Original subtitles

WOMAN: The problem with the people that run tech companies

is that they become fanatics,

end up thinking they're messiahs.

NARRATOR: The most wanted man in San Francisco

calls himself the Zodiac Killer.

GARY: The desire to know who my father was

overcame me.

My sole intent and my sole purpose

was to find this man.

JUDE: With Gary, things began to get tense

simply because he believes it very strongly.

GARY: When I got Susan to help me write the book,

she went a whole lot deeper than I ever dreamed of.

MAN: This is the Zodiac speaking,

and this cipher is my identity.

GARY: When I looked at it, I immediately saw

my father's name, Earl Van Best Jr.

spelled out completely.

SUSAN: I contacted a forensic handwriting expert.

There's a strong probability

that Earl Van Best Jr. wrote the Zodiac letters.

GARY: That's when I became convinced

that my father was the Zodiac Killer.

In 2004,

although the case was considered closed and inactive,

if anybody had a credible lead,

they should contact this guy named Lieutenant John Hennessey

in the San Francisco Police Department.

So I called him and when he answered the phone,

I said, "Lieutenant Hennessey, my name is Gary Stewart

"and I have a story.

"My mother was once married

"to Rotea Gilford.

"I have been looking for my father

"with a little help from Sergeant Butler,

"and I have come to the conclusion

that I believe my father might have been

the Zodiac Killer.

Right after that, Hennessey went

to Harold Butler's office,

and he asked to see

my father's file.

And Hennessey told me,

"Gary, your father's file was sitting

on Butler's desk."

But Harold Butler refused to let Hennessey

see what was in that file.

I said, "I have a question.

Has the Zodiac case been solved?"

And he just chuckled and he said... (chuckles)

"I wish it were solved."

Arthur Leigh Allen was the prime suspect

in the Zodiac case,

but he's denied to the day he died

being the Zodiac Killer.

And one statement he made was that,

"You guys have it all wrong.

"I know who the Zodiac Killer is.

He's a crazy man I met

in Atascadero State Hospital."

So when I went to the SFPD

without knowing anything

about what my father's record looked like

I told Lieutenant John Hennessey

my assumption was that one of the things listed

on my father's rap sheet

would be that my father would have been confined

in Atascadero.

So I told Lieutenant John Hennessey

I bet you you're gonna find

that my father was institutionalized

in Atascadero.

And that's the first thing he saw

on my father's rap sheet.

Lieutenant Hennessey asked if he could gather

a voluntary sample of my DNA.

So he swabbed me.

Hennessey told me that they had a partial profile

of the Zodiac's DNA from a stamp.

And so that's what they were gonna compare

my DNA to.

And I know that if this case was gonna be solved,

it was gonna be solved because of DNA.

(theme music playing)

NEWSREADER: In San Francisco, two more communications

have been received from the Zodiac.

Schoolchildren...

make fine targets.

I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning.

Just shoot out the front tire

and then pick off the kiddies

as they come bouncing out.

NEWSREADER: That was the threat of the Zodiac Killer.

The psychotic killer has already murdered five.

BUS DRIVER: We change our route practically every day,

and the police has been riding either ahead

or behind and watching.

FRANK FALZON: The Zodiac was a rare killer

that was gonna play the press

for his own ego.

saying that he couldn't wait

to shoot small children

coming off a bus.

You can imagine the shivers

that sent up the spine of every mother

in San Francisco.

GARY: The school bus was a clear reference to my mother

because my father met my mother

when she came bouncing off of a school bus.

NEWSREADER: This morning, the people of San Francisco

heard a man who claimed to be Zodiac

talking on the air with attorney Melvin Belli.

If it all boils down to the question

of your giving yourself up if you could be assured

that you wouldn't get capital punishment,

-for myself-- -MAN (on phone): No, I don't want to give myself up.

-Huh? -MAN: I wanna kill those kids.

(line disconnects)

Whether that's Zodiac or not, I don't know,

but this man was a sick man.

MAN: So now all we can do is wait.

Wait until the next time

when the Zodiac Killer calls again.

