Zodiac Killer /// Part 2 /// 796 | Forensic Files

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around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true crime [Music] [Applause] when it comes to the profiling of this
particular killer did you factor in or attempt to use any geological profiling when try attempting to unmask
as they say the Zodiac because typically we need at least three geological markers or locations and here with
zodiac we absolutely have four at the least I mean I mean we have our four attack and murder locations yeah um
Geographic called profiling something that uh has emerged in the 1990s looking at places that uh perpetrators live or
work in trying to from the GE geographic location of the attacks figure out where they are
comfortable with where they spend time uh some work has been done into the geographic profiling of the zodiac uh it
may not be useful in some crimes some crime spre it not um the Zodiac may have been tied to Southern California crime
scenes in which case we say well um does this say something about the individual
it is possible that the Zodiac was clever enough and criminally sophisticated to outsmart Geographic
profiling there's some thought that he may not have been living in California continuously during the crime spree um
for instance while the attacks occurred in in in Greater frequency the letters that
he spent were that he sent were were sent in different um different groupings different clusters letters were sent a
week or 10 days apart and that gives the idea that maybe the Zodiac came into town wrote a letter waited a week wrote
another letter and then took off and wasn't actually living in California if that's the case then Geographic
profiling would be precisely useless but the work that I've seen pinpoints the zodiac is living somewhere around
valo um maps have been generated of Darker regions of where he more like Al lived or worked based on where the crime
scenes took place um but that's kind of obvious because the first two crime scenes took place in or near valo what
what seems to be occurring with the zodiac is a progression toward greater visibility in other words he started in
the north bay area in uh valo which was a rather small town at the time moved to
Lake beresa which was even more remote so the early attacks took place in very vacant
remote areas and then moved to San Francisco because of the need some need for publicity where he could get uh a
greater visibility through uh Bay Area press and B the Bay Area Police Department if that was his motive then
maybe Geographic profiling says less about this type of criminal than it would about a criminal who was trying to
keep secret trying to not get caught something like the the Golden State killer or Ted Bundy or any number of
other serial killers who don't look for publicity so the zodiac is changing victims
locations and the manner in which he attacks his victims is is that is that to create
this overall um threat to society meaning this can happen anywhere anytime with any object and it doesn't matter if
you're a man or woman everybody in society could possibly be a victim that's a reasonable conclusion that uh
that seems to be um starting in a remote area and ending up in downtown or in in
the confines of San Francisco give the impression that anybody is vulnerable and that may have been either part of
his message or part of his intent to bring fear to everybody everywhere Mark in your book expose exposed you
expose who you believe the true identity of the Zodiac Killer the person you suspect of being the Killer part of
identifying the Zodiac as you include is how and why the Zodiac moniker originated so could you take us let's
start there with this part of our conversation how and why did the Zodiac moniker originate okay thank you for
mentioning the third book of my Trilogy exposed the Zodiac revealed in my first two books I do not deal with any
potential individuals the the only person I mentioned was Arthur Lee Allen because he was the the the police's
suspect early on in the investigation and the only one that they were able to look into in any great depth in the with
suspicions of being the Zodiac I deal with the the moniker of the zodiac the the name the zodiac what I found really
interesting in part of my research was that every other serial killer is given a name based on what they do where they
do it maybe how they do it may Jack the Ripper the hillside stranglers the uh um
BTK bind them torture them kill them each one of these names we know why that IND idual was given the name it it says
something about them but with the Zodiac suddenly we have this serial killer who
has a name and we don't know why this individual has this name in fact the Zodiac was given three monor monikers
within the Press prior to him giving us his own moniker he was called the cipher
Slayer or the cipher killer or the code killer each of these could have been picked up upon on picked up on by the by
the Killer and used but he didn't in August of 69 he sent a letter with the very terrifying opening line This is the
Zodiac speaking now what did that mean it sounds like a a Godlike pronouncement or possibly something that an airline
pilot would say this is your captain speaking uh it was an odd phrase especially because the Zodiac was never
known to actually say it in the instances that we have when he made telephone calls to police departments or
when he spoke to Brian and Cecilia at Lake barasa he never used that phrase he never said this is the Zodiac speaking
the only time he used that phrase was in a letter so he wasn't actually speaking
he was writing well it proved to be such a valuable tool for him that after his first use of it every other letter
essentially every other letter that he wrote following that time began with that opening catchphrase this is the
Zodiac speaking it uh it it brought palpable fear to individuals people would joke about it
in the neighborhood in the communities that he attacked um but the question is where did it come from people suspected
that maybe he had an interest in astrology um Robert greith the author of zodiac said that all of the attacks took
place within three days of celestial events in in in the heavens the problem with that is there are so many events in
the heavens that uh pretty much every date in the calendar is within three days of some winter solstice or phase of
the moon or whatever um so it remains a mystery what he meant by this is the Zodiac speaking other
than to terrify people or why he chose the name the Zodiac to identify himself and then
along with that he provided a symbol which is a Crosshair symbol a cross surrounded by a circle and some people
have said that well that just that's just a symbol referring to zodiac or all 12 signs of the zodiac but why the
killer gravitated toward it is not entirely clear in fact it's debated to this day to me this killer comes off as
he's not interested in your thoughts or not interested in society's thoughts and
so you're not going to give me a name I can only give myself a name does that does that make any sense at all yeah
