Interview with Former FBI Profiler Julia Cowley Part 1 of 2

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
You're listening to Zodiac Speaking, brought to you by Abject Entertainment.
Be sure to check out some of the other great
true crime podcasts from this network, including The Murder in
My Family, Missing Persons, dna ID Beyond, Bizarre, True Crime,
Scene of the Crime, Campus Killings, and Killer Communications. All

(00:23):
of these podcasts are available for you to binge on
right now wherever you listen to podcasts. Subscribe where you're
listening to this podcast so you don't miss an episode.

Speaker 2 (00:56):
This is Zodiac Speaking. In this special episode, I'm joined
by a former FBI agent and profiler and cost of
the great podcast Consule, Julia Cally. She spent time with
me discussing the Zodiac case, wearing her profiling hat to
help us understand some of the things about the Zodiac,

(01:16):
at least things she believes may be true of him
based on her extensive training and experience. She also gives
us a better understanding of exactly what it is that
profilers do and the role they play in trying to
solve crimes. This is part one of a lengthy conversation
we had. I hope listeners enjoy this episode and learn
something new. So with me today is Julia Cally a

(01:36):
retired FBI agent and profiler, and she's currently cost of
a great podcast called The Consul. Thanks so much for
coming on and.

Speaker 3 (01:44):
Talking with us, Julia, thank you for having me. And
we were talking before we started to record, and I
just want to get it out there. Your podcast was
the first podcast I ever listened to.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Well, thank you for that. And she's talking about criminology.
That was the first.

Speaker 3 (01:58):
Yes, cymology, Yeah, first deep.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
Dive and this one this shows a little bit different
because this is zodiac speaking. This is all about zodiac
and you know, to get insight from people like yourself
that a retired FBI agent, profiler, you did the stuff
for a living. You're an expert. You know, some of
us play experts on the internet or on podcast, but

(02:22):
you're the real life thing. So when we can get
people like yourself on to provide insights, it's really helpful.

Speaker 3 (02:28):
Yeah. I'm really glad to be here, and I'm glad
to talk about the zodiac. It's a case I've been
fascinated with, which is one of the reasons why I
picked your podcast to listen to. When I was like,
you know, I had a long flight, what am I
going to listen to. I'm interested in the Zodiac. It
was a case that I never worked on when I
was in the FBI, but I was one that I

(02:48):
was fascinated with like so many people, and followed it
and read up on it, and so when I have
the opportunity, I'm like, I'm gonna listen to this show here.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
This looks good, and it's one of the cases that,
unless you're living under a rock in the crime world,
everybody's heard of it. And some people's level of interest
is you know, some people could care less about it.
Some people are fascinated by it. But I'm always interested
when I talk to professionals like yourself, what their experience

(03:18):
with it is. So it's interesting to hear that from you.
Can you start off by telling listeners what your background
is and maybe a little about some of the highlights
of your career, you know, especially in regards to the
profiling end of things.

Speaker 3 (03:31):
Sure well, I started in law enforcement as a forensic scientist.
I worked in a crime lab. I was a special
agent forensic scientist, and then I joined the FBI. I
liked being in the crime lab, and part of my
job in the crime lab was to go out to
crime scenes and process scenes and bring evidence back to
the lab. But I enjoyed that part of the job

(03:54):
more than being in the laboratory. So I decided to
join the FBI because I wanted to work cases and
I had a dream of becoming an FBI profiler, but
I knew that might not happen, but I still wanted
to be in the FBI. So I joined the FBI,
and because of my forensic background, I was also part

(04:16):
of the FBI's Evidence Response team. But I was originally
assigned to much to my dismay, bank fraud squad, which
I thought, that's I mean, my background was violent crime.
I was a scientist and so that was my I
was just surprised I ended up on bank fry with

(04:37):
no experience. So I worked white collar crime for a
few years, and then I moved to public corruption civil rights,
so again another you know, white collar type violation. But
I just loved it. It was it was a lot
of variety, and I learned how to be, I think,
a good investigator, and I did that for many years.

(05:00):
And then I also became what is known as an
NCABC coordinator, which is the National Center for the Analysis
of Violent crime and that position within an FBI field
office is the liaison between local law enforcement and the

(05:21):
FBI's behavioral analysis unit. It's kind of a stepping stone
too if you want to be a profiler. So I
put in to have that position was selected. So I
was the coordinator or at least one of the coordinators
in the Boston Division of the FBI, which is where
I started, and that's how I got it really exposed
to the profiling. And then there was an opening in

(05:45):
the Crimes against Adults Unit at the BAU, which is
the unit I wanted to be in, and I applied
for it and I was accepted, and that was like,
that was a dream come true. So that was my
career in a nutshell.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
So I'm curious, what kind of training do you undertake
once you get into that role and you need to
become a profile or what kind of stuff do you
have to learn and have knowledge on to be able
to profile.

Speaker 3 (06:16):
So when you first get there, they have a training program.
It's about sixteen weeks. It's all classroom and we study
things such as abnormal psychology. We spent a week at
a medical examiner's office being exposed to autopsies, and I
had already had exposure to things like that because of

(06:37):
my position on the evidence response to me, because of
my position in the crime lab. So I'd been to
many autopsies. But there's a wide variety of backgrounds that
come into the FBI's BAU. Most of us, we're just
FBI agents, but we may have come from other backgrounds,
so you get a little bit of training and everything.
It also would include training in like we had a

(06:59):
class on the biology of the brain, and we did
some lectures over at the crime lab to understand forensic
evidence and what would be possible just to kind of
expose us a little bit to everything. But a large
part of our work was working on cases and analyzing

(07:23):
them in class and the different types of cases we
might be exposed to. I'm trying to think. It was
like it was sixteen weeks, so it was a lot
of classroom and then so you go through that kind
of basic training, and then you have, depending on how

(07:43):
long it takes you, about a year or two of
what's kind of an apprenticeship where you work different cases
in each of the different units. So even though I
was in the Crimes against Adults unit, I had to
work some cases in the terrorism unit. I had to
work some cases in the Crimes against Children's unit. You
have to and you work those alongside a mentor, like

(08:04):
a senior profiler, and they help guide you and instruct
you as you go along. And then you also have
to attend a certain number of consultations on other people's cases.
It was a lot. It was probably twenty four in
different you know, certain types of cases, like you had

(08:27):
to attend one like on a single homice side of
an adult, you had to attend one on a single
homic side of a child. You had to attend certain
ones in terrorism, including threat cases, and so it's just
kind of a checklist of things you have to do.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
So really filling your resume with a lot of different
experience in different situations it sounds like oh.

Speaker 3 (08:50):
Yeah, yeah. And then once you've completed everything, you have
to write it all up and say, you know, I've
met all the critter to become a certified FBI profiler,
and here are all the examples of everything that I've done.
And that goes through an approval process and they make
sure that you completed everything that you completed themselves successfully.

(09:14):
They'll go ask the people you worked with. Did they
do a good job? Do you think they're qualified or
do they need a little bit more training? Maybe most
people that get through it. I don't know of anyone
who didn't successfully complete it. But but yeah, there's a
you know, there is a process to become a certified

(09:35):
profiler and you have to meet all the criteria and
once it's done, you're you're certified, and then you get
assigned cases that you work and we never work alone.
You do work with other people all the time, but
you're no longer being monitored the same way as when

(09:56):
you're still in training.

Speaker 2 (09:58):
Yeah, it's very fascinating, all that level of stuff that
you have to go to to obtain that. I think
some people hear the term profiler and they're automatically thinking, Okay,
this person is like a psychic. They have all these
answers about these serial offenders, which, sure, I'm sure that's
not what your job is. But can you tell us
what a profiler actually does, what their role is, and

(10:22):
how people like yourself aid in cases when they're called upon.

Speaker 3 (10:26):
Sure, so a profiler like in the FBI's that's really
not what we call ourselves, and we just obviously the
public calls us the profilers, that's what they're popularly known as.
But we're supervisory special agents even though we don't really
supervise anybody. But what we do is, you know, comes

(10:48):
down to just doing an assessment, an assessment of a case.
We will review a case. We'll review all the information
that an agency may have, may have or may not have,
and try to assess certain things about that case, whether
it's in depending what they're asking for. You may do

(11:10):
an unknown offender profile. You look at a case, look
at the crime, look at the interaction between the offender
and the victim, and try to determine personality, traits and
characteristics and maybe other types of information about a particular offender,
such as what was the motive, what were the crime
scene dynamics. We'll do interview strategies, so it's not just

(11:31):
profiling an unknown offender. That's kind of the bread and
butter when people know the bau for doing. But we
may do media strategies, interview strategies, threat assessments, linkage analysis,
and so there's so many different aspects to the services
that we would provide.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
Now, have you worked on a lot of high profile cases, yes,
and can you talk maybe about some of the if
you're able to, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
I can talk about them. I worked on probably the
biggest case that I worked on was the Golden State
Killer and that I was the lead profiler on that case.
And at the time, he wasn't known as the Golden
State Killer. He was the Easter AIA rapist, original nightstalker,
so we called him the Earons or the ear But

(12:24):
that was the biggest case that I worked on. I
worked on and as I said, there's always a lead profiler,
but other people in the unit assist. You don't just
do a consultation all by yourself. So I assisted on
Israel Keys. That was another big serial murder case. Gosh,

(12:45):
I'm trying to think of all the different I mean,
most of the high profile cases that you see at
some point may come into the BAU because that's the
nature of the work. We look at the most bizarre, unusual,
sometimes very high profile cases and that you know, they're

(13:07):
known for the serial murder cases. So I'm just trying
to think of otherwise. I can't think of them off
the top of my head. But I will tell you
that even though we see them, a lot of serial
murder cases in the unit. Serial murder in and of
itself is a rare occurrence, and so the majority of
our cases were single homicides, unsolved single homicides, and at

(13:32):
least in our unit. So while there was you know,
maybe a serial murder case that was being looked at
and it could have been from a long time ago current,
that wasn't the majority of our work and what we're
spending the majority of our time working on. So but
just because of the nature of what we do, we

(13:54):
saw the majority of the serial murder cases that happened
to the United States and sometimes even internationally.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
That's fascinating. I mean, how often do jurisdictions, like police
departments call in the FBI to assist in profile.

