Speaker 1: Monster is back with a brand new series, Monster d
Speaker 1: C Sniper. Here's a teaser for the show. While you're listening,
Speaker 1: search for Monster DC Sniper and subscribe. New episodes are
Speaker 1: available every Thursday. I don't think America has ever gone
Speaker 1: back to the way that it was before nine eleven
Speaker 1: and the anthrax attacks. The fear was really that there
Speaker 1: would be a second wave of attacks, and then along
Speaker 1: comes the DC Sniper and all of the country's worst
Speaker 1: fears are realized. I think it's fair to say all
Speaker 1: help broke this. I don't know. The gunman, most likely
Speaker 1: a skilled marksman, fired six times in the courts of
Speaker 1: sixteen hours. They killed the five people on one day
Speaker 1: and then went on the rampage for the next month.
Speaker 1: The police say they have never had a crime quite
Speaker 1: like this. It is quite a mystery. It was scary
Speaker 1: to go to the grocery store or fill up your
Speaker 1: car with gas, and as the DC Sniper case unfolded,
Speaker 1: that terror only group from My Heart Radio and tender
Speaker 1: Foot TV. This is Monster DC Sniper. The views and
Speaker 1: opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the
Speaker 1: podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, and do
Speaker 1: not necessarily represent those of I Heeart Media Stuff Media
Speaker 1: for its employees. In the spring of the Valeo Police
Speaker 1: Department announced it had submitted two pieces of evidence for
Speaker 1: DNA testing, two envelopes that once contained letters sent from
Speaker 1: the Zodiac Killer to local newspapers. Although similar DNA tests
Speaker 1: had been performed in this case with no results, this
Speaker 1: attempt was different. The testing method was more advanced, and
Speaker 1: if a via DNA sample was produced this time, it
Speaker 1: would be used to create a genetic profile for forensic genealogy.
Speaker 1: In its simplest form, forensic genealogy maps and individual's DNA
Speaker 1: profile and then compares it to other previously existing profiles.
Speaker 1: It's a way to build family trees, and it's what
Speaker 1: companies like twenty three and me, Ancestry and jed match do.
Speaker 1: Forensic genealogy is the method that caught the Golden State Killer,
Speaker 1: the man who murdered at least thirteen people and committed
Speaker 1: more than fifty rapes. After more than forty years, Joseph
Speaker 1: James de'angelo was charged and convicted of his crimes. While
Speaker 1: DNA and forensic genealogy was able to close the Golden
Speaker 1: State Killer case, it's so far has not been able
Speaker 1: to identify the Zodiac Killer, and unfortunately, there hasn't been
Speaker 1: an official update from the Valeo Police Department since that
Speaker 1: spring of While we hope forensic genealogy will eventually unmask
Speaker 1: the Zodiac, for now the trail seems cold. The best
Speaker 1: evidence were left with remains circumstantial. Throughout the season, we
Speaker 1: examined the people we considered the most likely suspects. Since then,
Speaker 1: we've had many listeners calling in with questions about other
Speaker 1: individuals that we haven't fully investigated. Today, we're going to
Speaker 1: take a closer look at some of those people. A
Speaker 1: man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them, leaving
Speaker 1: them for dad. Subjects 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 a knife and
Speaker 1: gun and intended to use them. They have an arrestipe
Speaker 1: because they can't cove a m I'm not damn Zodiac.
Speaker 1: Who is the Zodiac and where is he? From my
Speaker 1: Heart radio and under Foot TV, this is Monster, the
Speaker 1: Zodiac Killer. According to an estimate by the Los Angeles Times,
Speaker 1: more than twelve hundred people have claimed to know the
Speaker 1: Zodiac's identity, but only a few of those claims seem viable.
