Speaker 1: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
Speaker 1: those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
Speaker 1: and do not necessarily represent those of iHeart Media, Stuff Media,
Speaker 1: or its employees. Some Zodiac researchers don't like people saying
Speaker 1: that they're obsessed with the case. I don't either, but
Speaker 1: for a different reason because I blew past obsession about
Speaker 1: five years ago. It's far more than an obsession to me.
Speaker 1: My name is Mark Hewitt. I'm a true crime author.
Speaker 1: I've been researching the Zodiac case for about eleven years now.
Speaker 1: Various times I've looked at online websites and talk with
Speaker 1: other people about the case. Back in two thousand and seven,
Speaker 1: around the time that David Fincher's movie Zodiac came out.
Speaker 1: That was the beginning of my fascination with the case
Speaker 1: that became an obsession eventually. There are a couple of
Speaker 1: times in my life back between two thousand and three
Speaker 1: and two thousand and seven, when I looked into the case.
Speaker 1: I spent a little bit of time on the three
Speaker 1: forty cipher and I thought about visiting different crime scenes,
Speaker 1: and it came a point where I said, you know what,
Speaker 1: either I'm gonna have to throw myself into it wholeheartedly
Speaker 1: or I'm gonna need to back away from it. It.
Speaker 1: It's got to be one of the two. I can't
Speaker 1: just dabble in it and feel like I'm doing anything seriously,
Speaker 1: So round about sometime in two thousand and seven, I
Speaker 1: made the decision that I was going to throw myself
Speaker 1: in it wholeheartedly and read everything I could read and
Speaker 1: talk to everybody I could talk to and figure out
Speaker 1: everything I could about the case. Threw myself into the case,
Speaker 1: knowing that it was a high profile case. It was
Speaker 1: eleven years of my life. A couple of years ago,
Speaker 1: my wife left me. I'm now divorced in part because
Speaker 1: of the case. Not fully, not not, but I threw
Speaker 1: myself into the case and neglected friendships, neglected my family,
Speaker 1: neglected my career. It's something that I had to do
Speaker 1: because of my my makeup as a person. This this
Speaker 1: case has actually been my life for eleven years. And
Speaker 1: I'm going through the process now that the book has
Speaker 1: come out in September, of what am I going to
Speaker 1: do now with my life. I can't live off the
Speaker 1: zodiac forever. In fact, I've even thought to myself at times, well,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe I just need to walk away from
Speaker 1: it and just form new social communities, social circles, and
Speaker 1: just just leave it completely. And yet I can't do
Speaker 1: that because I have great friendships here and the case
Speaker 1: is still being looked at by the police, and people
Speaker 1: are still reading my book, and reporters keep calling me
Speaker 1: and asking for comments, asking for quotes. So I suspect
Speaker 1: I'll be involved with the Zodiac the rest of my life.
Speaker 1: A man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them,
Speaker 1: leaving them for dad. Subjects stated, I want to report
Speaker 1: a murder, no a double murder. I did it. A
Speaker 1: man who wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried a
Speaker 1: knife and gun and intended to use them. They have
Speaker 1: an arrestipe because they can't move it. I'm not damn Zodiac.
Speaker 1: Who is the Zodiac and where is he? From My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio, How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV, this is
Speaker 1: Monster the Zodiac Killer. From the very beginning of this podcast,
Speaker 1: we've been asking the big question who is the Zodiac?
Speaker 1: The theories seem endless. A few searches on the Internet
Speaker 1: and you can be lost in a sea of conjecture.
Speaker 1: No other murder in history has drawn so many names
Speaker 1: in speculation as to the killer's true identity. With all
Speaker 1: this information out there, how can we possibly find that story?
Speaker 1: How long have you looked in the wrong places? Is
Speaker 1: it possible that there's more than one man behind the mask?
Speaker 1: The case details are so vague, so disconnected, they easily
Speaker 1: lend themselves to wild interpretation. And the unfortunate truth is
Speaker 1: this might be part of the reason why the Zodiac
Speaker 1: has gotten away with these atrocities for over fifty years.
Speaker 1: So there are a lot of myths out there about
Speaker 1: the Zodiac, and they often are attached to various theories
Speaker 1: about the case. So if someone has a suspect, they
Speaker 1: sort of tailor the story of the Zodiac to fit
Speaker 1: that suspect. So depending on who you're talking about, the
Speaker 1: story will change. This is Zodiac expert Michael Butterfield. He
Speaker 1: says he's heard a lot of unlikely theories about the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: While many are based in truth, others are pure conjecture.
Speaker 1: Butterfield now listens to every new story with a skeptical year.