Speaker 3 (14:15):
I mean, we were very busy, but I would think,
you know, probably if you looked across the country, most
police departments and police agencies have not ever dealt with
the BAU. They don't necessarily need to. The cases that
we look at are either you know, they're very repetitive.
They may be repetitive, they may be very bizarre. Sometimes

(14:38):
you're dealing with a department that maybe has never seen
something before and the case has gone cold. So they're
looking for a fresh set of eyes. So yeah, I
would say the majority of you know, police jurisdictions in
any state have never dealt with the BAU. I mean,
even though we're very busy, there are just so many

(15:00):
homicides out there that you know that maybe don't require
an agency to contact the BAU. And I always used
to make a joke that you know, they contact the
BAU after the psychic didn't work. So so it's it's
not something I think people automatically think of, and it's

(15:20):
not something that every case needs. It's you know, it's
not a thing in most police departments can solve the case,
or they they maybe know who did it, but just
don't have that other piece of evidence. These are really,
many times just the cases where the police are maybe

(15:41):
just at a loss for what to do, and they're
just looking for other ideas, a fresh set of eyes,
because many times we've seen a similar case that they've
never seen before.

Speaker 2 (15:59):
And I joked earlier that a lot of people think
a psychic, you know, someone like yourself that's doing profiling
is sort of like a psychic, and all these answers
are going to be right. But obviously that's not the case.
I am curious, though, do you keep some kind of
track of how often things that you say are right
or wrong when you find out who an offender is,

(16:21):
and do you go back and like check yourself and say, oh,
I was wrong on that or I have spot on
on that, because it seems like human nature that you
would do that.

Speaker 3 (16:28):
Yes, I absolutely do that. You're always just wondering what
did I get right? What did I get wrong? And
I don't consider it's not like a guessing game, like
there's just certain things that I know I'm right about.
And you know, we never say one hundred percent. We
always say it's most likely this most likely that the
reports are heavily caveated, because you know, no two criminals

(16:48):
are like, no two crimes are alike. Human behavior is
very complicated. You're not going to get everything right, but
there's sometimes where you know, if you do miss some
there's usually a good reason for it. And some people like, well,
you're just making excuses, and it's not really that. It's like,
there really is a good reason why you may not
get something entirely right or accurate. But I do. I

(17:12):
always go back and look, what was I right about?
And what was I wrong about? And there's sometimes just
you have like an idea in your head and it
maybe doesn't get onto the paper and because it's maybe
not necessary to it, but you just have this feeling
about something. And those are the things that I also
like to check, you know, like I thought this person

(17:33):
would be employed in this kind of a job, and
so you check that. And that's not necessarily necessarily something
as specific that we would put into a report, but
it might be something that you just think in your head.
But when when I after I did the Golden State Killer,

(17:53):
there was a research there was some resource study done
I think it was the out of a university in
Texas that was done by a geographic profiler, and he
was going back and he was looking at all the
different profile profiles that had been done on the Golden

(18:14):
State Killer and kind of comparing, not really like which
one was best, but you know, how accurate were each
of the profiles. So I called him up because it
didn't say whose profiles Who's like, it wasn't it wasn't
about it wasn't embarrassing anybody or anything like that. But
I called him and I'm like, I just I wanted

(18:34):
to talk to you about it, because I did one
of the reports. And he said, I'm just really surprised
you're calling that you would want you know, that you
would follow up like that, because a lot of people
will do this and they don't care what they got
right or what they got wrong. And I said, no,
I'm really interested to see. Really I was interested in
what he thought about my report, just generally, and you know,

(18:58):
I think he was pretty impressive. I wanted to follow
up on it, and we had a great talk and
I came away feeling pretty good. You know, one of
the things I learned about the work that I did
on the Golden State Killer that I didn't know is,
you know, one of the things we always say about
profiling is that it doesn't identify offenders and it doesn't
solve crimes. And people have asked me, well, what did

(19:18):
your profile do to you know, how to help solve
the crime, And I'd be like, it didn't, you know,
it's just it's maybe just an interesting report. But what
I found out from his project he told me, he said, actually,
your profile was extremely helpful because it linked the Vicelia
ransackings to the sexual assaults and the homicides. And so

(19:43):
while they would have eventually identified him, it gave them
extra data points when they were doing the forensic genetic genealogy,
so they got there much faster. And I'm like, that's fantastic.
I'm glad it. I'm glad it helps something. And they
would have gotten there, they had the they would have
gotten there. But I was glad that our assessment, and

(20:04):
that was part of what we did is linkage analysis,
not just the characteristics of the offender, but could we
link these other crimes to him, because as you know,
he killed somebody and by Celia, So if you can
link him to the other crimes, you can solve that murder.
So I thought that was an important question to answer
because it was heavily debated within the task force. So anyway,

(20:28):
some people because.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
There was a big fence on that case. I know,
there's a lot of people on the other Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:34):
And then you know, and even you know, even you
come in and you say I think they're linked, and
you're either validating somebody and they think you're great, and
then or you're somebody saying you're you're incompetent. You don't
know what you're talking about. So you know, it's like
people can take a profile or they can leave it.
But I was really glad that they utilize the linkage

(20:55):
analysis in the forensic genetic genealogy because I think that
was a really important question that needed to be answered
for investigators, and ultimately it was answered. They were linked
and you know, while while it was a very different crime,
it still was you know, the murder of Claude Snelling,
and it helps put closure to that case.

Speaker 2 (21:19):
M And was that doctor Kim Rossmo by the way,
they were talking about Texas?

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Okay, yeah, doctor Rossmo.

Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, and he coincidentally also did some geoprofileing on the
Zodia case, so that's a perfect.

Speaker 3 (21:31):
Yeah, perfect, Yeah, he did do some on the Golden
State or he did do the geographic profile on the
Golden State killer too, Okay, awesome anyway, Yes.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Very very interesting and interesting to know too that you
are sort of checking yourself and just saying, hey, what
do they because I think that's just human nature to
go back and say, you know, and not just be
all right, well on to the next one. I'd want
to know the same thing, you know, what was I
right on? What was I wrong on? Just shifting gears

(22:01):
a little bit. So now you're out of the profiling, uh,
you know, the the FBI game that you know, that's
your old role and your new role as a co
host on your podcast. Just tell listeners a little bit
about your podcasts and what they can expect to hear
if they head over and listen to episodes.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Yeah. So our show is called The consult Real FBI Profilers,
and I do the show with three other retired FBI profilers.
We work together in the FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit and
we talk about analyze, discuss both solved and unsolved cases.
A lot of the cases we worked on, some of

(22:41):
the cases we haven't worked on, and in between the
case analyzes, I try to do some interviews interviews that
will help in in future analyzes, like things that we
would have studied in our training at BAU to help
us have a better understanding of investigations in generally or

(23:03):
generally So I've done interview with the geographic profiler Doug McGregor,
did an interview with a retired FBI poligrapher. These types
of things that come up in the cases that we
talk about, but maybe we don't have a full understanding
or the listeners don't have a full understanding of the

(23:24):
capabilities or potential pitfalls of something. So I like to
fill that in, you know, fill in between the casework
with these different types of interviews because as you know,
you know, each case takes a long time, so it's
really nice to have a little bit of a break
between them with doing just the interview where I can

(23:46):
learn some more and the listeners can learn some more.