yeah and then and it's not unusual BTK gave himself his name the Son of Sam David burkowitz in New York City gave
himself a name even though he was called the 44 caliber killer in the Press but it says something about an individual
who refuses a name given to him in the Press comes up with his own name but with burkowitz and with Raider we know
what the names meant and how it functioned in their lives with the Zodiac we we just don't know there's
been some susp let's say some suspects that that is is laughable and you can hear me cracking myself up there
for a second but uh I think it I want to say that it started you know I'm of a certain age so maybe it started well
before this and I'm just not aware but when I became aware of it would have been about the mid to to late 90s where
it it maybe it's something in the water out there in California but at some point it got to be where everybody and
their cousin had a uh an uncle a stepfather or their own F their biological father people coming out of
the woodwork saying oh my dad or my uncle stepfather was the Zodiac and why and a lot of times it really boiled down
to like well he looks like the composite sketch and he was a really he was a really mean guy news flash for you all
the zodiac is Way Beyond really mean guy okay it takes it takes it takes a whole
another level of hate and evil to do what he did and then go out and do it again this whole thing with and I feel
like I just keep waiting for the next person to come forward saying that it's their that it was their father um well
it reminds me a lot of the Black Dalia it's like yeah if if your father wasn't old enough to be the Black Dalia
murderer then then he's the Zodiac well there were even some that if that wasn't
good enough for you my uncle not only killed the kill was the Zodiac Killer but also was the Black Dalia killer as
well yeah just to be clear in your book exposed you're not saying your father your Uncle stepfather anybody like that
had anything to do with these killings no no I have relatives who were not always the nicest people but no I have
no serial killers in my family as far as I know person that is often mentioned the most and this goes back to Robert
Grey Smith's book zodiac unmasked and then the the movie that came out what was that 2006 or seven Zodiac movie
Seven which I I I don't know what you're you know we don't have to play ciso and
eert here but I I loved the movie and it's um it's rare or at least it used to be for a long time that a True Crime
Story made its way to a blockbuster picture like that being a true crime buff I I always enjoyed when that
happened I thought that they they carried it out very well but Arthur Lee Allen is the suspect who is often
discussed starting with Grace Smith's book and again in the movie movie as well talk about Arthur Lee Allen and and
and maybe give us even a little bit of a a short pros and cons list for for Mr Allen why is he good why does he make a
good zodiac suspect what why does he make a bad zodiac suspect well I uh love the movie Zodiac I've seen it dozens of
times probably because of the content of the movie uh it's it's a subject near and dear to my heart uh it particularly
first half hour of the movie is very accurately done there there's some Hollywood
Liberties done to that that aren't exactly correct but Fincher did a lot of effort into put a lot of effort into
making sure the costumes were accurate and um much of the dialogue was correct or reasonably correct the first half
hour of that movie gives a very accurate portrayal of the different attacks that
are recorded on film the rest of the movie is dialogue driven and so many people find it a little bit slow and the
fact that the Zodiac was never identified leaves the movie with kind of a an empty ending but I think that's all
part of the experience that who is the Zodiac and why did he kill why did he appear why did he disappear that's all
part of the Mystique but with respect to Arthur Le Allen he was the the police's uh only
real suspect in the early years of the case he was brought to the attention of uh police departments in the early in 69
while the attacks were still taking place but why precisely he was brought to the attention of the police is not
exactly known we don't know from police reports who turned them in and why but arth Allen was kind of a weird
individual so it's not surprising that he was turned into the police throughout the Bay Area every
person who was a little bit different got looked at in fact uh many many people turned in their husband or their
father or their cousin or their ex-husband or their ex-boyfriend saying oh they must be the Zodiac so thousands
of people were looked into but Arthur Lee Allen seemed to have some connections to the case that the police
could not Overlook for one he wore a watch that had a Crosshair symbol on it a zodiac
symbol that was a zodiac Seawolf watch and very few places in human society the word zodiac and the
Crosshair symbol occur together well they occur together on the watch that he wore um so maybe he
uh maybe he was drawn to that symbol for that reason uh it was also uh somebody came forward a a former coworker and
former friend of Arthur Le Allen came forward to the police and said you know Arthur Lee Allen claimed that he wanted
to kill people and he wanted to call himself the Zodiac and they he would kill strangers so that they would never
connect it with him those are the reasons why he was looked into a number of people were absolutely convinced that
Arthur Le Allen was guilty they just couldn't prove it one of whom was Robert Grey Smith who wrote the book zodiac and
then the follow-up book zodiac un masted and it was from those two books that the
movie Zodiac was comprised so um Al also Dave tusy the lead investigator for sfpd
homicide who headed up the Zodiac uh investigation for nine years he was convinced that Arthur Le Allen was
responsible but he just couldn't prove it part of the reason that Arthur Le Allen became the only suspect is because
nobody else really fit the bill and they had nobody else to look at and so he was
given an awful lot of attention um part of the problem for investigators was the fact that Arthur
Lee Allen enjoyed the attention like the Zodiac he seemed to enjoy needling the police which was not an uncommon Pastime
back in the 1960s so it it it seems in the larger picture that Arthur Le Allen was
throwing the police department's red meat of information that seemed to implicate him in the crimes that he
might be responsible and so that only tormented them more and wanted to look into his
life and his activities more at least two search warrants were executed on his on properties of
his um but no case was ever put together and it's my suspicion that uh no case could be put together because it just
wasn't him uh none of the forensics matched but at the same time the police were never absolutely certain that the
fingerprints or later DNA shred or um other information uh implicated him he's not the type of person who would be
the Zodiac at least by my mind in my my research Arthur Le Allen spent three years in custody for child