Speaker 1: In two thousand nine, Deborah Perez held a sidewalk conference
Speaker 1: claiming that her father, guy Ward Hendrickson, was the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: Perez claimed she helped write some of the letters the
Speaker 1: Zodiac sent to the media. She also claimed to possess
Speaker 1: the glasses of Paul Stein, the Zodiac's last confirmed victim. However,
Speaker 1: after inspection, police determined that the glasses were not Paul
Speaker 1: Stein's and that guy Ward Hendrickson was not the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: Another accusation came from Jack Kaufman, a man who believed
Speaker 1: his stepfather, Jack Torrence, was the Zodiac. Kaufman gave police
Speaker 1: a black hood similar to the one the Zodiac war
Speaker 1: when he attacked the couple at Lake Berryessa. Kaufman also
Speaker 1: gave police a bloody knife resembling the weapon from the
Speaker 1: same attack. He claimed that both of these items were
Speaker 1: his stepfather's. Additionally, Kaufman provided stamps his stepfather had licked
Speaker 1: for DNA testing in hopes the police could finally prove
Speaker 1: his suspicions. While both of these accusations caught the attention
Speaker 1: of the police and the media, there is one claim
Speaker 1: that overshadows the rest, the claim of Gary Stewart. In
Speaker 1: May of fourteen, Gary Stewart's book debuted across the United States.
Speaker 1: It was called the Most Dangerous Animal of All Searching
Speaker 1: for My Father and Finding the Zodiac Killer. The book
Speaker 1: was a New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle bestseller.
Speaker 1: It follows Stuart's decade long journey to find his biological father.
Speaker 1: It began when Stewart's biological mother reached out to him
Speaker 1: when he was thirty nine years old. Their reunion was successful,
Speaker 1: and Stewart decided he also wanted to meet his father,
Speaker 1: Earl Van Best Jr. But he would soon learned that
Speaker 1: Earl had a police record for some very serious crimes.
Speaker 1: In fact, according to Stewart, the San Francisco Police Department
Speaker 1: told him to stop looking for his dad. It wasn't
Speaker 1: long after this that Stewart would turn over the first stone,
Speaker 1: leading him to believe that Earl Van Best Jr. His father,
Speaker 1: was the Zodiac Killer. The clips you're about to hear
Speaker 1: are from an interview with Gary Stewart on the I
Speaker 1: Heart radio show Rover's Morning Glory, in talking about his
Speaker 1: story and his book. One day, I'm watching an Ante
Speaker 1: Coal case file special on the Zodiac Killer. The wanted
Speaker 1: poster from San Francisco nineteen sixty nine of the Zodiac
Speaker 1: Killer pops up on the screen and I can't breathe.
Speaker 1: My son, here's whatever noise I make. And he runs
Speaker 1: into the room and he looks at the television. He says, Dad,
Speaker 1: it's you. I went in my office and got this
Speaker 1: old d m V photo that I've been given by
Speaker 1: the FFPD, which turns out it was his actual mug shot.
Speaker 1: And I said, no, Zach's not me, it's my father.
Speaker 1: The likeness between Van Best and the police sketch of
Speaker 1: the Zodiac suspect was only what started Stuart's theory. Gary
Speaker 1: also believes that his father's name appears in the cipher's
Speaker 1: the Killer sent to Bay Area newspapers. My father signed
Speaker 1: his name E. V. Best Jr. In particular, in the
Speaker 1: four oh eight cipher that was mailed to the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Examiner. I just looked at it one day to
Speaker 1: see if I could see anything, and out off the
Speaker 1: page popped E. V. Best Junior altogether in a row backward,
Speaker 1: forward and up. After the police did not pick that up.
