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 I Heart Media,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works, or its employees. I spent a week
Speaker 1: on call with Potsky and Armstrong, going to murders with
Speaker 1: them in the middle of the night. That was pretty
Speaker 1: amazing to know. What was it like to actually be
Speaker 1: a homicide cop. I mean, it's pretty gritty. I'd got
Speaker 1: a call at three in the morning. It was TASKI
Speaker 1: saying meet us at such and such, and so I'd
Speaker 1: go out in the mission district and then some guy
Speaker 1: laying there with a with a knife in the middle
Speaker 1: of his belly. I loved it. I mean, I thought
Speaker 1: it was I love that stuff. TASKI was so unique.
Speaker 1: He and Armstrong or or nothing alike. Armstrong was, by
Speaker 1: the book, very reserved. Toski had a flair and he
Speaker 1: was much more of a dynamic, sort of interesting, you know,
Speaker 1: real gregarious kind of guy. That's Duffy Jennings, the former
Speaker 1: reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. He worked with Detective
Speaker 1: Dave Toski, the lead Zodiac investigating for the San Francisco
Speaker 1: police department tasks. Personality and style won him attention, but
Speaker 1: it also put him in the crosshairs. The Zodiac had
Speaker 1: gone quiet and press coverage of him had all but disappeared,
Speaker 1: but that was about to change. So in April of
Speaker 1: ninety Zodiac had not been heard from for four years.
Speaker 1: There has been no letters, but just in case, the
Speaker 1: newspaper still put samples of Zodiac's earlier letters and envelopes
Speaker 1: tacked onto the mail slot cabinet where the copy boys
Speaker 1: sorted the daily mail, just in case they saw anything
Speaker 1: that remotely resembled these old letters. So in in April one,
Speaker 1: one morning, the copy boys are sorting mail. I'm at
Speaker 1: my desk. I haven't even thought about Zodiac for a
Speaker 1: long time. A copy boy named Brent Ward walks up
Speaker 1: to my desk with an envelope in his hand, and
Speaker 1: he said, hey, um, take a look at this. Does
Speaker 1: this look familiar to you? It went off like a flash.
Speaker 1: Oh my goodness, that definitely looks like Zodiac. A man
Speaker 1: in a mask robbed and tied and stabbed them, leaving
Speaker 1: them for dad. Subject stated, I want to report a murder,
Speaker 1: no a double murder. I did it. A man who
Speaker 1: wore an evil style executioner's hood, carried the knife and
Speaker 1: gun and intended to use them. They haven't Arrestie because
Speaker 1: they can't. I'm not damn Zodiac. Who is the Zodiac
Speaker 1: and where is he? From my Heart Radio, How staff
Speaker 1: works and Tenderfoot TV. This is monster, the Zodiac killer.
Speaker 1: The Zodiac craved at tension in the media obliged him.
Speaker 1: Even the major detective Dave Touski and his suspect Arthur
Speaker 1: Lee Allen received their share of the spotlight, and their
Speaker 1: stories provide an important lesson to other investigators, the independent
Speaker 1: investigators who hunt for the Zodiac on their own, exploring
Speaker 1: leads that others ignore, finding new suspects that had previously
Speaker 1: escaped notice, and making connections that others dismissed as coincidence.
Speaker 1: I got on the phone to call Dave Toski. I
Speaker 1: couldn't reach him. He was out of the office. He
Speaker 1: came back to the office and they told him you
Speaker 1: got a call from Duffy at the Chronicle. He thinks
Speaker 1: he has a Zodiac letter, so he came down and
Speaker 1: together we opened the letter. Dear editor, this is the
Speaker 1: Zodiac speaking. I am back with you. Tell herb Kane.
Speaker 1: I am here, I have always been here. That city
Speaker 1: pig Toski is good, but I'm smarter and better. He
Speaker 1: will get tired then leave me alone. I'm waiting for
Speaker 1: a good movie about me. Who play me? I am
Speaker 1: now in control of all things yours truly, Zodiac guess
Speaker 1: San Francisco Police Department zero. He said, I'm gonna take
Speaker 1: it over to Paul Shimoda for verification. Paul was the
Speaker 1: documents expert at the US Postal Service. An hour or
Speaker 1: two later, he called me back and said, Shimoda says
Speaker 1: it's the guy. So we did a story. Zodiac is back.
Speaker 1: It's his usual taunting of police for failing to catch him,
Speaker 1: and some reference to that city pig Tosky. San Francisco
Speaker 1: Police displayed a blackboard with excerpts of the latest Zodiac letter.
Speaker 1: Police are convinced it's authentic. DRD. San Francisco Police Chief
Speaker 1: Clemdamika said it's the sixteenth letter received from the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1: I'm the first since Letter number sixteen has breathed new
Speaker 1: life into the investigation of at least six leaders named
Speaker 1: on the Zodiac files will be reviewed again. For the
Speaker 1: last nine years, the Zodiac investigation has been headed by
Speaker 1: homicide Inspector David Tusky. I had Lewis beating that he
Speaker 1: was not dead and that he was out there somewhere,
Speaker 1: and that he would communicate. I was always looking that
Speaker 1: he would communicate and and not commit an act. A
Speaker 1: letter I can handle, you know, it's a front page story.
