Original subtitles

**

**

**

Man: Five murders.

Somebody who says he committed all and will commit yet more.

Beeson: The Zodiac Killer case

is a classic unsolved American crime.

Jennings: The fact that we're still here talking about him

50-plus years later is a testament

to what he created in terms of mystery.

Man: The Zodiac Killer puzzled authorities

with a number of coded letters

sent to newspapers and law enforcement.

Dr. Ho: The styles of the letters, the cryptograms,

the fact that the Zodiac Killer had information

that wasn't widely available to the public...

all point to this being one killer.

**

Butterfield: I think the most logical explanation is that one person

was responsible for the crimes and the letters

and that that person just got away with it

and hasn't been identified.

**

**

Horan: When you look at the whole picture,

the ballistics don't match from one case to the next,

the fingerprints don't match from one case to the next,

the witness descriptions and survivor descriptions

of the killer don't match.

Nothing actually connects any two of these murders

to any other murder, let alone to the letters.

But the more time that goes on,

detectives believe more and more in the "Zodiac,"

and it really does start to skew their investigations

toward certain suspects, away from certain suspects.

**

Man: This description, just to clarify,

was from the three students.

This is the sketch from San Francisco.

Man #2: Not even close.

Chambers: Never been interviewed

or never talked about her to anybody.

That's why I wanted to talk to you --

to set the record straight.

Jensen: I've never talked about it.

If I am one of the only witnesses,

I just assumed he might come for me.

Woman: I just always think about what she'd be like

if she had a chance to grow up.

[ Sniffles ]

Nock: I have to ask you. Did you kill Darlene?

Nock: This is the first time

the 32 Zodiac letters have been analyzed in this way --

using computational linguistics and artificial intelligence.

Horan: Unlocking the mystery of those letters and ciphers

is the key to blowing this whole case wide open.

The evidence proves...

there is no Zodiac Killer.

Man: Somebody says he committed all five murders

and will commit yet more.

Man #2: David Faraday. Betty Lou.

Two really good kids.

Man #3: Zodiac. The symbol of terror in San Francisco.

Woman: I miss her so much.

[ Indistinct voices ]

-Good morning, sir. -Good morning. [ Chuckles ]

Nock: Okay. Why don't you settle in?

Man: Thomas Horan interview. Take 1.

**

They had a complete lack of communication.

Horan: I got interested in the Zodiac case

because nobody has come close to cracking this for over 50 years.

**

I originally started out as an insurance investigator,

but I got tired of seeing people

get away with fraud and even murder,

so I got into educational publishing

and then eventually went back to school

and got all my degrees

and became an English professor and an author.

Along the way, I've been a journalist,

and I'd worked in banks, as well,

and I learned a lot about forgery.

**

One famous element of the Zodiac Killer story

is that the only evidence police had

that there was a single person committing these murders

was the Zodiac Killer letters.

"This is the Zodiac speaking."

Jennings: "I am the killer of the two teenagers last Christmas

and the girl last 4th of July."

"I am the murderer of the taxi driver."

Horan: I'd had some experience reviewing homicide cases

as an insurance investigator, and I was curious.

Did these letters really line up with the actual evidence?

So I spent hundreds of hours reviewing that material.

And the more I studied these letters

and compared them to the actual facts in each case,

I made a very surprising discovery.

It wasn't just that the story that we're all familiar with

about the Zodiac Killer was wrong.

It's the truth about the Zodiac Killer case

is more bizarre and more interesting

than anybody ever suspected.

There was no serial killer.

There was no single killer involved in these murders.

And the person writing the letters

didn't commit any of the murders.

The Zodiac Killer is a fictional character.

He's a literary invention.

Nock: So you're telling me that all the investigators,

all the reporters, all the online sleuths...

Gary Francis Poste.

It's been William Grant.

Claiming that he was the Zodiac Killer.

Nock: All the people that have looked at the Zodiac case

for the last 50-plus years, they've all got it wrong?

Bingo!

Falzon: It is my belief that this is one man

who randomly committed vicious crimes

for his own self-satisfaction.

**

Butterfield: I believe that one person

was responsible for the crimes and the letters

and that that person just got away with it

and hasn't been identified.

**

Nock: I'm Andrew Nock, and I've been making documentaries

since the 1990s.

And there's no more famous case than the Zodiac murders.

Coming into this investigation,

I believed all the murders were committed by one person...

and all those letters were written by that same person --

the Zodiac.

