Despite the passage of fifty years since his last activity, the case of the Zodiac Killer continues to fascinate and frustrate law enforcement, the media, and the American public, making America’s most notorious unsolved murder case.Thank you to the Incredible Dave White of Bring Me the Axe Podcast for research and Writing support!ReferencesBlankenstein , Andrew, and Wilson Wong. 2021. 'The case remains open': FBI rebuts claim Zodiac Killer case is solved. October 7. Accessed February 2025. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/case-remains-open-fbi-refutes-claim-zodiac-killer-case-solved-n1281002.Chabria, Anita. 2018. "Vallejo police have sent Zodiac Killer DNA to a lab. Results could come in weeks." Sacramento Bee, May 3.Chronicle, San Francisco. 1970. "A Zodiac threat to newsman." San Francisco Chronicle , October 31: 7.Cole, Michael F. 2020. The Zodiac Revisted: The Facts of the Case. San Francisco, CA: Twin Prime Publishing .Drake, Rossiter. 2007. "A magnificent obsession with the Zodiac killer." San Francisco Examiner, March 2: 28.Flaherty, Frances. 1969. "New letter by Zodiac claims seven slayings." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), November 12: 1.—. 1969. "Teenagers' s;ayer still at large." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), March 30: 1.Flaherty, Francis G. 1968. "Investigators lacking clues in 2 slayings." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), December 22: 1.Glover, Malcolm. 1969. "Hundreds of 'Zodiac' tips flood Bay police." San Francisco Examiner, October 18: 1.Lowe, Lindsay. 2024. Who was Arthur Leigh Allen? October 29. Accessed February 14, 2025. https://www.today.com/popculture/zodiac-killer-arthur-leigh-allen-rcna176996.McClatchy Newspapers Service. 1969. "Vallejo Police seek gunman who killed woman, shot man." Sacramento Bee, July 5: 1.Michelman, Jordan. 2020. "What If You Solved the Zodiac Killer Mystery and No One Believed You? ." Portland Monthly, December 16.O'Connell, Oliver. 2021. Gary Poste: Who was the alleged Zodiac killer identified by ‘Case Breakers’? October 7. Accessed February 14, 2025. https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/crime/gary-post-zodiac-killer-suspect-b1933700.html.Peterson, Dave. 1969. "2 survivors tell what they can on 'Code Killer'." Times-Herald, October 1: 1.Sacramento Bee. 1969. "Officers check leads in Berryessa killing." Sacramento Bee, October 3: 27.San Francisco Examiner. 1969. "'Cipher Killer's' new letter." San Francisco Examiner, August 4: 1.—. 1969. "'Cypher Killer' hunt is pressed." San Francisco Examiner, August 6: 57.—. 1969. "School bus alert on mad killer." San Francisco Examiner, October 17: 1.—. 1969. "Sketch made of killer in taxi slaying." San Francisco Examiner, October 14: 6.—. 1970. "Zodiac 'greeting' to police: 'enjoy yourselves at my blast'." San Francisco Examiner, May 1: 50.Smith, Dave. 1971. "17-plus victims claimed in letter by Zodiac Killer." Los Angeles Times, March 16: 3.—. 1969. "Zodiac Killer--chilling portrait of madness." Los Angeles Times, October 15: 1.—. 1969. "'The Zodiac' lives inconspicuously, but murders with flourish." Sacramento Bee, October 10: E12.Smith, Jane. 1969. "Girl stabbing victim dies in Napa hospital." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), September 30: 1.Times-Herald. 1969. "Cryptogram deciphered by teacher." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), August 9: 1.—. 1968. "Hunt maniac in murders of teenagers." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), December 23: 1.—. 1969. "Lake attacks linked to Vallejo slayings." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), September 29: 14.—. 1969. "Mystery ciphers not decoded yet." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), August 2: 1.—. 1968. "Vallejo teenagers are shot to death near Lake Herman." Times-Herald (Vallejo, CA), December 21: 1.—. 1969. "Police seeking clues in Vallejo shootings." Times-Herald, July 6:1.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of the Morbid podcast and what is their tone?
Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
I didn't like the look in your eye when you were saying that at all. Mikey said, nope.
Everybody's just shaking their head at me like, no, absolutely not. You went like, like she got low, sort of. No. Yeah, I just wanted to be weird about it, and I succeeded.
Congrats. High five across the room. That was weird.
666.
The mark of the beast.
Wait a second. Oh. Mercury is out of retrograde. Oh, it doesn't feel that way. I know. Well, we're in the after effects right now. It got out of, it stopped retrograding. I think that's how you say that, right? On April 7th.
Oh.
Right now, I think it's April 9th. So we're still feeling the, we're circling the toilet drain here. Sometimes I feel like that's when it's the worst, is the after effects. Yeah. So maybe that's why we feel so weird and why everybody's so annoying. It also might just be like facts.
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Chapter 2: What were the initial Zodiac Killer attacks covered in Part 1?
Something about it. I just don't know. And an executioner's hood in and of itself.
Horrifying. Yeah. So now let's get into part two, which, as most of us know, unfortunately does not end with the capture of this fool. But luckily, the attack at Lake Berryessa produced more evidence than the first two attacks. Because remember, the first two attacks, there was like nothing to go off of, basically. This gave us a little bit more.
But not so luckily, detectives had pretty much exhausted any lead that they had within like two weeks. Yeah. Not great. No, not great at all. No, not great at all. The witness descriptions and communications with the killer allowed investigators to get some kind of insight into the person that they were looking for. But funny that I was just talking about profiling.
At that time, psychological profiling was still years away. It wasn't a thing that was really tapped into yet. Yeah. And any kind of profile that they developed at that time was really just speculation. For example, a psychiatrist in Napa, quote, suggested that the killer may be psychotic rather than psychopathic. Thinking that the cipher revealed the Zodiac's delusional thinking.
Oh, okay.
Now, if you're like me and you found that quote a little bit confusing, according to a quick Google, psychosis, a.k.a. being psychotic, is a symptom of mental illness involving a loss of touch with reality.
Oh, interesting.
But psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by lack of empathy and remorse. Okay. That's the difference between those two things.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: What new evidence emerged from the Lake Berryessa attack?
I have nothing to hide. My life is in the balance and it shouldn't be.
I just want people to go back to who the victim is in this. It's not her.
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Lamont Jones' world is shattered when his cousin dies in custody just weeks after entering prison. The official report says natural causes, but bruises and missing teeth tell a different story. From Wondery comes Death County, PA, a chilling true story of corruption and cover-ups that begins as one man's search for answers, but soon reveals a disturbing pattern.
Lamont's cousin's death is just one of many, and powerful forces are working to keep the truth buried. With never-before-heard interviews and shocking revelations, Death County PA pulls back the curtain on one of America's darkest institutional secrets. This isn't just another true crime story. It's happening right now. Follow Death County PA on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
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Now, it wasn't until two days later on October 13th that Paul Stein's murder was linked to the Zodiac. That afternoon, a letter arrived at the San Francisco Chronicle containing one single page note written in what was now familiar writing and in a blue felt tipped handwriting of the killer. He said, this is the Zodiac speaking.
I am the murderer of the taxi driver over by Washington Street and Maple Street last night. To prove this, here is a bloodstained piece of his shirt, which he did include. He said, I am the same man who did in the people in the North Bay area.
The SF police, San Francisco police, could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcycles, seeing who could make the most noise. The car driver should have just parked their cars and sat there waiting for me to come out of cover. School children make nice targets. I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning.
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Chapter 4: How did police profiling and media characterize the Zodiac Killer in the late 1960s?
I have grown rather angry with the police for telling their lies about me, so I shall challenge the way of collecting slaves. I shall no longer announce to anyone when I commit my murders they shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger plus a few fake accidents, etc." The police shall never catch me because I've been too clever for them.