Speaker 1: So he's either a brilliant Harvard lecturer or he's part
Speaker 1: of the Manson family. For all these things, and so
Speaker 1: each portrait of the zodiac changes with each theory, but
Speaker 1: none of them correspond with reality. The list of possible
Speaker 1: suspects is long and bizarre. There are dozens of names,
Speaker 1: including the improbable Charles Manson, Dennis Rader, and even Texas
Speaker 1: U S. Senator Ted Cruz. But there are also a
Speaker 1: number of more plausible suspects, and many investigators have explored
Speaker 1: these extensively, often spending years finding the clues and connections.
Speaker 1: And for these investigators, their suspect is everything. This is
Speaker 1: what they believe. It's their truth, and I'm reporting what
Speaker 1: they believe. If there's another side to it, I report
Speaker 1: that too. I'm Rachel Raskins Raghan, and I'm a journalist
Speaker 1: with The Times Harold the layo. When I got with
Speaker 1: The Times Harold, it just came with the package because
Speaker 1: The Times Harold was involved from the start. I think
Speaker 1: the time I got a phone call from someone who
Speaker 1: knew the zodiac was I talked with someone about it.
Speaker 1: They say, oh, yeah, we get those all the time.
Speaker 1: You get letters, you get phone calls. They know for sure,
Speaker 1: and they want to tell you. And most of the
Speaker 1: time there's nothing. Really you can do to disprove it.
Speaker 1: It happened a long time ago, and it happened to them.
Speaker 1: They developed their theory in their head. There's no way
Speaker 1: really to disprove it. So I don't normally try, you know,
Speaker 1: unless something comes up in the story that that presents
Speaker 1: itself of an opportunity to talk to somebody else to
Speaker 1: see if there's another story out there that would contradict
Speaker 1: it or confirm it, then I do that. Well, Clearly,
Speaker 1: some have gotten so into it that it's cost them
Speaker 1: other important elements in their life. I've, you know, known
Speaker 1: of people who have lost marriages and families over it
Speaker 1: because they can't let it go. One of these people
Speaker 1: is Mark Hewitt, who you heard at the beginning of
Speaker 1: the episode. After more than a decade of research, Mark
Speaker 1: recently published a trilogy of books on his Zodiac suspect.
Speaker 1: I had to look at myself in the mirror a
Speaker 1: number of times over this past year and do a
Speaker 1: very serious gut check because I was going to go
Speaker 1: live and I was going to publish a book that
Speaker 1: identified Ted Kaczynski as a Zodiac serial killer. I put
Speaker 1: my credibility on the line, my research ability on the line.
Speaker 1: A lot of people have criticized it and ripped it
Speaker 1: apart online and called me an idiot and a fool,
Speaker 1: and a one person said that they wouldn't have been
Speaker 1: more surprised if I had named the Easter Bunny as
Speaker 1: being responsible for the Zodiac murders. We met up with
Speaker 1: Mark if the Late Herman Road fiftieth anniversary gathering, and
Speaker 1: it quickly became clear to me Mark had been through
Speaker 1: a lot. Regardless of the criticism he's received, Mark has
Speaker 1: done his homework. So we're going to hear Mark out
Speaker 1: and into his theory. What I came up with with
Speaker 1: six or seven clusters of evidence, one for instances, the
Speaker 1: whole use of mathematics. As you get to know the
Speaker 1: Zodiac letters, you realize there are awful lot of numbers
Speaker 1: in his writings. There are equations, There are umpteen symbols.
Speaker 1: This is important because Ted Kazynski studied mathematics religiously, and
Speaker 1: according to Mark, there's one particular symbol that had special
Speaker 1: meaning to Kazynski, a circle with a cross through it.
Speaker 1: The cross hair symbol is a mathematical picture and illustration
Speaker 1: of the equation X squared plus y squared equals one
Speaker 1: which is so basis to mathematics that it has its
Speaker 1: own term. It's called a unit circle. Ted Kazynski in
Speaker 1: a number of his papers uses the phrase a unit circle,
Speaker 1: and a unit circle is used widely in his area
Speaker 1: of expertise boundary functions within mathematics. For another clue, Mark says,
Speaker 1: you can look to author Joseph Conrad's book The Secret Agent.
Speaker 1: If you read The Secret Agent, you realize, oh my goodness,
Speaker 1: they're an awful lot of numbers. They're awful lot of phrases.
Speaker 1: Are a large number of vocabulary words that come straight
Speaker 1: from The Secret Agent into the Zodiac Letters. One example
Speaker 1: of this comes from the Zodiac letter received on November eleven.
Speaker 1: This was Zodiac's threat to bomb a school bus. It
Speaker 1: won't do to reroute and reschedule the buses because the
Speaker 1: bomb can be adapted to new conditions. In Conrad's The
Speaker 1: Secret Agent, the main character says that he wants to
Speaker 1: quote invent a detonator that would adjust itself to all
Speaker 1: conditions of action and even to unexpected changes of condition.