Speaker 1: He later came back and sent the infamous three forty cipher,
Speaker 1: which the amateur sleuths in the Zodiac community around the
Speaker 1: world say is still unsolved. He insisted that his identity
Speaker 1: was in that cipher and my father's name complete name
Speaker 1: is in that ciphering. Michael Butterfield, the creator of the
Speaker 1: website Zodiac Killer Facts, doesn't agree. These ciphers were constructed
Speaker 1: in blocks of seventeen symbols. Gary Stewart found each letter
Speaker 1: in his father's name in one of the lines. Now,
Speaker 1: normally a cipher is a series of symbols which are
Speaker 1: deciphered into other texts, but Gary believed that the actual
Speaker 1: text of the cipher was the message that it didn't
Speaker 1: need to be deciphered, that you could just read his
Speaker 1: father's name by finding the letters in his father's name
Speaker 1: in each one of these lines. Now, of course some
Speaker 1: people might find that compelling, but as David ran Shacking,
Speaker 1: Zodiac cipher expert, pointed out, you can use the same
Speaker 1: method to find many other names, which means that that
Speaker 1: cannot be the only solution. Gary also claimed that handwriting
Speaker 1: from the zodiac matched his father's handwriting, and this was
Speaker 1: based on the notion that several marriage certificates and documents
Speaker 1: from a certain church bore the handwriting of Earl vand Best,
Speaker 1: And Gary Stewart hired an expert who came in and
Speaker 1: he even wrote a book about how this was the
Speaker 1: end of the Zodiac mystery because he had matched the
Speaker 1: handwriting to Gary Stewart's father. Now, after that happened, a
Speaker 1: Zodiac theorist named micro Delli contacted that church and found
Speaker 1: out that the handwriting on those documents does not belong
Speaker 1: to Earl band Best. The handwriting was apparently that of
Speaker 1: the reverend at this church, So that cast doubt not
Speaker 1: only on Gary Stuart's claims, but on the credibility of
Speaker 1: his handwriting expert, who had apparently concluded that the handwriting
Speaker 1: of three different individuals was all earlband Best. And then,
Speaker 1: of course there's the fingerprint pulled from the crime scene
Speaker 1: of the Zodiac's last confirmed kill, the murder of Paul Stein.
Speaker 1: He basically claims that there's a fingerprint from one of
Speaker 1: the Zodiac crime scenes which he claims looks like his
Speaker 1: father's fingerprint when it's reversed, Apparently his father had a
Speaker 1: scar out of finger and there's some sort of line
Speaker 1: on the fingerprint which he believes go insides to the scar,
Speaker 1: but of course the police don't think this is a
Speaker 1: valid theory. The likeness, the fingerprint, the ciphers, all of
Speaker 1: these are common threads throughout many zodiac theories. But there
Speaker 1: is one detail that sets Gary Stewart's claims apart. His
Speaker 1: biological parents had several connections to the case. The first
Speaker 1: connection is to journalist Paul Avery, through a series of
Speaker 1: articles published in the San Francisco Chronicle called The ice
Speaker 1: Cream Romance. These articles detailed how his parents met and
Speaker 1: focused on their significant age difference. In nineteen sixty one
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty two, When you're twenty seven and you're running
Speaker 1: off with a fourteen year old and the cops catch
Speaker 1: you and you just happened in eating in an ice
Speaker 1: cream parlor, good journalists are gonna say something like he
Speaker 1: found love in an ice cream parlor. Ice cream romances
Speaker 1: bitter in. The problem was he was twenty seven and
Speaker 1: his young bride was only fourteen. I found out through
Speaker 1: contacting the Chronicle and the archivist at the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Library that Paul Avery was the author of the ice
Speaker 1: Cream romance, the Zodiac Killer came back and targeted Paul
Speaker 1: Avery as part of his taunting the media Paul Avery specifically. Basically,
Speaker 1: Stewart is claiming that his father, Earl Van Bess Jr.
Speaker 1: Wrote the Zodiac letters to Paul Avery because he was
Speaker 1: angry with him for writing the ice cream romance articles.
Speaker 1: There is currently no evidence that's been made public that
Speaker 1: directly links Earl Van Best Jr. To those Zodiac letters.
Speaker 1: The second connection to the case is through his mother's
Speaker 1: second sent After her marriage with Earl Van Best Jr.
Speaker 1: Was annulled, Gary Stewart's mother, Judy Chandler, remarried a man
Speaker 1: named Rotea Guildford. He was an inspector with the San
Speaker 1: Francisco Police Department and worked on the Zodiac case. Gary
Speaker 1: Stewart wanted law enforcement to take his DNA for comparison
Speaker 1: against a Zodiac sample. He hoped a partial match would
Speaker 1: confirm his theory about his father. However, the San Francisco
Speaker 1: Police Department declined to run this test. Stewart believes this
Speaker 1: is because of a conflict of interest. My mother believes
Speaker 1: that it's because of her late husband's involvement in the
Speaker 1: Zodiac case. You know, they're allegedly suspects in the Zodiac case.