Speaker 1: Zodiac had not been heard from for four years. What
Speaker 1: happened after that was we had a column going on
Speaker 1: in the paper at that time, a serialized fiction column
Speaker 1: called Tales of the City, and it was being written
Speaker 1: by a writer named Armistead Mopan. Mopan's column included a
Speaker 1: character based on Detective Dave Toski. He'd sometimes received fan
Speaker 1: mail about that character, anonymous fan mail that Mopan suspected
Speaker 1: had been written by Toski himself. Toski is on the
Speaker 1: fire for writing phony fan letters about himself to a
Speaker 1: newspaper feature writer, and Mopan today came up with farm
Speaker 1: more serious charges that there are similarities between the letters
Speaker 1: Tuski admits writing to Mopan and the most recent Zodiac
Speaker 1: letter of last April. I received the bogus fan letters
Speaker 1: in the fall of nine seventy six. I took no
Speaker 1: official action on them at the time because I regarded
Speaker 1: them as harmless. As a harmless if somewhat reckless action
Speaker 1: on the part of a police officer, I chose to
Speaker 1: turn the matter over to police only when I noticed
Speaker 1: certain similarities between the tone of the letters and the
Speaker 1: tone of the last Zodiac letter. Because there had been
Speaker 1: no Zodiac news for four years, there were people who
Speaker 1: thought this was Tusky trying to regenerate interest in the
Speaker 1: case and attention on him. So an investigation ensued internally
Speaker 1: in the police department, and Tusky was questioned about this.
Speaker 1: He denied that he'd written it. He acknowledged that he
Speaker 1: had written anonymous notes to Armistead Mopen. His credibility was
Speaker 1: called into question. The police chief removed him from the
Speaker 1: homicide detail, put him back in robbery and pawn shop detail,
Speaker 1: and it was the beginning of the end of his
Speaker 1: career on the San Francisco Police Department. This letter and
Speaker 1: the suspicions around it tarnished his credibility, and ultimately he
Speaker 1: retired out of the force, having never caught Zodiac and
Speaker 1: under a cloud of suspicion that was some of his
Speaker 1: own doing. And I know Dave started to go downhill
Speaker 1: after that emotionally. Because he investigated over a hundred murders
Speaker 1: in his career and had all this attention, Dave had
Speaker 1: become a icon of his own. He wore an upside
Speaker 1: down shoulder holster, he wore bow ties, He had his
Speaker 1: favorite snack, this trademark box of animal crackers, and he
Speaker 1: had a persona that was gregarious. He was an Italian kid,
Speaker 1: grew up in San Francisco, and you know it's sad
Speaker 1: because he loved the attention. Well, I think it affected
Speaker 1: his work on a day to day basis. I don't
Speaker 1: believe he ever did write a zodiac letter. I just don't.
Speaker 1: I just know him well enough to know that that
Speaker 1: wasn't true. But he became reclusive after that. This much
Speaker 1: can be said with certainty. There is no official police
Speaker 1: clamp on INSPECTATASKI talking with the media. That matter is
Speaker 1: entirely up to him. He would never talk to another
Speaker 1: media person besides me. He would tell the story about
Speaker 1: going back to the Paul Stein crime scene every year
Speaker 1: on the anniversary to reflect on it, and he was
Speaker 1: candid with me about how it ate at him that
Speaker 1: he had never caught the guy Dave Toski died on
Speaker 1: January six, two eighteen. Toski is survived by his wife,
Speaker 1: his two daughters, and two granddaughters. Toski died convinced that
Speaker 1: Arthur Lee Allen was the Zodiac and haunted by the
Speaker 1: fact that he was never convicted of the crime. Toskis
Speaker 1: story of obsession is familiar for many cold case investigators.
Speaker 1: He's not the only one to get swept up in
Speaker 1: the Zodiac case, and Arthur Lee Allen wasn't the only
Speaker 1: promising suspect. Ed Rust was the Valeo police officer on
Speaker 1: duty when Darlene Farren was shot and killed at Blue
Speaker 1: Rock Springs Park. For years, there had been no progress
Speaker 1: in the case, but then, through a chance meeting at
Speaker 1: a conference, a suspect would finally catch Rust's interest. They
Speaker 1: had a guest speaker who was going to do a
Speaker 1: presentation on the Zodiac killer, a man named Harvey Hines
Speaker 1: h I n e. S. Who was actually a police
Speaker 1: officer his investigation. It started out as a term paper
Speaker 1: in one of his police classes, and I believe this
Speaker 1: was somewhere around it in the early nineteen seventies. He
Speaker 1: began investigating the case on his own and became absorbed
Speaker 1: in when I met him. This was in late nineties,
Speaker 1: so he had been working on this case and following
Speaker 1: it on his own time for all these years and
Speaker 1: had developed a suspect he felt was the Zodiac Killer
Speaker 1: as a man named Larry Caine. Harvey Hines was absolutely
Speaker 1: convinced that Larry Caine was the Zodiac. There is no
Speaker 1: question in my mind that my suspect is a Zodiac.
