Speaker 1: Now here's a highlight from Coast to Coast am on
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio and welcome back to Coast to Coast. Doctor Mark
Speaker 1: Hewett with us DBA is a true crime of author
Speaker 1: who travels the world in his quest for intriguing, unanswered
Speaker 1: questions and enduring mysteries. Mark earned his master's degrees from
Speaker 1: Calvin Theological Seminary and the University of Phoenix and a
Speaker 1: doctorate from California Coast University with California inmate Guillermo E. Mendez.
Speaker 1: He is the co author of Charles Manson Behind Bars
Speaker 1: and the first Manson book From the Inside. He wrote
Speaker 1: the critically acclaimed Zodiac serial killer trilogy, Hunted the Zodiac, Murders,
Speaker 1: Profiled the Zodiac, Examined and exposed the Zodiac, Revealed which
Speaker 1: we are talking about tonight. Mark, Welcome to the program.
Speaker 1: Great to have you with us. It's an honor to
Speaker 1: speak with you, George. Thank you for having me on
Speaker 1: your show. What DBA normally in business means doing business
Speaker 1: as right after your name is that That is no,
Speaker 1: it is not. It stands for Doctor of Business Administration.
Speaker 1: All right. I love that we're going to talk about
Speaker 1: the Zodiac. We'll talk about Ted Kaczynski. We'll talk about
Speaker 1: the tie in that you have gotten together, but let's
Speaker 1: talk a little bit about the Zodiac Killer. For a while.
Speaker 1: It has gone unsolved. It happened in the sixties. What
Speaker 1: do you what can you tell us about the Zodiac Killer? Mark? Well,
Speaker 1: to me, it's one of the greatest stories I've ever encountered.
Speaker 1: It's a mystery on so many levels. It's not only
Speaker 1: an unsolved serial killing case, but there are many side
Speaker 1: issues within the case that are continuing to be debated
Speaker 1: to this day. It's one thing to not catch a
Speaker 1: killer and not know who's responsible for this series of events,
Speaker 1: but it's it's even more fascinating to discuss a number
Speaker 1: of cases beforehand, before the canonical five murders, and after
Speaker 1: the canonical five murders, whether or not the Zodiac was
Speaker 1: involved with those, and various aspects of the case within
Speaker 1: those five differences of opinions, but also differences of facts.
Speaker 1: People involved in the case remember things differently, and they
Speaker 1: have differing accounts of what took place, So you know,
Speaker 1: what is the actual series of events, how exactly did
Speaker 1: they take place? To me, that's very fascinating. They blame
Speaker 1: five murders on the Zodiac Killer, Yet the Zodiac claimed
Speaker 1: in letters to newspapers that he killed thirty seven people.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's somewhere in between? Almost certainly that
Speaker 1: number thirty seven is running up the telly trying to
Speaker 1: invoke more fear among the citizens of the Bay area.
Speaker 1: I am firmly convinced at least one of there is
Speaker 1: one prior to the canonical five that was the zodiacs,
Speaker 1: and a number of that he has made reference to
Speaker 1: have not been solved. So we have to say, why
Speaker 1: haven't they been solved? Maybe he was involved in them.
Speaker 1: Only one person, only one suspect, was ever publicly named.
Speaker 1: His name is Arthur Lee Allen, a former elementary school
Speaker 1: teacher convicted sex offender, but he died in nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Have you ruled him out too? I have. It's no
Speaker 1: wonder that the place took a very close look at him,
Speaker 1: because there were a number of eerie coincidences that made
Speaker 1: him look like a good suspect. The problem is, if
Speaker 1: you dig into each one of those so called coincidences,
Speaker 1: you realize that it may be nothing more than a coincidence,
Speaker 1: and that he was not involved in them. A lot
Speaker 1: of people have made Arthur Lee Allen out to be
Speaker 1: this big, larger than life, scary villain and said, you know,
Speaker 1: because he's large and scary, that makes him a serial color.
Speaker 1: But what always happens when we catch a serial killer,
Speaker 1: as all the neighbors say, well, he was such a
Speaker 1: quiet person. We never suspected anything of him. We would
Speaker 1: never believe that he would be involved in anything like that.