Speaker 2 (23:48):
Very cool, And I'm curious your other hosts that are
also sort of in the same vein of work. How
often do you guys agree or disagree on different things.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
Yeah, so we we tend to agree a lot, and
it really has to do with that we are applying
some very i don't say very basic concepts, but basic
concepts about profiling concepts we all learned, concepts we've all seen,
so oftentimes we do agree. For example, if you see

(24:22):
concealment of a body, you can think this is potentially
somebody with a known relationship to the victim. Now that's
not always going to be the case, but that's just
a concept that you know, why does somebody go to
the trouble of concealing a body? So we tend to
agree now, every now and then we won't agree. We'll
think something. We just did a case that I'll be

(24:45):
coming out in a few weeks where there was an
aspect to it that one of my colleagues thought was
purely practical, and two of us thought it was also
antisy based. And you know, he kind of agreed, but
not really. He's like, I think it's more practical, but

(25:06):
and then the other one was wasn't quite sure. So
it's kind of hard. Sometimes you're just doing your best
to try to interpret things and come to a consensus
about it. But I think that we have those discussions
on the show, and so what people will hear is
what's really going on in the FBI's bau. It's it's

(25:28):
the closest thing that people will get to sitting in
the room with us, and we do start out like,
you know, we all look at the case material that's available,
we get on to start recording, and I often don't know,
it's just like a regular console. You show up in
the conference room. Here's here's what we got, Here's what
do we think. We discuss things for three or four hours,

(25:49):
sometimes more depending on the case, and kind of come
up with what a consensus is of what we think,
and it's really just a discussion more than anything else.
It's not scripted. I will oftentimes lay out the case
that that's scripted, but our discussions are not scripted at all.
They're they're the real discussions, and I rarely edit anything

(26:12):
out unless unless it's just something we go off and
it's not even related to the case or something.

Speaker 2 (26:19):
But it's fascinating to that kind of show too, to
have a roundtable of experts and opinions and stuff like that.
So that's one thing I do like about the show.
And you know, one other small tidbit you throughout Doug
McGregor's name. He's also been a guest on this show.
So yeah, we definitely have some people in the same universe.

(26:45):
So jumping into the Zodiac case specifically, obviously it's a historic,
well known, fifty plus year old case that's unsolved. You know,
if you were called on today to prove a profile here,
would you approach it any differently because it's so well
known or because it's as old as it is, would

(27:08):
anything change in your approach to doing the profile on him?

Speaker 3 (27:13):
No, we would approach this case if it happened today
Obviously we are dealing with nineteen sixties and seventies technology,
so we won't have the evidence that we would have today,
so that makes it more challenging, but we would and
I would say every profiler may approach a case differently.

(27:35):
They may focus on certain things. Because of my background
in forensic science, I tend to focus on the crime
scene photos, the autopsies, and that's really where I try
to focus to really understand, like trying to piece the
crime scene back together, what actually happened between the offender
and victim, or offenders and victims, depending on the case.

(27:59):
But you know, looking at Zodiac, I approached it the
same way I approached the Golden State Killer, just kind
of from the beginning, you know, kind of chronologically, what
happened here? What do the reports say, what do witnesses say?
I tend to find the further out you get from

(28:19):
the crime itself, and people start going down rabbit holes.
I and you know, people in suspects really start to
get developed and people are thrown out names that to me,
starts to muddy the waters. I really want to stick
with the basics. I want to stick with the crime scene,
autopsy photos, lab results, early witness interviews, victimology timelines, things

(28:43):
like that. When you start getting like ten years down
the line and you get these you know, people that
say oh I saw this, and then you start to say, eh,
you know, you have to kind of weigh how significant
that kind of evidence is with you know, what is
going to be more credible. So that's my that's how

(29:05):
I approach it.

Speaker 2 (29:07):
Yeah, I think in absence of some of the technical
technology based, you know, sciences that we have today for
crime fighting, back then, I think a really well written
police report would go would do wonders to be in
absence of that other stuff. And I'm always I'm always
happy to see things that were detailed very well back

(29:29):
in old police reports like that, and then I'm always
disappointed to see ones that just leave out major blocks
of information, And I envision myself, you know, this is
just me as a podcaster or researcher going back trying
to dig through here and saying, why is X, Y
and Z not in there? So somebody that's actually a

(29:50):
detective going back and looking at an old case file
to try and solve a case. If that information's not there,
it just seems, you know, like it's a major misstep.
And again I think I know that a lot of
these police officers are probably not the greatest at you know,
typing stuff up, especially you know, back then, it seems

(30:11):
like but you know, there were a lot of well
documentary reports in this case. A lot of them have
made their way on into the public spectrum, but there
were some that were lacking. And I'm curious too, how
common is it for serial killers like Zodiac or Son
of Sam to write letters call police? I mean, it

(30:35):
seems like most of them don't want to get caught,
They don't want any kind of connection to the police,
and they're going to not open up a line of
communication that may lead to them being apprehended. You know,
a KA B t K the way he was. What
do you think is behind them wanting to communicate, wanting

(30:56):
to reach out? And it is that same thing that's
time that is it common amongst all of those kind
of killers that do that.

Speaker 3 (31:04):
Yeah, well, first of all, it's not common. That is
that is unusual behavior. It's rare behavior in serial murders.
But the ones that do that become very well known
because they are attention seeking and you know, as as
you know, not every serial killer wants attention. They don't
and it's a myth. They don't want to get caught.

(31:24):
But then you have ones that want attention, and so
they're all different. No, two serial killers are just alike.
They may have some characteristics in common, but they have
sometimes different motives, different needs they're fulfilling. But it's it's
really not that common to see that kind of communication

(31:45):
that you see in the Zodiac or BTK. It's it's
quite unusual. But again, those ones are the ones that
become high profile. And I want to go back to
what you said about police reporting and looking at a
case from a lot time ago, it's very similar to today
to today. Sometimes you get very thorough investigators and in

(32:07):
investigations and great reports, and sometimes you don't. And I've
seen some really as you even said in the Zodiac case,
there are some really good reports that were done. So
just because it's old doesn't necessarily mean you're going to
have a less thorough investigation. So, I mean, I thought

(32:27):
some of the reports on the Eastery rapist case were fantastic.
They were so informative, the victim statements in some of
the cases, once you know they really knew what they
had were so detailed, and it made it possible for me,
as somebody looking back and looking over this so many

(32:49):
years later, to immediately recognize this is him, you know,
because they were so well done, and that's so long ago,
and in today you might get a you might look
at a case now and it's you know, it's not
as complete. So just because it's old doesn't mean you're
not going to have a great investigation.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
And it seems to me anyway, And this is my
take on it, and just tell me if you agree
or disagree, but it seems like Zodiac. My thinking is
that he started killing for one reason and started writing,
calling the police, taunting them, and then sort of phased

(33:30):
out from killing and only stuck to the correspondence part.
And I feel like, you know, something in him took
more pleasure in that communication rather than the killing. Something changed.
Do you feel that way, and do you think what
might be behind that?

Speaker 3 (33:49):
Yeah, I don't know that anything changed. I don't know
if I could say that, But what I will say,
and you actually just said it, is that just shows
how important that part of it was to him, that
letter writing aspect, and so if he could continue to
do that maybe that was a good enough substitute for
the actual killing, that that fulfilled the needs enough because

(34:12):
he was still getting attention, he was still fantasizing, he was,
you know, spending time at that, whether he was actually
killing or not. So that can sometimes. What that demonstrates
to me is there are aspects to these crimes and
to these offenders where there are portions that maybe are
even more important than the actual killing itself. And so

(34:35):
that's what that tells me, that that was a really
important part. He saw that in BTK where he didn't kill,
but he lived in a fantasy world where he drew
pictures and he dressed up, took pictures of himself and
had these polaroids of him in you know, bondage, and

(34:55):
and that was a good substitute for him. And you know,
and similar to the part of his crimes where he
was prowling and looking for victims and stalking victims, the
whole entire process is almost as gratifying, if not more
gratifying than actually the killing itself. So and with somebody

(35:20):
like Zodiac, and he's not the only one we've seen
this with, but the letter writing is an extension of
the crime itself. It's just an extension. It's a way
to prolong things. I should say, it's likely a way
to prolong things. It's likely a way to feel significant
and important. Controlling, he's still controlling the narrative. He's like

(35:40):
still reminding I'm here, don't forget about me. And I
think that is just a really big part, and it
really goes to why he felt he needed to do this.

Speaker 2 (35:52):
Can we glean from that possibly that he didn't feel
that way in his everyday life? Yeah, these letters were
something that were making him feel powerful or important or
known scene.

Speaker 3 (36:04):
Yeah, I would assess that. I think many times we
see these crimes in a way compensatory. They're compensatory for
you know, I always say money isn't the root of
all evil, it's insecurity. Insecurity is the root of all evil.

Speaker 2 (36:24):
You know.

Speaker 3 (36:24):
We think about, you know, the times where maybe I
haven't acted as you know, as good as I should have,
and why did I do somebody say something I shouldn't have,
And you know, this is how I try to think
about it. It's usually because I there's something that's threatening
me or I feel insecure, and so maybe I say

(36:45):
something I shouldn't and I think that's the same, Like
they're feeling insecure, so they're compensating for that. And I
do think that insecurity is the root of a lot
of evil, so to speak.

Speaker 2 (36:57):
It's very fascinating. Or is have you written up or
completed your own profile Zodiac.