Speaker 1: Every fiber, every part of my being tells me that
Speaker 1: he is the Zodiac Killer. He had initially identified him
Speaker 1: when he went to South Lake Tahoe, where Donna Last
Speaker 1: had disappeared. Donna Last was a night shift nurse at
Speaker 1: a casino in Lake Tahoe. She'd recently moved there from
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and then on September six, after finishing her
Speaker 1: shift at two a m. Last disappeared. The next day,
Speaker 1: a man called her work in her landlord and told
Speaker 1: them she left suddenly because of a family emergency and
Speaker 1: wouldn't be coming back. But Lass's car was parked in
Speaker 1: front of her apartment and there was no family emergency.
Speaker 1: Police searched her apartment. They found no signs of struggle
Speaker 1: or anything suspicious, but her possessions were all there and
Speaker 1: they suspected foul play. Lass was never seen again and
Speaker 1: her body was never found. Six months later, on March twenty,
Speaker 1: a postcard arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle with a
Speaker 1: zodiac symbol in the corner. It was addressed to reporter
Speaker 1: Paul Avery and scrawled writing. Attached to the postcard was
Speaker 1: an image a winter scene from a condo development ad
Speaker 1: and words clipped for newspapers Sierra Club around in the snow,
Speaker 1: sought victim twelve peek through the Pines pass Lake Tahoe Areas.
Speaker 1: Police and media quick we connected this postcard with Lass's disappearance,
Speaker 1: and Harvey Hines learned in his criminology class that the
Speaker 1: crime was still unsolved. Lake Tahoe was only a few
Speaker 1: hours away, so he drove out to investigate himself. Hines
Speaker 1: went through the Lake Tahoe police records and started collecting
Speaker 1: information that he'd later compiled into an extensive report. The
Speaker 1: following are excerpts of his report, read by a voice actor.
Speaker 1: I reviewed the two South Lake Tahoe supplemental police reports
Speaker 1: filed on March. Both subjects came forward after seeing a
Speaker 1: television newscast stating the Zodiac Killer had sought his twelfth victim.
Speaker 1: In the Tahoe area, two women had filed police reports
Speaker 1: after wondering if a strange man they had encountered might
Speaker 1: be the Zodiac Killer. The first report was filed by
Speaker 1: Mary Highlander, a blackjack dealer. At an eyehap, Mary met
Speaker 1: a man with horn rimmed glasses. He offered to read
Speaker 1: her horoscope, telling her he was an expert at the zodiac.
Speaker 1: He said the reading would take time and asked for
Speaker 1: her number. When he called her later, he told her
Speaker 1: that he had to give her the reading in person.
Speaker 1: Mary arranged to meet him at her house, but something
Speaker 1: felt off, so she invited her friend Nancy over. When
Speaker 1: the man arrived, he seemed annoyed at Nancy's presence. He
Speaker 1: looked at Nancy, indicating that he wished she would leave
Speaker 1: him alone with marrying. Nancy stayed, fearing to leave her
Speaker 1: friend alone with the subject. He stated he had recently
Speaker 1: read a chart of a murderer and continued talking about
Speaker 1: this subject, seemingly preoccupied with death. The man was very
Speaker 1: evasive about questions asked of him by both women, and
Speaker 1: another woman reported a strange encounter that also occurred around
Speaker 1: the time of Donn Alas's disappearance. That woman, who wished
Speaker 1: to remain anonymous, said that a man sat down next
Speaker 1: to her at a pizza parlor and struck up a
Speaker 1: conversation about zodiac signs. He told her he sold real
Speaker 1: estate and said that a woman he had been watching
Speaker 1: at work would quote be sorry for rejecting him. The
Speaker 1: anonymous woman at the pizza parlor felt unnerved and made
Speaker 1: up an excuse to leave. Hines was intrigued by the
Speaker 1: police reports, so we interviewed three of Lass's former co workers.
Speaker 1: He asked if there was anyone in Lass's life who
Speaker 1: seemed suspicious or had shown a particular interest in her.
Speaker 1: I asked the same basic questions of each person I
Speaker 1: spoke with, without exception. Each person promptly gave me the
Speaker 1: name of Larry Caine. They all agreed Kine and Donna
Speaker 1: las knew each other. They said he was mostly a loner.
Speaker 1: They described him as being strange. He was forty five
Speaker 1: years old, had dark hair or horned, grimmed glasses, and
Speaker 1: had sort of a pot belly. I asked if they
Speaker 1: knew who he worked for now and They stated they
Speaker 1: did not know, but thought perhaps for an Alan M. Dorfman,
Speaker 1: the manager of Arizona Real Estate at the time that
Speaker 1: the victim, Lass disappeared. Although Haines was working the case
Speaker 1: in his free time, he used his connections as a
Speaker 1: police officer to determine Kane had moved to Lake Tahoe
Speaker 1: from San Francisco right around the time of Lass's disappearance.