Speaker 1: Why that's significant is because that is one of Ted
Speaker 1: Kazinski's favorite books. He claims to have read it a
Speaker 1: dozen times, and one time when he was trying to
Speaker 1: explain himself to his parents and his brother, he said,
Speaker 1: you know, you have to read this book to understand me.
Speaker 1: Another tie between Zodiac and Kazinski is the use of
Speaker 1: written declarations sent to the media. Mark says there are
Speaker 1: a lot of similarities between the Uni Bomber manifesto and
Speaker 1: the Zodiac letters. A lot of the wording and a
Speaker 1: lot of the explanation of the Unibomber manifesto is merely justification.
Speaker 1: So Ted Kazinski killed because he enjoyed killing the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: In his far away Cipher said, I like killing people
Speaker 1: because it's so much fun. So both Kazinski and the
Speaker 1: Zodiac killed for the pleasure of it, and both of
Speaker 1: them bragged about it and letters sent to local newspapers.
Speaker 1: Like many theories about Zodiac suspects, a lot of the
Speaker 1: evidence here is circumstantial. However, there are things that do
Speaker 1: eerily add up, like the timelines between Zodiac and Ted Kazinski.
Speaker 1: Ted was in California nine six interviewing for positions to
Speaker 1: become a math professor. Seven he moved to the Bay
Speaker 1: Area and was a professor at Berkeley from sixty seven
Speaker 1: to sixty nine. He abruptly resigned his position. Four days later,
Speaker 1: four days after his last day of work was the
Speaker 1: Blue Rock Springs murder. Over the next two years of
Speaker 1: his life, Ted Kazynski was missing in action, and during
Speaker 1: those two years the bulk of the Zodiac murders and
Speaker 1: the bulk of the Zodiac letters took place, culminating with
Speaker 1: the letter to the l a times in March of
Speaker 1: ninety one, the last time the Zodiac used the word Zodiac,
Speaker 1: the last time he used his cross here symbol. Why
Speaker 1: is that significant because several months later, in June of
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, Ted Kazynski moved to Montana, built his cabin,
Speaker 1: and lived in Montana. Between nineteen seventy one and nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy four, new Zodiac letters were sent to the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Chronicle. However, these letters were print They were signed
Speaker 1: with other aliases such as the Red Phantom or simply
Speaker 1: as a friend. There are maybe one, maybe a couple
Speaker 1: additional Zodiac letters after Ted moved to Montana, but they
Speaker 1: never used the word Zodiac and they never used the
Speaker 1: crossroads symbol. So the timelines of the Zodiac and Ted
Speaker 1: Kaczynski line up very well. But what about the way
Speaker 1: Zodiac killed people versus the Uni bomber. Zodiac only ever
Speaker 1: used guns and knives to kill. Is it possible he
Speaker 1: did follow through on his threat to make bombs? The
Speaker 1: truth is the Zodiac killed up until the murder of
Speaker 1: Paul Stein, in which he was cited, and that changed
Speaker 1: the Zodiac. As far as we know, he didn't attack
Speaker 1: after that. However, at that time, the Zodiac became more
Speaker 1: of a letter writer and began to write many, many
Speaker 1: letters to the police. And in those letters he included
Speaker 1: a bomb diagram where he threatened to kill a school
Speaker 1: bus with a bomb. So the Zodiac himself morphed from
Speaker 1: a up close and personal killer to somebody who threatened
Speaker 1: with bombs. This isn't just some far fetched theory. In
Speaker 1: San Francisco, detectives announced they were investigating Ted Kazinski as
Speaker 1: a possible Zodiac suspect. According to the San Francisco Chronicle,
Speaker 1: local investigators found distinct similarities between the Uni bomber and
Speaker 1: Zodiac crimes, among them where details Mark Hewitt had also
Speaker 1: found both sent letters to newspapers bragging of their crimes.
Speaker 1: Ted Kazinski was in the Bay Area at the same
Speaker 1: time as the Zodiac murders, and Kazinski often used a
Speaker 1: symbol similar to the Zodiac crosshairs symbol. Ultimately, police never
Speaker 1: confirmed any viable connections between Kazinski and the Zodiac crimes. However,
Speaker 1: his name still exists on the roster of possible suspect,
Speaker 1: and for Mark Hewitt, that possibility keeps his research alive.
Speaker 1: People have said to me, where are you gonna go
Speaker 1: with us? So you're gonna try to talk the police
Speaker 1: into it? Are you going to try to convince everybody?
Speaker 1: I don't feel that's my job. I'm a researcher. I'm
Speaker 1: a writer. I've researched the case, I've written about it.
