We continue our examination of the Zodiac killer who terrorized California in the late 60s. Jimmy Akin and Dom Bettinelli looks at this extensive correspondence with newspapers and his bizarre claims ask why he wanted so much attention.
Jimmy Akin Podcast
The Zodiac Killer Letters [or Codes? Games?] - Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World
Jimmy Aiken's mysterious world is brought to you by the Star Quest Production Network and is made possible by our many generous patrons. If you'd like to support the podcast, please visit sqpn.com/give. Previously on Jimmy Aiken's mysterious world. Beginning in late 1968, a serial killer began terrorizing the San Francisco Bay Area. He called himself the Zodiac. In addition to killing people, he carried on an extensive correspondence with various newspapers and individuals. He sent taunting letters and cards that dared the police to catch him. He issued threats that terrified the community and he sent cryptograms that, when decoded, described a bizarre set of beliefs. This all made the Zodiac arguably the most famous solo serial killer in American history. But what motivated him? Why did he commit his bizarre crimes? And who was the Zodiac? The next incident took place on March 22nd, 1970. A woman named Kathleen Johns was driving up to visit her mother from Southern California. And she was passing through Modesto about 90 minutes east of San Francisco. Kathleen was a young mother. She had her infant daughter with her in the car. And she was also seven months pregnant with her second child. At about 11 p.m., she noticed a car behind her. The driver was honking his horn and flashing his lights trying to get her to pull over. At first, she didn't. But eventually she did, since she was driving an old car and thought the other driver might be trying to warn her of a mechanical problem. When she stopped, the driver got out, came up to her window and said that her back wheel was wobbly. He offered to fix it for her. Over the next few minutes, he adjusted the lug nuts on her wheel and she went back to driving. But something was seriously wrong with the car now. And when Kathleen investigated, she discovered that her wheel was dangerously loose with only two of the five lug nuts still on it. The other driver was still nearby and he backed up and offered to drive her to an Arco gas station up ahead. She got her daughter and they started driving to the station. Only the man didn't take her to the station. He kept going. In fact, he kept driving for nearly two hours and started taking them down back roads. At one point, he said, "You know you're going to die. You know I'm going to kill you." You're listening to episode 330 of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World, where we look at mysteries from the twin perspectives of faith and reason. In this episode, we're talking about the Zodiac Killer and the letters he sent. I'm Dom Bethanelli and joining me today is Jimmy Akin. Hey Jimmy. Howdy Dom. Last week, we began looking at the Zodiac Killer, who was active in Northern California in the late 1960s. We've already looked at his canonical crimes. That is the ones that are universally recognized as committed by him. This week, we're going to look at the extensive correspondence he conducted with newspapers. What are you right? What bizarre things did he claim and why did he want so much attention? That's what we'll be talking about on this episode of Jimmy Akin's Mysterious World. Jimmy, what do we need to say to begin? Well, as always in a true crime episode, we're going to be keeping things clinical. We won't be trying to scare or induce fear in the audience. In fact, now that we're past the canonical Zodiac crimes, we're past the worst of the material, but parents should still make prudent decisions for their families. So last week, we closed on something of a cliffhanger at around 11 p.m. on March 22nd, 1970. A woman named Kathleen Johns was driving through the Modesto, California area. She had her infant daughter with her in the car and she was seven months pregnant. When another car appeared behind her, flashing its lights and honking its horn. What happened next? Kathleen was driving an old car and thought the driver might be trying to signal her of a mechanical problem. So she pulled over. The other driver told her that her back wheel was wobbly and offered to tighten it. But when Kathleen started driving again, she discovered a wheel was dangerously loose and only had two of its five lug nuts still on it. The other driver was still nearby and he offered to drive her to a gas station. But the man didn't take her to a gas station. He kept going. In fact, he kept driving for nearly two hours and started taking them down back roads. At one point, he said, you know, you're going to die. You know, I'm going to kill you. He directed her to throw her infant daughter out the window, which she naturally didn't do. Eventually, the man turned the wrong way onto an interstate exit ramp and he was forced to stop the car and back up. Kathleen took the baby and leapt out, running into a nearby field and hiding in an irrigation ditch. The man got out of his car with a flashlight and started looking for her, but a passing truck driver stopped to see what was going on, causing the man to get back in his car and drive off without saying anything. Once Kathleen was safe in the police station, she saw a wanted poster that with the police artist sketch of the zodiac. And immediately, she identified him as the man who had kidnapped her and her daughter. While at the police station, some officers reported that they had discovered Kathleen's car, which had been set on fire, apparently in frustration by the zodiac. The next month, on April 20, 1970, the zodiac sent a new letter in which he offered a new cipher that he said contained his name. What can you tell us about this? The new letter is significant for more than one reason and not just because the my name is cipher and to understand why we need a bit of background. On February 16, 1970, an unknown person left a cardboard box on a window sill outside of the San Francisco Police Department's Park Station. Inside the box was a pipe bomb. And when it went off, it injured nine police officers, one of whom died. People wondered if the zodiac may have been responsible, though we were just coming out of the 1960s and there were lots of bombings going on at the time. In April, the zodiac sent his next letter and he said, this is the zodiac speaking. By the way, have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name is. And he then gave a 13 letter cryptogram that has been become known as the zodiac 13 or Z 13 cipher. The letter continued. I am mildly serious as to how much money you have on my head now. I hope you do not think that I was the one who wiped out that blue meanie with a bomb at the cop station, even though I talked about killing schoolchildren with one. It just wouldn't do to move in on someone else's territory. But there is more glory in killing a cop than a kid because a cop can shoot back. I've killed 10 people to date. It would have been a lot more except that my bus bomb was a dud. I was swamped out by the ring we had a while back. The new bomb is set up like this. And there was a bomb diagram that has been said to be better than the last one. He finished. P s. I hope you have fun trying to figure out who I killed. He also closed with zodiac equals 10 SFPD equals zero. So he was now claiming to have 10 victims. The thing that attracts everybody's attention to this letter is the z 13 or my name is cipher. Many have been skeptical that it contains his name and they think that he may have just been pulling people's chains and he may well have been. But there is at least an argument to the contrary. Michael Cole argues the my name is cipher is almost certainly a six month anniversary response to an article that appeared in the examiner on October 22nd, 1969. Entitled cipher expert dares zodiac to tell name. The article documents the president of the American Cryptogram Association doctors DCB Marsh, the same man who validated the hardened solution to the 408 laying down a challenge to the zodiac. In Marsh's own words, I invite zodiac to send it to the American Cryptogram Association, a cipher code, however complicated, which will truly and honestly include his name for study by myself and my colleagues in the association. Dr. Marsh asked the zodiac to provide a cipher that encrypted his true name. The killer responded, albeit later than most would have expected with a cipher that he introduced via the phrase. My name is zodiac did things on a six month and 12 month basis on anniversaries or near anniversary. So it's possible he was responding to Dr. Marsh's challenge, whether he would really encode his name as another matter. Unfortunately, the Z13 cipher is so short that there's virtually no way to decode it. There are too many possible solutions and not enough data to establish one as uniquely correct. Of course, that hadn't stopped people from trying, but none have been confirmed so far and none are likely to be unless we're able to figure out zodiac's true name another way and reverse engineer the cipher he used in this case. In the letter, the zodiac also denies responsibility for the bomb that killed the officer at the police station. You think that's significant? I think it's very significant. There's a big debate about how many people zodiac killed. Ultimately, he'd