MAN: What are you doing to protect the school buses,

particularly in San Francisco?

In San Francisco, we have been, since the first day

since the reception of this note,

and up to now and continuing,

we have a number of plain clothes officers

following buses in the morning

and in the evening.

(switch clicks)

MAN: This is the Zodiac speaking.

If you cops think I'm going to take on a bus

the way I stated I was,

you deserve to have holes in your heads.

The death machine is already made.

Take one bag of ammonium nitrate fertilizer

and one gallon of stove oil

and dump a few bags of gravel on top...

and then set the shit off.

The map coupled with this code

will tell you where the bomb is set.

You have until next fall to dig it up.

NEWSREADER: ZODIAC,

a symbol that now stands for terror

in San Francisco.

BILL ARMSTRONG: On the cover, it says, "I hope you enjoy yourselves

"when I have my blast.

P.S. read the back."

On the back, it says, "If you don't want me

"to have this blast, you must do two things.

"Tell everyone about the bus bomb

with all the details."

DAVID VAN NUYS: I saw the Zodiac as a kind of prototypical terrorist.

He was holding the whole populace hostage

and doing so by blackmailing the press

to publish his letters.

At one point, he began to insist that

the citizens of San Francisco

should wear Zodiac buttons.

And he was insisting that the San Francisco Chronicle

promote that idea.

So talk about ego.

In his letters, the Zodiac was wanting

to be seen as having

this level of intelligence and sophistication and so on.

He makes reference to The Mikado

by Gilbert and Sullivan.

He writes one long letter as kind of a parody

of The Mikado.

* As some day it may happen that a victim must be found *

* I've got a little list I've got a little list *

* Of society offenders who might well be underground *

* Who never would be missed, who never would be missed *

GARY: As I research my father's life,

I discover that as a young boy

my father learned The Mikado

when he and his parents were missionaries in Japan.

They attended plays,

and they would send playbills back

to the family in South Carolina.

One of my father's cousins said that

one of the playbills that they remember seeing

was from The Mikado.

I also got verification from his friend William Lohmus

that they listened to The Mikado

at my father's home.

My father knew the words,

uh, by heart and would sing the songs.

He was obsessed with The Mikado.

SUSAN: A few months after The Mikado letter,

the Zodiac sent a Halloween card

to Paul Avery who was a reporter

for the San Francisco Chronicle covering the Zodiac case.

PAUL AVERY: I put no credence in this.

I think he just wanted to get himself a little publicity.

I think that the Zodiac

is just making an idle threat, frankly.

DUFFY JENNINGS: When Paul got this Halloween card,

it was the first time the zodiac had ever

actually threatened a specific person.

GARY: So this is the Halloween card

sent to Paul Avery.

"From your secret pal."

He was clearly indicating to Paul Avery

that they knew each other.

They had met before.

SUSAN: Back in 1962, after Van was arrested,

Paul Avery went to visit him in prison,

and a story was published

dubbing Judy and Van's romance

as the "Ice Cream Romance."

In this story,

Paul Avery was not very complimentary.

He described him as balding,

bespectacled, and a pedophile.

GARY: My father held a grudge for all those years,

and Paul Avery would have had no way of knowing

that this was Earl Van Best Jr.,

the guy who he humiliated

just seven years before.

SUSAN: Soon after he received the Halloween card,

Paul Avery received an anonymous letter

that linked a four-year-old murder

in Riverside, California to the Zodiac Killer.

AVERY: I received a letter pointing out the similarities

so I contacted the Riverside Police.

They sent me a letter that had been received

six months after the Riverside girl

had been killed.

And so this might be of interest to you, uh,

it's signed with a Z.

SUSAN: On October 30, 1966,

the Zodiac killed Cheri Jo Bates

outside of the Riverside Library.

He stabbed her 47 times.

VAN NUYS: I don't believe that he committed that murder.

We know that he killed five people.

As if to boost his reputation,

he began to claim other murders

that he actually didn't commit.

So the question comes up, why did he stop

committing more murders?