molestation well people with a sexual interest in children do not go out and kill heterosexual couples engaged in
sexual behavior in lovers Lanes areas it's just not the way serial killers think and it's not the way they work
serial killers tend to stay within their own community in other words a gay serial killer will kill gay victims a
heterosexual individual will kill heterosexual victims and a child molester is if they were to become a serial
killer will kill children for me a big reason that I was able to exclude Arthur Le Allen was because of his personality
as I have gotten to know the cases the attacks the letters choices that the Zodiac made in various times and the
contact that he had with people I came to the conclusion that he was a very cerebral person a person who was very
quiet who was um calculating but very hesitant in front of other people um there were great
stretches of time time that uh Brian hartell recorded at Lake beresa reported that the Zodiac didn't seem to know what
he was doing and didn't know what to say next um the the police officers who received the phone calls from the Zodiac
said that he appeared to be reading from a script that it wasn't a natural conversation that he was having in fact
he spoke over at least one of the individuals that he was talking with he wasn't conversing with them
that says that that's completely the opposite of the idea that we get from Arthur Lee Allen's
personality Arthur Le Allen had a kind of a verbal diarrhea where he would talk talk talk talk and he wouldn't want to
talk about the Zodiac or he wouldn't want to talk about anything that he was involved in but he would he would tell
talk about something Arthur Le Allen was the type of person who was able to get attention when he needed it when he was
in large groups of people or even small groups of people he would do something to impress other people whether it be U
he was a skilled diver a skilled swimmer but when he couldn't get positive attention he knew how to get negative
attention by making threats by appearing scary by by doing something outrageous that's exactly the opposite type of
person that the Zodiac has revealed himself to be in his attacks and in his letters it didn't help that Allen
would play into this idea that he's the Zodiac or suspected of being the Zodiac right he he almost very
boisterous would tell people I'm being investigated I'm they're looking at me because they think I'm the Zodiac and he
seemed to get an excitement or at least get something out of telling people that
and he he didn't mind as strange as it sounds he didn't mind being a air quotes zodiac suspect no he reveled in it um he
told people he was being investigated as zodiac which he was but he also told people he was incarcerated for three
years in a tasad because he was the Zodiac well he wasn't or at least that's not why he uh was incarcerated for three
years but that's what he told people he shared the trait with the Zodiac of like
to um um needle the police and U and get attention and and be this the center of
focus but that doesn't make him the [Music] Zodiac looking for Toys that'll get the
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upgrade your selling today [Music] I think of because of what he really was I mean he was a pedophile and and I
unfortunately made the mistake of reading the police reports on those the charges that he faced and the
accusations from the the boy and from from the things that he was accused of and let's be
clear convicted of he was a pretty hardcore pedophile and and especially with this this one particular victim but
I think that he I think that he enjoyed telling people that he's being investigated as the Zodiac or was locked
up for being the Zodiac because it it it was an ability it was a way of hiding or
masking who him being a pedophile which is I mean one the most disgusting criminal that that many can think of and
so I think that he thought that this I think he wanted people to think that he was something Superior some kind of
mystery something interesting I at the end of the day I think he wanted people to think that he was anything other than
what he really was and that was this pervert pedophile that's reasonable yeah what are your thoughts on I believe they
came out in 2021 the the case Breakers 40 independent investigators got together did their research and then
came out saying that they identified the Zodiac as Gary post yeah i' I've not uh
had real good feelings about the case Breakers I believe the group has grown to more than 50 now and these are um a
collection of people who have been in law enforcement or been investigators or whatnot retired police
departments and they have supposedly formed a group of of uh ex officers who want to solve
cases uh it seems to be more uh a case of a group of people wanting to be on television and wanting to be part of the
next documentary whatever that may be supposedly the case Breakers have solved the DB Cooper case they've solved the
Zodiac case they've solved other cases as well um what does it mean that 50 investigators have solved the Zodiac
case they've named a person well do all 50 of these investigators uh sign on to the fact that they believe that this is
the Zodiac because at the same time they're saying that they've solved the case they're also demanding that current
law enforcement look into the DNA possibility that there's a match between post and the Zodiac well if you know who
the zodiac is and you can prove it why are you looking for a DNA match so so there are a lot of questions in my mind
I have never seen any evidence that convinces me that post is the Zodiac um a photograph of him in that
era I think it's the 1970s or the 1980s shows evidence that post had a scar on his
forehead well the claim of this group is that that matches the the markings on the head of the
zodiac because the picture that was created in the aftermath of the Paul Stein murder shows folds or lines on the
Zodiac's forehead that seem similar to the scar that Gary post has in the photograph the problem is the original
photograph that was the original picture that was created by investigators did not have forehead lines on it and uh a a
revised picture was made when um somebody presumably a police officer said no we don't we don't give the age
between 25 and 35 we give the age between 35 and 45 so the artist felt compelled to add some age to the Zodiac
picture and Drew a couple of lines on his forehead folds of of what wrinkles may look like in his
forehead but as far as anybody could tell these were not um composed were not added because of a report that somebody
said that he had a a scar or lines in his forehead that looked a certain way so that seems to be the major point of
tie between post and the Zodiac um I I'm very skeptical if if they have more information I'd love to see
it um but from what I've seen it it appears to be someone looking for getting involved in a documentary and
and evidently the the group has already done one documentary on DB Cooper yeah well and and you can't use lines on
on a picture of someone from the Circa 67 68 69 lines on someone's forehead and compare them to a composite