claimed to have killed 37 people, most of whom were never identified, but there's widespread suspicion that he was inflating the numbers with nameless, non-existent victims and that may well be the case. However, there's a related theory that says he also falsely took credit for some actual real crimes with victims whose names are known. This letter counts as evidence against that theory. If he simply wanted to grab all the credit he could, zodiac could easily have claimed responsibility for the pipe bomb that killed the police officer that people already suspected he was behind and he didn't do that. That suggests that whatever number games he may or may not have been playing with non-existent crimes, he didn't claim credit for actual specific crimes that other people had committed. It's also noteworthy that he admitted this in this letter that his bus bomb plan didn't work and that means he was admitted he was capable of failure and so he'd come up with a similar new plan for a bus bomb. But there's something that we need to mention at this point because it plays into zodiac's next communication. While the newspapers had published at the police's request, his original threat to shoot out the front tire of a school bus, the papers had not published any of his bus bomb threats so the public had no idea about those. They weren't being scared by them as a result and that was getting on zodiac's nerves. It just a few days later on April 28th, 1970, the zodiac mailed another not actually very funny greeting card to the Chronicle. It's become known as the dragon card. What did it involve? The front of the card had a picture of an old time prospector sitting on donkey, the type of animal otherwise known as an ass. The prospector is sitting on his donkey, his ass, and it says sorry to hear. And when you open the card, it says your ass is a dragon. With another prospector sitting on top of a dragon, a not so clever play on the phrase your ass is dragon meaning you're moving too slow. So another lame joke ribbon the police for not catching him. That much was all printed on the card by the greeting card company, but zodiac himself wrote inside the card. If you don't want me to have this blast, you must do two things. One, tell everyone about the bus bomb with all the details. Two, I would like to see some nice zodiac buttons wandering around town. Everyone else has these buttons like peace sign buttons, black power, Melvin eats rubber, etc. Well, it would cheer me up considerably if I saw a lot of people wearing my button. Please know nasty ones like Melvin's. Thank you. He thus threatened to set off an actual bomb unless the press released his previous bus bomb material so that the public could be scared by it. On the police's advice, the papers did so they told the public, but it had been so many months since he had threatened to do the bus to do a bus bombing and he hadn't. And he'd even admitted failure that people weren't that scared. Certainly not as much as they would have been if the press had released the bus bomb threats when he first sent him. What's with his desire to see people walking around San Francisco with zodiac buttons? Pin on buttons that you'd wear on your shirt or your jacket or your hat were a big part of the culture at this time. And the zodiac was right. There were all kinds of buttons people were wearing all the time. And he said he wanted to see people wearing nice zodiac buttons, which in their simplest form would presumably just be the, you know, could just be the round circle with a superimposed plus sign. If he saw people wearing these, he said he wouldn't set off a bomb. Was he serious about wanting people to wear buttons advertising a serial killer? Yeah, there's there is some evidence that we'll get to in a bit that suggests he was serious. And it's not as crazy as it might sound. Charles Manson and the Manson family, who we discussed in episode 54, had been caught a few months earlier and they were awaiting trial. While they were at trial, Charles Manson kind of became a counterculture folk hero for a while, even though he was a multiple murder mastermind. And people were wearing stuff that tied into Manson, you know, like t-shirts with his face and buttons and things like that. So it wouldn't be unreasonable for zodiac to think that he might be able to get something similar going. He may have even seen early rumblings of the Manson as folk hero phenomena felt jealous and wanted to get a piece of the action to what about the nasty Melvin eats blubber buttons he mentioned. Those weren't real, of course, but they're a sign that he may have become annoyed with Melvin belly. Melvin eats blubber is close to an actual button that did exist. However, a popular button of the period read Shakespeare eats bacon, a reference to the theory that William Shakespeare's plays were written by Sir Francis Bacon, something we'll discuss in a future episode. Well, when the Shakespeare eats bacon button was a hit, the manufacturer released another button that said Herman Melville eats blubber or even just Melville eats blubber Herman Melville be in the author of the whale centered novel Moby Dick and whales being a source of blubber. The zodiac apparently saw Melvin Melville eats blubber buttons and decided to twist it into Melvin eats blubber to spite Melvin belly who was a bit of a hefty guy. What evidence emerged that zodiac might be serious about the buttons? It started to emerge in the next letter that he sent. First though, we need to mention another crime that was committed. On June 19th, 1970, San Francisco police officer Richard Ratatich was out alone on his patrol performing traffic duties. And this was one of the few kinds of police work where you could at the time go alone. At 525 a.m., he was right in the citation for a vehicle that was lacking a 1970 license tag. And he was sitting in his cruiser as he was doing that. An unknown person approached him and shot him three times through the driver's side window with a 38 caliber handgun before speeding away in another car. He was the only person, not just the only policeman, but the only person killed in San Francisco area in this time in this fashion. But then a week later on June 26th, 1970, the zodiac mailed another letter in which he said, "This is the zodiac speaking." I had become very upset with the people of San Fran Bay Area. They have not complied with my wishes for them to wear some nice zodiac symbol buttons. I promised to punish them if they did not comply by annihilating a full school bus. But now school is out for the summer. So I punished them another way. I shot a man sitting in a parked car with a 38. Then he wrote the zodiac symbol with a 12 next to it and SFPD zero indicating that he now claimed to have attacked 12 people while the San Francisco Police Department was still coming up zero, not having caught him. Zodiac also included a map of the Bay Area and said, "The map coupled with this code will tell you where the bomb is set. You have until next fault to get up." And zodiac included a 32 character cryptogram known as the zodiac 32 or Z 32 cipher. It would be the last cipher that he sent. Zodiac did mention the buttons again in this letter, but we still haven't gotten to the evidence that he was really serious about him. He does appear to claim credit for the death of Officer Radotich. And since he recently denied responsibility for the death of another officer, I think that's evidence he's telling the truth here. I think he did kill Officer Radotich. Most significantly for the future direction of the case, he included a map of the Bay Area and the code. On the map, he had put his zodiac symbol over the peak of a mountain known as Mount Diablo or Mount Devil. He also numbered the four points of the sign as 0, 3, 6, and 9. And he added a note explaining that 0 is to be set to magnetic north rather than geographical north. Supposedly, if you decode the Z 32 cipher, you could use the map to find where he's buried a bomb, which was otherwise set to blow up a school bus the next fall when school resumed. Zodiac's next letter was mailed almost a month later on July 24, 1970. What did it have to say? This one was quite short. He said, this is the zodiac speaking. I'm rather unhappy because you people will not wear some nice zodiac symbol buttons. So I have a little list starting with the woman plus her baby that I gave a rather interesting ride for a couple hours, one evening, a few months back that ended in my burning her car where I found them. Once again, he's talking about the buttons with his symbol on him. And this time he claims credit for the Kathleen John's abduction and for burning her car when he wasn't able to kill her. With both John's and zodiac identifying him as the culprit, I consider that basically confirmed. I think he was very likely the one responsible. And by the way, notice the phrase he used saying he has a little list that phrase will be coming back. The next letter, which was five pages long, was mailed just two days later on July 26, 1970. What did he have to say this time? He wrote, this is the zodiac speaking, being that you will not wear some nice zodiac symbol buttons. How about wearing some nasty zodiac buttons or any type of zodiac buttons that you can think of? If you do not wear any type of zodiac buttons, I shall, on top of everything else, torture all 13 of my slaves that I have waiting for me and paradise. Some I shall tie over ant hills