If you wonder why I was wiping the cab down, I was leaving fake clues for the police to run all over town with. As one might say, I gave the cops some busy work to keep them happy. Hey, pig, doesn't it rile you up to have your nose rubbed in your boo-boos? If you cops think I'm going to take on a bus in the way I stated I was, you deserve to have holes in your heads.
For someone using the term boo-boos, that's very aggressive. Boo-boos. It's a very aggressive letter for someone using the word boo-boos. That's upsetting and I don't like it. Like, nothing about that is something I want to be around. I don't like that. The fact that he's saying, I'm going to make them look like routine robberies and accidents so you can't trace them to an actual murder or...
trace them back to me is so scary. It's so scary and it's possible he did that.
Well, that's the thing. I'm like, so did you do that? Because remember, like I said, Paul Stein is the last official victim. Yeah. But did he kill, like, who knows how many other people he could have killed and made it look like accidents, robberies. Because obviously there's a degree here where people are like, I don't even know that he's that intelligent.
Like, look at all the grammatical mistakes he makes. I think those are on purpose. Yeah. Possibly. And it's like, he has gotten away so far, so he does know how to make things look a certain way. You know? Yeah. I mean, he definitely... I think he was capable of making things look like accidents.
He's not leaving clues. So it's like he's at the very least capable of doing that. Right. And... But then you also have to look at it like the Jack the Ripper letters. You have to say which ones are from him, which ones are copycats, because you know there's always going to be some, you know, level of people who want to get involved with this shit.
Oh, yeah. And we'll get into it. There were plenty of letters that were sent that were not from the Zodiac.
But this one is talking about the seven victims again. Yeah. It's talking about wiping down the cab. Wiping down the cab. And there were certain things that were not made. Yeah. That the public was not made aware of. Yeah. So it's interesting. Yeah. But the whole ending of, like, if you cops think I'm going to take a bus in the way I stated I was, you deserve to have holes in your heads.
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Chapter 5: What happened during the murder of cab driver Paul Stein and its investigation?
A series of strange markings that looked like maybe Chinese or Japanese writing, but they've never been identified as any known language. Scary. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But here he just makes a snarky joke about The Exorcist, which had been released in theaters a couple months earlier.
And then he just quotes line from the Rodgers and Hammerstein play, The Mikado, and makes what feels like we were just saying is like a pretty vague threat of violence just for the hell of it. Yeah, just to do it. Yeah. But the letter has been analyzed thoroughly and it is believed by law enforcement officials to be authentic. I wonder why. Like, what about that feels authentic?
I don't know if it was like...
maybe the blue felt pen or maybe something yeah sure i know that one i'm not positive about especially the fact that it didn't have the crosshair symbol i'm like this feels very jack the ripper-y where it's like yeah it's totally a real one yeah i don't know i don't know about that well and i don't know i mean like obviously handwriting analysis is a real thing but it's also like a tricky science yeah it can definitely be tricky i don't know
But the Chronicle did publish the letter in full either way. They left out the strange markings on the bottom, though, at the request of the San Francisco police. But in the years that followed, investigators would receive hundreds, if not thousands, of letters and cards claiming to come from the Zodiac.
But as far as investigators are concerned, this was the last time any news outlet or law enforcement agency would hear from the Zodiac. Yeah. So who the fuck was this guy? Yeah. We got to talk about it. We do. So obviously a lot of the Zodiac story is, you know, result of the media attention, the public fascination that surrounded the case.
But at the same time, there's also a massive and very long ranging investigation there. There was that went on behind the scenes. Countless law enforcement officers from local cops to FBI all work together to try to stop him.
Their efforts obviously didn't make it into the endless stream of press coverage because there wasn't a lot to say beyond we don't really have much to go on, but we're trying.
When you don't want to be like, here's what they're doing to catch him.
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