,
that would be even better for the Zodiac mystery overall
because we can focus on the unknown crimes.

Speaker 2 (01:12:29):
Yeah, I underset. I could couldn't agree more with that,
and yeah, yeah, it's just interesting. There's seemingly this pattern
down there. You know. It seems like like with Gil
you know, some of the suspects even crossover and they
tested ballistics with Swindles and Lake Herman Road and you know,
so it's just like every avenue you kind of think
are the obvious paths, it's like we're already kind of

(01:12:51):
past them. So at this point now it's kind of like,
all right, we either get announcements for law enforcement that
something came up, you know, or we don't. Some stuff
is a little bit unrelated more. But some stuff I've
been looking into lately, or the Zodiac hood inspirations at
Lake berry Essa and I got super stuck on that
Ned Kelly crime from eighteen eighty. I just don't see

(01:13:13):
Zodiac missing that. You know, a lot of people think
there's like the Jack the Ripper parallels. This is in Australia,
eight years before Jack the Ripper. He creates this kind
of metal armor and suit and gets in this massive
shootout with police that are kind of arresting his gang
and then he's ultimately hung by rope with kind of
a hood over his head. He also wrote a manifesto

(01:13:35):
that was published in the newspaper, you know, much like
the Zodiac letters. So I just a lot of seemingly
parallels with that one too, And I know, you know,
people have looked into other crimes, but that's one I've
kind of been stuck on lately. And then the other
one is the Marvel character the Hate Monger, which there's
some images from nineteen sixty three where he seemingly has
you know, a dark colored hood h logo on his

(01:13:58):
chest military style boots, as well as the movie Shock
Corridor that also came out in sixty three where the
guy puts the hood over his head. What has the
cross logo on the hood? So, again, are any of
these things There's no way to know, But it's just like,
if there's that many kind of random parallels with the
kind of zchronicity there, yeah, it's we none of us know, right, So.

Speaker 3 (01:14:20):
It's worth exploring. And if the cases ever saw, then
we get a definitive name of who Zodiac was, then
we can sort of reverse engineer it and go back
and say, well, here's why he chose that hood, and
he really was inspired by this movie or this book
or whatever. Then we can sort of fill in the
blanks if we ever get a confirmed name, and I'm

(01:14:41):
waiting for that day to come and hopefully we see
it in our lifetime.

Speaker 2 (01:14:46):
Absolutely. The other one I found randomly is The Devils
of the Daredevils of the Red Circle. There's this one
image of like a hooded character holding like what looks
to be like a Luger nine millimeters style pistol. Obviously
Zodiac reference that in his Blue Rock Springs phone call
in the character it's I guess like a TV movie
or series or whatever, the characters get these letters of

(01:15:07):
hints that are signed with a circle. You know, it
seems very zodiac esque. I actually found that because I
was looking for a film called The Red Circle, which
is a French film. I found this on Spotify. I
don't know if you've ever heard of this. More if
it was like Zodiac trivia, and they were saying that
law enforcement actually investigated, like I guess, a movie group

(01:15:28):
or people that bought tickets to this film The Red
Circle to try to find out if you know, Zodiac
was influenced by this film or was he one of
these people that bought tickets to this film? So I
don't I don't know, you know how accurate that is
because I haven't really met at It is just kind
of a random thing off Spotify. But that's what Zodiac

(01:15:49):
Trivia said on there. But yeah, people want to check
out the trailer or whatever. I believe it's on YouTube,
the Red Circle and it's a it's a French film,
So that's something I'm gonna be following up on.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Well, there's there's no shortage of rabbit holes certainly to
go down to and explore what might have what might
have been linked to some of these crimes or to
Zodiac's crimes. But I'm glad that you're taking the time
to do it and sharing your findings with everybody. So again,
thanks for coming on, and love to have you on
some other time to talk about some other topic.

Speaker 2 (01:16:17):
Yeah. Yeah, I'd love to get you know, try to
get some something newer. That's why I want to check
out the Red Circle stuff. And anyway, Zodiac Speaking the
number one Zodiac podcast. In my opinion, I always tell people,
if you know, if you want to learn the entire
the way Morph and Rich went through, point by point,
from everything from the canonicals to the letter activity to
even you know, some of that post canonical stuff. I

(01:16:38):
honestly think that Zodiac Speaking is the best timeline you
can find on the case in the crimes. So keep subscribing,
keep liking, guys, and you know, support more stuff.

Speaker 3 (01:16:46):
I appreciate that.

Speaker 4 (01:16:47):
Thank you, 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 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

(01:17:11):
you can search Facebook for Zodiac Speaking podcast.

Speaker 5 (01:17:15):
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 3 (01:17:28):
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 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.

Speaker 2 (01:17:45):
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