Speaker 1: If my father happened to be interviewed and cleared because
Speaker 1: he was a very intelligent, smooth talking salesman, maybe even
Speaker 1: by Rotea Guildford, how would that look. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I'm just speculating. Stewart believes that the police refused to
Speaker 1: test his DNA because if there was a match, it
Speaker 1: would mean the police had made a mistake if they
Speaker 1: had previously cleared Earl Van Best Jr. If true, that
Speaker 1: scenario would certainly be embarrassing to the whole department. But
Speaker 1: we have to ask ourselves would embarrassment be enough to
Speaker 1: stop law enforcement from running those tests and possibly confirming
Speaker 1: the Zodiac's identity. It's also important to note that, according
Speaker 1: to Butterfield, Judy did not believe her ex husband was
Speaker 1: the Zodiac. According to the Zodiac Killer Facts website, Judy
Speaker 1: reportedly referred to Stuart's Zodiac claims as fiction. Again, this
Speaker 1: is all speculation, but if the evidence didn't match up,
Speaker 1: then how did this book gain so much traction. Normally
Speaker 1: a book is presented up for review, but this book
Speaker 1: was withheld until the day was released, so it came
Speaker 1: out to a lot of fanfare, and of course most
Speaker 1: media outlets simply pick up the publicity information put out
Speaker 1: by the publishers, so they will just repeat what the
Speaker 1: book jacket says the most compelling evidence, you know, that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. He went on a media tour, I
Speaker 1: believe he was on Fox News and ABC This Morning
Speaker 1: and things like that. He was asked a lot of questions,
Speaker 1: but of course no one asked the pertinent questions about
Speaker 1: the handwriting, about the fingerprint and other things. But if
Speaker 1: you look at the way the book was released, in
Speaker 1: the way it was received, it's kind of a harbon
Speaker 1: copy of what's happened with other books in the past.
Speaker 1: People see the book, they assume it's nonfiction. Then they
Speaker 1: repeat what's in the book as if it's fact. And
Speaker 1: if you only go by that, Gary Stuart's theory seems
Speaker 1: very compelling. It's not until you start to ask some
Speaker 1: serious questions and get into the nitty gritty details that
Speaker 1: you'll find that there is some serious problems. I think
Speaker 1: that one of the reasons people accepted it so quickly
Speaker 1: and why it became so popular, it's because it's a
Speaker 1: story that a lot of people like to hear. A
Speaker 1: man in search of truth about his own life finds
Speaker 1: his father, and then he finds out horrible secrets about
Speaker 1: his father. It's very compelling family drama, but it doesn't
Speaker 1: necessarily translate into an actual true crime story. Days after
Speaker 1: this book was released, the theory was already being unraveled
Speaker 1: by another theorist, Mike Rodelli. He was the guy who
Speaker 1: contacted the church about Van Best's handwriting. He didn't believe
Speaker 1: Gary Stewart's claim about Earl van Best, Jr. Because he
Speaker 1: already had his own suspect, a man who ran a
Speaker 1: car dealership in San Francisco. If you're well acquainted with
Speaker 1: luxury cars, you may be familiar with this next suspect.
Speaker 1: He's responsible for introducing brands like Jaguar and Rolls Royce
Speaker 1: to the United States. Although his name now circulates across
Speaker 1: zodiac forms, when the book The Hunt for Zodiac was released,
Speaker 1: he was simply referred to as Mr. X. More than
Speaker 1: twenty years ago, a theorist named Microdelli came up with
Speaker 1: the idea that the Zodiac may have written letters to
Speaker 1: the editor at several local newspapers using his real name
Speaker 1: or an assumed name, so, Mike Rodelli and others began
Speaker 1: checking on the files of the local newspapers in the
Speaker 1: Bay area and they came across one letter from a
Speaker 1: man named Shell Caballi. This letter apparently referred to children
Speaker 1: lying in the streets and was written sometime before the
Speaker 1: first Zodiac murders on Lake Herman Road. Prodeli thought this
Speaker 1: sounded compelling and he decided to check into this individual.
