It’s the case that should’ve been solved by now—but somehow, the Zodiac Killer has slipped through the cracks. Morgan and Kaelyn examine the key clues: the strange letters, the police sketch, and the DNA evidence that almost led to a suspect. Could the key to solving the Zodiac murders still be hiding in plain sight? Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t Miss out on all things Clues! YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the Zodiac Killer case?
Each week on Clues, we'll explore how the smallest pieces of evidence, like microscopic fibers, a partial fingerprint, even a single strand of hair, could lead to groundbreaking discoveries. And... may even bring long-awaited justice. These clues shine a light on the stories that have been waiting, sometimes for decades, to finally be heard.
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Today, we're talking about one of the most mysterious killers in history, the Zodiac Killer. In the late 60s and early 70s, he terrified people all over the San Francisco Bay Area with a string of brutal murders. He struck without warning, he taunted the police with cryptic letters, strange symbols, and chilling promises, and then he vanished. Was the Zodiac a criminal mastermind?
Or was he just a deluded narcissist hiding behind ciphers and shadows? Spoiler, I think it was the latter.
To this day, no one knows who the Zodiac Killer was. And it continues to be the topic of heated speculation. And so we're taking a closer look at it. More on this case and the clues the Zodiac Killer left behind right after this quick break.
If someone had told Charles and Melanie that after their Tinder match, they would start a channel with crazy tasks together. So really crazy. Spend five days on a lonely island, crawl down a zip line on a belt, crack one million views, climb a wall with a lot of buttons and jump off a parachute in Egypt? They would never have believed that. But that's the thing with Tinder.
It takes you to places you would never have expected. Wherever it takes you. It starts with a swipe. Tinder.
What did you know about this case before diving into today? So this is one that I've always been interested in. I hadn't done a deep dive like we did to prepare for this episode. But growing up, I mean, Zodiac was one of my favorite movies. So I had just really known about the case through that film. I don't know.
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Chapter 2: What happened on December 20, 1968?
Yeah, investigators get into this pretty quickly, and they learn that there was a six-minute period where David and Betty were the only people on Lovers Lane. And the shooting happened in that six-minute window. So there were no eyewitnesses. Wow. The only small clue we really get is investigators can tell that the gunshots came from a .22 caliber rifle. But that is about it.
There's no tire tracks, no footprints, nothing. And there's also not really anything about this crime scene to suggest a motive. There's no sign of robbery, no indication of sexual assault. And these were just two kids out at Lover's Lane and about to head home. I mean, it's just mind-blowing to me.
The best lead they have is that a suspicious white Chevy Impala was driving around the area that night. A few months go by, and with no new leads, police don't really have a place to start on this. never going to get solved? That is, until four months later, when an eerily similar crime occurs.
Yes, it's the 4th of July, 1969. There's this young woman in Vallejo. Her name's Darlene Farron, and she's getting ready to enjoy the holiday. She's 22 years old. She's married. She has this little baby girl at home. Darlene and her husband, Dean, are actually planning to celebrate the 4th with a few friends after his restaurant shift ends around midnight.
But Dean asks her to pick up some fireworks before. And she says, sure, back in the day when you could buy fireworks in California. But Darlene has plans that evening. So she doesn't actually leave to go get the fireworks until about 1130 p.m. She's kind of cutting it close to when his restaurant shift is going to end. And she asks the babysitter, hey, just stay a little bit longer.
I'm going to be out. I just have to run this quick errand and then I'll be right back. At least that's what she says she's going to go do. She's actually going to go pick up a guy named Mike Majoe. Mike's 19 and he and Darlene are very good friends. A lot of people actually think that they're more than just good friends. And Darlene and Mike, they're not going to go pick up fireworks that night.
Instead, they end up going to the parking lot of the Blue Rock Springs Golf Course, another Lovers Lane type area only two miles from where David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen were killed. The couple sitting alone in the area. It's dark. There's no one else around. And all of a sudden, another car pulls up into the lot. And it's a big lot. A lot of kids come here to, you know, it's a lover's lane.
But this car pulls up right next to them. And that's kind of lover's lane faux pas. You give each other space when you're there.
Yeah, we all have one of those areas where we grew up. Mine is Skyline Parkway in Duluth. There's rules. You don't park next to another car. You don't peer in other cars. Like, you just, you're trying to make out. There's rules.
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Chapter 3: How did the Zodiac Killer taunt the police?
No. And luckily for them, there's no response. There's no other murders that are linked to the killer that weekend. So it seems maybe he is satisfied with the fact that the newspaper published these letters. But at the same time, the mission to decode this cipher... This major clue is on. The authorities have some of the best codebreakers working on the Zodiac Cipher.
Chapter 4: What details do we know about the Zodiac Killer's victims?
I'm talking people from the NSA, CIA, Naval Intelligence. The best and brightest, you would think. They spend about a week trying to crack this cipher, But it's not actually any of those organizations that decode it. It's actually a married couple named Donald and Betty Hardin who happen to see the puzzle in their local newspaper.
That is just so wild to me. Like that part of the story always gets me that it was not the government that was able to crack this. It was no military that could crack this. It was a history teacher and his wife.