and watch them scream, plus twitch and squirm. Others shall have pine splinters driven under their nails, plus then burned. Others shall be placed in cages, plus fed salt beef until they are gorged. Then I shall listen to their pleas for water. And I shall laugh at them. Others will hang by their thumbs, plus burn in the sun. Then I will rub them down with deep heat to warm them up. Others I shall skin them alive, plus let them run around screaming. And all billiard players, I shall have them play in a dark ended dungeon, all with crooked cues, plus twisted shoes. Yes, I shall have great fun inflicting the most delicious pain to my slaves. This is the first two pages of the five page letter and what they had to say. He mentions the buttons again, and this is the fourth consecutive communication in which he's mentioned them, which would suggest he's serious. Further notice that the zodiac says that since people aren't willing to wear nice zodiac buttons, he's now willing to accept nasty zodiac buttons or any type of zodiac buttons people might want to wear. This willingness to compromise is notable evidence that he was telling the truth about wanting to see people wearing the buttons. He's basically admitted to a kind of vulnerability by backing down from the demand for nice buttons. It's like saying he's desperate for attention and is willing to take the attention even if it's nasty attention or any type of attention from the public. He's revealing himself as emotionally needy. He then threatens to torture his slaves in paradise and it's hard to know what to make of that. He might really have believed his slave theory or he may have just been saying stuff in an effort to bolster a possible future insanity defense. But in describing what he'll do to his slaves, he mentions putting billiard players in a dungeon with twisted cues, meaning twisted pool cues, you know, the sticks you use to play the game. And to any Gilbert and Sullivan fan, like me, that is immediately recognizable. Now, these days, there aren't that many people who know Gilbert and Sullivan's work thoroughly. But back in the 60s, there were a lot more. In fact, I remember watching an episode of the Brady Bunch once where the father of the family, Mike Brady brings home a new vinyl record album he's just bought and the kids are saying, what did you just buy? What did you just buy? And he responds by saying, a wandering menstrual eye, a thing of shreds and patches. Okay, that's the opening line for Nankipoo's introduction song in the Mikado. And the writers of the show assumed the audience would be so familiar with Gilbert and Sullivan that they could introduce Mike Brady, having bought a Gilbert and Sullivan album just by quoting the lyrics to one of the songs. So back in the 60s, a lot more people knew Gilbert and Sullivan. Well, in in their most famous operator, the Mikado, the zodiac has just referred to a song that's sung by the emperor of Japan or the Mikado himself. In the song, the Mikado is singing about how he's working to adjust to Japan's laws so that the punishment fits the crime. And he's going to make all of the punishments ironic so that they fit the crimes in amusing ways. Mind you, he's not talking about torture and slaves in the afterlife. He's talking about having an earthly criminal justice system that serves up ironically amusing punishments. In the play, the Mikado sings, the billion charm whom anyone catches his tombs extremely hard. He spayed to dwell in a dungeon cell on a spot that's always bad. And there he plays extravagant matches in fitless finger stalls. On a cloth, I'm true with a twisted cue. I've been licked for a minute. My object won't supply my child the chief in time to let the punishment fit the crime. The punishment fit the crime and make his prison a pant. I'm wheeling the represent. I'll solve something this and bury it, I'll feel this and bury it in. My contrast, the zodiac says that he'll have all billiard players, that is, players of the game a pool play in a darkened dungeon with crooked cues and twisted shoes instead of in a dungeon cell with twisted cues. By referring to this song, the zodiac is veering off into Gilbert and Sullivan and he keeps doing so. I remember how in the previous letter, he said he had a little list. That's a reference to another song from the Mikado, which is sung by the cheap tailor Coco who has been appointed Lord High Executioner. The joke is that Coco is a totally squeamish man and there is no way he will ever be able to execute anybody, making him completely unsuited to be the Lord High Executioner, which is in fact why he was appointed. He'll never kill anybody and he won't ever be able to sum up the nerve to do so. So by appointing him Lord High Executioner, there will be no more executions. Nevertheless, he has a little list of people who he theoretically can kill if the need ever arises for an execution to take place and the list is a series of jokes about people with habits that Coco finds annoying. Here is part of that song. [Music] As I mentioned, the current zodiac letter, which has become known as the Mikado letter, is five pages long. He spent two pages getting to this point and then he spends the final three pages mangling, adapting and misspell in the song by Coco. I won't subject you to all that, but it's just the zodiac's recycled and rewritten version of the song, which tells us other than that zodiac was a Gilbert and Sullivan fan that he envisioned himself as a real life version of Coco, the Lord High Executioner. Only whereas in the play Coco is a purely comic figure who can't kill anybody, zodiac is anything but. Does he say anything else of note in the letter? Yeah, at the end he has a postscript, which says "PS, the Mount Diablo code concerns radians, plus number inches along the radians." Radians are a measure that you may remember from high school or college geometry. Angles are or trigonometry. Angles are measured in how many radians wide or narrow they are. A radian is equal to the radius of a circle, hence the name. And since a circle's circumference is two times pi times its radius, a circle of 360 degrees has two pi radians in it. Here, zodiac is given a clue for how to crack the Z32 cipher and apply it to the map he sent with the circle centered on Mount Diablo. Did anyone ever crack the Z32 code and figure out where the site should be on the map? And nobody has come up with a solution that's universally considered to be right, but there have been attempts. In his books, the zodiac revisited Michael Cole, proposed this solution and he makes an interesting case. Zodiac ciphers.com also has a really interesting solution and theirs suggests that the map site was the Ingleside police station, making it another joke at the police at the police's expense by zodiac. So it's like, where do I bury the bomb? Under the Inglewood police station. I'm interested in possible solutions and still considering them, but at this point, I'm not convinced by any. With zodiac sending all these letters, were the police able to get any forensic evidence off of them at the time? Yeah, the SFPD crime lab reported. Eight latent fingerprints were developed from one of the letters. These prints were our from two different pages. It is possible to determine the pattern of each of the prints. All are individually identifiable with the possible exception of the print that is believed to be the right little finger. Six of the latent prints were developed on the letter in a position that indicates they are impressions of the middle, ring, and little fingers of the right and left hand. Two of the latent prints may be of the thumb or index finger of the right and left hand. Elimination prints have been obtained of all the persons connected with the newspaper and the police department who could have possibly handle the letters. The latent prints have not been eliminated. So it looked like they had some plausible zodiac prints from the letters. Couldn't some of those have been from other people who touched the paper either before or after zodiac sent the letters? It's hypothetically possible, but that possibility is decreased by the fact that the FBI determined that one of the prints on the letter was similar to a bloody print left by left on Paul Stein's taxicab. That would suggest that both of these prints really were from the zodiac. After the maccato letter, which was really long, zodiac's next communication was very short, just a postcard. It was mailed on Monday, October 5th to the San Francisco Chronicle. And it was produced using a cut and paste method with text cut out of the Chronicle itself and pasted to a three by five inch index card. It's known as the crackproof card and it read, Dear editor, you'll hate me, but I've got to tell you the pace isn't any slower. In fact, it's just one big 13. He then had the number 13 with a cross underneath it. And next to that, it said, some of them fought. It was horrible. He then signed it zodiac and included his special zodiac symbol. He also included a PS that was upside down. But when you turned it right side up, it read, PS, there are reports city police pick cops are closing in on me. F K, I'm crackproof. What is the price tag now? He thus describes himself as crackproof, meaning they won't be able to catch him. And he asks what the price tag or bounty on his head is now. Interestingly, he uses the letters F and K as an apparent abbreviation for the F word, as if he a killer is too modest