Speaker 1: People can respond to it anyway they want to. There's
Speaker 1: so much detail to the Kazinski case that covering everything
Speaker 1: in this episode would be impossible, and that's true for
Speaker 1: nearly all of the high profile Zodiac suspects. In fact,
Speaker 1: the sheer amount of information and circumstantial evidence on these
Speaker 1: suspects is intimidating. But there's one journalist who's combed through
Speaker 1: almost all of it. The main San Francisco Chronicle reporter
Speaker 1: assigned to the Zodiac case. Oh you can go into
Speaker 1: zodiac r Kenya. Like many rabbits down many holes. I'm
Speaker 1: Kevin Fagan. I'm gonna report at the Sanrancisco Chronicle. I
Speaker 1: have thousands of tips and a drawer over there. It's
Speaker 1: a series of file folders and books dating back to
Speaker 1: six I believe it is right around then. Of of
Speaker 1: theories and tips and proclamations from people who believe they've
Speaker 1: solved the Zonia case. It's gonna spill over. This may
Speaker 1: be the first. Yeah, this is one of the first ones. No,
Speaker 1: it's not that the first. You could spend all your
Speaker 1: days sorting this tune, this one, and this is this guy.
Speaker 1: Sure it's someone in I think Scotland. Maybe they're right,
Speaker 1: who knows, but they're just so damn many of them
Speaker 1: there sorting out which one is the real one. That's
Speaker 1: for the cops. That's why a lot of people when
Speaker 1: they call I say, you know, my standard response, which
Speaker 1: I truly belief, is you know, thank you, I'm glad
Speaker 1: you're sharing this. When the cops move on it, that's
Speaker 1: when it's the best time to report on this. Because
Speaker 1: if I wrote a story on every and in the
Speaker 1: plausible one, a restaurant, every plausible zodiac tip that came in.
Speaker 1: You know, it'd be a weekly caller. This is just
Speaker 1: every one that came in. It's just moving. Come on.
Speaker 1: I wrote about this one because two thousand nine my
Speaker 1: dad did it. The dad do it, you know. And
Speaker 1: then I started getting a ton of stuff from people
Speaker 1: who thought their dad's zodiac, their moms maybe the zodiac.
Speaker 1: The guy upstairs as the zodiac. It's no, it's a
Speaker 1: bunch of cops. No, it's a guy in Scotland. Wait, no,
Speaker 1: it's a crazy guy who lives downstairs. And I'm writing
Speaker 1: this letter as he's down there right now. If you
Speaker 1: if you read the cipher's I get letters, oh hack,
Speaker 1: so many every year, and packets and and handmade books
Speaker 1: from people who have gone through the ciphers and oh
Speaker 1: my god, they've solved it and it says, you know,
Speaker 1: fell in the blanks. And people who have gone through
Speaker 1: the handwriting say, oh my god, it's my grandpa's handwriting,
Speaker 1: or it's the guy down the road's handwriting, or the
Speaker 1: Sero Keller and presidents his handwriting, and they're dead sure.
Speaker 1: And they get experts who confirmed their their theories. It
Speaker 1: comes back my dad did it two thousand nine. No,
Speaker 1: my dad did it. Fagan is talking about a phenomenon
Speaker 1: that we also noticed in our investigation. In recent years,
Speaker 1: several individuals have come forward to claim they have direct
Speaker 1: family ties to Zodiac. One of those individuals is Gary Stewart.
Speaker 1: In two thousand fourteen, Stewart went public to suggest his
Speaker 1: biological father, a man named Earl Van Best Jr. Was
Speaker 1: the Zodiac. His primary evidence was found in one of
Speaker 1: the Zodiacs unsolved cryptograms. Stewart claims his father's name could
Speaker 1: be found in the so called three forty cipher. Remember
Speaker 1: this was a later cryptogram sent to the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Chronicle on November nine, nineteen sixty nine. Zodiac sent a
Speaker 1: follow up thirteen symbol cipher on April twentie, nineteen seventy.
Speaker 1: Unlike the first ciphers, these were never officially decrypted. My
Speaker 1: father's name is in that cipher, he said, my name is,
Speaker 1: and then he put thirteen symbols. Those thirteen letters are
Speaker 1: E A, R, L V A N B, E S
Speaker 1: T j R. That was Gary Stewart, speaking on a
Speaker 1: talk show in He published a book on these findings
Speaker 1: and more, but not everyone was convinced on solved cryptograms.