Speaker 1: And yet every time there's an unidentified serial killer, people
Speaker 1: start looking for somebody who's big and scary. What got
Speaker 1: me off the Arthur Lee Allen case was the temperament
Speaker 1: and the mode of interacting with the world. Arthur Leallen
Speaker 1: was an attention seeking individual that he would walk into
Speaker 1: the room and he would get attention one way or
Speaker 1: the other. If he couldn't get an attention by being
Speaker 1: by doing something positive, he would do something negative or
Speaker 1: threatening or outrageous or inappropriate. He was very good at
Speaker 1: getting attention. Somebody like that does not need to write
Speaker 1: letters to the press to try to get attention of
Speaker 1: the people of the Bay Area. The characteristic of the
Speaker 1: letters of what the Zodiac revealed himself through his letters.
Speaker 1: Somebody who was much more quiet and introspective, Probably somebody
Speaker 1: who didn't get a lot of attention in his life,
Speaker 1: somebody who was crying out for attention but didn't know
Speaker 1: how to get it in either appropriate or inappropriate means.
Speaker 1: And so the letters were his way of reaching out
Speaker 1: and making threats and scaring people and that way getting attention.
Speaker 1: And so to me, Arthur Lee Allen just did not
Speaker 1: match up with the Zodiac mark. What got you interested
Speaker 1: in the Zodiac serial killer case? I was first introduced
Speaker 1: to the case by our roommate back in college. We
Speaker 1: were both fans of true crime, and we were sharing
Speaker 1: with one another some of the books that we read,
Speaker 1: and he said to me, have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: the Zodiac? And I hadn't, And I began to research
Speaker 1: it after he talked to me about it, and I
Speaker 1: was absolutely smitten with the case that there's so many
Speaker 1: unanswered questions. Indeed, indeed, now let's talk a little bit
Speaker 1: about Ted, because Ki the UNI bomber. Wasn't it his
Speaker 1: brother who turned him in close? It was actually his
Speaker 1: sister in law, his brother's wife. David was very resistant
Speaker 1: to the idea that his brother was the UNI bomber. Obviously,
Speaker 1: he didn't want to think that his brother was that person.
Speaker 1: He didn't know any violence and his brother. So it
Speaker 1: took his wife a while to actually convince him to
Speaker 1: take a close look at it, and to take a
Speaker 1: close look at the UNI Bomber manifesto and compare it
Speaker 1: to some of Ted's letters and some of Ted's writings.
Speaker 1: And it was her persistence that got Dad Ted's brother
Speaker 1: to consider the idea and actually be willing to go
Speaker 1: forward and approach attorneys and make contact with the FBI.
Speaker 1: He's going to be eighty one in May, still alive
Speaker 1: in prison and will probably just die there, won't he
Speaker 1: That's correct. He was in Colorado for about twenty five years.
Speaker 1: He was actually in Colorado for longer than he was
Speaker 1: in Montana in his little cabin. But in December of
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one, he was moved to North Carolina to
Speaker 1: a health facility. Now, obviously the Department of Corrections is
Speaker 1: unable to say anything about his health condition. I haven't
Speaker 1: been able to confirm this, but rumor has it that
Speaker 1: he expressed through a letter to somebody that he has
Speaker 1: been diagnosed with cancer and told that he has two
Speaker 1: years or that he had two years to live. So
Speaker 1: that would be December of this year. December of twenty
Speaker 1: twenty three is when they expect his time to run out,
Speaker 1: so we could hear an announcement about him. Anytime. Have
Speaker 1: you tried to interview him? I have. I corresponded with
Speaker 1: him for a couple of years back in two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine twenty ten, and what happen. Well, I got
Speaker 1: some very interesting letters from him. I got some Zodiac
Speaker 1: like wording that he sent to me, and his final
Speaker 1: letter I call it my exorcist letter because it once
Speaker 1: he found out who I was, I contacted him under
Speaker 1: a guise of being interested in his manifesto, and I
Speaker 1: really kind of sucked up to him and told him
Speaker 1: how great he was, and told him everything that a
Speaker 1: narcissist and sociopath would want to hear, just to continue
Speaker 1: the dialogue. But once he found out that I was
Speaker 1: studying the Zodiac case, he sent me one final, nasty,
Speaker 1: scathing letter, which was as much anger as he could provide,
Speaker 1: but it rang to me of a similar tone of
Speaker 1: the Zodiac's last confirmed the Exorcist letter. Now the FBI
Speaker 1: in the San Francisco Police Department, based on what they
Speaker 1: say fingerprint and handwriting comparison ruled him out as a suspect.