**

You're plugged in live to "The Stones Unturned Podcast."

Nock: So when I ran into Thomas Horan's theory online,

it was shocking.

The three pieces of the bloody shirt

actually prove the letters are a hoax.

His theory is the most compelling

and the most out-there that I've ever heard.

**

Man: Duffy Jennings interview. Take 1.

Nock: So, the theory I'm investigating

comes from Thomas Horan.

He believes that the murders were all committed

by separate individuals.

Uh, well, I've never heard that, first of all.

It's the first time I've ever heard that.

I was recently asked in an interview

if I would be willing to debate Thomas Horan, and I said no.

You might as well debate a ham sandwich.

Nock: What do you say to this theory

that there isn't one killer and one letter writer?

I think it's a really interesting theory.

I mean, he calls it a hoax, right?

Yeah. I was asked by two or three people

to try to debunk that theory.

And my initial response was, "Why?"

This case is absolutely ripe for something like a hoax theory,

where you have one entity or person

or persons committing the murders,

and then someone else taking credit for the murders

by writing the letters.

Nock: That really surprises me, considering I've read your book,

and the professor's theory is nothing like yours.

It obviously is a contrastive theory to mine,

but I liked a lot of aspects of it,

and it's a theory that I would personally more gravitate to

if I didn't already have my own.

Falzon: The realm of possibility is infinite.

You can come up with any narrative you want.

But show me something I could follow up.

Speculation -- that doesn't solve cases.

I'm asking you, prove it.

Nock: Exactly. We have to prove it.

Let's go down the rabbit hole.

What if there is no Zodiac Killer?

Horan: We need to take another look

at each and every one of these cases,

look at what the real evidence was,

what the witnesses really said,

look into the victims' backgrounds,

and find out who had a motive

to kill each and every one of these people

instead of looking for a serial killer who never existed.

**

**

[ Trolley bell dings ]

* It's the time of the season *

* When love runs high *

Richardson: The Summer of Love happens in summer of 1967,

and by that time, there had been

a lot of countercultural activity.

* It's the time of the season *

* For loving *

It was a story built for television --

outlandish costumes, very colorful,

young people really enjoying themselves.

There was a kind of youthful rebellion in the air.

Man: These were the so-called flower children,

restless fugitives from Middle America.

Come here to smoke dope, dance in the streets,

and, in some marvelous but undefined way,

change the world.

Jennings: All of that glow of the Summer of Love

gradually wore off into 1968.

In '68, of course, we had the Martin Luther King

and Bobby Kennedy assassinations.

You had the big riots

at the Democratic Convention in Chicago that fall.

So a lot was going on in the country politically,

most of it geared toward resistance to the Vietnam War.

**

Richardson: When the hippies start heading for the hills

is when the scene in San Francisco

loses its kind of utopian spirit.

Very quickly the whole scene kind of hardened.

It wasn't really about expanding consciousness anymore.

* It's the time of the season *

Methamphetamine and heroin and harder drugs

began to take hold.

[ Woman screaming ]

[ Siren wails ]

Well, the Zodiac Killer enters the scene

right about this same time.

**

**

Butterfield: 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen

and 17-year-old David Faraday

were out on what has been called their first official date.

They told their parents that they would be home by 11:00 p.m.

and they were going to a school function.

**

Unfortunately, they decided

to go to Lake Herman Road instead,

and they were still there after 11:00 p.m.,

sitting in David's Rambler station wagon.

[ Radio static]

**

At some point, another vehicle pulled up alongside them...

**

...and a man got out.

**

**

[ Gunshot ]

There were shots fired into the back window

and even into the roof of the Rambler.

And at some point, the victims

escaped from the passenger side of the car.

[ Gunshot ]

**

[ Gunshot ]

David Faraday was shot once in the head.

And Betty Lou Jensen was shot five times in the back.

She was found about 20 or so feet away from the vehicle,

and the belief is that the killer shot her in the back

as she was trying to escape.

Man: What has the investigation brought up to date today?

Well, we checked -- we secured the crime scene last night

and we searched the area

and we went back at daybreak this morning.

Have you any idea of the motive at all? Was it robbery?

There was no robbery motive.

We have no motive at this time.

Beeson: There was no immediate claim to that crime after it happened.

It wasn't until late July 1969

that there was even a mention of that crime.

That was the first time a letter was sent

where Zodiac took credit for it.