Speaker 3 (37:06):
I haven't actually written anything up. I mean I have
done notes and stuff, but I don't have like an
official report. And then we have a documation documentation the
form of our show, because we did a few episodes
on Zodiac and and you know what I'll say about
our show, and it's not the way you did your

(37:28):
show like yours is a very deep dive into every
little aspect of the investigation where we just kind of
which I think is great. You need to have that understanding,
but we just sort of stripped that all away. We
go back to the basics of the crime, to the
odd toops. It's kind of those things that the initial
things that I was telling you, we focus on and

(37:49):
just go back to that because without try without trying
to fit that into a particular suspect or you just
you know, like we may do a case and it's
been I guess solved. Let's say it's been solved and
we know who the offender is, but we like to

(38:10):
go or the in there. But yet maybe the public
doesn't feel that it's been resolved. There's a debate. So
we'll go look at it and then we'll do a
profile and we have to kind of block out Yeah
we know, somebody confessed, Yeah we know somebody was convicted.
Yeah we know, And we just try to do a
profile with blocking all of that out and coming up

(38:30):
with the characteristics. And so that's how we approached it,
just going back to the basics with the zodiac. So
it's very different than how you approached it. But we
can't do what we do without the information that you
went over in your show. We need to have that information,

(38:51):
but we don't go over all of it when we're
doing the show.

Speaker 2 (38:55):
Sure, and that makes sense because you're more of a
clinical aspect of the details as opposed to the details themselves. Maybe,
So I'm curious based on you know, I know you
recently did the coverage with Mike Butterfield, I know you
listened to our podcast before. I know you you know

(39:16):
researched the case to some extent too. Based on all that,
have you come up with any conclusions or opinions on
zodiac that you'd like to share.

Speaker 3 (39:26):
Well, sure, and I don't think this is going to
be everyone's going to, you know, think this is amazing
or anything like that. But you know, we we thought
they were compensatory. The crimes were compensatory in nature. Obviously
a white male acting alone. And you know, there were
certain things that particular aspects about the case that we

(39:47):
wanted to try to answer, like, you know, his proficiency
with firearms, his level of potential education, and were the
mistakes in his letters on purpose or not? You every
case has unique aspects. We want to try to see
can we answer some of these questions that people have,
can we interpret it? So, you know, we did it

(40:11):
like that and came up with, you know, just some
observations of our own. Certainly this was as most serial
killings are a crime of power and control and compensating

(40:34):
for feeling maybe not so powerful and ineffective in their normal,
everyday life. And that's just kind of the you know,
the psychology part of it, like they're acting out then
hurt people, hurt people, right, But that's you know, that
was our assessment that you do have some killers you

(40:57):
would say they're brazen. They're bold and boldened there you know,
they may present to the world in an entirely different way.
We didn't see this killer like that. We saw him
as somebody who deep down was extremely insecure and his
crimes were a compensation for that.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
And you know, just and I'll just ask you some
general questions right off the top of my head, because
I haven't prepared this list of questions. But I'm curious, like,
from an economic background, would this be someone that you think,
maybe you know well to do, wealthy, or would this
be somebody that's more blue collar and maybe on the

(41:41):
lower side of income was Yeah, I don't.

Speaker 3 (41:44):
Know that we could say that with any you know, certainty,
but you know, we know he likely had some education.
We know he's not he's not stupid, so he probably
had access to education. He had a vehicle, he likely

(42:05):
had a job. He had access to firearms. So do
you have to have some way to obtain those firearms?
Maybe he stole them, we don't know. You know, he
was able to travel around, he interacted with victims, and
there was nothing that they noted that made us think, well,

(42:29):
he's let's say, intellectually deficient. His crimes certainly reflect I
don't want to say, you know, intelligence, but I think
he has some form of education. So all of that
would lend itself to probably somebody who does have some means,

(42:51):
but I wouldn't say they're you know, I don't think
I have anything that would support he's extremely wealthy or
but he had some means of some sort of had
access to education. So it's you know, middle class, okay,
and what kind of which is very safe to say, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:10):
I mean it's it's sort of you know.

Speaker 3 (43:12):
Ages between twenty to fifty. I mean, you know, I
mean you can see it. You know, you have to
be careful with things like this, but yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 2 (43:20):
Yeah, And I mean age range, you know. And I'm
curious what your estimate might be for that. But I'm
also curious too, in your experience, what age range do
offenders like this start doing this kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (43:35):
So age range, I'm going to say, and this is
more anecdotal than me citing a specific research project late twenties,
like twenty eight around that's where people usually are serial
killers usually commit their first murder. And that's kind of anecdotally,

(43:58):
like I said, but that could you could have them
be younger than some of have even been older. But
if you want to just put like an average, that's
probably a pretty close to average. Now that's not necessarily
when they started their criminal history, Like, they probably have
a criminal history that goes back before that, of course.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
And what kind of things maybe things in their childhood,
you know, even as far as hurting animals, starting fires,
that's all kind of common stuff that you hear about.
But are those the kinds of things you might look
for in their youth?

Speaker 3 (44:36):
Sure, you know, I would not say that there's like
this old myth about the triad bedwetters, fire starters and
animal you know, abusers. But I you know, I think
there are serial killers that have those in their backgrounds.
But I would not say across the board that is
something that you could say with definitive you know, definitively,

(45:00):
I wouldn't say that quite at all. What I would
say is, you probably do have incidents in their life
where they have shown a lack of empathy for other people,
and they've maybe been cruel and you may see that
in cruelty to animals, cruelty to other kids, lack of

(45:20):
remorse for their actions, things like that, but I wouldn't
necessarily say, oh, you have to see fire starting, you
have to see bedwetting.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
So something that might stand out, but not necessarily go
to those levels of violence for that kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (45:39):
Yeah. You I think usually when people get arrested for
serial murder, people go, oh, yeah, that person, you know,
they were not quite right, or you know, people will
sometimes say I can't believe it. But usually when people
look back, they see these issues that we're talking about,
you know, the lack of empathy, the issues with control,

(46:00):
things like that. But you know, we were talking about
this when we did a couple episodes on Brian Koburger,
and you know, just we can always look back and say, yeah,
we saw these warning signs. But there are a lot
of people that have some of these same characteristics, and
we wouldn't predict that they were going to be murderers
or serial killers. It's just it's impossible to predict. But

(46:26):
oftentimes when we're looking at it, we're looking at it
hindsight twenty twenty. And then when you're looking at a
case where you don't know the offender, you try to
apply what you've learned about offenders that have been identified
and try to say, Okay, what was similar about this
crime versus this crime, and how can we apply it
to this one that we're looking at right now. That's

(46:48):
what we try to do, and as you can see,
it's it can be very challenging to do that. So
you know, for example, if you're looking at a case
like like, I'll just take jody'angelo. He was breaking into homes,
he had his you know, so it's it was fair
enough to say he likely has a history of burglary.

(47:10):
But then you have Zodiac. Zodiac also a serial killer,
but he wasn't breaking into homes. I wouldn't necessarily say
he would have a history of burglary in his in
his past. You know, you would maybe be looking at
other types of offenses, but may but not likely burglary. Maybe

(47:32):
stalking or peeping or you know, prowling around or being
somewhere he's not supposed to be. You know, those those
are the types of things you may see in somebody
like Zodiac, But I wouldn't necessarily say he had to
have a burglary but like somebody who's actually going into homes.

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yes, and you mentioned Jod'angelo, and I just bring this
up because This is a thing that always is a
pet peeve of me. And I see people saying Jody
Angelo could be Zodiac. No way Zodiac. I mean, this
is a confirmed someone that likes inflicting pain on people

(48:15):
and experiencing with them for hours and hours of the time,
where Zodiac is in and out. It's just so in
your opinion, there's no way, no way, Joe D'Angelo is Zodiac.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
Right, you know how I say we never say things
with one hundred percent certainty. I will tell you I'm
one hundred percent certain that jody'angelo is not Zodiac. And
you you know, you're you're actually that's what's profiling, is Mike,
You're that's what you're doing. You're looking at you know
the thing about Joe, as you know from covering him,
he was every crime was exactly the same, every almost

(48:53):
word for word, his actions, tying up the victims. I mean,
you could start reading a report and I'd be like, Yep,
that's him, it's him. And then I'd get another report
where detectives might not be so sure, and then you'd
see something in the report and you'd be like, Okay,
this is not in his character, this is likely not him.
But you're what you've known, what you're what you've noticed

(49:16):
about Zodiac, just the things you just pointed out, They're
not the same person. They're They're completely different. And what
you do see with Zodiac is you do see a change.
You know that he his mos are not all the same.
Jody'angelo almost his mos were just the I mean, they

(49:37):
were so similar in every single case.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
Mm hmm. And whenever I see somebody that that says
that there's a chance that same, but I'm like, listen,
I'm not an expert, but they are not. Trust But
you know, in this in the Zodiac case, especially cause
California is such a big state filled with lots of
serial killers, everybody sometimes tries to link them him together
and thinks that they could be you know, one killer

(50:04):
could be the other. And sometimes I think we just
need to simplify things and take pieces away from the
puzzle rather than add extra pieces to the puzzle, if
we can do that. So it's good to hear you
say that.