sketch with lines on the suspect's forehead that's not a fingerprint by any standard and it's it's so far from a
fingerprint is Mike Mao still live do you know I don't he was interviewed in 2007 in conjunction with the 2007
release of finer movie I have not heard of news of him since because he's remained very under the surface and I
think for obvious reasons but you know in ' 92 as The Story Goes Mike mou picked
Arthur Lee Allen out of a police lineup saying that's him he's the man that shot
me I mean these case crackers case Breakers what whatever they're called U you know let's maybe maybe show uh Mike
maou or somebody that we can get better confirmations rather than some lines on on a photograph compared to lines of a
drawing of an unknown individual one theory that became rather popular when Joseph D'Angelo was identified as the
Golden State killer one someone who moved around changed the way uh change the type of crimes that he was
committing we do know that there was some level of communication from him as well mainly to victims but uh what are
your thoughts on Joseph D'Angelo being a good or bad zodiac suspect yeah he was arrested in uh early
2018 and people who know the Zodiac case immediately said no this isn't the guy uh D'Angelo was involved in three
separate criminal campaigns as a as a serial killer he uh started out as a burglar somebody who went into people's
homes and took things it wasn't uh it wasn't a matter of trying to enrich himself because he left cash that was
out in the open and took things that had very little value he started out as a burglar became a rapist and then became
a murderer somebody who killed in conjunction with his rapes the Zodiac was never known to burgle he did he was
not a rapist that had that functioned in no manner whatsoever in any of his attacks and he didn't kill in order to
cover up his crimes or to silence Witnesses or to kill people that he had first raped so therefore there's there's
very little comparison between the two the the motives seem entirely different D'Angelo did not seek attention did not
attempt to terrorize a neighborhood he did inadvertently but he attempted to stay under the radar as much as possible
the only phone calls he made or the correspondence that he had with uh with citizens was following up with victims
and ret terrorizing them by contacting them he was not known to contact the police he was not known to look for
headlines um he was not known to taunt a community and one thing we should probably point out here too in regard to
Arthur Lee Allen I mentioned the the word fingerprint here Arthur Lee Allen from my understanding was at one point
dismissed by police after fingerprint and handwriting comparisons they said at the time in 71 did not
match yeah and even the um Mike Mao's U interview with the police Poli where he met with George Bower and looked at a
lineup of uh suspects he did indicate Arthur Le Allen he said that's the man who shot me I'll never forget that as
long as I live which sounds really great it sounds like a match it sounds like hey we have him but then Mike mou turned
and looked at another picture and said yeah he had a face a little bit like this guy so um in the end Mao was only
able to give an 80% certainty that Arthur Lee Allen was responsible the fact that he indicated other pictures
had similarities to the person who attacked him uh made his identification essentially worthless uh a somebody in a
defense attorney in court would absolutely tear to shreds Mike mou trying to um say that Arthur Le Allen
was responsible in the same way a defense attorney would abs tear apart the case Breakers saying that look this
line This scar on post looks very similar to a picture on a artist created rendering of the zodiac um that's just
not usable evidence and the other thing too that makes it difficult right is the
the timing of the attack on Mike Mao it it would have been very dark at that time it's very likely that the killer
the shooter used a flashlight has he just been looking for that face in the dark for decades and finally he's being
presented with faces No that that's not the case at all at the time following the attack Mike mjo said I don't want to
look at pictures I don't want to make a composite because I only saw the killer in profile and as you said it was at
night so the lighting was bad there was a flashlight waving around likely uh striking him in the eyes as well so he
said he was not able to identify the victim identify the perpetrator he did look at a number of books and books of
of uh photographs uh of potential perpetrators he never was able to say he looked more like this guy then this guy
he just looked at them and said you know I don't recognize any of these people the identification in 1992 in no way
represents uh what Mike mou was saying you know immedi Med after the attack let's get to your suspect then because
one day you decide to write a letter to your suspect can you tell us about writing that letter why you CH you chose
to put pen to paper and who you address that letter to okay first of all I don't
like the the term suspect um it it has a legal connotation when the police department identifies somebody as a
potential perpetrator and calls them a suspect immediately that individual is granted Extra Protection under the law
and so even police departments don't like to use that word you'll notice uh police departments will say somebody is
a person of interest or somebody exists under an umbrella of Suspicion similar wording that that allows them to
continue an investigation without being worried about all of the Extra Protection that an individual has when
when um amateur detectives say they have a suspect really doesn't mean anything it means that they know a little bit
about the case and they've picked a person that they think is responsible but um probably the word suspect is is not a
good one to use what I say in my research is that I present my research conclusions what I have concluded based
on the evidence that I've gathered and the way I look at uh at the evidence and I attempt to make conclusion is based on
on facts not based on what I think a lot of times people when they say they they're suspect is so and so they're
referring to their their opinion and I've even seen people on the internet say well my top three suspects or my top
five suspects that really concerns me because that says that at least two or more people are entirely
Innocent but they're um being dragged through a a a mud of suspicion as I came to know the case um
Let me let me back up when I first looked into it I assumed that Arthur Lee Allen was responsible I did that because
of my knowledge of the case from Grace Smith's books um I figured that as I leaned into
the case and got to know the details I would either convince myself that yes indeed Arthur Le Allen was responsible
or else I would um come to know on a psychological level some perpetrator that I might never name somebody who may
have been lost to history um as I came into knowledge of the case and grew in my understanding
both of those original suppositions were were eliminated I came to believe that Arthur Le Allen had nothing to do with