Speaker 1: Very quickly, he discovered that this man lived approximately one
Speaker 1: block north of the scene of the Zodiac's last murder
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. For people who are familiar with the case,
Speaker 1: they'll know that the killer walked away from the crime
Speaker 1: scene and headed off in a direction and was seen
Speaker 1: in the vicinity of this man's house. There was the
Speaker 1: theory that this man was the killer and that he
Speaker 1: had simply gone into his own residence after the murder.
Speaker 1: Microdelli became convinced that this might be a serious lead
Speaker 1: and began investigating this individual, and over the years he
Speaker 1: came up with some points of interest which he believed
Speaker 1: implicate this man in the Zodiac crimes. Now, Microdelli has
Speaker 1: found some other people, including some investigators, who believed that
Speaker 1: he may be onto something. He apparently resembled the composite
Speaker 1: sketch of the Zodiac, but then again, there are thousands
Speaker 1: of men who matched that description, especially in the nineteen sixties,
Speaker 1: and Microdelli had some other interesting tidbits of what you
Speaker 1: might called trivia. Cavali was a car dealer, and the
Speaker 1: Zodiac crimes revolved around cars, Prodelli believed that there was
Speaker 1: some sort of link there. Cavally also participated in a
Speaker 1: race in Riverside, California, where there was a suspected Zodiac murder,
Speaker 1: so there was some belief that this might be a
Speaker 1: link as well. But at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: when you look at the information that Rodelli has presented,
Speaker 1: there's not a whole lot there. But let's go back
Speaker 1: to the point about Cavalli having lived a block from
Speaker 1: where Paul Stein was murdered, because that's the main link
Speaker 1: Rodelli's theory hinges on. One of the things that has
Speaker 1: been a major problem with this story over the years
Speaker 1: is that Microdelli contacted Armand Pelissetti, the police officer who
Speaker 1: was the first to arrive at the crime scene in
Speaker 1: San Francisco, and he was telling Armand Pellistti about his suspect,
Speaker 1: and apparently Pellisetti was not impressed, and he was looking
Speaker 1: for a quick and easy way to make Microdelli go away.
Speaker 1: He appears to have told Microdelli that he stopped Cavalli
Speaker 1: near the crime scene on the night of the murder,
Speaker 1: that he spoke to him and cleared him as a suspect,
Speaker 1: and therefore he had nothing to do with it and
Speaker 1: Microdelli could just move on now. Cavali himself has denied
Speaker 1: being that individual. Cavalli said, I was not stopped that night.
Speaker 1: I was not spoken to by the police. I had
Speaker 1: nothing to do with that. And he wasn't even sure
Speaker 1: that he was in San Francisco that night. He was
Speaker 1: being asked about this some decades later, so it's possible
Speaker 1: that he could have been mistaken. But when I interviewed
Speaker 1: armand Pealisetti myself, I asked him point blank, how did
Speaker 1: you know that this was the individual in question that
Speaker 1: you talked to that night? He had no recollection of
Speaker 1: that specific name, He had no records, and he said,
Speaker 1: at best, I think I told the instigators about it
Speaker 1: that night. So there's no credible evidence that Cavalli was
Speaker 1: at the crime scene that night, or that he was
Speaker 1: seen or spoken to by anyone near the crime scene.
Speaker 1: And if he was, the timing doesn't seem to support
Speaker 1: the version of events as him being the murderer. In
Speaker 1: order for him to have been out on the sidewalk
Speaker 1: and talking to armand Pealisetti shortly after the murder, he
Speaker 1: would have to have run inside his home, changed his clothes,
Speaker 1: wipe the blood off his hands and his clothes or
Speaker 1: whatever else, and then dashed back outside to beyond the
Speaker 1: street in time to meet armand Pealisetti. There's no evidence
Speaker 1: to support that claim, and there are many reasons to
Speaker 1: doubt it. I interviewed shell Cavali several years before he died,
Speaker 1: and he was very friendly. He was very polite, and
Speaker 1: he was very happy to talk to me about this.
Speaker 1: He made it clear to me that he was not
Speaker 1: the Zodiac, that he didn't even understand and why he
Speaker 1: was suspected in the first place. And then he said,
Speaker 1: you know, if I could talk to this person who's
Speaker 1: accusing me, I have no doubt that I could disabuse
Speaker 1: him of this idea if we could just sit down
Speaker 1: and he could get to know me. Here's a clip
Speaker 1: of Michael Butterfield's interview with Cavali. Hen he thinks is me?