Speaker 3 (50:16):
Yeah, you're well, you're absolutely right. Simplify it. What is
this person, what is he doing? And does is this
person doing the same thing? You can't just say they're
both killing in California. So therefore maybe they're related. But
when you really look at their wants and their needs
and how they're interacting with the victims, I mean, you

(50:36):
even have the way Joe DeAngelo spoke to his victims,
and you know, yes he used disguises, but he didn't
talk in his normal way. He just it was very different.
His the way he spoke to victims, very different than
Zodiac as reported in one of his crimes where he
spoke with his victims and had a conversation totally different.

(50:59):
And so that's what you just you know, cut cut
out the noise, look at the you know, what did
they do, what's going on here? And what need is
that fulfilling? And you see that's where you see the differences.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
And I will ask you one technical question though, So
it seems to me Joe Deando was clearly a sexual sadist.
Could Zodiac be a sexual sadist even though he's not
doing that same kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (51:24):
He may be just because he's a sadist for sure.
I mean he you know, he enjoyed hurting people, he
enjoyed taunting people, and so that is a sadistic quality.
So they both have a sadistic quality. Just because he
didn't sexually assault his victims, I would not rule out

(51:46):
they're not there's not some sort of sexual component to it.
This you know, this need again to feel powerful, to
feel in control, to feel like he is not only
killing a woman, but he's you know, dominating another man.
You know, that could very well be sexually motivated. The

(52:08):
you know, the going to lover's lanes and stuff like that,
you know, interrupting couples and intimate moments. It's really hard
for me to just say it's not sexually motivated. It's there.
It just may not be what we think as as normal.
But you know, there are serial killers that will just

(52:29):
talk about how I shouldn't say they all do. But
you burglary can be have a sexual component and there
may be no person there, but the whole process for
some of these killers can be very gratifying. So I
wouldn't rule out a sexual motive in this case, even

(52:49):
though we don't have overt sexual activity.

Speaker 2 (52:53):
Interesting, and I'm curious one more question about who you
think Zadik Mahmen. What do you think his social gills
words as someone that was just a pure loaner. Could
he have had, you know, a certain group of friends.
What do you think that would look like.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
Yeah, I wouldn't say he was just a loaner. But
what I think people would have maybe noticed about him
is his probably need to control a situation. He probably
got frustrated if somebody tried to correct him about something.
He would have to show that he's right. I would

(53:32):
think that if he was engaged in social relationships, they
would become strained because of his attitude and his you know,
inferiority with other people. And you know, oftentimes you're in
friendships and your friends may have some constructive criticism for you,

(53:53):
and if you can't accept that and try to change
a little bit or work through situations, then you're not
going to maintain friendships. So I would say friendships he
had may may have been strained.

Speaker 2 (54:08):
And what about romantic type relationships.

Speaker 3 (54:11):
I would say the same thing. I would say the
same thing, and I think he'd probably have issues of
control in those relationships. You know, we were sort of
on the fence about whether we thought he would be
in a relationship, but we wouldn't rule that out. There's

(54:31):
some offenders where we think likely not, But I don't
think we would rule that out. With the zodiac, I
think it's very possible he could have been in a
relationship with somebody.

Speaker 2 (54:43):
And this is a question that you know a lot
of people have theorized, and you don't know there's any
way to prove it one way or the other. But
you know the zodiac. You know, there were two interesting
things that happened. You know, he wrote letters steadily from
nineteen sixty you know, sixty nine to nineteen anyone. Then
there was a three year hiatus, and he started writing

(55:03):
again in nineteen seventy four, and then he dropped off
the face of the earth. I'm curious, you know that
the standard things are, well, maybe he went to jail,
maybe he was in the military, Maybe he died in
nineteen seventy four. Are there any things you think life
changes perhaps that might account for that pause and then

(55:24):
that final stoppage of writing.

Speaker 3 (55:30):
All those things you just mentioned are all possibilities other possibility.
What I would say is I'd say likely not dead
or in prison, just because statistically they're likely not. But
it also could be marriage and children and life gets busy.
There's also I think an element to I mean, there's

(55:52):
a lot of work that goes into killing someone. It's tiresome,
it's exhausting, there's a lot of time spent. So it
could be he got a little older and aged out
a bit, but still was able to fulfill his needs
through the letter writing. So I think there's a number

(56:12):
of reasons. I mean, so many people thought that, you know,
jod'angelo would have been dead. But that was one of
the things I always said, you know, he's he's very
he's likely alive statistically, and he was obviously so, but
you know, could he have died. Sure.

Speaker 2 (56:33):
I think it's an old myth that there's these guys
either die or go to prison, and that's the only
two options.

Speaker 3 (56:40):
Yes, yes, exactly, They've got to be dead or they
you know, because they can't stop. I think I think
that was an old kind of theory about serial killers
that people used to think, well, they can't stop, they
don't know how to stop themselves. They know they can
stop themselves, and they do.

Speaker 2 (57:03):
So some listeners and for members sent some questions and
to ask you, and I sent them to you beforehand
just to look over so you could, you know, maybe
have some answers ready. So I wanted to go through
these and just take these one by one and get
your thoughts on any of these, and we can sort
of do a lightning around here and not go too
deep into them unless you feel it's important that sound good.

Speaker 3 (57:26):
Sounds good, all right?

Speaker 2 (57:27):
So I think the first question here was that some
profilers said that Arthur Lee Allen, who's the most famous
Zodiac suspect, was likely not Zodiac because he was attracted
to children. Do you agree?

Speaker 3 (57:43):
No, I wouldn't agree, So I'm not saying he's I'm
just saying for that reason, just because somebody may have
been attracted to children and this person's killing adults, I
don't think you can say it's not him that I
would not agree with that necessarily. Yeah, that's I mean,

(58:03):
I'm not saying that. You know, I don't know if
it's him. I never really like, like I told you,
i've never done deep diy. I looked at your suspect
and what you sent to me, but I've never done
a deep dive, so I don't know for sure everything
about him. But I would say, just because he may
have been attracted to children, I wouldn't rule him out

(58:24):
as being a killer because of that.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:27):
No, I wouldn't do that. In fact, one of the
things that one of my colleagues thought, because what's really
interesting is that he threatened children, and Zodiac threatened children,
I'm going to shoot the kiddies, you know, and that
I didn't necessarily see this, but one of my colleagues

(58:48):
thought that the Zodiac may have himself have been a
victim of you know, child abuse at some point. And
as we know a lot of people who are victims.
I didn't say a lot many people who abuse children
were actually abused themselves. So that was something we thought of.

(59:09):
It's just it's unusual to threaten children and a lot
of times, like if you have a threatening note. And
this is also anecdotal, but you know, when I worked threats,
and from the people that were expert in threat assessment,
one of the things when they saw threats to children,
that tends to be more of a feminine characteristic. Not
saying it's a feminine, it's not a female. We're not

(59:33):
saying definitively, but they may have feminine characteristics. That's sort
of something that we look at when we see threatening letters,
when children are threatened. So it was really interesting when
we saw that Zodiac threatened children. We obviously we know
that he's a man, and that would be our assessment
because statistically he's likely a man. So why why throw

(01:00:01):
in the children? I mean, certainly throwing in children create
makes it even scarier because you know, we're in our culture,
as in most we are so protective of our children
and the most vulnerable victims. So why is he threatening them?
So that was very interesting, and like I said, my

(01:00:24):
colleague thought maybe he had been a victim of child molestation.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
And could it be violence of some sort, not necessarily molestation.

Speaker 3 (01:00:34):
Yeah, okay, it could be. Yeah, I mean he definitely definitely.
I shouldn't say definitely, he felt strongly that they might
there might be a history of some abuse up to
sexual abuse.

Speaker 2 (01:00:48):
Okay, yes, okay. Interesting And then the next question is
do you believe that Zudec's first murder was made close
to his home?

Speaker 3 (01:00:58):
I think he's comfortable and how close he lives, But
this is likely These areas are places he'd been before,
whether he lived in the area, passed through, worked in
the area, recreated in these areas. He's comfortable with them,
he's familiar with him them. So now did he live

(01:01:19):
closer to where he committed his first crime than the others.
I don't know that I could say that with certainty,
but I would say he's familiar with this area, okay,
and he's comfortable definitely okay.

Speaker 2 (01:01:34):
And then the next question is do you believe Zodac
really was a bad speller as we saw in many
of his letters, or was he faking it?

Speaker 3 (01:01:42):
Yeah, this was something we talked about as well. And
we felt because of some of his letters, his need
to correct the record, like kind of silly things that
the police may have gotten wrong, like you know, and
he would follow up with a letter correcting them. Felt
that he had a problem with authority and people correcting him.

(01:02:04):
So we didn't think that he would purposely make mistakes.
So we thought they were probably real mistakes. And another
thing I had, I had three different teachers reach out
and say that it was their impression that he might

(01:02:24):
be dyslexic.

Speaker 2 (01:02:27):
Hm.

Speaker 3 (01:02:27):
Interesting, Yeah, three teachers And actually one of them I
interviewed on my show for something else, but she mentioned
that she's like, I think he's dyslexic. And you know,
I'm not an educator, and so I wouldn't know patterns
to look for. But I just thought that was interesting.
I don't know if that is true, but.