A history teacher and his wife, big organizations, best and brightest got a week. They cracked this in two days. Betty was actually the one to make the breakthrough, which is pretty badass considering she's just, you know, a puzzle nerd with no formal training.
How did the government not try to hire her after that is what I'm wondering.
I mean recruit them both like yeah Don actually I saw on one source he just loved doing puzzles and like did it throughout college yeah so it's like they cracked this and you don't bring them on in some regard then okay seems like missed opportunity there yeah but here's what Don and Betty determine the message says Quote, I like killing people because it is so much fun.
It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all. To kill something gives me the most thrilling experience. It is even better than getting your rocks off with a girl. The best part of it is that when I die, I will be reborn in paradise and they, I have killed, will become my slaves.
I will not give you my name because you will try to slow me down or stop my collecting of slaves for the afterlife. This was then followed by a line of indecipherable gibberish.
Yeah, there's two things that are interesting about this cipher. Also, the first thing being that like when the cops asked the couple how they solved it, they were like, oh, each symbol corresponds to a letter, which doesn't feel that hard. But I don't understand how NSA was not able to crack that. But anyway. Outside of that.
So there's this indecipherable gibberish at the bottom, but everything else spells out something. There's like this line and they don't know if you rearrange the letters, if it'll spell something out. But they kind of start getting a sense that it might be his name or like a clue as to who this person is.
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Chapter 5: What were the Zodiac Killer's letters about?
So he spends his nights and weekends driving a cab, just trying to make a little extra money. And that evening, Paul's in the city's theater district, and he's just picking up people as they get out of shows. But at 9.40 p.m., he gets a call from dispatch. Someone else needs a ride. And on his way to the pickup spot, he gets stuck in a little bit of traffic.
And while his cab is stopped, there's actually a man that approaches him and asks for a lift. Paul figures might as well, especially this is probably just going to be a quick ride. I can get it. Maybe go grab the other person. But the man has Paul stop on a quiet street before they reach his destination between a couple of trees.
And then the man pulls out a gun and without any warning, he shoots Paul in the head and kills him instantly. But as this is happening, there's actually a group of teenagers in the house across the street and they happen to be peering out of the window at this exact moment and they watch all of this happen. They call the police.
They describe the suspect over the phone as a large white male wearing a dark jacket. something gets crossed along the way. There's a wire that gets crossed at some point. And when the officer taking the report puts out the call, he actually tells them to look out for a black man. Within two minutes, a pair of officers arrive on the scene. Mark it, it's botched.
And wait till you hear this, because within two minutes, these officers arrive in the area. Two officers get to the scene. They see a husky white male walking away from them. Kind Kind of in like a dark area because where the murder took place, there's actually streetlights everywhere.
But walking away from the crime scene, they see in the shadows, there's this husky white guy and they actually stop him and they talk to him. They want to know if this guy's seen anything suspicious. They have no idea that they are almost certainly face to face with the Zodiac Killer. Also, at this point, this is a huge story in California. I mean, think about it.
Like, the ciphers had been in the papers. People are starting to lock their doors at night. People are terrified of the Zodiac. These cops probably came into contact with him and let him go. By the time the correct description goes out, that it was a husky white guy, it's not a black guy that they're looking for, that man is gone without a trace. They have no idea which direction he went.
Yeah, I don't need to say it. You saw me add the tally if you're watching on YouTube. Botched column gets another mark.
So shortly after that happens, San Francisco homicide detective Dave Tosky and his partner Bill Armstrong, they arrive on the scene. And they assume immediately that this is probably a cab robbery gone wrong. I mean, everything about the crime scene kind of points to that. And as they look at the crime scene, they see that the victim's wallet and keys are missing.
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Chapter 6: How did the Zodiac Killer's methods differ from typical serial killers?
This message is printed in the newspaper, and it's picked up all over the country, and it actually leads to a massive development in this case because the story catches the attention of an anonymous reader down in Riverside, California. hundreds of miles away from where the Zodiac has been killing his victims.
And this reader tells Avery to look into a murder, one that happened back in October of 1966, and it's one that he believes was the Zodiac's first real kill.
So the victim that reporter Paul Avery is looking into was named Sherry Jo Bates. She was an 18-year-old Riverside City College student who had been killed in 1966. She was popular. She was really pretty. She had these striking blue eyes and blonde hair. And her dream was to be an airline stewardess, which we talked about back in the day.
You had to be very beautiful and very single to be a stewardess. On the afternoon of October 30th, 1966, Sherry goes to the library to study. She gets there around 6 p.m., but she never makes it home that night. And the next morning, she's actually found dead in an alleyway near the library, less than 100 feet from her car. She had been viciously beaten and then stabbed to death.
But Sherry fought back, which gave investigators this crucial evidence to examine because they discovered skin and hair were underneath her fingernails. And forensics revealed that to belong to a brown-haired white man. There were also footprints in the area. They were between the sizes of 8 and 10, and they were from a military-grade shoe.
Nobody in the area saw this crime happen firsthand, but a few witnesses believed they heard a woman scream sometime between 1015 and 1030 the night before. But even though the police talked to 75 people in the area within 24 hours of Sherry's murder, they just cannot find a good suspect.