Speaker 1: It's like the equivalent of a treasure map, trying to
Speaker 1: figure out what whereas the treasure buried. Sometimes I go
Speaker 1: through a period we I'll spend a lot of hours
Speaker 1: on it, and other times I don't because I get
Speaker 1: burned out on trying it. This is programmer and amateur
Speaker 1: cryptographer David A. Rancheck. We talked with him early in
Speaker 1: the season about the first Cipher's. He's tried to solve
Speaker 1: the three forty cipher, but like everyone else, has had
Speaker 1: no success. People have written endless books about their suspects,
Speaker 1: and you know, their claims about solving the solution, and
Speaker 1: in some cases they're rewarded for it, you know, financially,
Speaker 1: their books are wildly popular even though they haven't really
Speaker 1: solved the codes. You know, if they can convince enough
Speaker 1: people that they have, then they know they're they're able
Speaker 1: to make a decent buck from it. So that's that's
Speaker 1: the other strange aspect of this whole thing. And like
Speaker 1: the case of Gary Stewart, who claimed his biological father,
Speaker 1: I guess was the Zodiac. You know, he's got very
Speaker 1: flimsy evidence on that, and I looked at his codework
Speaker 1: in his book. He got a publication deal from Harper's
Speaker 1: and he's a big publishing house. It was a best
Speaker 1: selling book for a while. It hit the New York
Speaker 1: Times Best Sartlist, and he was going around to all
Speaker 1: these news shows. They would bring him on and saying,
Speaker 1: you know, Zodiac is solved. Here's the guy who solved it.
Speaker 1: A lot of people go into it and they don't
Speaker 1: bother to learn cryptography. They just have kind of an
Speaker 1: intuitive feel for what needs to be done, and that
Speaker 1: I think is what gets people stuck in these traps
Speaker 1: of you know, they got a name to pop out,
Speaker 1: or they got a phrase the pop out, but they
Speaker 1: can't prove that it was intentional. There is a sort
Speaker 1: of intoxicating effect when you plug in what do you
Speaker 1: think Zodiac might have said? And it happens to fit.
Speaker 1: So you come up with this long phrase, but invariably
Speaker 1: the message turns into gibberish for the rest of the message.
Speaker 1: It's easy to get caught up in that first feeling
Speaker 1: of Wow, this it's working, it's fitting, this message is
Speaker 1: coming out. But that's just because the ciphertext gives you
Speaker 1: enough room to make an early mistake, and it looks
Speaker 1: right at the beginning, but then later on it it
Speaker 1: just turns into nonsense. I often compare it to you know,
Speaker 1: seeing faces and clouds. Well, a lot of times you'll
Speaker 1: see something that seems to be there and it's not
Speaker 1: really there. It's just making your brain think that there's
Speaker 1: a pattern there, but it's actually happening because of just
Speaker 1: random chance. And that's a frequent mistake that people make
Speaker 1: when they look at the ciphers. So that's the kind
Speaker 1: of trap that they're in. They're kind of stuck in
Speaker 1: this place where they can't prove beyond a reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: that the message is real. Somebody will go through a
Speaker 1: procedure that generates a name, and so that will be
Speaker 1: their solution. But if you repeat the process, you can
Speaker 1: make the same process generate other names. But they ignore that.
Speaker 1: Some of them are just so fixated on their suspect
Speaker 1: that they get locked into a particular way of solving it.
Speaker 1: What it's resulted in is, you know, a lot of
Speaker 1: people are so severely misinformed on the case they think
Speaker 1: that it's already been solved. I stopped playing that game
Speaker 1: a long time ago, but people a look, they make
Speaker 1: it sound like if you can show them that piece
Speaker 1: of information, it'll be really compelling. And then you go
Speaker 1: to the trouble to upload it and they say, no,
Speaker 1: big deal, doesn't prove anything. I didn't say it did,
Speaker 1: Jack Won. That's why I have the delete feature. I
Speaker 1: can ban people at all, but I've melted out a lot.
Speaker 1: This is Tom Voyd of Zodiac Killer dot com. As
Speaker 1: you heard last episode, he started the Zodiac Anniversary meet ups.
Speaker 1: In many ways, he's a key figure in this Zodiologist community.
Speaker 1: Tom has explored the three forty cipher extensively. He echoed
Speaker 1: David ranchek sentiment that the unsolved cipher theories are bogus.
Speaker 1: People are so influenced by the fact that three of
Speaker 1: those codes didn't get solved. Well, they're just rubbish. There's
Speaker 1: no solution to be had. It's just to manipulate people
Speaker 1: and get him to keep focusing on that instead of
Speaker 1: on the government. Does that you throw out something a
Speaker 1: press release about a controversial topic to get people not
Speaker 1: to talk about you know what they should be talking about.