or hesitant to say the F word. One other interesting aspect of this card is that he used a hole punch to punch 13 holes in the letter, one for each of his claimed victims. Later that month, zodiac mailed one of his most famous pieces of correspondence, a Halloween card sent to Chronicle reporter Paul Avery. And this was unusual because normally he wrote to the editor of whatever paper he was writing, but Paul Avery was the principal reporter that had been pen and stories about the zodiac in the newspaper. And he obviously had caught the killer's attention. True to form, zodiac deliberately misspelled Paul Avery's name as Paul Averley with an L on the envelope. For some reason, he also underlined the L and Paul and the AV and Averley. The postmark on the envelope indicates that it was mailed in San Francisco on October 27, 1970, just before Halloween. And in the upper left hand corner of the envelope where the return address normally goes, there was a strange symbol. It was sort of like a wide V shape with a short single line coming off its left hand side and two short lines coming off its right hand side, making it look kind of like you stuck an upside down letter L and an F together to form the V. It also had four dots to inside the base of the V and to outside the base of the V. Below it was a Z represented the zodiac. When you open the envelope, they found a message written in on the inside of the envelope itself. It said, sorry, no cipher written twice in the form of an X. So there was no new encrypted cipher in this communication. The Z 32, the last one he sent was the last one. The main thing that they found in the envelope was a greeting card. It featured a dance and skeleton making an okay symbol with one of its hands. And it bore a message which read, from your secret pal, I feel it in my bones. You ached to know my name. So I'll clue you in. And when you open the card, there's another message that read, but then why spoil our game? Boo. Happy Halloween. On the inside of the card, zodiac had also pasted a skeleton cut from another card, and he painted 13 eyes of different sizes, all staring at the pasted skeleton. And above the head of the skeleton, he had written 14 spelled with the number four hyphen teen T E E N. One of the eyes was peeking out of a not hole in a in a piece of wood, presumably a wooden fence. And around the not hole, it was written peekaboo, you are doomed. At the lower right hand corner of the card was the strange v symbol again together with a Z and the cross and circle symbol. Then on the back of the card, zodiac had written the words paradise and slaves intersect in each other like cross. And in each quadrant of the cross, there was a two word pair by fire, by gun, by knife, and by rope, which no doubt referred to the ways that he had killed or was threatened to kill people to become his slaves and paradise. What about the meaning of the 13 eyes on the interior of the card? I would interpret those to be zodiac claiming to have had 13 victims so far. And with 14 written above the head of the skeleton, I would interpret that to mean that there would be a 14th victim. As indicated by the peekaboo, you are doomed message written around one of the eyes. I would say that he was threatened that the 14th victim would be Paul Avery, to whom the card was addressed, which is how Paul Avery and the people at the San Francisco Chronicle took it. Michael Cole writes to provide some comic relief in the week of the ominous Halloween card. Somebody at the Chronicle had buttons made that read, I am not Paul Avery. Several members of the staff, including Paul Avery himself, wore the buttons for a brief time. In some sense, the zodiac finally got his precious buttons, even if only indirectly and only at the Chronicle. More seriously, Avery also applied for and received a permit to carry a concealed weapon which he did. But soon after the requisite change in personal behavior seemed to outweigh the likelihood that the killer would actually pursue Avery with the intent to murder. And so he discontinued carrying the weapon. I like the image of Paul Avery wearing a button that says I am not Paul Avery to throw a zodiac off. Now I should note that there are several interesting things about this card. One is that it's based on a Halloween card that really was available for sale at the time. The cover of the card did say from your secret pal and I feel it in my bones, you ache to know my name. So I'll clue you in. All that zodiac did modify the cover was to cut out the image of a pumpkin from somewhere and pasted over the skeleton's pelvic bone as if the skeleton is being modest or something. And then on the inside of the card, it really did say, but then why spoil our game? Happy Halloween. So this really was meant to be a card you could give to someone if you were their secret pal, or maybe secret admirer or something like that. The plank of wood was also in the original card with an eye looking out of it towards the message. But zodiac himself added all the other eyes and the second skeleton and the symbols. Has anybody been able to shed light on the strange vf symbol or other aspects of the card? There's been a lot of speculation about these matters and a couple of possibilities have emerged. Ironically, both of them involve cowboy comic books, which used to be a popular thing. First, there's issue number 30 of Tim Holt, RKO's western star, which came out in June of 1952. The cover features a cowboy character named Red Mask who dresses in red and wears a red bandana as a mask. The cover also has a woman on it who's known as Lady Doom, and she has a wheel of fortune that she's going to spend to determine by which method Red Mask will die. On the wheel of fortune, we can see death by rope, death by gun, death by knife, and death by fire, the same kinds of death that zodiac listed on the back of the card. It's also been proposed that the vf symbol is from another cowboy comic. Specifically, it appears on the cover of Red Rider Comics number 15, which came out in September of 1943. On the cover, a very similar symbol is used as a cattle brand on the side of a cow that someone's riding. This version of the symbol is lacking the four dots that zodiac included, but otherwise it looks the same. What would these connections tell us? Well, there's been a lot of speculation about that online, but I think all we can say with confidence is that if zodiac was drawn on these comic books, then he may have read them when he was a kid or read them later on as back issues. And so maybe he had a thing for cowboy comics. But I don't think we can say anything else with confidence, and that's assuming that the comic books were the source of these elements. Zodiac's next communication was on March 13th, 1971. And this time he wrote a letter to the Los Angeles Times, which is almost 400 miles south of the San Francisco Bay Area. What did he say? And why would he write there? As to what zodiac said he wrote. This is the zodiac speaking. Like I have always said, I am crackproof. If the blue meanings are ever going to catch me, the had best get off their fat asses plus do something because the longer they fiddle plus fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my afterlife. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones. There are a hell of a lot more down there. The reason that I'm writing to the Times is this. They don't bury me on the back pages, like some of the others. And at the bottom, he wrote SFPD zero next to the cross and circle zodiac symbol, which where he wrote 17 plus mean in the San Francisco police department or SF, SFPD had come up with zero. They hadn't caught zodiac while he was now claiming to have over 17 17 plus victims or more than 17 people. However, there's more to say about zodiac's reference to his activity down there near Riverside, California. And before we talk about that, we'd like to take a moment to thank our patrons who make this show possible, including Morgan N, Jacob K, Richard L, Alexandra S and linka be their generous donations at SQPN dot com slash give make it possible for us to continue Jimmy Yakin's mysterious world and all the shows that star quest. You can join them by visiting SQPN dot com slash give. Jimmy Yakin's mysterious world is also brought to you by deliver contacts dot com offering top brand contact lenses at always low prices with free delivery. Visit deliver contacts dot com and buy great lakes, customs law, helping importers and individuals with seizures, penalties and compliance with us customs matters throughout the United States. Visit great lakes, customs law dot com. Jimmy, what did he mean by them stumbling across his Riverside activity? Riverside is a city that's part of the greater Los Angeles area and an anonymous man had become convinced that a local murder back in 1966, four years earlier, was connected to the zodiac. He thus wrote Paul Avery and Avery looked into it. He got in contact with the Riverside police and eventually published about it. He learned that on Sunday, October 30, 1966, a young woman named Sherry Joe Bates had been killed. Sherry was an 18 year old student at Riverside Community College and that evening she left home to go to the community college library and pick up some books based on what police later pieced together. She left her lime green Volkswagen Beetle nearby and while she was in the library, an unknown man severed the middle wire of the distributor of the engine at