Speaker 1: Kine had multiple social security numbers and names on file.
Speaker 1: He'd been arrested ten times between nineteen forty six and
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, including for battery. A probation report from
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four said Kane had sustained brain damage after
Speaker 1: a head on collision with a cement truck. The report
Speaker 1: said his injury was serious and that his recent involvements
Speaker 1: with the law indicated a quote lack of control in
Speaker 1: self gratification, and scientific studies show that people who've experienced
Speaker 1: head trauma can become more likely to commit violent crimes.
Speaker 1: Hines now had a suspect, but he still had no
Speaker 1: clue what happened to don Alas he turned back to
Speaker 1: the zodiacs card, What did it mean pass Lake Tahoe
Speaker 1: areas and why did it say Sierra Club? Were those
Speaker 1: phrases clues as to the location of Lassa's body. After
Speaker 1: leaving the police department, I spent several hours studying the
Speaker 1: postcard and driving around the lake. I began to notice
Speaker 1: several signs marking local ski areas, and the postcard made
Speaker 1: a reference to areas. He decided to follow the postcard's directions.
Speaker 1: He drove out of Lake Tahoe, past the ski areas
Speaker 1: and spent hours trying to find a location somehow related
Speaker 1: to the Sierra Club. I drove north of Lake Tahoe
Speaker 1: and found the Claire Tap and Lodge and was a
Speaker 1: private club for Sierra Club members. Only after getting out
Speaker 1: of my car and walking up the driveway, I realized
Speaker 1: the scene was not unlike the picture depicted on the
Speaker 1: Zodiac postcard. I took pictures of the area without making
Speaker 1: contact with anyone at the club. I then left and
Speaker 1: returned to my motel room. I believed if I followed
Speaker 1: the directions on the postcard, I would find Donna Lass's grave.
Speaker 1: I believed she was buried near see A Club. Hines
Speaker 1: had now identified Kine as a suspect, and he had
Speaker 1: located a Sierra club outside Tahoe that matched the postcards description,
Speaker 1: so Hines returned to the club to investigate. He learned
Speaker 1: that the town's old postmaster, Mr. Fredericks, had stumbled upon
Speaker 1: a strange area out in the woods behind the club.
Speaker 1: Frederick said he thought it was a burial site made
Speaker 1: out of logs. He described it to me as a
Speaker 1: circle fourteen ft in diameter, and within the circle was
Speaker 1: a six ft by six ft square with a triangle
Speaker 1: within all these made by careful placement of locks. Within
Speaker 1: the triangle was across like that of a grave marker
Speaker 1: made from thirteen stones. Mr Fredericks related that he was
Speaker 1: very frightened, but he was convinced it was a grave
Speaker 1: site and took pictures of him. The postmaster led Hines
Speaker 1: out to the site. We dug a cone shaped hole
Speaker 1: within the center of the six by six foot area
Speaker 1: to a depth of approximately four to five ft. No
Speaker 1: human remains were located, However, indications were that at some
Speaker 1: earlier point in time, the ground had been disturbed down
Speaker 1: several feet. At this point, because of lack of time,
Speaker 1: I had to return to Sonaro, but Hines wasn't ready
Speaker 1: to give up. He was still convinced that Caine was
Speaker 1: the promising suspect. Hines learned that shortly after Lass's disappearance,
Speaker 1: Kine had moved to Las Vegas, and so Hines too
Speaker 1: went to Las Vegas to investigate. He asked law enforcement
Speaker 1: there if any crimes in the area had matched the zodiacs.
Speaker 1: M O Sergeant Anderson related the following information. On Sunday,
Speaker 1: April seventy four, at approximately ten thirty six pm, victim
Speaker 1: Lull accompanied by her boyfriend Roy. We're in a lover's
Speaker 1: Lane area of Red Rock Canyon. Well. They were parked.
Speaker 1: A vehicle approached from the rear. According to the boyfriend,
Speaker 1: the car was a white convertible with a black cloth
Speaker 1: top and it was missing its front grill. A man
Speaker 1: got out of the convertible and approached their car. He
Speaker 1: was wearing horn roomed glasses and black gloves, and he
Speaker 1: was holding a pistol. He then ordered Roy and Lull
Speaker 1: out of their vehicle at gunpoint. Roy complied, but the
Speaker 1: victim remained in the vehicle. The suspect then went to
Speaker 1: the passenger side to remove the victim. While he was occupied.
Speaker 1: Roy fled and hid in a ditch. The suspect coerced
Speaker 1: Lull into his car and drove off. That night, in
Speaker 1: identified man called Lowell's parents and told them, your daughter's dead.