Speaker 2 (01:02:46):
What's great about the podcast is you have so many
people that listen that come from all walks of life
and have all kinds of experience and knowledge that reach
out to you and give you little tidbits like that. Yeah,
there's a fascinating video you can find on YouTube, and
I forget what it's called and who did it, but
it's it's a linguistics analysis of zodiac and they go

(01:03:07):
through some of those spelling errors and there's I'm sort
of on the fence as to whether he did those
spellings intentionally or not, but there was an instance where
he would spell a word correct and then later on
spell it incorrectly. So I'm wondering, is that him slipping
up and you know, spelling it right one time and
then spell it wrong on purpose the next time, or

(01:03:30):
maybe he's in a hurry and he just spelled it wrong.
I don't know, but it was fascinating when I saw
that instances where he did that.

Speaker 3 (01:03:37):
Yeah, and we're looking at it. We're not looking at
it linguistically. None of us are linguist or anything like that,
so we're looking at it behaviorally and then we just
sort of thought, you know, if he was making his
mistakes on purpose, it'd be something that the police could,
you know, say stupid. And I think that would be
very hard for him to take because he did not
want to appear stupid. He wanted to appear smarter than

(01:03:59):
the police, and the police were the stupid ones, and
I think it would have been very tough on him
to be thought of as stupid. So that's why we
thought that. But it is, it is interesting. It's a question,
you know that I don't know for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Yeah. I think some people too, are the opinion that
maybe he was doing that to throw police off in
another direction, as to look uneducated in making these spelling errors,
maybe to get them looking in the wrong direction. But
it is a fascinating, you know, discussion to have about
the the motives in his writing.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
Yeah, and we do see that a lot of times
in threatening letters when someone's trying to remain anonymous. I mean,
they want to remain anonymous, so they throw people off
by misspelling things or trying to you know, change their writing.
But when we see that, when we see purposeful mistakes,
we call those contraindicators trying to throw people off. So
it's possible that he was doing that on purpose, but

(01:05:02):
I didn't think so.

Speaker 2 (01:05:03):
Okay, and what do you And the next question is
what do you think Zodiac's motivation was for attacking young
couples in particular.

Speaker 3 (01:05:12):
Need for power and control and to feel significant, because
because he did not, Yeah, and what.

Speaker 2 (01:05:20):
And why might he choose those as opposed to just
I don't know, uh, shooting somebody randomly on a porch
or poisoning their coworker. What might what might have led
him to look for those kinds of victims in the
areas that he was looking for them.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
I think that gave him even more power to kill
a couple, including you know, having a male victim and
showing his dominance over a male victim. He's likely threatened
by other men. I think it's similar with Joe DeAngelo.
Some people think, well, he's going after men, so he

(01:06:02):
must be really brave, and I think it's opposite. I
think he was threatened by other men, threatened by romantic relationships,
maybe feeling as if, you know, he somehow had an
unfair life because he wasn't able to have a similar relationship.
So he's going out to these lovers lanes and finding,

(01:06:24):
you know, finding relationships that maybe he feel he maybe
he felt he was denied to some capacity, right, I mean,
victim selection is important. It's always interesting when you see
an offender attacking a couple versus, as you said, just attacking,
attacking someone randomly or just one person or but I

(01:06:48):
think there's definitely some something lacking in his maybe romantic life,
and he has resentment and issues over that.

Speaker 2 (01:07:03):
Okay, And the next question is do you believe that
the Zodiac wrote to newspapers outside of his Zodiac persona,
in other words, writing to them with his real name.

Speaker 3 (01:07:16):
That wouldn't surprise me, It really wouldn't. He's a writer,
so it is it? Is it possible? I could very
well see that if he even like let's say he's
at his job or something and he doesn't like something
or he has something to communicate, I could see him
writing a memo to his boss or typing something out

(01:07:36):
and formally submitting something. But yeah, I could see him
communicating outside of being Zodiac because he's a writer. He's
a communicator in that way. So if he had something
to express, I could absolutely see him writing letters, like
to newspapers and things like that that wouldn't surprise me.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
And along those lines, do you think if he was
a pro letter writer to newspapers that once he started
writing as the Zodiac, that he might stop writing to
these newspapers using his name.

Speaker 3 (01:08:10):
Possibly? Yeah, okay, yeah, And I'm not saying necessarily he
would have been prolific. It wouldn't surprise me if in
his regular everyday life, when he had something to communicate
he wrote a letter, nasty letter to somebody of like
a complaint or something. That just wouldn't surprise me at all.

Speaker 2 (01:08:36):
The next question here is would you consider Zodiac an
early domestic terrorist with a pent up hate for police
and other authorities.

Speaker 3 (01:08:47):
I hadn't really thought of him as like a terrorist.
I mean, but he was. He was. He terrorized people,
But I don't know that we'd put him in that category. Technically,
I would agree. I think he resented authority. I would

(01:09:11):
agree with that, and I think that show likely showed
in his regular everyday life when he had to deal
with authority in any way, shape or For me, he
likely resented authority and he likely made offhanded, flippant comments
about people in authority because he felt insecure to them.

(01:09:36):
You see it in his letters, So I would expect
that that would leak out into his regular everyday life
where you have him, you know, complaining about his boss
and and you know, other authority figures where somehow he's
he feels like he is in an inferior position to them.

Speaker 2 (01:09:56):
Okay, so we tell I think we talked about this
next question a little bit about offending history.

Speaker 3 (01:10:04):
I like the questions.

Speaker 2 (01:10:06):
Yeah, there's there's so we talked about phone clothes while
he might interact. So how likely is that Zodiac would
knowingly keys clues to their identity and communications, like, for example,
one suspect, his theme was gay Kowski and there's a

(01:10:27):
g y k E, which some people have tried to say, Oh,
that might be him hiding that because you can see
that in the symbols. And then there's an unconfirmed Zodiac
letter from nineteen ninety of a you know, it was
a xerox copy of some keys that turned out to
be a photo a peobox that police in the FAI

(01:10:48):
were able to track the owner of and question him
and went so far as to take DNA. But it's
long been thought that maybe he would put some little
clues in there that maybe if they found them, they
would reveal his identity. And now, of course, his original
cipher that he sent, he said he would give his

(01:11:10):
name if they solved it, and when they did solve it,
he said in the in the solution, I'm not going
to give you my name. So it's sort of like
he gives clues that he's going to possibly give his
identity if you can figure it out. But then, and
you know, in the one time where that cipher was solved,
he didn't reveal his name. So what do you think

(01:11:31):
the chances are that he would really put something as
a hint that if you had the right key to
sort of unlock that hint, that you might discover who
he is.

Speaker 3 (01:11:45):
I don't think that he would put something in there
that would ever directly lead to his identity. I do
think he put things in there that were meaningful to him,
that he knew what they meant, that if somebody else
were inside his head would know it was him because

(01:12:07):
he's a game player. He likes to be smarter than
everybody else. But I don't think he puts something in them.
And you know, maybe I'll be proven wrong someday, and
that'll be great because but he's already proven that he's
not going to tell the truth about putting his name
in there, his identity. But yeah, I don't think because

(01:12:28):
I don't, I mean he doesn't. I don't think he
wants to get caught. I mean, the myth serial killers
don't want to get caught. So I just don't think
he was going to put something in there that would
lead to his identity. But is he putting things in
there that are amusing to him and to him alone?
I think so.

Speaker 2 (01:12:46):
Okay, Now these next questions are from the book This
is the Zodiac speaking into the mind of a serial killer,
And this is by Michael Keller, who did a series
of videos on If you're from familiar with his work
or ever watching any of the videos he did on YouTube,
but he had some experience and wrote a book, and

(01:13:08):
this person's asking questions about him, and so page fifty
one references to getting your rocks off with a girl.
So that's something that Zodiac wrote, that doing what he
was doing was more fun than getting your rocks off
with a girl. Do you think the writers are correct here?
The author is correct here and saying the writer of

(01:13:29):
this letter may also be socially or sexually dysfunctional. He
may be intensely jealous of sexual intimacy of couples and
hunts them for that reason. And do you think Zodiac
has never had sex before? A little sexual experience. These
are a lot of questions sort.

Speaker 3 (01:13:45):
Of they're alated to the same issue.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Yeah, So basically they're asking about his I guess, his
prowess of level of intimacy or ability or non ability
to have that relationship.

Speaker 3 (01:14:03):
Yeah, I would agree that to throw that kind of
comment in there kind of speaks to me is like,
maybe he isn't as confident in that area as he,
you know, feels he should be. I mean, he's really
he's saying this is better than this, And so what
that's implying is he is having sexual relations Why do

(01:14:25):
you have to throw that? Why do you have to
tell people that? Why do you feel the need to
tell us that? Because it's likely not happening, or you
likely feel or you likely lack confidence in that area.
So I would tend to agree with kind of that
little that assessment there that he's probably ineffective or feels
ineffective in that, you know, sexual aspects of his life.