However, a month after Sherry's murder, the Riverside Press Enterprise newspaper and the police department get something Really interesting. A letter. And here's some excerpts from that letter. He says, She was young and beautiful, but now she's battered and dead. She is not the first. She will not be the last. I am not sick. I am insane. But that will not stop the game.
And one thing that's interesting here is he refers to it as the game. And in the first cipher, he referred to humans as the most dangerous animal. That's actually a reference to the most dangerous game, the book. And that kind of became a clue to that whoever was doing this was referencing that specific piece of literature. He sends a letter and he also refers to it as a game.
And that really gets police starting to think that maybe this is related to the Zodiac. It's eerily similar. Yeah. Paul Avery looks into this and he decides it sounds a heck of a lot like the Zodiac Killer. So on November 15th, 1970, Avery, in true Avery fashion, he writes a big story about it. Again, he... was kind of known to, like, want to sell newspapers.
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Chapter 7: What chilling messages did the Zodiac Killer send?
Like when I went on the Zodiac website to look at their watches, they literally have a watch called the Skin Diver. And this is all very suspicious, but it's not enough to make an arrest. It might just be a ton of coincidences. But now they're able to look into him a little bit more, that they're revisiting him as a suspect.
So over the next year, they decide they're going to still follow a couple other leads. Like there's just not really enough on Arthur to arrest him, even though they do want to follow that lead a little bit further. They end up looking into 100 other suspects. And even though all of these other people's names come up, like really no one is has enough going for them that like it's definitely them.
And then in September of 1972, which is over a year after they talked to Arthur at the refinery, his name comes back up because, get this, his own brother, Ron, asks the investigators to look into him some more. And that's kind of all the prodding that the police need. Like, at this point, you have so many people who are close to this person calling and being like, you have to look into them more.
Like, this is getting too weird. Close friend and now brother. And now brother. Brother. So on September 14th, they finally get a warrant to search Arthur's trailer where he's currently living in Santa Rosa. When the police arrive, the property manager actually says that they just missed him. But still, they're able to get into the trailer and they look around.
And they find a lot of disturbing stuff in this trailer. There's dissected squirrels and other dead animals in the freezer, which actually he was going to school for biology at the time. And he did have permission from the state to dissect animals. And so they found that permission. I didn't realize you... Need permission?
It's actually a good thing that you need permission to dissect animals, actually.
God, you guys, my face this whole time as Kaylin's been saying this. Like, we all know, like, one of the more traditional signs is people that hurt animals. And it's like, are these actually the squirrels you got from the bio lab? Or where did they come from, Arthur? Yeah.
Yeah. Also in this trailer, there's a collection of sadomasochistic pornography. But this is still not enough clues that incriminate him, basically. And it's frustrating for the investigators. After about 45 minutes of searching, they still don't really have enough to get him on anything. Arthur comes home. They take his fingerprints.
They have him do a handwriting sample, too, because they have all of these letters that the Zodiac wrote. So they have all these handwriting samples that they can compare to. But it's not a match. Like nothing he gives them is a match with anything collected from the crime scenes or the letters. So they leave without making an arrest.
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Chapter 8: What can we learn from the Zodiac Killer's unsolved case?
Some think it does look similar to the Zodiacs, but it's different enough that experts don't think it's the same person. But you have to wonder, like, did he disguise this? You know, me in my rational head, I would assume that he'd be smart enough to change his handwriting if police come knocking on his door and... Hey, can you give us a sample?
Like, you know that all of these letters have been published. It's it's common knowledge.
Also, after he gave the handwriting sample, the police checked in with either his brother or friend. I can't remember who. And they were like, yeah, sorry. We looked into him. The handwriting didn't match. And they go, well, you know, he's ambidextrous, right? Exactly.
Did they go back and get another one with the other hand?
They did. And it also didn't match.
I think he's faking it. Another really interesting point in this is people note that Arthur actually lived only 150 yards from the restaurant where one of the victims, Darlene Farron, worked. So they kind of draw that connection. However, a lot of people don't think he was the Zodiac. And they point to the reason they think this because he didn't commit any violent crimes.
And I'm using air quotes, right? Because everyone's definition of violent might be a little different. And there is credible evidence that Arthur actually did inappropriately touch Don Chaney's daughter during a camping trip in 1967. And... Arthur was later convicted as a pedophile when he was arrested in 1974 for molesting a young boy and he was sent to prison for three years.
Yeah. One thing to mention too is he was fired from multiple jobs for being inappropriate with young girls. Yeah. And maybe because it was the 70s. I really don't know. But the times he was fired from jobs, they never filed police reports. They quietly fired him. They thought he just had a problem. And no one thought to contact the police to let them know, like, this man is a threat.
Yeah. And if we think back to Lake Berryessa, the suspect, the person of interest that day, was seen parked nearby those three girls outside just watching them. And then went after a couple. Like... There's just some eerie connections here that kind of make you feel like it's more than just a coincidence. And of note, after 1974, there were no confirmed Zodiac letters.
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