As time went on, it almost seemed like

the letters were being written by a totally different person.

So I suspect that he suffered from

multiple personality disorder.

One of the later letters has a feeling of,

help, stop me before I kill again.

We have this picture of a divided self

that is able to kind of be aware

that there are two parts going on.

There is a conflict going on inside.

But people tend to age out of that problem.

So my hypothesis is

that his Zodiac personality

was deteriorating.

There was a three-year period

in which we heard nothing from him.

He may have been in prison.

He may have been in a mental hospital

or this more helpful personality

may have been in control during that period.

GARY: During the final years of the Zodiac,

my father's whereabouts are unknown,

but I uncovered his FBI file

and he resurfaced in 1975,

a year after the last known Zodiac letter was sent.

In that file, I found out that my father

called up the FBI

to report that he knew of an assassination attempt

on Gerald Ford's life.

Well, the FBI called the local SFPD

and says this call is coming from a pay phone

right there at 100 Embarcadero.

And so the SFPD show up and arrest him

on a drunk tank charge.

In the late 1970s, my father was arrested

two more times for drunk driving charges

and after that, he disappeared again.

But I found a friend of my grandfather

who told me what had happened to my father.

It was in a letter from him where he said,

I'm sorry to have to inform you

that your father...

is deceased.

He died in 1984,

and he's buried in an unmarked grave

in Mexico City.

I had spent so many years trying to find my father

and hoping to find him alive that...

I wanted to go visit his grave

because I needed that closure.

I, I had...

I had some things on my heart

that I needed to say.

Mexico City has more than one cemetery,

but I got my father's report of death

of an American citizen traveling abroad

that listed his date of death

and where he was interred.

as well as his cause of death.

My father drank himself to death

all alone in Mexico City.

He drowned in his own vomit.

When I first visited my father's gravesite

in 2006...

I remember the emotions that I had to deal with.

A lot of it was regret...

and guilt because I hadn't done enough

soon enough to try to find him earlier.

I would never have a chance to meet him

and to let him see

that I turned out okay.

And I wonder, did he ever think about me?

Before he took his last breath, did he ever think about me?

Did I ever matter?

So not having those answers that I really wanted that closure...

I guess it was just really sorrowful

that I would never get that.

My father left a proven trail of destruction,

and I'm not the only victim.

There were victims before me,

and there were victims after me.

It just hard to imagine such...

such evil.

ZACH: I think he did you

a great favor

by abandoning you.

Truly you're lucky, in a way,

that he made the decision that he made.

I was raised in a home

where forgiveness was a daily part of life.

and I've really struggled being raised

in the Christian home that I was raised in

that taught and preached and lived

and depicted forgiveness.

Love and forgiveness. Love and forgiveness.

You know, if you don't forgive...

you're not hurting the person

that you're holding that grudge against.

You're actually holding yourself prisoner.

I forgive him.

I forgive him.

I hoped that I'd have the chance to bring you here.

Because I wanted you to see that...

(sniffles)

...the love of the Stewarts in God's plan for my life

didn't give you this as a legacy.

And I wanted you to see it

knowing that I went there with my dad

and help my dad make peace and say goodbye...

because I'm not coming back.

JUDE: In 2014,

I hadn't seen Gary in a while,

and so I proposed that we got together for lunch.

For two and a half hours,

we had an amazingly wonderful time.

We talked about everything.

And then we went our separate ways

and it was shortly after that

that I found out about the book.

The book is called The Most Dangerous Animal Of All:

Searching For My Father...

GARY: In May of 2014,

The Most Dangerous Animal Of All was published.

(audience applauding)

When you've lived 39 years,

all of a sudden your past comes back,

and it comes back in a whirlwind.

JUDE: Until that book was published,

I didn't know it was being published.

I found out because People magazine wanted

to do an interview with me.

They were doing a story about the book.

How could it happen that such an important thing

didn't come up when we were together.

I couldn't have been more surprised.

GARY: Immediately, I got a text message from my mother.

"Shocked, beyond belief."

When I finished reading the book...