Speaker 1: It's fake news. Zodia convented it. Zodiac invented fake news
Speaker 1: with the code has my Name in it and all
Speaker 1: this other every letter was fake news and it was
Speaker 1: to get manipulate the people or the police into following
Speaker 1: the wrong path. Even still, Tom Void developed his own
Speaker 1: suspect through the ciphers. Many years ago, he received a
Speaker 1: tip from an informant named gold Catcher. This informant also
Speaker 1: spoke with the police, but at the time they didn't
Speaker 1: consider him a reliable source. Tom, however, was so convinced
Speaker 1: by this new info he began his own investigation. Eventually,
Speaker 1: Tom found the name of this new suspect in the
Speaker 1: initial three parts cipher. These were the three letters sent
Speaker 1: to separate newspapers in July of nineteen sixty nine. The
Speaker 1: name Tom found was Richard Geikowski. At the time that
Speaker 1: the Zodi X that his three part cipher, Richard was
Speaker 1: working for a counterculture newspaper and he would publish articles
Speaker 1: and he would call himself Dick Geike, So he would
Speaker 1: shorten his last name to the first syllable, and he
Speaker 1: spelled it different ways. I have found evidence, the actual
Speaker 1: proof that where he spelled at g A i K,
Speaker 1: g i k E and g U y k, there's
Speaker 1: only one they're spelling to get that Gike sound, and
Speaker 1: that's g y k E and that was found in
Speaker 1: the cipher before it's translated. You can see it with
Speaker 1: your own eyes. G y k E. Zodiac chose the
Speaker 1: g y k E was going to go right there,
Speaker 1: and he chose that it would represent when solved, the
Speaker 1: last four letters of the word because I will not
Speaker 1: give you my name, because so in the word, because
Speaker 1: the last four letters A, U, S, E are what
Speaker 1: GUI translates to when the key is learned and you
Speaker 1: translate the cipher. So Guik house key the key syllable
Speaker 1: can be found if you consider the word key as
Speaker 1: in the decryption key as part of the solution. According
Speaker 1: to Tom, Zodiac changed his encoding method throughout the three
Speaker 1: parts cipher to throw off cryptographers. So Zodiac potentionally changed
Speaker 1: the coding method and that allowed Guike to translate the house.
Speaker 1: If he hadn't changed the encoding method, then Guike would
Speaker 1: have become something else. It wouldn't have been a usc
Speaker 1: So you have all three syllables of his last name,
Speaker 1: which is really interesting. And he went on to become
Speaker 1: one of the first computer corners in the Bay Are.
Speaker 1: He started his own online newsgroup in his fifties, which
Speaker 1: is when most people are along done learning something new,
Speaker 1: so he obviously had an aptitude for that. For many
Speaker 1: online sleuths, Richard Geikowski is another major suspect in the
Speaker 1: Zodiac case, but aside from the cipher connection which Tom
Speaker 1: just mentioned, what other evidence is out there. Geikowski was
Speaker 1: part of a counterculture commune in San Francisco called Good Times.
Speaker 1: There he edited an anti police, pro violence newspaper. By
Speaker 1: January of nineteen sixty nine, the Good Times newspaper was
Speaker 1: publishing violent works of fiction, many were extremely similar to
Speaker 1: the Zodiac's future crimes. There's some circumstantial evidence linking Richard
Speaker 1: Gaikowski to the Paul Stein murder. Richard's cousin lived on
Speaker 1: Washington Street, which you may remember is where Paul Stein
Speaker 1: was murdered, and that cousin's birthday was October eleven, the
Speaker 1: same day Paul Stein was killed. For this reason, it's
Speaker 1: possible he was in the area that day. Also, the
Speaker 1: Good Times Communication Center was located just a few houses
Speaker 1: down from Paul Stein's residence in San Francisco, and according
Speaker 1: to paul Stein's sister, Gaikowski attended Paul's funeral The most
Speaker 1: significant evidence came from the informant gold Catcher. He was
Speaker 1: a former co worker of Geikowski's. According to Goldcatcher, Geikowski
Speaker 1: would invite him to engage in violent acts similar to
Speaker 1: the Zodiac crimes. This was convincing enough that NAPA detective
Speaker 1: Ken Narlow decided to interview and investigate Gaikowski. Goldcatcher also
Speaker 1: obtained an audio clip of Gaikowski talking. We received a
Speaker 1: copy of this audio courtesy of Tom Voyd from Zodiac
Speaker 1: killer dot com. The whole thing about a code, You've
Speaker 1: got to remember also, once the code telecode is broken,
Speaker 1: you have I never know, never any way of knowing
Speaker 1: whether it's a real code or whether it's just a
Speaker 1: fake code. Oh, which means at some time, you know,
Speaker 1: like the military and all of that, sometimes you would
Speaker 1: send garbled messages that meant absolutely nothing, so that you
Speaker 1: get the enemy to depend all their time trying to
Speaker 1: make break the code. Nancy Slover, who spoke with the
Speaker 1: Zodiac when he called to report the Blue Rock Springs murder,
Speaker 1: listened to this clip of Richard Gaikowski. According to Nancy,
Speaker 1: it was the voice of the Zodiac, but aside from
Speaker 1: some initial questioning by authorities. Geikowski was never thoroughly investigated.