the back of the vehicle. When Sherry returned to the car, it would not start. The man approached her, took a look at the engine, but then said he couldn't fix it and he offered helper in some other way, such as by giving her a lift. She then accompanied him down the street and at about 10 30 p.m. he pulled out a knife and killed her, leaving her body for someone to find which happened next morning. Riverside didn't have any unsolved murders on its books at this time, so the police immediately investigated and they did something really creative, which was to get about 65 people who had been in and around the college library to come back and reenact what they did. But this didn't help him, just didn't let him solve a crime. However, they did find that in the struggle, Sherry had scratched her attacker, who was revealed by the residue to be a white male. They also found a watch that apparently had come from the attacker's wrist. A month later, on November 30, the Riverside Post Office found two letters with no postage on them. One was to the Riverside homicide department and the other was to a local newspaper called the Riverside Press. Both contained a letter entitled The Confession. This letter was written in all caps and it had been done on a typewriter using multiple sheets of carbon paper, like four or five sheets of carbon paper, so as to disguise the distinguishing elements that each typewriter has, which could which would be a sign of criminal sophistication on the part of the person who sent it. The letter read. The Confession by Blank. She was young and beautiful, but now she is battered and dead. She is not the first and she will not be the last. I lay awake nights thinking about my next victim. Maybe she will be the beautiful blonde the baby sits near the little store and walks down the dark alley each evening about seven or maybe she will be the shapely blue-eyed brown net that said no when I asked her for a date in high school, but maybe it will not be either. So don't make it too easy for me. Keep your sisters, daughters, and wives off the streets and alleys. Miss Bates was stupid. She went to the slaughter like a lamb. She did not put up a struggle, but I did. It was a ball. I first pulled the middle wire from the distributor. Then I waited for her in the library and followed her out after about two minutes. The battery must have been about dead by then. I then offered to help. She was then very willing to talk to me. I told her that my car was down the street and that I would give her a lift home. When we were away from the library walking, I said it was about time. She asked me about time for what. I said it was about time for her to die. I grabbed around the neck with my hand over her mouth and my other hand with a small knife at her throat. He went very willingly, making her pay for the brush offs that she had given me during the year's prior. She died hard. She squirmed and shook as I choked her. Her lips twitched. She let out a scream once and I kicked her head to shut her up. I plunged the knife into her and it broke. I then finished the job by cutting her throat. I'm not sick. I am insane, but that will not stop the game. This letter should be published for all to read it. It just might save that girl in the alley. But that's up to you. It will be on your conscience, not mine. Yes, I did make that call to you also. It was just a warning. Beware. I am stalking you girls now. There's also good reason to think that this letter is authentic, meaning by the killer, because they had not released the fact that the center wire of Sherry's distributor had been severed, but the author of the letter knew that this letter also has a lot of similarities with those later sent by the zodiac. First, it has spelling and grammatical mistakes like referring to a hypothetical victim as a brownette rather than a brunette, saying he went very willingly instead of she went very willingly and say saying, I am stalking you girls instead of I am stalking your girls. It also says that murder and Sherry was a ball and part of a game, which reflects the kind of thing zodiac later said, and it indicates the author fantasizes about killing other people. And like zodiac, the author warns that he will kill again and blames the authorities if he does so. And he wants the letter to be published for everyone to read, indicating the same kind of desire for publicity that zodiac displayed. Combining all these with the fact that zodiac said the police had uncovered his Riverside activity, I think it very likely that the zodiac was the author of the confession letter and that he killed Sherry Joe Bates. I'd also note a couple of other things. First, the confession letter said that Sherry was not the first of his victims and that and the zodiac letter to the LA Times said there were a hell of a lot more down there, suggesting multiple other murders in Southern California before he took on the zodiac persona. That itself is reasonable because as we discussed in episode 38 on the Golden State Killer, murderers typically go through a progression. One aspect of this progression, serial killers, one aspect of this progression is that they get bolder in what they do and they also become more criminally sophisticated over time. Well, by 1968 and 1969, the zodiac was displaying criminal sophistication. He wasn't just killing people, but doing so in a sophisticated way, like when he attacked Cecilia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell at Lake Berryessa. On that occasion, he wore his executioners costume to disguise himself. He had a phony story about being an escaped convict who just wanted their money and car. And he had Cecilia tie up Brian first so that he would have the easier job of tying up Cecilia. Similarly, when he killed Cabby Paul Stein, he knew they'd be alone in the cab. He directed Paul to go where he knew he could hide after the murder. And he took part of Paul's shirt so that he could send pieces of the shirt with letters to prove who he was. And when he tried to kill Kathleen johns, he got her to stop on the road by flashing his lights. He pretended to fix her rear tire when he was actually loosening and removing lug nuts from it. So it would fail. And then he offered her a ride similar to what may have happened after he tampered with Sherry Joe's engine. All of this criminal sophistication suggests that he had prior experience killing people before the zodiac murders between 1968 and 1970. And that the 1960 and the 1966 claim that Sherry Joe Bates wasn't his first victim is also credible. Because the way he tampered with her car engine and then offered to help her also displayed criminal sophistication. In a future episode, we'll look in more detail about who some of his previous murders may have been. But Sherry Joe Bates is the only pre zodiac murder we'll be looking at today because it was uncovered while zodiac was still active. Is there anything else we should know about the Sherry Joe Bates case? A couple of things. First on April 30, 1967, the sixth month anniversary of Sherry's death, three short handwritten notes online school paper were sent one to the local newspaper, one to the local police department and cruelly, one to Sherry Joe's father, Joseph Bates. The one to the newspaper and the police both said Bates had to die. There will be more. And the one to her father said she had to die. There will be more. Also, the ones to the newspaper and the police had a small symbol at the bottom of the page that looked like a Z with a squiggle on the top horizontal line. This could indicate that the killer was already thinking about the zodiac persona he would eventually announce. And he may have been experimenting with different ways to sign things as the zodiac. What was the second thing we also need to know about the Sherry Joe Bates murder personnel at the community college also discovered a poem scratched into a desk in a storage area with a ballpoint pen. Based on various factors, it was thought that this poem was written shortly after Sherry's death. The poem was titled sick of living unwilling to die. And it described the near death of a young woman by stabbing. Many people immediately connected it to Sherry Joe Bates is shock and death. But there are significant reasons to doubt this. One is that the poem describes the woman in question who is not named as wearing a red dress. But Sherry was wearing a long sleeved yellow blouse and Capri slacks, not a red dress. Also, the poem says that the victim won't die this time. But Sherry did die and the killer knew that. I thus consider this poem to be a red heron. It may have been inspired in the mind of some sick person by Sherry's death. But I don't think we have good evidence it was written by the zodiac. And so I won't go through it in detail. Then let's move on to the next communication that came from the zodiac. It was a postcard that was delivered on March 22, 1971, just eight days after the zodiac's letter to the Los Angeles times. What can you tell us about it? It was based on a blank postcard that he had purchased from the post office, but he'd heavily modified it. One thing that was obvious from both sides of the card was that he had used a hole punch to completely erode all four edges of the card. He basically punched holes all around the edges. So there wasn't any, there weren't any straight surfaces. On the address side of the card, he punched a hole in the upper left hand corner where the address