Speaker 1: He does. Unfortunately, it's so silly and so ridiculous. It's
Speaker 1: if it wasn't so insulting, it would be laughable, you know.
Speaker 1: Christ So my idea, what would you say to him
Speaker 1: if you did have him on the off? I don't
Speaker 1: know where you get touch goofy idea? Why don't you
Speaker 1: come out here and spend a few days with me
Speaker 1: and see what kind of a person I am. You know,
Speaker 1: I've been in business here for fifty five years. I've
Speaker 1: been busy as hell the whole time. I haven't got time.
Speaker 1: The only thing I've ever heard of a fly. I
Speaker 1: contacted Mike Rohdelli and I said, Hey, your suspect wants
Speaker 1: to talk to you, and they apparently arranged a meeting
Speaker 1: and Microdelli went out to San Francisco to talk to Cavalli.
Speaker 1: But that's when things went wrong. Cavally denied being the
Speaker 1: man who was stopped on the street that night. According
Speaker 1: to Microdelli, at least through his perception of things, that
Speaker 1: was just proof that Cavali was lying there. So he
Speaker 1: didn't listen to anything that Cavali said. Really after that,
Speaker 1: the evidence indicates that Cavally was probably telling the truth
Speaker 1: that he wasn't there that night, but through the eyes
Speaker 1: of his accuser, that was just another reason to cast
Speaker 1: suspicion on him. In two thousand two, Cavally voluntarily gave
Speaker 1: a sample of his DNA to be compared to suspected
Speaker 1: Zodiac data, and that DNA did not match. I just
Speaker 1: did the DNA test and the police, my guy, who
Speaker 1: was a friend of mine, a retired guy, said it's negative.
Speaker 1: Forget it, and that's the end of it. That's all
Speaker 1: I ever heard. The whole thing. Negative. You can forget it,
Speaker 1: and a ship police forgot about me, and and that's it.
Speaker 1: Now there are people who claim that that is not
Speaker 1: really Zodiac DNA, and therefore the fact that it didn't
Speaker 1: match a suspect doesn't mean much. But on the other hand,
Speaker 1: you have to look at the fact that this was
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties. People didn't even know about DNA, and
Speaker 1: they certainly didn't know the extent to which they might
Speaker 1: have possibly left some evidence behind. There is a thing
Speaker 1: called touch DNA where they can find DNA and something
Speaker 1: just because you've touched it. So the fact that cavally
Speaker 1: offered up a sample of his DNA for comparison. Can
Speaker 1: be viewed as exculpatory and if you believe that, you know,
Speaker 1: an innocent person would just say here's my d n A,
Speaker 1: but a guilty person might have more reservations about handing
Speaker 1: over that DNA if he knew that he was guilty.
Speaker 1: In the end, Rudeli couldn't present any significant evidence to
Speaker 1: implicate Cavalli. This is what Butterfield has to say about him. Well,
Speaker 1: he isn't an incredibly interesting person if you look at
Speaker 1: his background. He had an amazing life. He sent me
Speaker 1: a copy of his memoir and I read it. It
Speaker 1: was an incredible story. But he was also very happy
Speaker 1: to talk to people about this and say, hey, I'm
Speaker 1: not the zodiac. After this one all over the internet
Speaker 1: for several years, I think he was maybe a little
Speaker 1: more reluctant to talk about it because he didn't want
Speaker 1: to add Field of the fire. But when he talked
Speaker 1: to me, he was very open and he was very
Speaker 1: surprised that someone could think he was a murderer. I
Speaker 1: couldn't be any more innotentive. Newborn baby died, but speculation
Speaker 1: about him continues. However, just a year before his death,
Speaker 1: another theorist published a book that contained a different, unnamed suspect.
Speaker 1: This time, the cover up in scandal was focused on
Speaker 1: the Valleo Police Department. The next suspect comes from Lyndon Lafferty,
Speaker 1: a longtime Valleo resident who took interest in the case.
Speaker 1: His story, unlike many others, implicated the police. His suspect
Speaker 1: was never named. Still, Lafferty wrote a book about his findings.