Speaker 1: How do you handle that? That's the word that's been
Speaker 1: going around. Somebody has posted that online, that those two
Speaker 1: departments have ruled them out. Neither of them have published
Speaker 1: anything or come right out and said that it couldn't
Speaker 1: be him. The best I could actually say is that
Speaker 1: some people within those departments have looked into him and
Speaker 1: were not able to make a match, and so they
Speaker 1: moved on. I know the FBI did a fingerprint comparison
Speaker 1: at the same time. All of the fingerprints in the
Speaker 1: Zodiac case are from publicly available locations, and there's no
Speaker 1: guarantee that those are Zodiac fingerprints. Why do you believe
Speaker 1: Kazynski maybe the Zodiac Killer? Why do I believe? Yes?
Speaker 1: The first thing that took me, actually, I should say,
Speaker 1: first of all, when I heard the idea, I thought
Speaker 1: was a ridiculous idea that he was there a the
Speaker 1: same time. Wasn't he in California? He was? He was. Indeed,
Speaker 1: he taught at UC Berkeley from sixty seven to sixty nine,
Speaker 1: and he was in California in sixty six interviewing for
Speaker 1: his position one that the first canonical murder took place
Speaker 1: over the Christmas break during Kazynski's final year as a professor,
Speaker 1: and thirty one days exactly one month after that, he
Speaker 1: tendered his resignation. His final day at UC Berkeley was
Speaker 1: June the thirtieth, nineteen sixty nine, and four days later
Speaker 1: the murder at Blue Rock Springs Park took place. Following
Speaker 1: his time at Berkeley, there's a two year gap in
Speaker 1: Ted Kazinski's life. He gave his parents home address in Lombard,
Speaker 1: Illinois as his mailing address, but he didn't stay there.
Speaker 1: His mother speaks of regular travels that he took away
Speaker 1: from that home. He would disappear suddenly without notice, so
Speaker 1: he wasn't completely based in that location. And the bulk
Speaker 1: of the Zodiac murders and the bulk of the Zodiac
Speaker 1: letters took place during that two lost years of Kasinski's life. Now,
Speaker 1: he pled guilty to all his charges back in nineteen
Speaker 1: ninety eight. If he were the Zodiac killer, why wouldn't
Speaker 1: he just come clean on that too. That's a very
Speaker 1: appropriate question. That's a question that a lot of people ask,
Speaker 1: and a lot of people point out the truth is
Speaker 1: that Ted Kazinski does not want to be known as
Speaker 1: somebody who is mentally ill. He was given a provisional
Speaker 1: diagnosis of being schizophrenic by a quarter pointed attorney following
Speaker 1: his arrest. He has adamantly declared that he is not
Speaker 1: mentally ill. If he were to admit to the Zodiac killings,
Speaker 1: he would be unable to make that claim that he
Speaker 1: wasn't mentally ill, because there's a lot of craziness that
Speaker 1: took place with that, especially the letters following the murders.
Speaker 1: After he he turned a letter writing in lieu of killing.
Speaker 1: Once he was cited after the final canonical killing, his
Speaker 1: letters became more and more bizarre and more and more
Speaker 1: desperate because people weren't taking him seriously anymore. It appeared
Speaker 1: that he wasn't killing any longer. If he were to
Speaker 1: admit that he was the Zodiac it would put into
Speaker 1: question all of his life's work in the Unibomber manifesto
Speaker 1: and claiming that he has a purpose in what he
Speaker 1: is doing and has a reason and a justification for murder.
Speaker 1: And what specifically, Mark, do you think was the cause
Speaker 1: for you to believe that Kazynski is the Zodiac killer?