return address goes. And he wrote the word zodiac over it. And he drew the cross and circle symbol around the punched hole. So there would be no doubt who sent it. In the central address space of the card, he pasted three bits of text that had been clipped out of newspapers, given their titles. The first was the times. The second was the SF examiner. And the third was the San Francisco Chronicle. It was thus ambiguous where the card should be sent. So he clarified by writing at the bottom attention, Paul Avery Chronicle, using the same deliberate misspell and of Avery's name that he had used in the Halloween card the previous year. The content side of the card consisted mainly of a picture that he had cut out and pasted onto the card. The picture was of a snow-covered condominium community known as Forest Pines in Incline Village, Nevada, on the northeast shore of Lake Tahoe. This community is just over 200 miles northeast of San Francisco and advertisements for it had been printed in many Northern California newspapers. The one that the zodiac got it from was almost certainly the Chronicle itself, which had printed the ad just three days earlier. Almost all of the text on this side of the card consisted of clippants from the Chronicle or other newspapers. Over the image itself of the condominium community, zodiac had pasted the words Sierra Club. The Sierra Club is an environmental organization, but here the reference may be to the fact that Lake Tahoe, where Forest Pines is located, is in the Sierra Nevada mountains on the border between California and Nevada. Toward the bottom of the advertisement, zodiac had pasted the phrase around in the snow. And for some reason, he'd pasted this upside down. Below the advertisement, he had pasted Peek through the Pines, which is why this is sometimes called the Peek through the Pines card. He also pasted Sought Victim 12, then past Lake Tahoe areas. And finally, he made the zodiac cross and circle symbol in the lower right hand corner of the card. There wasn't a lot of text to this card. Any idea what it means? The most informative text on the card was Sought Victim 12. This would appear to contradict the previous claim on the letter to the LA Times that implied zodiac had more than 17 victims or the Halloween card to Paul Avery that said he had 13. So we shouldn't treat these victim counts as reliable, though, you know, back then he he was right into the LA Times and he may have meant that including his Southern California crimes, he had more than 17. But since adopting the zodiac persona, he had only like 12. However, the image of the condominium community in inclined village Nevada, as well as the text referring to the Sierra's, the text past Lake Tahoe areas and Peek through the Pines suggest that the zodiac sought his 12th victim or at least a victim in the area around Lake Tahoe, where he may have peeked through the Pines to find the victim. Was anyone found murdered in that area that may have been a zodiac victim? Nobody was found murdered, at least not at the time, but there was a strange disappearance that had recently occurred there. There was a 25-year-old woman named Donna Lass. She lived in South Lake Tahoe and she worked as a nurse in the nearby Sahara Hotel and Casino. The last time she was seen was in the early morning hours of Sunday, September 6, 1970 or eight months earlier. She got off her shift at the hotel and casino at 2 a.m. Later that same day, the Sahara Hotel and her landlord both received a call from a man who said that Donna had been called away by an emergency involved in a sick family member. They thus didn't think very much about it. But when Donna failed to reappear, the Sahara staff contacted the police. They also contacted Donna's family and the family said there had been no sick family member. So the story that she left because of a family emergency was false. The police then searched Donna's apartment, but there was no sign of a struggle and her car was found near the apartment. So it looked like she may have driven home after her shift, but then something happened to her before she got to the apartment. It thus looked like Donna Lass may have been another zodiac victim and many researchers believe that she was. You said that Donna wasn't found murdered at least at the time. Did they ever recover her remains? In 1986, a sheriff's deputy found a skull along a highway about 45 miles northwest of South Lake Tahoe, but they didn't know whose skull it was for 37 years until 2023, when DNA evidence finally established that it was Donna's. So part of Donna's remains were recovered, but since they only had the skull, they couldn't prove that she'd been murdered. Still, it looks like she may well be a zodiac victim and that's why he sent the peak through the Pines card. At this point, the zodiac did something unexpected with silent. He didn't send any more letters for some time, which is kind of surprising for someone as obsessed with taunting the police and getting public attention as he was. It's even more surprising than that, because what happened in the months after he went silent, because there were two films that were about the zodiac. The first film came out on April 7, 1971, and it had the straightforward title, the zodiac killer. And this was less than a month after the peak through the Pines card. It premiered at the RKO Golden Gate Theater in San Francisco, so right in zodiac's territory, since that was where he'd been mailing his letters from the film in very high quality. But the producers wanted to try to help catch the zodiac. They figured that as obsessed with attention from the public as he was, he wouldn't be able to resist staying away from the film. And he was likely to show up on open in night. So they did something very interesting. They held a raffle for a motorcycle donated by Kawasaki. To enter the raffle, you needed to fill out a card that said, I think the zodiac kills because, and then you could then fill in your reason for why he kills. You then dropped the card into a big box. Crouching inside the box was a volunteer waiting to compare the handwriting on the cards to samples of the zodiac's handwriting. And there were also goons, including members of the film's cast, waiting in the wings to grab anybody whose handwriting matched. Unfortunately, they didn't catch anybody. The second film about the zodiac to come out, which happened on December 23, 1971, was much better known and has gone on to become famous. That's right. The film "Dirty Harry", which launched the "Dirty Harry" franchise, was based on the zodiac case. It featured Clint Eastwood as Inspector Harry Callahan of the San Francisco Police Department, and it pitted him against a serial killer played by Andrew Robinson, who would later play the Cardassian, Tinker, Taylor, Soldier, and Spymaster Garak on Star Trek Deep Space Nine. But in dirty Harry, he's playing a version of the zodiac killer, only they call him Scorpio instead of zodiac. And just like zodiac threatened to kill a school bus full of children, in "Dirty Harry", there's a sequence in which Scorpio holds a school bus full of children hostage. Alright, let's have some rundowns. Alright, who knows the song, huh? Everybody knows the song. How about you? You must know a beautiful one, huh? Come on, the synchronous. Oh my god, you're the fun. And on his farm he had some dust. ♪ Row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, row, So it's really kind of surprising that after Zodiac was depicted in super popular movies like Dirty Harry, that he just kept his mouth shut and didn't comment either positively or more likely negatively on how he was depicted. Yet he did. However, it would be another movie that would eventually draw him out of hiding. "Somewhere between science and superstition, there is another world, the world of darkness." Nobody expected it, nobody believed it, and nothing could stop it, the one hope, the only hope, the exorcist. The movie The Exorcist came out on December 26, 1973 and it scared the heck out of a lot of people, being considered one of the scariest movies ever made, at least to that time. I remember people, including children, I'm pretty sure had never seen this R-rated movie on television talking about how movies like this should not be made. People in audiences actually fainted or vomited while they were watching it. Well, The Exorcist is what finally brought the Zodiac out of hiding. Just over a month after the film was released on January 29, 1974, the San Francisco Chronicle got a one-page letter that read... "I saw, plus think, The Exorcist was the best satirical comedy that I have ever seen." Signed ears truly, he plunged himself into the billowy wave and an echo arose from the suicide's grave. "Tit willow, tit willow, tit willow." "P.S. if I do not see this note in your paper, I will do something nasty, which you know I'm capable of doing." There were then some strange markings at the bottom of the page that nobody has ever convincingly explained, and at the very bottom it said, "Me 37 SFPD 0." So he was apparently now claiming to have killed, or at least wounded, 37 victims, which would be a really big jump in the three years since he had written. But people weren't generally taking his claimed body count that seriously. What's more significant about this letter is the top portion. He begins by saying that he thought The Exorcist was a great satirical comedy, which is just him being contrary, since he knew