Speaker 1: Butterfield explains the main reasons that Lyndon Lafferty thought this
Speaker 1: individual could be the Zodiac was number one, of course,
Speaker 1: that he looked like the infamous composite sketch of the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: He apparently had some military background and some training in codes,
Speaker 1: and there was the theory that he had known one
Speaker 1: of the Zodiac victims, Darlene Barren. Darlene Barren had been
Speaker 1: stalked by a mysterious stranger in the weeks and months
Speaker 1: before she was killed, and some of Darlene's sisters identified
Speaker 1: Grant as that individual. Darlene's sisters also have a long
Speaker 1: and documented history of telling some pretty tall tales about this,
Speaker 1: and they have identified at least five or six different
Speaker 1: individuals as being the same individual stalker. There's not a
Speaker 1: lot of reason to believe that this man did know
Speaker 1: Darling Baron, but that was one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: was presented to the police in the nineteen seventies when
Speaker 1: they were examining this suspect, and there were some other
Speaker 1: things like Lyndon Lafferty believed that some of the Zodiac
Speaker 1: letters contained clues to Grant's identity. There was a Zodiac
Speaker 1: letter in which he mentioned something about a basement and
Speaker 1: being swamped out. Grant had a basement which was apparently flooded.
Speaker 1: This individual owned a nineteen one white Chevrolet, which was
Speaker 1: said to be similar to the car used by the
Speaker 1: Zodiac at the Valeo attack, and this individual apparently hung
Speaker 1: around a rest stop in the Valo area. At one
Speaker 1: time he had some to face off with a highway
Speaker 1: patrol officer and this was one of the reasons that
Speaker 1: he came to the attention of Lyndon Lafferty. The Valeo
Speaker 1: Police Department investigated this suspect in the late nineteen seventies
Speaker 1: and did not find any evidence to implicate him in
Speaker 1: the Zodiac crimes. Lyndon Lafferty and others who believed that
Speaker 1: Grant was the Zodiac were not satisfied. They claimed that
Speaker 1: there was some sort of cover up or interference from
Speaker 1: a local judge, and that's why the title of Lyndon
Speaker 1: Lafferty's book is The Silenced Badge, the notion that they
Speaker 1: had identified the Zodiac but were somehow silenced by this
Speaker 1: cover up in conspiracy. So it doesn't appear to be
Speaker 1: any evidence to support that claim. It's understandable why people
Speaker 1: become captivated with the Zodiac case. After fifty years, it
Speaker 1: still hasn't been solved and continues to puzzle the police
Speaker 1: and public alike. But what exactly separates police investigations and theories.
Speaker 1: It's important to note that many Zodiac theorists who are
Speaker 1: confronted with the fact that they really don't have any
Speaker 1: credible evidence to implicate their suspects, are often asked, well,
Speaker 1: if you're right, how come the police haven't arrested this person.
Speaker 1: The familiar refrain seems to be, well, there was a
Speaker 1: cover up. You see this with Gary Stewart and so
Speaker 1: many other people who have accused their fathers. At the
Speaker 1: end of the day, there's really no evidence there, but
Speaker 1: they can't explain that away without having some sort of
Speaker 1: conspiracy from the police department. Essentially, what they're saying is,
Speaker 1: I'm right, my suspect was the Zodiac, but the police
Speaker 1: refused to investigate. That becomes a handy excuse when you're
Speaker 1: being criticized for the lack of evidence. Monster the Zodiac
Speaker 1: Killer is a fifteen episode podcast hosted by Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: and produced by iHeart Radio and Tenderfoot TV. Matt Frederick
Speaker 1: and Alex Williams are executive producers on behalf of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio alongside producers Miranda Hawkins, Josh Thane, ben Kybrick,
Speaker 1: and Trevor Young. Payne Lindsay and Donald Albright are executive
Speaker 1: producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV alongside producers Meredith Steadman
Speaker 1: and Christina Dana. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set.
Speaker 1: Make sure to catch the new season Monster DC Sniper.
Speaker 1: New episodes are available every Thursday. Search for and subscribed
Speaker 1: Monster DC Sniper on the i Heeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.