Speaker 1: Wasn't anything specific I in my research gathered together evidence
Speaker 1: of six clusters of information that linked the two. I
Speaker 1: don't know if you want to go into those, please
Speaker 1: go ahead, sure, but the first indication once I realized that,
Speaker 1: once I thought it was a crazy idea to link
Speaker 1: the two, then I recalled, oh yeah, the Zodiac included
Speaker 1: two bomb diagrams as part of his letters, and obviously,
Speaker 1: Ted Kazinski, the Unibomber, is known for his designing and
Speaker 1: either setting or sending through the mail sixteen bombs over
Speaker 1: the course of seventeen years. The bombs that the Unibomber
Speaker 1: created Kazynski as the Unibomber, were very distinctive. The FBI
Speaker 1: was able to identify them quite easily because they contained
Speaker 1: redundancies such as two dowels that would go through a
Speaker 1: pipe bomb instead of the usual one, or a backup.
Speaker 1: He was very good at what he did. He was
Speaker 1: extremely good. The two diagrams of the Zodiac bombs have
Speaker 1: either two circus or one circuit used for two reasons
Speaker 1: with a cloudy day disconnect, so the intricacy appears evident
Speaker 1: in the universe in the Zodiac bombs as well. Another
Speaker 1: cluster has to do with mathematics. The Zodiac was into codes.
Speaker 1: He sent four codes as part of his letters. What
Speaker 1: are codes? They're symbols to solve and where does coding
Speaker 1: come from? It comes not from the military, It comes
Speaker 1: from within mathematics. It's symbols, symbols that need to be solved.
Speaker 1: And so it was no surprise that Ted Kaczynski, as
Speaker 1: a mathematician, was very interested in coding and as somebody
Speaker 1: who was a little bit paranoid, he put a lot
Speaker 1: of his journaling into codes, and when he was arrested,
Speaker 1: they found codes in his cabins that the FBI said
Speaker 1: they hadn't encountered such complex codes since the Cold War,
Speaker 1: and at least one of them they would not have
Speaker 1: been able to solve if it were not for the
Speaker 1: key that was also recovered from the cabin. Well. He
Speaker 1: was a very intelligent person, extremely his IQ was measured
Speaker 1: above one hundred and sixty. He skipped two grades, one
Speaker 1: in elementary school one in high school, so he enrolled
Speaker 1: at Harvard at the age of sixteen and then became
Speaker 1: one of the youngest professors hired by UC Berkeley Math department,
Speaker 1: and he hated that job. Though didn't he he did
Speaker 1: not do well at it because he was unable to
Speaker 1: socialize with people. His students gave him horrible feedback on
Speaker 1: his lectures. They said he didn't care about his students.
Speaker 1: He ignored questions, He just plowed through the material. He
Speaker 1: read through the book and then left and didn't keep
Speaker 1: his office hours. It's interesting that he only lasted about
Speaker 1: two years when he was student teaching. When he went
Speaker 1: to get his Masters of Mathematics, he lasted two years
Speaker 1: and then gave it up so that he could focus
Speaker 1: on his doctoral work. But then once he secured a
Speaker 1: full time job with UC Berkeley, he only similarly lasted
Speaker 1: two years and then quit. What was the most important
Speaker 1: piece of information that drove you to believe that Ted
Speaker 1: Kaczynski is the Zodiac Killer? Well, that's just it. It's
Speaker 1: not one item. That's just an accumulation and stuffing. It's
Speaker 1: it's very easy to say, oh, I noticed this connection
Speaker 1: and then build a whole story around that. For me,
Speaker 1: it was studying the case for several years before I
Speaker 1: realized that a lot of it can deeal together into
Speaker 1: a single story. I'll tell you one extremely important connection,
Speaker 1: and that is the novel Secret Agent by Joseph Conrad.
Speaker 1: To me reading it, it's almost a guide for the Zodiac.
Speaker 1: It contains themes, it contains individual vocabulary items, phrases that
Speaker 1: almost seemed to be an influence on the reader to
Speaker 1: be fascinated by you're interested in or to actually go
Speaker 1: out and produce the Zodiac serial Killer. And why is
Speaker 1: that significant? Because the Secret Agent is reportedly ted Kazinski's
Speaker 1: favorite book. He wrote to his family one time that
Speaker 1: if they wanted to understand him, he was a hard
Speaker 1: person to understand, but they needed to read that book
Speaker 1: and they needed to especially take notice of a particular
Speaker 1: character the professor within that book. And Kazynski claimed to
Speaker 1: have read that book a dozen times. And I can
Speaker 1: see how rereading that book would have an influence on
Speaker 1: the letters that the Zodiac wrote. Listen to more Coast
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