it other than he liked attention the same way that zodiac did and it my research conclusions led me to somebody
who is not like to history um through great detail and looking at the case I came to the conclusion that the zodiac
is Theodore kazinski also known as the unibomber it's not a wildly popular theory on the
case but as I put together the evidence and as I collected it it occurred to me that the only way to understand the
Zodiac case is to understand its continuation as that of the unibomber and the only way to understand the
crimes of the unibomber is to understand its precedent the crimes of the zodiac serial killer the Zodiac who disappeared
in 1970 as far as anybody knew reemerged in 1978 under the guise of the unibomber a
separate and different campaign designed to look very different than that of the
zodiac and yet the similarities between the two are incredible and there appears to be a great
progression in crimes and in the need for publicity from the Zodiac that is continued on through the crimes of the
unibomber one of the things that you point out that I thought was very fascinating was when you look at
comparing serial killers there's not a ton of similarities between what what Bundy did
and what BTK did but when you compare the unibomber to the Zodiac you have a lot of similarities and and also a thing
that you you brought to my attention that I've never even heard before was not only were there letters to not only
did the Zodiac give letters but he also Drew bomb bomb diagrams and sent those out with the letters yeah on the surf
surface of it the Zodiac seems very different than the unibomber and it's led a number of professionals to lay
their professional um reputation on the line and say there is no way that the Zodiac could be Theodore kazinski
because the unibomber is so different than the Zodiac and they've gone on to say you know the Zodiac did this and the
unibomber did that and it looks entirely different the problem is what we know about the zodiac is what the Z zc wants
us to know about the Zodiac we see his attacks and we can gather information on them but the bulk of what we know about
the Zodiac we have gathered through the letters that he has sent well who says the Zodiac has to tell the truth through
his letters and with respect to the unibomber we got to know the unibomber through the the unibomber manifesto that
was sent out a year prior to Ted kazinsky arrest and a lot of people have read the
manifesto and said oh okay I get the unibomber I get the manifesto I know what he did and why he
did it well what's to say that Ted kazinski had to tell the truth in the manifesto and in fact uh there seems to
be an awful lot of deception within the manifesto and in fact his very reason for killing as the unibomber doesn't
really hold up to light when you begin to look at it in any great depth so that the truth about the Zodiac and the truth
about the uniom is an awful lot closer than people have been led to believe and people have concluded I don't believe
the media did a very good job of reading the manifesto and presenting the unibomber to the the general public um
there's a lot of misunderstanding and it led um writer Alon Chase to say every you know about
the unibomber is wrong which is quite a blatant statement but I have come to believe it that the more you look into
his life and his actions and what he has claimed about himself um a lot of it doesn't hold a lot of weight no he he
is and that's the thing that made me so damn angry about the manifesto and and look the what is we've studied and we've
studied we' put our best women and men on it we've studied serial killers what makes them tick why do they do what they
do nature virtues nurture there's no no end of what can be studied what could potentially be learned but then each
serial killer is in ways contradiction to the previous one that you studied before and but the one commonality that
they all share they're Liars the Zodiac the Zodiac was a liar Ted kazinski was a
liar whether they're one and the same it doesn't matter they were liars and the the thing the thing here is you read
that Manifesto and I'm so glad that you said that because that's the one of the things that angers me the most about the
unibomber case is oh yeah I get it I he was a man on a mission he was a mission oriented killer [ __ ] he was a holier
than thou you know uh do what I say not as I do type of type of guy at the end of the day and he he stole from his
neighbors he he fantasized about killing about shooting uh teenagers or children he he
he was he was he wasn't just scum for mailing bombs to people that maimed and and
killed he was he was scum because he was scum when he woke up in the morning and
he was scum when he went to bed every night that's that's who he was and he had a deep seated hatred for so many
people that he had to go live out in the damn Woods to be by himself and so this
look like the cap to the captain's Point earlier you you spend it um enough time
by yourself you can come up with some brilliant things to say well that's what the manifesto was he spent enough time
by himself that he could or orchestrate this and piece this whole thing together
for the rest of us to read and and and try and for a second to believe to have somewhat of an understanding of this
very flawed very complicated man who likely didn't understand his own intelligence and clearly had a lot of
problems with the emotion and with connecting on a real human level with anyone else Nick I have never heard a
more accurate description of Ted kazinski and believe me I've I've heard a lot um I'm working right now on a
rather comprehensive biography of Ted kazinski and you hit the nail on the head as far
as my research into the man he poached he was not an environmentalist he as as he seemed to
Proclaim within the the words of the manifesto John Douglas has written that um when Ted kazinski took a six-year
break from his bombing it was his prediction he claimed that Ted kazinski would work on number
one improving bombs but also number two developing a justification for what it was that he was doing so in many ways
the manifesto is a justification for his activities his murders and he has claimed that the reason that he killed
people was to give his ideas a fair hearing well the truth is a lot of people have ideas and a lot of people
want their ideas to be heard but the idea that he went out and killed people because he needed to get his message out
it was such an important message and he was such a benevolent person that he wanted to help humankind none of that
made any sense the truth is when you look very close into Ted kazinski the reason he killed is because he enjoyed
killing and so the words of the zodiac apply very closely to Ted kazinski he likes killing because it's so much fun
so if if we're on a speed date right and you had a couple minutes to make your case for Ted kazinski uni bommer being
the zodiac what what would your major points be well and I and I think has to one thing that we've not gotten into yet
here Mark is the the chronologic the Chron sorry the chronology of Ted kazinski where he was