Speaker 1: Two weeks later, Lowell's body was found. She'd been dropped
Speaker 1: down a mine shaft a hundred and twenty five miles
Speaker 1: away in San Bernardino County, California, and it appears Lull's
Speaker 1: killer may have barely escaped capture, at least according to
Speaker 1: an investigative technique that has become controversial, a NI County
Speaker 1: deputy sheriff who felt he had made a stop on
Speaker 1: the suspect's vehicle, was placed under hypnosis and recounted the
Speaker 1: following information. The vehicle bore a California license plate. The
Speaker 1: deputy recalled the suspect getting out of his vehicle. He
Speaker 1: described the driver as being heavily tanned, wearing a sports
Speaker 1: type jacket, horn rimmed glasses, and black leather gloves. He
Speaker 1: further related there seemed to be something strange about the
Speaker 1: female passenger. He stated she was very still and never
Speaker 1: turned around to look in his direction or made any movement.
Speaker 1: The encounter took place in the middle of a desert,
Speaker 1: out side of radio range, so the deputy hadn't called
Speaker 1: in the man's license plate, and no bulletin had been
Speaker 1: issued about Lull's abduction because police had initially been skeptical
Speaker 1: of her boyfriend's story, so the deputy let the man
Speaker 1: go with just a warning. A month later, the boyfriend
Speaker 1: thought he spotted the killer at the Spring Inn and
Speaker 1: called the police, but by the time the police arrived,
Speaker 1: the suspect had left. Hines looked to see if Kane
Speaker 1: could be connected to this killing. He discovered that Kane
Speaker 1: lived just down the road from the Spring Inn. What's more,
Speaker 1: Heinz said that Kane's old boss, Alan Dorfman, told him
Speaker 1: that Kane often went to the Spring Inn, and according
Speaker 1: to d MV records, Kane had owned a white convertible
Speaker 1: with a black cloth top at the time of Lull's murder.
Speaker 1: Heinz suspected Kane was responsible for the murders of both
Speaker 1: Donna Lass and Dana Law. He felt it all lined
Speaker 1: up too well to be a coincidence. The horn rimmed glasses,
Speaker 1: the white convertible, the sighting at the Spring Inn. But
Speaker 1: even if Kane killed Lass and Lull, was he the zodiac?
Speaker 1: As Hines continued to investigate the coincidences piled higher and higher.
Speaker 1: Kane had not only been living in San Francisco during
Speaker 1: the Zodiac murders, but he lived just a few blocks
Speaker 1: away from where cab driver Paul Stein had picked up
Speaker 1: the Zodiac. He had traded in a car six days
Speaker 1: after Darlene Ferron was murdered in Valleo and acquired a
Speaker 1: Tan Sedan similar to the car used to abduct Kathleen
Speaker 1: John's in her infant daughter. And it wasn't just Kane's
Speaker 1: whereabouts and his vehicles that seemed to line up. Some
Speaker 1: of the suspected Zodiac victims, like Kathleen John's, thought Kane
Speaker 1: was the Zodiac. John's identified Kane out of the lineup
Speaker 1: of eighteen photos. I asked, are you sure, and she
Speaker 1: said yes, And it's not just my eyes telling me
Speaker 1: I know it in here. And she clenched her blouse
Speaker 1: with her fingers, nodding into a fist and pushing into
Speaker 1: the pit of her stomach. I'm dest behind and I'm
Speaker 1: her behind son. When I was growing up, my dad
Speaker 1: was talking about the Zodiac since as early as I
Speaker 1: can remember. In the later nineties, that's when I actually
Speaker 1: started paying more attention to it, and my father and
Speaker 1: I had sat down and started looking at the Prince
Speaker 1: the fingerprints from the Lake Berryessa killings. After stabbing Cecilia
Speaker 1: Shepherd and Brian Hartnell at Lake Berryessa, the Zodiac wrote
Speaker 1: the dates of his killings and his symbol on the
Speaker 1: door of their car. Apparently he had kind of squatted
Speaker 1: in his left hand left four prints on the window
Speaker 1: of the Karma Ghia. So my dad had those prints
Speaker 1: and his suspect, Lawrence Kane. Larry Kane, he had been
Speaker 1: arrested for being a peeping tom and so my dad
Speaker 1: had the booking prints from that. I scanned them in
Speaker 1: and used Photoshop to kind of overlay and align the Prince,
Speaker 1: and what we saw was very distinct, very convincing matchup
Speaker 1: of those prints. So my dad made an appointment with
Speaker 1: one of the investigators at the Vallejo Police Department and
Speaker 1: we went up there and met with him and we
Speaker 1: showed him the Prince, and he said that they weren't
Speaker 1: able to confirm that it was Larry Kane or that
Speaker 1: the Prince match, but it also didn't discount them, so
Speaker 1: in other words, it could very well have been the
Speaker 1: same person. But there just wasn't enough print evidence there
Speaker 1: to be able to make a definite match. We wanted
Speaker 1: to know just how good this fingerprint evidence was, so
Speaker 1: we spoke to Dr Kimberly Moran. She's the director of
Speaker 1: forensic Science at Rutger's univer City Camden. We sent Dr
Speaker 1: Moran a digital version of Kane's booking fingerprints from when
Speaker 1: he was arrested and the latent prints from the car
Speaker 1: at Lake Bury Essa. I'm basically flicking back and forth
Speaker 1: between the booking print and the latent prints. So looking
Speaker 1: at the latent fingerprints, they are pretty poor for glass
Speaker 1: because glass is usually a great substrate and these are
Speaker 1: very very faint. So is there enough data within that fingerprint?