I said he thinks I've lied about everything.

I was... floored.

NEWSREADER: More than 40 years later,

the mystery has never been solved.

Gary Stewart, author of the new memoir,

The Most Dangerous Animal Of All,

says the serial killer is his father.

SUSAN: It was unbelievable

that we were even able to get a book publisher

like Harper Collins to publish this book

because there has been so many books published.

Everything that has been written about the Zodiac

and here we come with a brand new theory.

You think that the identity of the Zodiac Killer

will always remain a mystery?

Everything you know is wrong.

Joining me now is Gary L. Stewart.

MICHAEL SIGNORELLI: Editors look at hundreds

of proposals a year.

Most of these proposals don't see the light of day

because they're not believable.

But with Gary's story, our question was,

does he deserve to present his story

and share what he believes based on this evidence?

And the answer to that is one hundred percent yes.

The book comes out, gets a great press release

in New York Magazine.

This story was getting a lot of exposure.

There was enough attention

for the book to become a New York Times bestseller.

GARY: The response was by and large very supportive.

Um... all of the book reviews, all of the interviews...

saying, wow, this is the best suspect

we've ever had in 50 years.

If this is true, does it make you wonder

about who you are, what kind of person you are.

I try to disassociate myself

from the serial killer side of my father.

People from around the globe were saying, I feel for the guy

finding out his dad was this evil person,

but we're glad he did.

The families of the victims

now have closure.

When my story came out,

I shared details

that were based on intimate conversations

between me and my mother.

From that viewpoint,

I betrayed her trust.

JUDE: A lot of...

the speculation in the book was preposterous.

I was so offended

by the way Gary came to the conclusion

that my husband, Rotea,

must have interviewed Van

and that the San Francisco Police Department

were trying to cover up for Rotea.

To this day,

I have not had that thought

that it would-- could be credible.

GARY: Here you have the first African-American officer

promoted to inspector

of the San Francisco Police Department.

And then have this come out,

that Rotea Gilford may have actually interviewed

the guy who was the Zodiac suspect

and didn't arrest him.

That's a disgrace in itself.

LYN OVERTON: I was very shocked to learn that

Gary was trying to make something

of the fact that

Rotea was a police officer at the same time

that the Zodiac murders were occurring.

Because he became

a... a homicide inspector in 1971,

but that was a year after...

the Paul Stine murder happened in San Francisco,

and it was not worked by Rotea.

Rotea's Legacy was damaged

by what Gary wrote about him.

And this book is not just

about her family but about his family as well.

And they're, they've all been deeply hurt by this.

GARY: My mother didn't want this to be out there.

I remember one day getting an email

from my publicist at Harper Collins...

saying, Gary, I'm so sorry, but...

it looks like your mother has threatened to sue.

Harper Collins if we didn't pull

the book from the shelves.

JUDE: What I said to the publisher was

at what point do you change

true crime to fiction?

And Gary took that as a threat and he was furious.

DON ALLEN: The one figure that could support

his premise on his father's...

background was his mother,

and it was unattainable,

and that brought forth this anger.

In one of these incidences, Jude received an email

saying why Jude should believe it

and... be damned...

damn you if you don't.

When things aren't right

with Gary and his mother,

things aren't right in Gary's world.

I think it's the whole abandonment issue,

will come back to haunt him,

and he responds in a destructive manner

toward her.

JUDE: I don't think I knew about the anger

until he proposed the idea

of being the son of the Zodiac.

GARY: I guess in a moment of hurt or anger,

I may have fired off an email or a text

but when your mother is going to leave you hanging,

leave you vulnerable,

and, and publicly

uh, humiliate you or embarrass you,

I don't want that out of a mother.

Gary and I have not seen each other

since the book was published,

and, um, I told Gary that

I am sorry that I ever started all of this.

GARY: I felt like she'd abandoned me all over again.

I don't need her.

You know, I lived 40 years without her.

And Kristy would always be my voice of reason saying,

you need her.

And you love her, and she loves you.

Somebody in this,

in this relationship has to be the adult.