living at the time what he was doing and then comparing that to the Zodiac the Zodiac timeline yeah to really um
connect the two it took me a 400 400 page book to uh lay out all of the evidence so so it's difficult to me to
uh to do speed dating um but I did gather the information into six or seven constellations um groups of evidence
that seem to connect the two it's been common in the Zodiac Community to notice uh a scar on the forehead or the way
somebody writes their ease or some some minor piece of evidence and then built up a a a philosophy of that convicts
this person of being the Zodiac the the evidence that I use to link the two is is gathered into quite a large
collection divided into six clusters or six constellations um with respect to timeline Ted kazinski was a professor at
UC Berkeley he was on Christmas uh vacation your Christmas break during the murder at Lake Herman Road one month
after that he abrupt sent a resignation letter to his school which really shocked his uh superiors his last day of
being a professor UC Berkeley was June the 30th 1969 four days later the Blue Rock
Springs Park murder took place after kazinski left UC Berkeley there's a two-year Gap in his life where very
little is known with specificity as to where he was what he was doing that two-year gap of time ended in July of
1971 and that's the time that Ted kazinski purchased property in Montana and began to build his cabin the bulk of
the zodiac activity happened during that two-year break the two-year Gap in Ted gazinsky life the murders the bulk of
the letters um what the Zodiac did happened during that two years following Ted kazinsky move to Montana only a
single verif IED zodiac letter was ever sent and that was sent in 1974 three years after the The Zodiacs
three years after kazinski had moved to Montana so it's entirely possible that Ted kazinski traveled to the Bay Area in
1974 and at that time sent one final zodiac letter but the six clusters that uh of information that I gathered
include bombs um some people say well you know this zodiac killed with knife and guns and the unibomber killed with
bombs and so they're very different and there's no way the two could be one but the truth is the Zodiac himself uh made
that change made that alteration in his own life following the murder of cab driver Paul Stein he sent two different
bomb diagrams to the Press saying I'm going to start killing people with the use of bombs um Ted Kaz inski in Montana
rope bomb diagrams some of that he sketched out in three dimensions exactly as the Zodiac did the Zodiac improved
from his first bomb making it into a second Revis bomb diagram and Improvement Ted kazinski improved upon
his bombs when he was in Montana the unibomber bombs were very distinctive and very easy to recognize for
investigators because they took great um great pains to put in a second failsafe uh
circuit kazinski was worried that his bombs would not work and so he often put a second circuit in the Zodiac bomb
diagrams contain two circuits or a circuit used also for a second use um so there so they're great similarities
there the Zodiac was uh had a had a strong connection to mathematics if you think of what codes are and the Zodiac
sent four codes in his letters codes are at base a mathematical operation codes are symbols that need to be solved well
Ted kazinski was a PhD mathematician who is a prodigy and a a a a worldclass mathematician as he was a professor at
UC Berkeley um if you go back and look at the Zodiac letters there's an awful lot
of mathematics within them the use of the word radians um many many symbols not only in
the not only in the codes but in the actual writing and a number of um Illusions or ideas that the writer of
the zodiac letters was a teacher a professor and a mathematician are all there so that uh I see many connections
between the two but also a great deal of effort putting into trying to make individuals look different um when Ted
kazinski was a professor and Following being a professor people knew his handwriting people had a familiarity
with him even if it was not very close and so he put a great deal of effort into disguising his handwriting and
disguising the tone with which he wrote his letters and he was a young man at the
time he was 27 at the time of the zodiac attacks as the UN bber when he was arrested a lot of people think of the
unibomber from Ted kazinsky arrest he was led out of his cabin and taken away in handcuffs at the age of 53 almost at
the age of 54 he was at a very different time in his life therefore it was very easy for Ted kazinski to present himself
differently to present himself more as he was in actuality but not entirely the unibomber did enough to mask himself so
that people didn't know that he was a a PhD Professor um and and and incidentally we discussed earlier about
the intellectual level of the zodiac and how that's a hotly debated issue Ted kazinski as the unibomber did a
fantastic job of presenting himself as possibly a bluecolor worker somebody who didn't have a lot of
Education in other words uh Ted kazinski was presenting himself in his letters and in his Communications and in his
Manifesto as somebody who was not as intelligent as he actually was but somebody who was trying to
convince the investigation that he was more intelligent than he was so investigators kind of snickered and said
yeah here's this dumb bluecollar worker trying to present himself as more more intelligent than he is but we know that
he's only a blue color worker whereas it seems that the Zodiac did very much the
same thing presented himself as somebody who wasn't very intellectual somebody who couldn't spell very well somebody
who didn't have good penmanship but at the same time tried to throw in words like radians and photo electric to get
investigators to think that he was a dumb person masking himself as somebody who was more intelligent than he
actually was when you talk about his handwriting I I noticed some of Ted kazinsky letters if you look at that
actual letter compared to how he addresses the letter almost looks like two two separate people um how do you
mean how he addresses his letter do you mean the handwriting yeah so like the handwriting when he is putting the
address and everything is like in all caps and and has one style you know any graphic artist or whatever would go well
this is one font and then when he writes the letter it's almost in a completely different font yeah Ted kazinski
addressed envelopes in a block letter and uh his brother David kazinski claimed that uh his whole life at least
since the time that the two of them were corresponding his brother Ted always addressed his envelopes in Block
lettering zodiac did the same the Zodiac printed almost everything that he ever wrote which for the 1960s was a little
6s and 70s was a little bit odd because most people knew cursive and use cursive
it's not in Vogue today it's not being taught any longer but people generally wrote in cursive the Zodiac never did
and neither did Ted kazinski I corresponded with him for about two years and all of his letters to me the