**

Horan: The only so-called evidence

that does link any of these murders together

is these letters,

but there's absolutely nothing about the murder

of David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen

that would indicate a random crime of opportunity

by some serial killer.

From studying the witness statements

to ballistics evidence, all the other evidence,

I have concluded that the killer

did not arrive at the scene alone.

And I believe I can prove it.

**

Nock: We are on Lake Herman Road, and we're going to look

for the first murder site of David and Betty Lou.

Well, the reason why I want to come here

with you, Thomas, right now is,

you suggest that there were two people in the car

that killed David and Betty Lou.

It wasn't a lone serial killer.

Which would completely blow apart

the whole Zodiac Killer story.

Right.

So, I printed out the police sketches

that we're going to refer to and we're going to try

and re-create the positions of the cars,

the bodies, and the bullet casings.

Let's see if that tells us a story.

A story that most people don't know.

**

Horan: In the so-called Zodiac Killer case,

I can't stop thinking about the fact that none of these people

and their families ever got any justice.

And there's something wrong with that.

There was a young lady.

We were friends, and we dated a few times,

and we went to the University of Illinois at the same time.

And several years later, she was murdered by --

turned out to be by somebody else I knew.

That was a tough pill to swallow,

but at least her family and her friends --

we know who did it.

He was arrested, he was prosecuted,

he was sent to prison.

That doesn't bring back the person that we lost,

but it brings some closure

and it does help the survivors move on,

if we just know who did it.

**

Nock: Okay, that night, an eyewitness named James

claims to have seen two cars on Lake Herman Road.

What I have here is a diagram James drew for the police.

He definitely saw two cars --

a station wagon and another vehicle.

James said that the cars were about 10 feet apart.

And then a quarter of a mile down the road,

he thought he heard a shot.

Okay, so, I'm gonna call in part of our production team.

They're gonna bring in another vehicle

to this position right here.

Can you guys bring in the other car?

Man: Copy, copy.

According to the police report, Betty Lou was found

28.6 feet from the car...

and David only inches from the car.

There were 10 bullet casings found around their vehicle.

One casing in particular was found 20 feet away,

near where the witness said a second car was parked.

So let's do it from here. That's good.

So, this is 20 feet from the car, right here.

Right. Okay.

So, explain to me why this is significant.

Look where that one shell casing is.

This suggests someone

got out of the passenger side of the second car,

stepped around right about here,

fired over the top of his car,

into the back of the station wagon.

**

That would be just about exactly how far

a .22-caliber target pistol would eject a shell.

Nock: So, how does this demonstrate

that it was a second person in the car

and not the driver that shot David and Betty Lou?

Well, why would the driver

get out of the driver's side of the car

and then walk around his car all the way over here,

carefully put one over the top of the second car

and into the back of Betty Lou and David's car

and then walk back around and get in his car and drive away?

That explanation doesn't make any sense.

The most logical, the simplest explanation is the killer

arrives in the passenger side of the second car.

So he must have had accomplices,

so this is not a lone serial killer.

**

Horan: Another myth of these murders

is that there was no apparent motive.

But once we get to know the victims, David and Betty Lou,

it turns out there was an obvious and powerful motive

for someone to murder these kids.

[ Bell tolling ]

Beeson: David Faraday was a Eagle Scout.

He received a God & Country Award from the Boy Scouts,

one of the highest awards you can receive in the Boy Scouts.

He was on the wrestling team.

Betty Lou Jensen was 16 years old,

and she was a junior at Hogan High School.

Very pretty girl.

Her father worked for Pacific Gas and Electric.

Two really good kids.

**

Watson: I met Betty Lou when we were in the fourth grade.

This is me and Betty Lou at sixth-grade graduation.

Is this Betty Lou on the right?

The short one, yeah.

Here's another picture of Betty,

but I don't know when that one was taken.

"Diane, have fun, you nut.

Good luck with the person you want good luck with.

Love..." And she used to sign things "BLJ."

She was very talented, very artistic.

We were just always together. So she was a real sweetheart.

She did not deserve this.

And I think this was her first date.

That night, he was going to ask her to go steady.

But they went out on Lake Herman Road,

and that's where it happened.

**

What do you think of the idea that maybe they weren't

the victims of a serial killer?

I guess I really had never thought of it, you know?

Once they plant the seed, that, oh, the Zodiac did it,

then you just kind of convince yourself

that it must have been the Zodiac.