VAN NUYS: There's a website called ZodiacKiller.com.

A huge number of people speculate about the case

and go over and over the clues.

KELLY CARROLL: This case seemed to attract

those who felt

that they were the only ones that could solve this,

and it becomes a parlor game.

MAN: Okay, we're standing at the corner

of Washington and Cherry Street in San Francisco,

and it is at this very intersection

where the Zodiac shot Paul Stine in his cab.

It's competition among amateur sleuths

or "Zodiologists."

After Gary Stewart's book was published,

he became the subject of a lot of criticism online.

Many people did not accept his suspect.

And he was all over the media and talk shows,

and I think a lot of people in the Zodiac

online community resented that.

But there are also people who had legitimate complaints.

You can read Gary's book over and over again,

and you won't find anything remotely resembling evidence

to implicate his father in the Zodiac crimes.

SUSAN: The forums online just really started

nailing us a new ass...

saying that we had no evidence, it was all circumstantial.

Ask any prosecutor about circumstantial.

You know the only

non-circumstantial evidence there is

is eyewitness testimony.

Everything else, including DNA, is circumstantial.

CARROLL: They believe fervently

in their particular theory of the crime.

If you subscribe to their belief,

you are welcomed with open arms.

But if you for one moment disagree

with their theory of the crime or find fault with it,

you're subject to all the furies

of someone who is outside their church.

SUSAN: I warned Gary, don't interact with them,

don't communicate with them.

But he is very sensitive.

GARY: Someone attacked my credibility,

so I joined the forum.

I should have never gotten involved.

I should have left it alone.

The fact that they had never heard

of Earl Van Best Jr. ever before

I think was kinda humiliating for them.

I know the motivation of that community

They all have done years and years of research

as to why their guy might be the Zodiac Killer.

There are people trying to push

Richard Gaikowski,

Arthur Leigh Allen,

and Ted Kaczynski,

but none of the other suspects

can be included because of handwriting

and fingerprints

and... no name in the cipher.

BUTTERFIELD: Gary's claims about the Zodiac ciphers

are one of the more troublesome aspects of his case.

DAVID ORANCHEK: I build cryptology software for the FBI

and as we got into the details

of the evidence that supposedly links his father

to the killer,

the evidence wasn't standing up to scrutiny.

Here we have the second cipher,

the 340 Cipher.

I've highlighted where he found his father's name.

What he did was he went column by column,

starting all the way on the right.

He found this symbol.

It's not quite an "E,"

but he's using it as a letter E.

Similarly, this second column from the right

is kind of shaped like the letter A,

so his takes it to stand for the letter A.

And here you can see what the symbols

look like all together.

Earl Van Best Junior.

Seems compelling because the entire name seems to fit.

But there's a problem with this approach.

What he's doing is taking some liberties,

for instance interpreting the circle

to be the letter E.

By taking these liberties,

it increases the chances of finding a name.

There's 20 symbols in each column,

and the symbols can be interpreted in different ways.

Earl Van Best Junior is only one

out of a hundred thousand names

that can be found using this method.

If there are thousands of other names

that can also be found this way

how do you know for sure that the name you found

was put there on purpose

by the person who made the cipher.

GARY: I am not a cipher expert,

but I don't believe

thousands of names can be found

using all 17 columns.

The Zodiac community then tried to discredit

my fingerprint evidence.

Okay, what about the other suspects?

Do any of them have a scar on their right index finger?

Shoot that one down.

GLENN LANGENBURG: I'm an expert in fingerprints,

and I work on private cases

and get involved in forensic matters.

The subject that the white line is being compared against

has a scar on his right index finger,

but the original blood print from the Zodiac

is either the left index finger

or it's the right ring finger.

The only way if it could be the right index is

if the images were reversed.

But there is no reason that you would reverse those images.

So if being compared to the wrong finger

and the scar, it's insignificant,

considering that most people

actually have scars on their fingers

and the right index finger being the most common finger.

One thing that we have to also recognize is

in order to be able to compare fingerprints,

you have to have high resolution images.

These images do not have a sufficient resolution.