Speaker 1: Can you see enough of the ridges and the individual
Speaker 1: ridge flow. I mean, the right little finger I would
Speaker 1: rank as no value, The right ring finger I would say, yes,
Speaker 1: it has value. I can definitely see that this is
Speaker 1: a world. I can count individual ridges. The right middle finger. Yes,
Speaker 1: I would also say that's a print of value. The
Speaker 1: right thumb. You know, there's too much uncertain but all
Speaker 1: you need is one finger. You don't need any more
Speaker 1: than that. Let me look at the booking prints, Okay,
Speaker 1: so what what this person has marked out On the
Speaker 1: right ring, They've marked out a scar at the top
Speaker 1: of the fingerprint. They've marked out two bifurcations where a
Speaker 1: single ridge splits into two separate ridges. Let me just
Speaker 1: compare the two. So looking at the latent fingerprints, I
Speaker 1: really do not see the scar or these bifurcations. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's one that maybe I could be talked into, but
Speaker 1: one point of agreement is just not enough to say
Speaker 1: these two fingerprints are the same. These probably are not
Speaker 1: from the same source. I don't feel like there's enough
Speaker 1: data to say for certain that they're not from the
Speaker 1: same source. But from what little I can see, I
Speaker 1: do not think that they are from the same source.
Speaker 1: Harvey Hines compiled a report with all of his collected evidence,
Speaker 1: but no one would take it seriously. The San Francisco
Speaker 1: police were focused on Arthur Lee Allen, and when Heinz
Speaker 1: shared his report with the FBI, they seemed interested at first,
Speaker 1: but nothing came of it. Here's Harvey Hind's son Destri again.
Speaker 1: One of the interesting things was when a new FBI
Speaker 1: agent would contact my dad, they'd be interested in the story.
Speaker 1: They'd be investigating that they'd you want to know who
Speaker 1: my dad's suspect was, more about him why he thought
Speaker 1: that the suspect was the zodiac um And they were
Speaker 1: always really excited about, Wow, this is this is great information.
Speaker 1: I'm going to follow up as soon as I get
Speaker 1: back to the office, I'll give you a call and
Speaker 1: we'll move this forward. And they would just go away
Speaker 1: and my dad would have to call him up and say, hey, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you followed up on any of this or what's
Speaker 1: happening with it, and they just wouldn't be able to
Speaker 1: talk about it. So my dad was starting to wonder
Speaker 1: if Larry Kine turned witness on someone because he was
Speaker 1: part of the MOP, he may have turned somebody in
Speaker 1: and they put him into protection program. Once you go
Speaker 1: in there, there's just there's limits to what the FBI
Speaker 1: can do. And I started investigating you. The mafia connection
Speaker 1: sounds outlandish at first, but remember Kane's old boss, Alan Dorfman.
Speaker 1: Dorfman was linked to organized crime. He was indicted by
Speaker 1: a federal grand jury and convicted of conspiracy to bribe
Speaker 1: as senator. Three days before his sentencing, he was shot
Speaker 1: and killed, presumably to prevent him from cooperating with authorities. However,
Speaker 1: it was difficult to either confirm or dis roof that
Speaker 1: Dorfman was actually Kane's old boss. That was information we
Speaker 1: could only find in Heine's report. I fact, Larry Kane,
Speaker 1: he was probably a hit man for this syndicate of
Speaker 1: real estate and developers, and not like real estate and
Speaker 1: developers you think of today, the guys that were backed
Speaker 1: by the mob out of the gambling world. My name
Speaker 1: is writer McDowell, and many years ago I was an
Speaker 1: investigative reporter and s coovered a lot of kind of
Speaker 1: interesting crimes. You know, I seem to pursue the psychopaths.
Speaker 1: They are the boogeyman, but they don't look like it.