(01:14:47):
Why does he have to tell us that. You always
have to look why why is somebody telling us this?
These these unnecessary things he's telling us.

Speaker 2 (01:14:55):
And I've also seen people point out the fact he
says with a girl as opposed to just getting your
rocks off?

Speaker 3 (01:15:02):
So maybe exactly it's maybe he's such a good observation, Mike, And.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
That wasn't my observation. That's one that somebody's posted.

Speaker 3 (01:15:10):
Well whoever did it? Yeah? I like that. I do
like that because it's that's absolutely right that Why does
he you know, getting your rock Why do you say
with a girl, Because again he's trying to tell us
I get my rocks off with a girl. Yeah, I'm not.
You know, why do you need to tell us this
when whenever you have this extraneous information that he's giving

(01:15:30):
us that or maybe an inside look into his personal
life or his identity, you really have to question where
that's coming from. So I think he's socially and sexually inadequate.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
Okay, So page ninety six references to Zodac's misspellings grammatical errors.
All right, we did that, so let's not rehash that.
This one. This is interesting because he uses the word
shell a lot I shall do this, I shall do that,
which is not really how most people speak. Do you

(01:16:04):
think that might be proof of some kind of some people?
Now this person's asking particular if if he's got some
British connection, I think I'm a lot of people are
more likely that he was maybe a reader of books
that use that word. What do you think he's used

(01:16:26):
of that word to because I don't think unless you're
saying it for like this podcast, I would never use
that word in my life or anything unless I'm quoting zodiac.
So it's just such an odd word to say.

Speaker 3 (01:16:38):
Yeah, it's very formal. It's a formal way, and I
think that's his way of sounding more educated. I don't
necessarily think he is educated, but maybe, like I said,
I think, yes, some education. But I wouldn't say he's,
you know, a genius or anything like that. But it
is a way, and it's an easy way to try

(01:16:59):
to sound as if you're more formal, as if you're
more educated, as if you're smarter by saying I shall
do this, it's it's it's not something that especially I
don't think maybe even at that time, people would be
talking like that in normal everyday life.

Speaker 2 (01:17:16):
And I did see one interesting n'gllget somebody throughout somebody
says that's the language you also see in like legal
contracts and things of that nature. So that got them
thinking maybe he reads that kind of language in some
kind of documents that he's preparing or used to reading

(01:17:38):
or using.

Speaker 3 (01:17:39):
Yeah, and I think that's a good observation. I wouldn't
necessarily say something like, oh, he's in the legal field,
but what I would say, you know, it's like I
love these specific maybe examples, and I like to pull
back just a little bit and say, he's definitely trying
to sound formal, and he's getting that from formal writings

(01:17:59):
maybe such as a legal document. But it just goes
to what we were talking about. He's just trying to
appear like he is more formal, more educated, more well read,
more well written, which is sort of again kind of odd.
If he's using these words, I shall, and then he's
misspelling words, so it makes me he's trying to appear

(01:18:20):
smarter than he really is. Well, if he's trying to
do that, why is he purposely misspelling words? So you
have this kind of.

Speaker 2 (01:18:30):
You know, uh conflict.

Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
Yeah, it's very contradictory. Yeah, yeah, exactly, So which is it.
I think he's trying to appear smarter. That's why I
don't think he would, you know, purposely misspell. But I
there are other interpretations that I would not that or
could not just disagree with. You know, the only thing

(01:18:53):
I would disagree with. Someone would say, well it's a woman,
I'd say I disagree with that, or he's Golden State killer.
I disagree with that. But I think there's I think
there's a lot of very valid interpretations. But this is
this was our interpretation, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
And sort of along those lines, and I probably should
have asked you this before. But as far as you
talked a little bit about him being educated, do you
think he's high school educated, college educated? What do you
think his level of that might be?

Speaker 3 (01:19:30):
Yeah, I think I think that's very possible. I think
because of what we see in his writing, I think
he would have struggled in school. So I wouldn't say
did he get through high school possibly because I think
he probably had the means too. Did he get very
far in college? I'm not sure. I think he would

(01:19:52):
have struggled with you know, some of his academics based
on what my assessment is in his writing. And even
if you were to say those were purposeful mistakes, you know,
I wouldn't necessarily say he, you know, had a college degree,
maybe some college, okay.

Speaker 2 (01:20:15):
And then the next question is page one ten of
this book. It's regarding all reference to bombing, and it
gives ingredients and medium, fertilizer, nitrate, this other stuff. And
this person the writers in the book say where did
he get this formula from? And then this person saying, hey,
it was an agricultural background. I and I used to

(01:20:36):
you know, blew up stumps on treatment on forums and
things like that. So do you think there might be
some background to Zodiac that had him knowledgeable of this
stuff he's writing about regarding this bomb or could this
be simply something he read.

Speaker 3 (01:20:54):
About in a book either either, But but you know,
again kind of hold back from that. It does show
what his interests are. He's interested in that, right, He's
so he did he learn it from a book or
did he actually have some hands on experience with some
of this or in a field where he would be
exposed to some of this information. You know, what I

(01:21:17):
would say is he has exposure to it, whether it's
a personal interest or professional but it's important enough for
him to write about it, so he would have had Yeah,
there would have been something in his life that shows
that he had knowledge of this type of stuff. Whether

(01:21:39):
but you know, that's stuff I believe you would probably
look up in a book if you were interested. You know,
we all read about things we're interested in, and we
could probably write a little bit about it and sound
kind of like we know something. It doesn't necessarily mean
we had a career in it, sure, but it shows
we had an interest in it.

Speaker 2 (01:22:05):
And Okay, so page one thirteen to one fourteen Van
Nights has some comments which I think some of this
stuff goes along with what you said earlier that Zodiac's
career likely includes a conventional day job, has a car,
He can buy his guns and knives ammo, unless he's
stealing them, like you mentioned. He can do physical labor,
but likely not a desk job, likely a loner I

(01:22:30):
can put him on. He can use short term social
stuff for charm. I think they're saying that he's you know,
too immature to sustain relationships and he was more blue collar,
and I'm just curious, does that sort of fit what
you've been I.

Speaker 3 (01:22:51):
Can't disagree with any of that. Okay, I like that. Actually,
I can see I can see how that that person
came up with that profile that those are good observations. Unfortunately,
it means it also includes a lot of people. Yeah,
and those are great observations.

Speaker 2 (01:23:10):
Yeah, it doesn't in that town, in particular of Valleo.
If if you want to say that Zodiac lived in Balleo,
you know that was a blue collar town. So that
doesn't doesn't really knock down the suspect list too much unfortunately.
So page one sixteen to one twenty. This is regarding
the letter that was mailed to attorney Melvin bell I. Uh,

(01:23:33):
he was, you know, sort of a big shot and
a high roller in San Francisco, and he was on
a lot of TV shows, so that may or may
not be why Zodiac sent him a letter. But in
the letter, he said that he asked bell I for help,
saying he was drowning, which he spelled wrong, d R

(01:23:53):
O W N, d I and G. And it was
sort of like a child like phrase asking for help,
and that he might want Bellay's services should he get caught.
I'm just curious what your thoughts are on why he
might reach out to him, and you know, maybe why

(01:24:15):
he's using that term drowning as to what he's feeling.

Speaker 3 (01:24:20):
Yeah, I think that might be just a mistake. You know,
that's what he thought. The word was, I'm drowning. You
know that that makes sense to me, now, didn't didn't
he reach out to another attorney first?

Speaker 2 (01:24:36):
He tried to get this is this is a caller
on a TV.

Speaker 3 (01:24:41):
Show, okay remember that.

Speaker 2 (01:24:42):
Yeah, And he reached out requested to speak to Flee
Bailey and he wasn't available. So the Melvin bell I
took the call and was on this TV show that
the call is actually traced back to an asylum and
it was a patient calling from an assign that was
making this call thing. He was Zodiac. But that may

(01:25:03):
be where Zodiac saw that Melvin Belly appearance and said,
I'm going to write Melvin Belly letter.

Speaker 3 (01:25:11):
Yeah, that's very possible. Yeah, I knew there was another
attorney involved in that and that whole that whole phone
call and stuff, which obviously you know was not going
to be him. But I you know, I think that
letter to Melvin bell I is just another way to
gameplay and you know, I don't think I don't think

(01:25:35):
he maybe he was. I think he was just messing
with him. Yeah, I just I don't think he really
thought he needed help or wanted help. And I think
he was just making a flippant joke in a way
again to kind of poke fun at you know, like

(01:25:59):
how high high file he was and be attention seeking
and that kind of thing. Or I may need your
help someday. But he's probably the kind of attorney he'd
want if he did get caught, it would get him
a lot of attention. But I don't think those were
real emotions that he had because he very This is

(01:26:20):
not someone I think reflects on their behavior and self
correct in any way or thinks they need help. I
really doubt he would feel that way.