Horan: This execution-style double homicide took place

in Vallejo, right at the peak of this wave

of violent drug dealing and trafficking by biker gangs.

Man: The Hells Angels for a whole generation

has been known as a black-jacketed motorcycle gang

with a taste for violence.

Now the police authorities say

they have become far more than that.

They've gone into such moneymaking fields

as narcotics and prostitution

and have made millions using methods

even more brutal than the Mafia's.

**

Horan: David was not just on the wrestling team.

He wasn't just an Eagle Scout.

He was a real leader. He was a real hero type.

**

[ Indistinct conversations ]

According to the police reports, witnesses told investigators

that a couple of days before he was murdered,

David got into a physical altercation,

almost a knock-down, drag-out fight,

with this young punk from his high school

at the pancake house on Tennessee Street.

David said, "You're pushing drugs at my school,

and I'm gonna put a stop to it."

**

In my opinion, that is the motive for this murder,

that David was targeted by these drug-dealing biker gangs,

and they had concluded that he was a danger,

he was a snitch, he was an informant,

or he was about to be,

and they decided that he had to go.

Butterfield: I don't think that what David Faraday actually did

was that provocative at that time.

It wouldn't be that unusual for somebody

to confront somebody about dealing drugs.

The more logical explanation is that David Faraday

was just in the wrong place at the wrong time

when the killer was trolling for possible victims.

**

Nock: So, as you know, I've also been talking

to Professor Horan about his theories,

and he believes that this murder involved

biker gangs in the area selling drugs in Vallejo.

Beeson: It's plausible. It's definitely plausible.

Because there's some guys in Hells Angels, as we know,

would not hesitate to take out,

you know, people that they needed to take out.

But, then again, we go back to the victims here.

I don't know if that would have been enough

to justify murdering him and his young date,

over the possibility of being ratted on for drugs.

Why not cover your identity and let Betty Lou live?

I mean, Betty Lou was executed.

I cover crime in Alameda County,

Contra Costa County, basically the entire East Bay.

In the '60s, especially the late '60s,

there was kind of an explosion

of drug use and drug trafficking in this area.

[ Siren wails ]

For instance, in Solano County,

from 1967 to 1968,

drug arrests went up by 400%.

You have to understand --

right now marijuana is not that big a deal,

but back then, you know, it was a prison offense,

you'd go to jail for possessing small amounts of it.

And when you make a drug, you know,

something that you can get into that much trouble for,

it changes the caliber of criminal

that's, uh -- that's distributing it.

[ Engines rumbling ]

The threat of being turned in to the police is a pretty big deal,

and the way that biker gangs and gangs in general

enforce their rules is with violence.

**

[ Gunshot ]

So somebody snitching on you or turning you in to the police

is basically a cardinal sin.

It's one of the worst things you can do.

It's definitely plausible that somebody

who was threatening to turn in a biker-gang member

would end up dead.

One of the theories that I've heard

over the years from criminals and other people

was that there was this drug dealer

who owned a ranch up in the Richmond Hills, in that area,

who was responsible for the Lake Herman Road shooting.

Nock: Wow. Really?

Yeah.

Butterfield: At first, police didn't know

what to make of the murders on Lake Herman Road.

Those kinds of shootings were rare in that area.

**

Man: What kind of youngsters were these?

The boy was an Eagle Scout.

The girl was on her first date.

And there's no record of any misbehavior

on either one of them.

We have several leads that we're working on,

and some of them have been expired.

We have ruled them out.

Horan: When police aren't able to generate any solid leads,

fear really takes hold

in the Vallejo and Benicia communities,

as Pierre Bidou talked about

in the 2007 documentary, "This Is the Zodiac Speaking."

There was a real panic in a small community like Benicia.

Benicia had a 10:00 curfew. Well, that was off after that.

I would say the paranoia in Benicia

lasted a good six to seven months.

People were very concerned, and it escalated every time

after another reported killing.

Nock: Why do you think the police didn't follow up

on this suggestion that this biker gang

was involved in their murders?

Police are generally pretty secretive.

There could be any number of reasons.

But one thing you have to keep in mind is...

the nature of policing really changed

from now versus, you know, the late '60s, early '70s.

It was basically a situation where

if somebody didn't see you do it,

it was very easy to get away with murder.

There were no cameras. There were no cellphones.

And DNA was just some scientist's dream at that point.

**

Horan: At first, the police did assume,

because there had been this wave of drug-related violence,

that this must have had something to do with that.

