Crime Adjacent

Tommy Coulet left home at 9 p.m. on Dec. 23, 1995 and would never return. His body was discovered the next morning in a known lovers’ lane spot on the western edge of Ridgewood just off Interstate 80.

Investigators wouldn’t know it at the time, but Tommy Coulet would be the first known victim of the most prolific serial killer in American history.

This is the story of how it all began.

Crime Adjacent is the never-...

With no leads, no clues, and no suspects, Tommy’s case went cold, almost instantly. But as more men were abducted in Ridgewood, investigators reached out to the FBI for a profile.

The profile has never been publicly released.

Until now.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling readi...

Exactly two weeks after the discovery of Tommy Coulet, another man was found on the outskirts of Ridgewood.

Same valley. Same injuries. Same horrible manner of death.

This is the story of Bobby Calvin, who would soon become known as Bobby #1.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling...

Bobby Calvin had everything going for him. 

Smart, handsome, a former D1 star quarterback at Stanford, where he almost led the team to a national title in the 1980s. An actor with big dreams of Hollywood. An early adopter of the Internet.

So how did he cross paths with a killer on a lonely night just after the new year in 1996? 

Detective Jones has spent her entire career trying to answer this question,...

Detective Ida Jones had seen this before. Gay men were being murdered while the police and the entire town looked the other way. 

Like a nightmare she couldn’t escape, she couldn’t stop this from happening in Ridgewood. 

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group ...

With the discovery of a third body in the valley just off Interstate 80 in Ridgewood, police realized the killer emerged every other Saturday night. Only this time, instead of abducting a man at Hunter Hill rest stop, he was in Ridgewood.

Anyone, it seemed, was fair game now.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our t...

The similarities between the abduction of Bobby Briggs and one Zodiac survivor were so striking that Detective Jones had to check it out. 

Briggs was kidnapped in the middle of Ridgewood, on a busy thoroughfare. And yet, there were no witnesses or signs of a struggle. It was as if he simply vanished.

When Detective Jones inspected his truck, she knew what happened. She had seen this before. With the Zodiac kille...

After the abduction and murder of Bobby Briggs on Jan. 20, 1996, Ridgewood exploded. There was a killer among them, taking men. Off busy streets. Stomping them to death.

Just as it has done all over the country for ages, panic set in. And Ridgewood would never be the same.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true ...

One man built a flamethrower and patrolled the town’s sewer system, positive the killer lurked underground. A posse of women formed an armed vigilante group and roamed the streets at night. Neighbors reported other neighbors to police. Kids called the tip line on their teachers. 

As Ridgewood waited for the killer to strike again, mass hysteria settled over the entire town. But then, just as suddenly as they began,...