envelopes were in Block lettering and the letters themselves sometimes page page after page were done in a very
careful printing the only cursive that I ever received from kazinski was his uh signature at the end of a line where he
wrote Ted kazinski in a very small script you mentioned John Douglas uh legendary retired FBI agent in criminal
profiler John Douglas earlier we've had the privilege of interviewing him several times here in on in the garage
but you you mentioned what he said about Ted kazinski now let's go back and compare that to what he said about the
unidentified the unknown killer who he profiled the Zodiac Killer when he profiled the Zodiac Killer yeah he um
profiled he actually had the Zodiac Case Files on his desk for only a single day
back in the 1970s his hups assigned him to work on the Zodiac case for no apparent reason gave him the
files and he started to work on them the very next day the same files were removed from him and they said no we
don't want you to work on this any longer you need to work on something else he wasn't sure why he uh he was
given the case or why the case was taken away it was never explained to him but he said something very interesting he
said that that the Zodiac was more intelligent than he let on in his letters and that the Zodiac had the
meticulousness of a bomb maker I thought that was really interesting even despite
the messy script that the Zodiac wrote John Douglas realized there was a certain amount of skill and intricacy to
what it was that the Zodiac was doing I don't believe he ever made the case that
uh kazinski was the Zodiac in fact he has written on both the unibomber and on the I andon kazinski said many of the
same things about the two of them but has never um made the leap of saying that they were the same person yeah as
far as suspects go or sorry Persons of Interest go he was more willing to work the angle of words that were said by the
Zodiac Killer when interacting with the victims at Lake berasa and maybe clues that he dropped or of course he could be
lying but even if he were to have been lying he had to have some knowledge of what it was that he was saying at the
the time there yeah I believe Douglas came down on the fact that uh the perpetrator was Arthur
Le Allen or somebody similar to him somebody somebody who was ineffective and socially incompetent one of the
bigger arguments against Ted kazinski being the zodiac is that well after he was apprehended of course they took
apart his the Little Shack that he was living in piece by piece with all the books that were in there with him and
went through everything I I mean you want to talk about really throwing a guy in all of his belongings underneath a
microscope that's exactly what they did and got several different sets of eyes to review and use that microscope to to
look at everything with this guy and so the argument would be well they never found anything once they apprehended him
to link him or to say that he was or suggestive that he was the Zodiac Killer but then you can take that same argument
and apply it to Arthur Lee Allen as well I mean he he's I I might be a little incorrect on
some of the details here but Arthur Lee Allen at the the age of 52 I think it was suffers a heart attack calls for
help in the paramedics arrive at his house and so a lot of Arthur Lee Allen's belongings and things were gone through
because it it wasn't like he was didn't become a suspect or a person of interest
until after he had passed and then later they had to go back and go well we missed out on this one no he was he was
alive and well for a large part of when people were considering him as a possibility for being the Zodiac yeah I
ironically what you say is absolutely true they looked at his his belongings Ted kazin's belongings and found nothing
to specifically forensically tie him to being the Zodiac but ironically the search of his cabin is another of the
clusters of evidence of showing a familiarity between kazinski and the Zodiac when they took apart kazinsky
cabin they found many books they found disguises that consisted of glass sunglasses and a hood because you know
the Z the the unob bomber used a a hood and sunglasses as part of his disguise they also found codes they also found
bum creation material these are precisely the things that we would expect to find
in the home of the zodiac were he to be arrested and his belongings gone through
if you think of um the home of Ted of of Ted Bundy or the home of Gary Ridgeway the uh Green River Killer or the home of
John Wayne gasy any of these individuals would not be expected to have disguise es because as far as we know none of
them wore disguises there would not be any codes and in fact no codes were found in these
individuals we would not expect to find a lot of books um and yet these are precisely the things that we would
expect to see from the Zodiac and these are the classifications the the the types of things that were taken from the
uni bomber's cabin once he was arrested and am I correct by thinking though two Ted kazinski moves across the country to
go to school moves back across the country and then moves far again so I would I would expect that he wouldn't
have many personal belongings from his past if any yeah and and in connection with that kazinski was very meticulous
about all of his belongings he attempted to distance himself from a lot of his Crimes by um purging his his uh
belongings of things he he categorized everything in his life and with respect to incriminating evidence he would list
something by how incriminating it was what needed to be done with it um did it need to be burned could it be buried um
is it mildly embarrassing to him or is it completely incriminating in um felonious behavior
and and because he wrote a lot about this a lot of things in his possession just a lot of things disappeared from
his possession before he was arrested he wrote about uh how he would destroy things and how he would hide things and
what he would do to prevent himself from being caught so while when he was arrested there was an awful lot of
evidence of him being the unibomber there was not evidence of other crimes he had committed in his life and that
gives us the idea that he may have entirely purged his life of the zodiac crimes if he was responsible
one of one of uh his greatest fears and he wrote about this regularly and his uh
his brother confirmed this he did not want to be considered mentally ill even though he was diagnosed as having
schizophrenia with paranoia at least on a provisional basis through the courts after he was
arrested as many schizophrenics he attempted to present himself to the public as somebody who was entirely sane
he was afraid of his life's work the manifesto not being believed or being ridiculed because maybe he was insane
maybe he was crazy mentally maybe he suffered from a mental illness um his whole life this is something he fought
against his father compared him to a coworker who suffered from schizophrenia and ended up being in uh
institutionalized as a result of it Ted kazinski appears to have fought against the whole notion that he was insane um