Speaker 1: He died in two thousand four. Tom Voight, Mark Hewitt,
Speaker 1: and other online sleuths have been meeting up for years.
Speaker 1: On occasions like these, they come together to tell stories
Speaker 1: and share theories. I got a little group together people
Speaker 1: that were very interested in the case. They come to
Speaker 1: my house. We have dinner, and we sit in the
Speaker 1: chat and watch the Zodiac movies over and over and
Speaker 1: over again. And so that's that's how this got going.
Speaker 1: And we go to all the Zodiac sites for every anniversary.
Speaker 1: This is Sandy Betts. She's been a part of the
Speaker 1: Zodiac story from the very beginning. Sandy told us that
Speaker 1: back in the sixties she knew some of the victims.
Speaker 1: She even claims to have had run ins with the
Speaker 1: Zodiac himself. It has taken up a good portion of
Speaker 1: my life, it really, really truly has. My children have
Speaker 1: grown up with it, you know, knowing that I was
Speaker 1: being stocked by somebody who was claiming to be the Zodiac,
Speaker 1: and my children were afraid. My had a daughter was
Speaker 1: scared to death of him because he didn't he followed
Speaker 1: her as much as he did me. She finally passed
Speaker 1: away for a thing. It sounds terrible, but when she
Speaker 1: passed away, I didn't have to worry about her being
Speaker 1: tortured by him, because I was scared to death that
Speaker 1: he was going to get her and torture her. According
Speaker 1: to Sandy, the Zodiac was obsessed with her and her daughter.
Speaker 1: She spent years confronting this man. He would supposedly show
Speaker 1: up at her home or tail get her car late
Speaker 1: at night. Sandy saw his face many times, but never
Speaker 1: got his name. I did a steak out. There was
Speaker 1: several girls that were murdered in Pittsburgh area, and I
Speaker 1: decided to do a steak out because I was told
Speaker 1: the guy was an older guy and Betty looked like
Speaker 1: my guy. So I went and I backed in to
Speaker 1: a laundromatt area where was cross streeping taco bell where
Speaker 1: most of the prostitutes hung out. And as I'm hanging
Speaker 1: out the pictures that I'm talking, this one girl walking
Speaker 1: up and she screams, Oh my god, that's the killer.
Speaker 1: I go, whoa, whoa, wo calm down, calm down, what
Speaker 1: do you mean that's the killer? And she said he
Speaker 1: grabbed her jacket with one hand, and he grabbed her
Speaker 1: hair with the other and he pulled a big hunk
Speaker 1: of her hair out, and she slipped her arms like
Speaker 1: this and slipped out of the jacket. It's not too
Speaker 1: long after that I get an envelope in the mail
Speaker 1: and one of the pictures has returned to me, no
Speaker 1: return address. The stamp was upside down. It was a
Speaker 1: love stamp. I think I figured he's telling me that
Speaker 1: he got ahold of one of the girls that I
Speaker 1: gave the picture too, and he wanted me to know
Speaker 1: that he killed another one. Sandy told us many stories
Speaker 1: which connect her stalker to the Zodiac. One of those
Speaker 1: stories begins just days after the attack at Lake Ferryessa September,
Speaker 1: when the Zodiac stabbed se Seria Shepherd and Brian Hart. Now,
Speaker 1: within a day or two, this is before it hit
Speaker 1: the newspaper. Within a day or two, the costume was
Speaker 1: put in my car, the killing costume. Now this is
Speaker 1: four weeks before Halloween, so I thought it was a
Speaker 1: Halloween costume. But I made a copy of what it
Speaker 1: looked like, and it was in two parts. The top
Speaker 1: part was made out of a paper sack. It was
Speaker 1: painted black. I don't remember if there was a hole
Speaker 1: for the nose there or a hole for them out.
Speaker 1: But at the very bottom he had sliced each corner
Speaker 1: and bent it so that it sat on his shoulders,
Speaker 1: and the other part, which I called the poncho part,
Speaker 1: went over that and held it down. And the glasses
Speaker 1: that he had the clip ones, actually held the hood
Speaker 1: in place so that he could turn his head like
Speaker 1: this and and it would stay in place because the
Speaker 1: glasses holding it together. Sandy's theories really confusing and complex,
Speaker 1: but we doesn't matter because we get along and we
Speaker 1: treat each other well, and you know, we're nice to
Speaker 1: each other's We were curious what Tom thought of all
Speaker 1: these different zodiac theories. Each of the Zodiologists has their
Speaker 1: own personal story, but still they gather every year to
Speaker 1: spend time together, and the differences of opinion don't seem
Speaker 1: to matter. As long as people are, you know, nice
Speaker 1: and polite and you know, and not rude, then I
Speaker 1: don't really care what their theory is. We'll get along
Speaker 1: just fine. I have a bad reputation of being an
Speaker 1: asshole and kicking people off my message board and stuff
Speaker 1: like they have it. Really I think I'm pretty fair.