Speaker 1: So when somebody is exposed as being a mass murderer,
Speaker 1: he just it's like fascinating. Writer McDowell met Hines in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties and he wrote a long piece about
Speaker 1: him for the San Francisco Examiner. Somebody had called me
Speaker 1: up and said, you know, writer, there's this guy that
Speaker 1: thinks he's caught the Zodiac killer. And I I had
Speaker 1: coincidentally recently read that Robert Gray Smith book called Zodiac
Speaker 1: and was really intrigued Harvey was a really driven guy,
Speaker 1: kind of shy. There's a sadness around the guy, and
Speaker 1: he felt that people were mocking him and no one
Speaker 1: would take him seriously. So I did. I think Harvey
Speaker 1: was a bit of a crusader, you know, had this
Speaker 1: kind of quixotic view of good and evil. You know,
Speaker 1: he was going to get this guy because this guy
Speaker 1: was the ultimate bad guy. Early on, the name Kane
Speaker 1: was floated, and it did make sense in terms of
Speaker 1: the woman in South Lake tow and then it started
Speaker 1: to make sense in terms of the taxi driver killing
Speaker 1: and other things. What's clear is that the guy Larry
Speaker 1: Caine really was an odd person. You know, he was
Speaker 1: up to something. One time, Kane asked a female real
Speaker 1: estate agent to show him a house out in the
Speaker 1: middle of the desert. She went out there to show
Speaker 1: this house and there was nobody there, but she went
Speaker 1: into the house looking around. You know, you're in the
Speaker 1: middle of nowhere, really vulnerable, and you realized, you know, well,
Speaker 1: I'm actually have been more careful than this thing shows
Speaker 1: up a hearse pulled up and it was a guy
Speaker 1: from the mortuary and he said, well, I had a
Speaker 1: call here to pick up a body and it was
Speaker 1: just so creepy, and this so freaked out this woman
Speaker 1: that she just quit her job. And Larry Kane was
Speaker 1: just a creepy, odd character full of stories like that.
Speaker 1: Writer wanted to get Kane's side of the story, but
Speaker 1: Kane kept a low profile. I finally got his number,
Speaker 1: and I got it in some clever way because it
Speaker 1: was unlisted and he had this kind of recording you
Speaker 1: could buy that had Alfred Hitchcock, Writer prepared himself to
Speaker 1: talk with the man he thought might be the Zodiac killer.
Speaker 1: Bring out leave your name and numba and we're with
Speaker 1: them your core vish breathe interruption. It was so chilling
Speaker 1: if that really was, And I almost forgotten that. Eventually,
Speaker 1: writer did meet Larry Kane, and Kane denied being the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: I interviewed Kane one time. He was a very creepy guy,
Speaker 1: but not so you'd necessarily notice if you're behind him
Speaker 1: in a store or something. I don't know what his
Speaker 1: life is like, but he lived in this condo and
Speaker 1: walk around and go into town and have coffee and
Speaker 1: and his voice is so um it had this Brooklyn accent,
Speaker 1: you know, this New York accent seemed to me that
Speaker 1: that would have been noticeable and either the phone calls
Speaker 1: to the cops or at Lake DARRISA but writer says
Speaker 1: one time he played a recording of Kane's voice to
Speaker 1: Brian Hartnell, the survivor of the Lake Barry Esa stabbing,
Speaker 1: and he said there was similarities too, because it was
Speaker 1: a little bit of a hiccup. Cane. He would not stutter,
Speaker 1: but there was a little kind of pause. But but
Speaker 1: I am confident who wasn't Larry Kane. Hart Behinds did
Speaker 1: have a certain amount of tunnel fishing, which was fascinating
Speaker 1: because he seemed to have chanced upon this this other
Speaker 1: bad guy. You know, he had been a keeeping tom
Speaker 1: for years and some kind of gun story that he
Speaker 1: pulled a gun on a couple of people, and you know,
Speaker 1: he was up to no good. I've all added up
Speaker 1: to being a really odd character that probably capable of murder.
Speaker 1: But it was frustrating dealing with Harvey because in the
Speaker 1: beginning he would get a clue, somebody would tell him something,
Speaker 1: and then he would just go there, and he wouldn't
Speaker 1: chronicle all the steps, and so I couldn't really unwind
Speaker 1: us and go back and see what who did you
Speaker 1: talk to you there? What was this? Because I was
Speaker 1: really going over this with a fine tooth calm. I
Speaker 1: don't think he fabricated anything. I think you just so
Speaker 1: oversell us that he would go to the next thing.
Speaker 1: And I think it was like a pit bull. But again,
Speaker 1: like a pit bull, he raised the head without getting
Speaker 1: his facts tight. Harvey Hines and Larry Caine have now
Speaker 1: both passed away. Although Hines could never find any conclusive
Speaker 1: evidence against Kane, he went to the grave convinced that
Speaker 1: Larry Kane was the Zodiac. But the more you look
Speaker 1: into the Zodiac case, there's so many guys like the
Speaker 1: Harvey because it's it's such a compelling case. It brought
Speaker 1: the amateur sleuths out of the woodwork, and it really
Speaker 1: had an interesting way of doing that. I think Harvey
Speaker 1: was part of that legion of amateur sleuths, even though
Speaker 1: he was a policeman by day. Harvey Hynes was a
Speaker 1: precursor to a huge movement in the Zodiac investigation in
Speaker 1: the nineteen nineties. The Internet brought access to a treasure
Speaker 1: trove of Zodiac related information, and independent investigators like Hinz
Speaker 1: would go on to make major discoveries. One of the
Speaker 1: first websites dedicated to the case was Zodiac killer dot com.
Speaker 1: My name is Tom Voyd and the webmaster at Zodiac
Speaker 1: killer dot com. There was nothing on the internet back
Speaker 1: then about Zodiac. It's a lot of porn that was it.