Speaker 2 (01:26:32):
Interesting, Okay, And then page twenty five it talks about
Kathleen John's who was abducted by someone she later saw
a poster of and said, you know, it's a poster
of Zodiac and said, that's the guy that abducted me.
You know that this is hotly debated whether she was
actually a victim of the real Zodiac or not. But

(01:26:53):
if it is him, if it was him, you know
she she mentioned that his was disheveled, there was children's
clothing inside it. So and this sort of goes back
to might Zodiac at the time he was doing these crimes.

(01:27:14):
If this was Zodiac, might have had a child, a
young child likely at that time.

Speaker 3 (01:27:21):
I mean, I think it could very well be he
had a child. I so many times serial killers are caught,
we do find that they have families and they have kids,
and people are surprised because everyone thinks they're just all owners,
but they often do have children. I am not. We
did not look at that case, so I'm not familiar

(01:27:42):
with all the details, so it's hard for me to
say to draw too much from that. But I guess
what I would say is that he could have been married.
He might have had children as well, and that could
be a reason why he stopped killing because life got busy.

Speaker 2 (01:28:05):
Yeah, ok, yeah, And not to go too far off
onto the Kathleen John's case, but it is the most
different from all of the other known Zodiac attacks. In
this encounter, she was driving down a lonely road in
the middle of California late at night. Someone started flashing
their lights at her. They got her to pull over,

(01:28:27):
the guy got out of the car and came up
turn and said her wheel was loose and he didn't
mind tightening up for her. She said, yeah, he actually
loosened the lugnutsize and then she drove a little bit
further down the road her wheel fell off, and then
he came back and said, oh my god, you know,
let me give you a ride, and he got her
into his car. Now, there's there's some debate whether this
actually really happened. There's a lot of speculation that she

(01:28:50):
was being you know, you know, wanted insurance money for
her car because her car was later found burned. He
gave her a ride, she jumped out with her young
child with her supposedly, and when the car was found
it was burned. So there's some people that thereize this
was an insurance scam. But the reason ties in is

(01:29:11):
because when she was at the police station, she saw
a Zodiac poster and said, oh my god, that's the
guy that abducted me. So, my long and the short
question here is would Zodiac, based on all the attacks
we know are his, would this be the kind of
attack he would engage in.

Speaker 3 (01:29:28):
Well, we do see his motive varying, but he also
minimizes his risk with victims by making sure that they
you know, they can't leave, they're in a parked situation.
So this is very different. I just can't say, I

(01:29:54):
just you know, because he does change his mo and
there there are some similarities. I I could see him
doing this. I just couldn't rule it out, just because
he's varied so much already. But you know, he tends
to other than Paul Stein. But he did get Paul
Stein into a situation while they were moving, you know,

(01:30:17):
Paul couldn't get out of the situation, and his other
victims were in a situation where they you know, were still.
So he approached victims. He didn't follow them pull them over.
Said that is quite a significant deviation. But I would
not say it's not him at all, because we see,

(01:30:39):
you know, the varying of his m O. Now, what
the biggest difference is here is he didn't kill her.
So you already have a major difference, you know, and
the questions all become, why why didn't he kill her?
You know, this guy doesn't have compassion for people. He
doesn't hasn't let anyone live on purpose, So why would

(01:31:04):
he let her live? So that just becomes the biggest thing.
He didn't kill her, What was the reason? Is there
a reason? And that would be, you know, something we
would want to look at if really examine the case.
You know, we we intended to go back at some
point and we're going to do this and look at
some of the other cases that individually that have been
suspected to be linked to him and just profile them

(01:31:27):
individually and first of all, try to come up with
a profile of the unknown offender and see if there's
anything that links them behaviorally to Zodiac. This one, I think,
just on its surface, I would say I don't think
we could say behaviorally that we could link it to Zodiac.

Speaker 2 (01:31:46):
Okay, and it's interesting, you're going to go back and
look at some of those other cases because we.

Speaker 3 (01:31:50):
Always wanted to, I know, and that's why we stuck
just to the the the canon ones, just because we
know they're him. Actually, some people don't think they're all
him either. There's so much to be We thought they
were all him that way we linked We did link
them thinking that they were all him. Even though we

(01:32:12):
had some striking differences, there's still a lot of similarities.

Speaker 2 (01:32:16):
Okay, So the next question here is, and this sort
of touches maybe what you mentioned earlier regarding to the teacher.
He always used a blue felt tip pen or a marker.
He didn't often use pen, although I do remember a
letter that looked like it was written in pen, and
that led them to ask whether he might have a

(01:32:37):
condition called dysgraphia, which is where you can't use pens
and pencils to write for some reason. I think that's possibility.

Speaker 3 (01:32:46):
I don't know. I couldn't say, Okay, that's very detailed. Yeah,
I couldn't say, because it just maybe he liked yeh, yeah,
he had a preferred pen he liked to use. I mean,
who knows. I have pens I prefer over others, or

(01:33:07):
maybe he felt they you know, the felt tip makes
it a little harder to analyze than someding a little finer.
It's more, you know, it's like it's like trying to
analyze handwriting when someone's used as sharpie. You know, it's
a little thicker. It dolls those fine lines that the

(01:33:29):
people that do handwriting analysis are looking for, and those
transitions between letters and all those things. So that could
be a possibility. I'm not saying that it is, but
I just think I think it would be too specific
to say he had any kind of condition. I just
don't think I could say.

Speaker 2 (01:33:45):
Okay. And then the next one, page one thirty nine
forty the book, the author says, and I found this
one interesting. It is very likely that Zodiac felt rejected
early in life, were abandoned reactive detachment disorder among infants,
in very young children who've been rejected and replaced for adoption,
some never recover from the loss of a mother at

(01:34:08):
an early age, or behaviors destructive, almost psychotic. So basically
they're saying that this could be something that happened in
the zirds background. What do you think of that possibility.

Speaker 3 (01:34:24):
It's possible. I think there's some point in his life
he has felt rejection. But whether where, at what point
that happened. Was it nature, was it nurture? I don't
think I could say. But I just I don't think
I could go back and say it's probably somebody that happened,

(01:34:45):
you know, early when he was abandoned by his mother
or something like that. I don't know specifically, but these
feelings of resentment and ineffectuality were probably developed in his
childhood at some point, but the reasons behind that, I
couldn't say.

Speaker 2 (01:35:05):
Okay, I'm going to skip ahead a couple questions because
some of these are things we already talked about. But
van Nie thinks Zodiac may have had disassociative identity disorder
characterised by two or more personalities. What do you think
of this theory?

Speaker 3 (01:35:21):
Well, first of all, let me address we don't diagnose
on our show. We don't have the ability to diagnose people.
You can't really do a diagnosis of anybody without examining them.
And even even if I talk to somebody, I'm not
qualified to do that kind of analysis, and we don't

(01:35:42):
do it. So I don't know. But do I think
he had two different personalities? Clinically, I highly doubt that
that is. That's rare, and I don't see that. I
see that he's pretty consistent, So I don't see that.
But I don't have that kind of experience.

Speaker 2 (01:36:05):
This is the conclusion of part one of my conversation
with Profiler Julia Kelly. In the next episode of Zodiac Speaking,
Julie is back to take a deep dive into my
favorite Zodiac suspect, Mac and based on everything we know
about him, Julie will let us know what things she
thinks may or may not line up between Mac and Zodiac.
You can listen to it right now ad free with

(01:36:26):
an Abject Insider subscription through Apple podcast. Just head over
to Apple Podcasts and search for either Zodiac Speaking or
Abjact Entertainment to get started with a subscription. Thanks for listening,
and we'll see you back here soon. Thanks for joining
us for this episode of Zodiac Speaking. If you'd like
to help more people find the show, please take a

(01:36:47):
moment to rate and review us on the podcast platform
you're listening now on, and make sure you're subscribed so
you don't misten any new episodes. Just a reminder, new
episodes of Zodiac Speak and want air on Saturdays. To
support this show, please consider an Abject Insider subscription through
Apple podcast for only four ninety nine a month or
forty nine to ninety nine a year. You'll get not

(01:37:08):
only ad free early access and bonus content for this show,
but for every show on the Abjectnetwork podcast. Just head
over to Apple podcast to get started with a free trial.
If you want to follow or interact with us on
social media, we're on every major platform. Simply search for
Zodiac Speaking Podcast on your favorites. You can also find
our homepage at Zodiac Speaking dot com.

Speaker 4 (01:37:30):
And don't forget you can get plenty of Zodiac details
twenty four to seven by visiting my site at Zodiac
Sifers dot com or by going to Mike's site at
Zodiac Killer dot net.

Speaker 2 (01:37:44):
On behalf of rich This is Mike Morphord and i'd
like to say thanks again for listening and we'll see
you on the next episode of Zodiac Speaking

All Episodes

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

.css-15opob5{left:0;position:absolute;top:0.8rem;} All Episodes

.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Interview with Former FBI Profiler Julia Cowley Part 1 of 2

Episode Transcript

Popular Podcasts

.css-r6mb8g{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:1;overflow:hidden;}Stuff You Should Know

Dateline NBC

The Herd with Colin Cowherd

All Episodes

Interview with Former FBI Profiler Julia Cowley Part 1 of 2

Stuff You Should Know