it wasn't a satirical comedy. But then, when he says, "signed yours truly," he doesn't follow it with a signature. He doesn't say the zodiac, or have the plus and circle symbol, or a z, or anything like that. Instead, he quotes from the Mikado again, "Towards the end of the opera, the Lord High Executioner and cheap-tailer Coco needs to convince a woman named Katasha to marry him." And he tells her a fake story about a little bird he knew that committed suicide when his love for a lady bird was not reciprocated. "Except my love, or I perish on the spot." "Go to, who knows so well as I, that no one of you had died of a broken heart." "You know not what you say, listen." On a tree by a river, a little Tom Titt sang Willow, Titt Willow, Titt Willow. I said to him, "Dicky bird, why do you sit?" Singing Willow, Titt Willow, Titt Willow. "Is it weakness of intellect, birdie I cried, or a rather tough worm in your little inside? With a shake of his poor little head he reclined, oh Willow, Titt Willow, Titt Willow." He slept at his chest as he sat on that bow, singing Willow, Titt Willow, Titt Willow. And the cold perspiration bespangled his brow, Oh Willow, Titt Willow, Titt Willow. He saw Dandy's side, and a gurgle he gave. And he plunged himself into the billowy wave, And an echo arose from the seawy side's grave. Oh Willow, Titt Willow, Titt Willow. So instead of signing himself as Zodiac, the killer quoted the part of the maccato where the Lord High Executioner was threatened to commit suicide. This is highly significant since Zodiac identified himself as a real life Lord High Executioner since he was a murderer. And as illustrated by the fact that he previously quoted Coco's "I've got a little list song." What this looks like is that Zodiac, or at least the Zodiac persona that the killer has been affecting, is being killed off. He himself is killing off this persona. So an echo arises from the suicide's grave, Titt Willow, Titt Willow, Titt Willow. And that's why at the bottom of the page where he claims to have 37 victims, he doesn't put the 37 next to a Z or a cross and circle symbol. He just says, me, the Zodiac, or at least as a persona, has been retired. He'd already ceased writing as the Zodiac three years earlier in 1971. He resisted writing even after the films about him early, and Dirty Harry went on to become a huge blockbuster with Andrew Robinson playing his Zodiac stand in for vast audiences to see. Yet Zodiac seems to have lost interest in the game he was playing. And now he comes back just to announce that he's quit in the game. Zodiac would be no more, and he didn't even sign himself as Zodiac in the letter. Does that mean that Zodiac literally committed suicide at this point, or that he wouldn't write anymore? Well, no to both questions, because it appears that he did keep writing, and thus he didn't literally kill himself. He just retired the Zodiac persona. There's some doubt about some of these later communications, but based, but one of the more plausible ones was a card that came into the San Francisco Chronicle on May 8, 1974. It stated, "Third, I would like to express my consternation concerning your poor taste and lack of sympathy for the public. As evidenced by your running of the ads for the movie Badlands, featuring the blurb in 1959, most people were killing time. Kit and Holly were killing people. In light of recent events, this kind of murder glorification can only be deplorable at best. Not the glorification of violence was ever justifiable. Why don't you show some concern for public sensibilities and cut the ad? A citizen." Documents experts concluded that this was written by the killer, formerly known as the Zodiac, and if so, he was portrayed himself as an ordinary citizen who was shocked by the paper-running ads for movies that glorified violence like the 1973 film Badlands, in which Martin Sheen and Sissy Spacek played characters who were loosely based on a couple of real life criminals who had gone on a murder spree in 1958. The former Zodiac is portrayed himself as now so reformed that he even says not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable. His next communication came two months later on July 8, 1974. It was about someone called Count Marco. Who was that? And what can you tell us about him? Count Marco was the pen name of a columnist named Mark Spinelli who worked for this San Francisco Chronicle. He wrote what was called a glamour advice column for middle-aged housewives, but really it was an outrage column. That is to say, it was written to be deliberately outrageous and get people stirred up and talking about what outrageous thing Count Marco had just written, so it was deliberately provocative. As was Count Marco himself when he was in persona, for example, he was known for driving around San Francisco in a Pink World's Royce, and in 1964, TV Guide ran an article about Count Marco. It billed him as "the man women love to hate." With the subhead, one reason may be that Count Marco refers to them as slobs, pigs, and cattle. So yeah, he was deliberately provocative. When the Chronicle received a new postcard from the former Zodiac, it said, "Editor, Count Marco back in the hellhole from whence it came. He has a serious psychological disorder, always needing to feel superior. I suggest you refer him to a shrink." Meanwhile, cancel the Count Marco column. Since the Count can write anonymously, so can I. The Red Phantom. Red with rage. And experts also agreed that this came from the former Zodiac, and the Chronicle didn't cancel the Count Marco column, but perhaps not so surprisingly. After the postcard, Mark Spinelli decided, "I've been writing this column for fifteen years, and now that I've attracted the attention of the most famous local serial killer, maybe fifteen years is enough, and he stopped writing the column." Now, because Count Marco was writing deliberately outrageous stuff, there are any number of things he wrote that could have caused the former Zodiac to be outraged. But in the postcard, the killer made two references to psychology. First, he said that Marco had a serious psychological disorder of always needing to feel superior, which was true of the way the Count Marco persona wrote. It was also true of the way the Zodiac, the Zodiac persona had written. And then secondly, he says, "Send Count Marco to a shrink." In the third volume of his Zodiac Revisited series, author Michael Cole points out that just five days earlier, on July 3, Count Marco had written a column in which he rubished psychiatrists. He said that they ruined more marriages than they saved, that shrinks look at ordinary marriage problems as cases, that they leave their patients totally disoriented, that they can only agree on specific diagnoses about 40% of the time, and he concluded by writing, "The best psychiatric treatment you can have is taking a long, truthful look in the mirror and saying honestly to yourself, 'Okay, what am I doing wrong? Your mirror will tell you, the basic trouble with marriages is too many of you are afraid to face the truth and hope an outsider will agree. You don't need a psychiatry. All you need is the Count Marco column." So you don't need psychiatry, you just need the Count Marco column. And then five days later, the former Zodiac writes a letter saying that Marco has the serious psychological disorder of always needing to feel superior. He says to send him to a shrink. And whereas Marco had said, "All you need is the Count Marco column." The former Zodiac says, "Cancel the Count Marco column." He also signs himself with a new persona, the red phantom, explaining that he's red with rage. And this is also probably a reference to a silent movie character. In view of this, I think that Michael Colt's suggestion that this, that it is this column that prompted the killer's postcard is quite plausible. But I'm not at all sold on another suggestion that Cole makes. He writes, "Let's consider this final letter in the larger context of Zodiac-related events. After his communiques in the spring of 1971, the killer dropped out of sight. Three years later, inspired by the exorcist, he re-emerged to kill off his Zodiac persona. Shortly thereafter, the killer lambasted the movie Badlands for its glorification of violence and in so doing indirectly express some degree of remorse. Finally, in his swan song "Missive," he vehemently took issue with Count Marco for the writer's disrespect of psychology and the arrogance of the assertion "All you need is the Count Marco column." One possible scenario that explains all of these details is that the killer sought professional psychiatric help on or around the beginning of his hiatus, which started in spring 1971. Given that the bell-eye letter appeared to be in aborted but otherwise authentic attempt to seek help, it's not unreasonable to consider that the fugitive may have followed up with one or more additional attempts. In this line of thought, under the care of a psychiatrist, the killer may well have achieved some level of control over his mental disorder, which in turn might explain the cessation of his activities starting in 1971. If the killer did manage to make some progress with his mental disorder through the help of psychiatric treatment, it's easy to imagine that he may have honestly valued the profession of psychiatry. The remorse evident in the Citizen Card suggests the killer may have made real progress toward understanding the depth of the destruction