Speaker 1: So I decided I wanted to get some Zodiac stuff
Speaker 1: on the web. When I finally got my own website,
Speaker 1: there were people I was talking to who had the
Speaker 1: Zodiac information that I wanted, and they thought that since
Speaker 1: I had a website, that I must be like a
Speaker 1: genius or a millionaire or some secret agent or something,
Speaker 1: and so they would give me documents and tell me
Speaker 1: information that that they would never have told me. For
Speaker 1: over twenty years, these amateur investigators have been sharing information
Speaker 1: across Void's website. They even meet up in person on
Speaker 1: the anniversaries of the crimes to discuss the case and
Speaker 1: honor the victims. We met Tom Voyd in a large
Speaker 1: group of these self described zodiologists at a restaurant in Vallejo.
Speaker 1: It was the night of the fiftieth anniversary of the
Speaker 1: murders of Betty lu Jensen and David Faraday. We've done
Speaker 1: a lot of these events called them task force meetings,
Speaker 1: and the first one was in two thousand two in Riverside,
Speaker 1: and it went really well, and there were people that
Speaker 1: showed up and had good information to share, and so
Speaker 1: I started doing them, you know, yearly. The big payoff
Speaker 1: of b if there's ever a conclusion and it turns
Speaker 1: out my suspect is is the zodiac. So I got Angie.
Speaker 1: Angie's this. I've just proposed her today at crimes. This
Speaker 1: is Angie. So I've met Angie at Lake Berry, SA
Speaker 1: in two thousand four. That's where we met. It was
Speaker 1: invitation only, you know, people had to red cabins and
Speaker 1: I didn't want to be a cabin next to some
Speaker 1: nut I'd never met or anything like that. You took
Speaker 1: a chance on me. Well, we communicated through you know,
Speaker 1: through you me on stuff. I'm still like kind of
Speaker 1: a denial. I mean, we've been together for fifteen years,
Speaker 1: but I never in a millionaires expecting to get down
Speaker 1: on is the I hadn't been there in a long time,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to see it in the fog. It
Speaker 1: was really cool. He was talking about how he doesn't
Speaker 1: want it to be a sad place anymore, and that
Speaker 1: there should be something good to think about when we
Speaker 1: come back. So I never thought I would get formally
Speaker 1: engaged at a crime scene. Yeah, that's what I can
Speaker 1: honestly say. I can't imaginely happened to other place. Well,
Speaker 1: I kind of can't either, honestly. We're all, I mean, liquorious,
Speaker 1: and maybe it would have been a little more appropriate.
Speaker 1: But that's okay. Maybe we'll get married there. Who knows.
Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, we're back Lake Herman.
Speaker 1: It's all a blur at some of the anniversaries. I'm
Speaker 1: so sick of. I didn't want to do this again,
Speaker 1: these gatherings and so forth. It's just we want to
Speaker 1: just make some advancements, you know, and get something major.
Speaker 1: I think I've come up with something major. It's an
Speaker 1: interesting bit of information that nobody knew about before. And
Speaker 1: I think we're fifty years I do it. It's time
Speaker 1: to solve the case. Next time one monster, the Zodiac Killer.
Speaker 1: I have thousands of theories and tips proclamations from people
Speaker 1: who believe they've solved the Zonia. A lot of people
Speaker 1: have criticized it and ripped it apart online and called
Speaker 1: me an idiot. One person said that they wouldn't have
Speaker 1: been more surprised if I had named the Easter Bunny.
Speaker 1: People are so influenced by the fact that three of
Speaker 1: those coades didn't get solved. Well, they're just rubbish. There's
Speaker 1: no solution to be had. It's just fake news. Zodiac
Speaker 1: could have edited. There is a sort of intoxicating effect
Speaker 1: when you plug in what do you think Zodiac might
Speaker 1: have said, and it happens to fit. If you're walking
Speaker 1: around and you have no idea what happened and who
Speaker 1: the Zodiac is, then he could be anybody. He could
Speaker 1: be your uncle, he could be a guy living next
Speaker 1: door or whatever. But if someone tells you, oh, I
Speaker 1: know who it was, and he's locked up in prison
Speaker 1: or it's dead or whatever, that's comforting. It's comforting to think, oh,
Speaker 1: they solved it. It's been figured out. Monster the Zodiac
Speaker 1: Killer is a fifteen episode podcast produced by iHeart Radio,
Speaker 1: How Stuff Works and Tenderfoot TV. Donald Albright and I
Speaker 1: are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers
Speaker 1: Meredith Stepman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hope is
Speaker 1: executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along with
Speaker 1: producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, ben Kybrick, and josh Than Scott.
Speaker 1: Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is our host.
Speaker 1: Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. If you
Speaker 1: haven't already, make sure to check out the first season
Speaker 1: of Monster called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders
Speaker 1: from the late seventies to the early eighties. Download the
Speaker 1: ten episode season right now. Have questions or comments, email
Speaker 1: us at Monster at how stuff works dot com, or
Speaker 1: you can call us at one eight three eight five
Speaker 1: six six six seven. Thanks for listening. M