I'm not sure really what could be said

about these fingerprints other than that they are

generally fingerprints.

GARY: There are people who only want

that one piece of information that will embarrass me.

He was wrong all along, and it's, you know,

probably still one of our other guys.

But we have more evidence now

than we had when we released the book.

Tonight, we return to one of the most enduring

and chilling mysteries of the last 25 years.

The unsolved case of the serial killer

who called himself Zodiac.

GARY: I saw a documentary done by ABC Primetime Live

that aired in 2002, 2003.

ABC partnered with the San Francisco Police Department,

the San Francisco Crime Lab

to try to extract genetic material

from some of the Zodiac letters.

NARRATOR: Dr. Holt has already detected

the possible presence of Zodiac's DNA.

in the seal of the envelope

that contained the greeting card.

CARROLL: But what we know from Zodiac's postings

is that he often over-posted

and the mouth is actually a very, very rich area

for DNA, uh, donation,

as they say in the crime lab.

And so I submitted these envelopes to our lab

to determine if there was any DNA evident.

I found a partial DNA fingerprint

from a male individual...

CARROLL: Our lab was able to develop

a DNA profile from the envelopes

and that there were sufficient points of reference

that might be able to help, uh, solve the case.

NARRATOR: You're looking at the Zodiac Killer's

genetic identity...

GARY: That effort generated a partial genetic profile

of the Zodiac Killer.

They were able to extract

five of the sixteen genetic markers,

including the gender marker.

Every person has two sets of genetic markers.

One is from their mother,

and one is from their father.

And I had already had my mother and my DNA tested

to extract what my father's genetic profile would look like.

And that old Primetime documentary

actually showed a blurred image

of those five genetic markers.

But it was a very poor job of blurring,

so if you're really careful

and stop it at the right moment,

you can actually see what those values are.

From that, I extracted the five markers

that the San Francisco Police Department have

on file for the Zodiac Killer.

SUSAN: Gary did this first,

and he wrote down what he thought they were.

And then he called me up and he said,

"Susan, I want you to come over and watch this."

GARY: The genetic profile from the Zodiac Killer

are these five markers.

SUSAN: Then he said, "Susan, I want you to write down

what you think it is."

And we came up, independent of each other,

exactly the same thing.

GARY: VWA as a 17 and an 18.

SUSAN: So I contacted George Schiro

with Scales Biological Lab in Mississippi

and asked him to run a paternity index.

That would tell us the odds of the Zodiac

being Gary's father.

GEORGE SCHIRO: Susan asked us to see if we could take

the paternal markers of Gary Stewart

and compare those to five markers

that were present on that TV show

as being from the Zodiac.

D8 is the, the rare allele.

SCHIRO: One of the markers that we looked at

that Mr. Stewart has...

8S1179, marker 11,

...that is found in about six percent

of the Caucasian population,

therefore making it fairly rare.

And we found that the DNA profile

that was found on the stamps

could not be excluded

as a potential biological father

of Gary Stewart.

If the numbers Mr. Stewart provided are correct,

there's a 97 to 99.8 percent probability

that these markers originated from the Zodiac.

This would be a very significant find

in the investigation.

The Zodiac may be Mr. Stewart's father.

And we analyze it and it matched.

But, I mean, just this is news.

99.8 percent certain

that my father was the Zodiac Killer.

(theme music playing)

Do I just knock, or what? What do you think?

I feel like they're not ever gonna...

Why are you wearing your sunglasses inside?

Bro, you know I gotta drip, bro. We're goin' to the studio right now.

Snack Time. I didn't--

Okay. You're welcome.

I feel like that did nothing for my career.

* Hi, I'm Dave *

-Mom. -Yes?

-Okay. I want a big party this year. -Serious?

-I want a quinceañera. -Quinceañera?

We can't do that. We're too white for that. We're not allowed.

Do me a favor? Never look me in the eye again.

Okay? 'Cause your stare is way too intense.

It's starting to make my hair fall out.

-(operatic singing) -(chattering)

MAN: Check!

Check.