Speaker 1: I just if you're going to be arrogant and aloof
Speaker 1: and confrontational, condescending that I'll probably be a dick. Usually,
Speaker 1: Tom and the Zodiologists traveled to the actual sites of
Speaker 1: the known murders, but something happened this year that changed everything. Well,
Speaker 1: this year Tom Tom at a bus. But what was
Speaker 1: supposed to happen was we were all going to be
Speaker 1: on a bus and do a tour of the crime
Speaker 1: scene and probably go to where Betty Luke lived and
Speaker 1: where David lived and things like that. And everybody was
Speaker 1: very excited about doing this because it's the fiftieth anniversary.
Speaker 1: So Tom was having a big deal, you know, a
Speaker 1: bus and everything, and this guy who is not mentally stable,
Speaker 1: made a threat to Tom, and Tom reported it to
Speaker 1: Solano County Sheriff's Department, and I guess they probably said,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not a good idea for you to
Speaker 1: have this bus tour because this sounds pretty serious. Not
Speaker 1: much is known about the person who made this threat.
Speaker 1: Tom says he has a history of stalking these Zodiac gatherings.
Speaker 1: This individual apparently believes his own father is the Zodiac
Speaker 1: and that the Zodiologist community is trying to kill him.
Speaker 1: Tom's fiance Angie told us that this case has a
Speaker 1: detrimental effect on some people. I think they just get
Speaker 1: so wrapped up in it they start to lose sense
Speaker 1: of reality. It's easy to lose yourself in a movie
Speaker 1: or something, but that's not what this is. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of those people kind of have that mindset,
Speaker 1: like maybe like things can play out the way they
Speaker 1: want them to fits their movie in their script, and
Speaker 1: that's not good. Luckily, I don't see too many too
Speaker 1: much of that. Tom probably sees more of it than
Speaker 1: I do, but I kind of turn an ignorant eye
Speaker 1: to that. Angie says, this individual is one of those people.
Speaker 1: After he made the threat, local law enforcement advised everyone
Speaker 1: to stay away from Lake Herman. So Tom Void canceled
Speaker 1: the bus tour. My boyfriend came all the way from
Speaker 1: conduct to to go on the bus tour, and a
Speaker 1: lot of people, you know, have hotels booked and things
Speaker 1: like that, and this screwed up everything, especially for poor Tom.
Speaker 1: We've got it all together, Yeah, so it's a it's
Speaker 1: a crying chain. But now they think the guy was
Speaker 1: just rambling, which makes me think that possibly they talked
Speaker 1: to him and he kind of backed off a little
Speaker 1: bit and said, Oh, I'm really not gonna do that.
Speaker 1: I just wanted to scare him, you know, And so
Speaker 1: we're probably gonna end up going out there anyway next time.
Speaker 1: On Monster the Zodiac Killer, I know there were threats
Speaker 1: made for people who came here tonight. We're here because
Speaker 1: of the fifty anniversary of the Zodiac killing, and we're
Speaker 1: just here for extra patrol and just kind of make
Speaker 1: sure everyone that comes here wants to be here and
Speaker 1: stay safe. I've had a couple of people tell me
Speaker 1: that they are positive that they encountered this person and
Speaker 1: escaped death. And the headlights, there's a guy's standing in
Speaker 1: the road, and then I remember I told the officer
Speaker 1: I was saying, I think that was Zodiac from all
Speaker 1: that that I've read, I've saw, and I've heard, so like,
Speaker 1: I don't think he'll ever be caught. We do need
Speaker 1: a face, and we need that face to be a monster.
Speaker 1: So that, I think is why we have to identify
Speaker 1: the murder with a face in the area that was involved,
Speaker 1: basically decent New York Brooklyn at the time, it was
Speaker 1: like the motor capital of the world. That was the
Speaker 1: most violent police in New York City, and in the
Speaker 1: midst of all this violence was an emerging serial killer
Speaker 1: who was calling himself to Zodiac Monster. The Zodiac Killer
Speaker 1: is a fifteen episode podcast produced by I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works in Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright and Right
Speaker 1: our executive producers on behalf of tender Foot TV, alongside
Speaker 1: producers Meredith Stepman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hope
Speaker 1: is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along
Speaker 1: with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and Josh
Speaker 1: Thane Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is
Speaker 1: our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 1: If you haven't already, make sure to check out the
Speaker 1: first season of Monster called Atlantic Monster, about the Atlantic
Speaker 1: child murders from the late seventies to the early eighties.
Speaker 1: Download the ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments,
Speaker 1: email us at Monster at how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: or you can call us at one three five six
Speaker 1: six six seven. Thanks for listening.