But then everybody's telling investigators,

"Well, David and Betty Lou didn't do drugs.

They didn't even smoke grass. I mean, they didn't drink."

So, well, maybe that's not what's going on.

But then a week after the murders,

they receive two tips

pointing towards possible involvement

of organized crime and narcotics,

and they didn't follow up on any of this.

Butterfield: There's not a lot of information about the drug dealer

or what happened in the investigation into that,

but having spoken to some of the original investigators

who were involved in that particular investigation,

they didn't see any reason to believe

that avenue of investigation would be productive.

Man: Why did this happen?

It was a senseless murder I believe.

**

Horan: You had the lead investigator, Les Lundblad,

who had only ever worked on one homicide case before.

Les' partner, Detective Butterbach,

he had more experience,

but neither one of them had experience

with this kind of violence and these kinds of gangs,

so they might not have even really known

what kind of leads to follow up.

It's perfectly understandable why these particular murders

might go unsolved by these investigators.

**

**

Butterfield: The next known Zodiac attack

occurred on the night of July 4, 1969, in Vallejo.

**

22-year old waitress, wife, and mother Darlene Ferrin

decided to go out with a friend named Michael Mageau,

who was 19 years old.

They decided to go to Blue Rock Springs Park,

which is just outside of Vallejo near a golf course.

Darlene pulls into the park and parks the car,

and they're talking for a little while.

**

At some point, a car drove up

and parked behind Darlene's Corvair.

The driver just sat there and then drove away.

Just a short few minutes later, another car pulls up behind them

as they're parked in Blue Rock Springs Park.

A man gets out of the driver's side,

and he's shining a very bright flashlight,

and they think it's the police.

And without any warning...

...this man just starts firing into the car.

[ Gunshots ]

[ Engine idling ]

Butterfield: Darlene was shot several times,

much more than Michael Mageau.

Three teenagers drove up,

and they saw Michael Mageau laying on the ground.

So those teenagers found a phone and called the police.

That phone call was answered by police dispatcher Nancy Slover

at the Vallejo Police Department,

and she directed police to that location.

Beeson: The police finally arrive.

They're trying to get information

out of Darlene Ferrin about who did it.

But she was so critically wounded

that she couldn't even speak at this point.

[ Siren wailing ]

And then she winds up dying on the way to the hospital.

Mike Mageau is shot up really bad,

but he winds up surviving that attack.

**

Horan: Mike tells police that the shooter arrived

in a car very similar to Darlene's 1963 Corvair.

So an APB goes out.

"Be on the lookout for a brown car

and some kind of 9-millimeter pistol."

Because Richard Hoffman and other officers

discovered the shell casings,

and they're stamped, "9mm Luger."

[ Police radio chatter ]

Butterfield: Shortly after that,

Nancy Slover answered another phone call

from someone who claimed to be the killer.

[ Telephone rings ]

Beeson: If it was a crime of passion or a drug deal gone bad,

why the phone call?

There was absolutely nothing to gain from that phone call.

The preponderance of my research

and things that I know,

it lines up perfectly with a Zodiac crime.

Taking responsibility by the phone call,

knowing the details that came in on that phone call.

I think it really does solidify that it's a Zodiac attack.

Horan: That's not true.

What we see at Blue Rock Springs Park

looks more like a killing in anger.

Like, really angry. Not just taking a shot and running off.

This is pumping round after round into Darlene's back.

[ Gunshots ]

Like, this person really wanted Darlene dead.

Nock: But why would anyone make that call?

Horan: Because if police believe that the murders are related

and perpetrated by a single killer

picking victims at random,

then it takes the heat off of the person

who actually has a motive to commit this killing.

[ Gunshots ]

I think Darlene was targeted by someone who knew her.

Chambers: Darlene was my oldest sister.

We were very close.

For being six years apart, we were extremely close.

I idolized her. I looked up to her.

I thought she was everything I wanted to be.

She was friendly and loved people.

And she loved her daughter and her husband.

**

Nock: I'm on my way to meet Dean Ferrin.

Dean was married to Darlene when she was murdered in 1969.

I don't know what Dean is gonna remember

from 50-odd years later,

but he hasn't talked too often to researchers.

This must be the place.

**

Nock: So, how did you and Darlene meet?

Well, I was a cook here in the middle '60s,

and she was a waitress.

We just worked a lot of the same shifts,

got to be friends, and...

We started dating while she was living with this friend of mine.