following the death of the the murder of Paul Stein when he became a letter writer because he was not killing any
longer the Zodiac's letters became more and more desperate and more and more ridiculous and bizarre and people
stopped taking them very seriously because well he wasn't killing anymore and what he was writing about just was
starting to be silly so it appears that the Zodiac wrapped up that campaign and completely rid himself of it um for fear
that he would be considered mentally ill one thing that when we started this when
the captain and I started True Crime garage we were eager to we were already into True Crime and eager to be a part
of the True Crime Community but one thing that that that I've never liked you know I like to have the open
discussion these cases are unsolved for a reason we don't know until we know and
so I've never found it to be I found it to be very off-putting when someone says
oh don't present me with your person of interest because you know I got my own Theory and yet some of those people if
you don't like their guy then you're wrong and they don't want to have a conversation but the thing that annoys
me so much with so and it's very few people but but some of those same people will then later look at investigations
and go well the cops locked in on a on a suspect too quickly and then they built
their case around around that guy well essentially if if you've locked in on a guy and you're not willing to have
conversations about another guy then you're doing the exact same thing and I know you're not of that type you're
willing to have other conversations and and look you're presenting a theory and I I enjoy the theory I think that Ted
looks as good for this as anyone else uh he's he's a better he's a better person
of interest than a lot of other ones he separates himself from a lot of individuals simply because we know he's
capable of murder we know that he had murder on his mind and he successfully did it whether he was the Zodiac or not
so that sets him apart from a large portion of the population and this this whole idea clearly it look it was it was
not lost on us we didn't we didn't broadcast this or shout it from the mountain tops when we covered zodiac in
2021 but one thing we did with it was purposefully done was that we covered zodiac in five episodes the Tylenol
murders and two the unibomber and two and all of those episodes ran between the episode numbers of 470 and 483 so
there there was reason for putting those Nine episodes with in a 14 episode batch
so I I love the theory before we wrap up here Mark please tell everybody where they can get your books or where they
can find you my books are available as they say wherever books can be found um with respect to the Zodiac I've written
the Zodiac serial killer Trilogy which consists of hunted profiled and exposed and three weeks ago I released my
Memoirs entitled obsessed my Relentless pursuit of the Zodiac Killer some of the
interesting material that you'll find in my most recent book is how I came to acquire and own the unib bombers cabin
Library also how I corresponded with Ted kazinski across two years kazinski of course passed away in June of last year
he took his own life Behind Bars um partially because he had been diagnosed with cancer and was in the late stages
of uh his life I can be contacted through my website dru.com doct hewitt.com and I enjoy interacting with
other people answering questions or um just discussing the Zodiac case and uh I I really appreciate the opportunity to
be here and to talk with the two of you well and now we want to thank you for joining us as well and now the three of
us will leave the garage together we're going to walk to the nearest bar and consume as many Aqua Velva cocktails as
we can together so thanks Mark for joining us I know that this uh it will be something really to enjoy by the the
listeners and it's a lot of a lot of uh thought will be brought forward and and be had because of our conversation here
today so thank [Music] you want to thank you so much for joining us here in the garage thanks for
telling your mother thanks for telling your brother thanks for sharing the cases on social media it means the world
Colonel do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful beautiful listeners yes please Captain we have
plenty of recommended reading for you this week that's because the great Mark HT who you heard with us here in the
garage this week he's got four count them one two three four books all centered around the Zodiac and his
investigation and Research into this still unsolved case so look for Mark htt's books all on the Zodiac you can go
to our website and check out our recommended page we'll have them listed there for you and while you're there
make sure you sign up on the mailing list and until next week be good be kind and don't litter
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Zodiac Killer /// Part 2 /// 796

Part 2 of 2

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This is the Zodiac speaking… the words of a killer. The haunting words of a killer determined to terrorize and taunt the public in and around the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 60s and early 70s. We featured this case at length a few years back with “The Zodiac” parts 1 through 5. Those episodes are available for your listening pleasure and are True Crime Garage episodes #470 to #474, released March 9th through March 17th 2021. This week we revisit one of the most infamous unsolved and unidentified serial killer cases in all of True Crime. The Zodiac killer serial murder case. To help us further investigate we are joined by Zodiac expert Dr. Mark Hewitt. Mark has authored a Zodiac trilogy with his series The Zodiac Serial Killer. The trilogy is available everywhere you buy books with books: Hunted - The Zodiac Serial Killer - book one - The Zodiac Murders Profiled - The Zodiac Serial Killer - book two - The Zodiac Examined Exposed - The Zodiac Serial Killer - book three - The Zodiac Revealed Now his book Obsessed: my relentless pursuit of the Zodiac killer is available.

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Brief Summary

Mark Hewitt discusses the Zodiac Killer's identity, geographic profiling, and connections to Ted Kaczynski in this episode of True Crime Garage.

Key points

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Welcome to True Crime Garage. Join hosts Nick and Captain as they dive into chilling true crime stories.
The Zodiac Killer's Moniker. Explore the origins and implications of the Zodiac Killer's infamous name.
The Zodiac Suspect's Confession. The suspect reveled in being seen as the Zodiac, masking his true nature.
Case Breakers' Controversial Claims. A group of investigators claims to have identified the Zodiac, raising skepticism.
The Unibomber Connection. A theory suggests the Zodiac is the Unibomber, highlighting similarities in their crimes.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Gather around, grab a chair, grab a beer, let's talk some true crime!

Invitation to discuss true crime

3:45WatchOct 23, 2024

Tension

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