that his actions had wrought. He likely would have been under the ongoing care of a psychiatrist and may well have considered the relationship essential to his continued state of relative mental well-being. Under these circumstances, one can easily imagine the killer taking offense to Count Marco's whimsical ramblings aimed at devaluing psychiatry. I think that Cole's three-volume work on the Zodiac is excellent, far better than much that has been written about him. I don't agree with everything in it, but I recommend it to people who would like to learn more. But I do disagree here for two reasons. First, reported requirements weren't as strict in the early 1970s as they are today. Today, if a psychiatric professional comes to believe that their patient is a danger to himself or others, they're required to report it to the authorities. That wasn't the case in the early 1970s, but there were court cases about this that were in progress at the time and in the state of California, because in 1969, a woman named Tatiana Tarasov was killed after a psychologist failed to report that one of his patients was thinking about killing her, which led to the adoption in California and later other states of what is now known as the Tarasov duty. That wasn't yet a legal requirement when Cole proposes that Zodiac went for counseling, but even in the absence of a legal duty, lots of psychological professionals would have reported such a patient. If one of their patients confessed to a bunch of murders and was asking for help controlling murderous impulses, Zodiac would have been taken a huge risk by going for counseling, and I think he was too careful to do that with him being even more unlikely to do so as a newspaper reader himself when the Tarasov case was all over the newspapers in California. But I think if he wasn't specific about the kind of impulses he was seeking to try to get control of, I don't see how the counseling would have helped him. That leads me to the second reason I disagree with Cole on this point, which is that the Zodiac was a high-grade, narcissistic psychopath. Killen was a game for him, and he wanted to continue the game by getting attention for it and inflicting fear on a broader populace, as illustrated by his extensive correspondence with the newspapers and all the ciphers and things like that. The sad truth is that for anyone who has that kind of narcissism and psychopathy, there's really no going back. Psychiatric treatment, even today, will not cause a person like that to have genuine remorse for their deeds. So even if Zodiac had sought treatment and had avoided being reported, the treatment wouldn't have brought about a real moral or empathetic renovation in him. Just to cross-check, my sense on this issue, I contacted a couple of mysterious irregulars who are psychological professionals, Dr. Natalie Lindeman and Dr. Joseph Sheridan, and they both agreed with my assessment. I think it was much more likely that the killer was angry at Count Marco for some other reason. Quite possibly about the psychology column, but also possibly about something else since Marco specialized in outrage. However, he never did anything to Mark Spinelli, and in fact, he never wrote it again. This was the last verified communication from the Zodiac. Then, where do things stand now, and how will we be handling them in the future? Well, at least thus far, Zodiac was right about one thing. He would get away with his crimes because in the last 55 years, nobody has been charged with him. There have been suspects, and in fact, there have been a lot of suspects. A huge number of people have been accused of being the Zodiac and some people have apparently hinted or even claimed that they were the Zodiac. We'll be taking a look at some of the more popular candidates in a future episode. First though, we'll take a break from Zodiac since I don't want to do a Zodiac month on the show, and our next episode on The Killer, whenever it comes, will look at what we can tell about his origin story. As I mentioned, the canonical Zodiac crimes show a great deal of criminal sophistication, like when the Zodiac would use fake ruses to help trap people such as Cecilia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell or Kathleen Johns, or when he apparently called Donna Lass' employer and landlord to say that she had to make an emergency trip to help a sick family member. That would stop them from looking for her immediately and give him a chance to leave town and for the trail to go cold. Well, criminals aren't born sophisticated. They get that way over time, typically as a result of a learning curve they go through. So it's very likely that there were other earlier victims of the killer before he adopted the Zodiac persona, like Sherry Joe Bates in Riverside, and Zodiac himself said that there were others down in Southern California. So the next time we look at Zodiac will be examined in the crimes he may have committed before he became Zodiac, and there are several very plausible contenders. Then to wrap up the series, we'll have an episode focusing on the suspects in the case. So that's how we'll proceed going forward. Is there anything else you'd like to say before we close today? I just like to say a special thanks to mysterious irregulars Dr. Natalie Lindeman and Dr. Joseph Sheridan for their help in consulting on whether the Zodiac killer might have sought and had successful psychological treatment. And Jimmy, what's your bottom line so far? The case Zodiac killer is unique. He was clearly a psychopath for whom killing was a game, but he was also a narcissist who loved getting attention for his crimes and who wanted to inflict fear on the public. That's why he carried out his years-long correspondence with the newspapers, and that's why he invented and sent elaborate ciphers to stay in the public eye. But eventually he tired of the game, and in the exorcist letter, he apparently retired the Zodiac persona, though he did continue writing at least for a bit. However, there's more to say about the Zodiac killer, both in terms of where he came from and who he may have been. So we'll talk about both of those subjects in future episodes. In the meantime, what are the further resources can we offer to folks? We'll have links to all three volumes of Michael Cole's series, Zodiac Revisited, Robert Grace Miss book, Zodiac and his book, Zodiac on Mast drew Beeson's book, citing in on the Zodiac killer, linked to the 2007 film, Zodiac, the documentary, This is the Zodiac speaking, but also basic information about Zodiac, we'll have a link to zodiackiller.com, history.com's timeline of the crimes, a video about Kraken the 340 cipher, which only happened in 2020. We'll also have links to a libretto or, you know, the lyrics of the Mikado and the really authentic Gilbert and Sullivan performance trust version of the Mikado, as well as my favorite version of the Mikado, the Stratford festivals, version of the Mikado, as well as information about radians, the zodiac cipher solution to the Z32 cipher that I mentioned, an article about Donna last being identified by her DNA, and also information on the Terasoff duty. All right. And now it's time to hear from you. What are your theories about the zodiac killer and his extensive and bizarre literary career? You can let us know by visiting SQPN.com or the Jimmy Akins mysterious world Facebook page. Send us an email to feedback@mysterious.fm, send a tweet to @mysterious_world, visit the Star Quest discord community at SQPN.com/discord or call our mysterious feedback line at 619-738-4515. That's 619-738-4515. And I want to say a special thanks to Oasis Studio 7 for the video and animation work on this episode. Check out what they do by watching the video version of the podcast and see how much it adds to just the audio. You can do that by going to my YouTube channel, youtube.com/jimmyakin. And while you're there, you can help me out. Tell YouTube that other people should watch the video too by liking, commenting, and sharing it, and also subscribe and hit the bell notification so you always get notified whenever I have a new video. I am trying to grow my channel, and thank you so much. I also want to thank Rob Mady for his voice over work on this episode. Jimmy, what's our next episode going to be about? Next week we're going to look at a mystery that very few people have heard of. We're going to be talking about the Toinby tiles. Very good. That sounds very mysterious. Folks, be sure to follow Jimmy Akins' mysterious world in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, TuneIn, your favorite podcast app, or at Jimmy's YouTube channel. You should hit the bell to get notifications. Get your very own mysterious world t-shirt, mug, or more in our merchandise shop at SQPN.com/merch. You'll find links to Jimmy's resources from our discussion on our show notes at mysterious.fm/330. And remember to help us continue to produce the podcast, please visit sqpn.com/give. Jimmy Akins' mysterious world is also brought to you in part by The Grady Group, a Catholic company bringing financial clarity to their clients across the United States, using safe money options to produce reasonable rates of return for their clients. Learn more at gradygroupank.com and buy Rosary Army, featuring award-winning Catholic podcasts, Rosary Resources, videos, and the School of Mary online community, prayer, and learning platform. 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