We planned on just settling down.

And then she was pregnant.

[ Engine idling ]

Butterfield: There are a lot of questions

about why Michael Mageau was with Darlene Ferrin,

who, of course, was married at the time.

We don't know exactly why they were together.

There's all kinds of speculation

that they were romantically involved.

And Michael Mageau even said years later

that he was in love with her.

**

She liked to go out and dance,

and I worked nights,

and it got back to me that,

"Oh, she's out here whoring around."

And I don't believe that.

And some of the other -- her closer friends

said that wasn't true;

they're just a group of girls going out.

Michael was a friend. That's all.

Their relationship was friendship.

So you think that the websites and the books

have given your sister a real bad rap?

Yeah, that's why I wanted to talk to you,

to set the record straight and tell everybody

how wonderful a sister and mother she was and wife.

Darlene Ferrin had been married

before she married Dean Ferrin.

She was married to a man named Jim Phillips,

and they apparently had a rough relationship,

and she had been working

and trying to raise money to get a divorce.

When we first met, she was still married

and having a little trouble with her husband

and wanted to get out from under him.

They lived in a motel on the edge of town,

and he wouldn't let her sleep in the bed

and slapped her around a little bit and...

Nock: When Jim and Darlene broke up and she went with Dean,

was Jim upset?

Yeah, I think he was kind of upset with that.

And I think he ended up leaving town

'cause he couldn't handle it.

Horan: If it's true that Darlene is targeted

by a very personal motive,

the first person who comes to mind would be the ex-husband,

and this particular ex-husband does have a criminal record.

He owned a car just like the one described by Mike.

He was known to be stalking Darlene.

In my opinion, Darlene Ferrin's ex-husband, Jim,

is the prime suspect in her murder.

Nock: Do you think Jim has anything to do with Darlene's death?

I did at first.

I think he was mean enough to definitely do it.

[ Gunshot ]

What kind of a person was he?

Kind of strange. I mean, he didn't talk a lot.

My folks didn't really care for him that much.

I guess they thought he kept Darlene, you know, to himself.

He seemed very capable of doing something like this.

He was that strange. He was definitely a weirdo.

**

Horan: When the police wanted to talk

to Darlene's ex-husband, they couldn't find him.

You know, nobody had seen him in town,

and supposedly he didn't have Darlene's address.

Nock: Do you have any evidence that Jim Crabtree

was in Vallejo the night of the murder?

I have never found any evidence

that he was in town around the time

Darlene was murdered.

It's very difficult to know where Jim Phillips

has ever been.

To this day, I don't know.

He's supposedly dead, but I can't confirm that.

**

Butterfield: After the shooting at Blue Rocks Springs Park,

there was a lot of speculation about what had happened and why

and what the motives were and who the killer was.

But all of that changed at the end of July 1969.

Horan: Just a couple of weeks after Darlene's murder,

the newspapers start getting these letters

taking credit for these murders.

**

Beeson: The Zodiac letters that came out

on July 31, 1969,

forever changed the case.

Beeson: On July 31, 1969,

there was three different letters

sent to the San Francisco Examiner,

San Francisco Chronicle, and the Vallejo Times-Herald.

That was the first time

that anything was received by the killer.

And at that point, he only wrote

the cross circle logo, as we call it,

but the word "Zodiac" was not used yet.

This is seven months after the first crime at Lake Herman Road.

"Dear Editor, I am the killer

of the two teenagers last Christmas

at Lake Herman

and the girl last 4th of July.

To prove this I shall state some facts

which only I and the police know.

Christmas. 1.

Brand name of ammo -- Super-X.

2. Ten shots fired.

I want you to print this cipher on the front page of your paper.

In this cipher is my identity.

If you do not print this cipher by the afternoon

of Fri, 1st of Aug, '69,

I will go on a kill rampage Fri night."

**

Beeson: All three letters were similar,

and they each contained a part of a cipher,

a message hidden in a cryptic code.

**

[ Siren wails ]

Butterfield: Of course, the police were a little skeptical,

so they made a public announcement asking the writer

to send another letter with more information,

and the person complied.

And that was the first letter to begin with the phrase

"This is the Zodiac speaking."

When he followed up with what we call

the debut of Zodiac letter,

all jurisdictions believe this was the actual killer,

by what he was revealing in those letters about the crimes,

and they were very, very motivated to break that cipher,

to see if it was gonna reveal his name.

Oranchak: The first cipher, which was solved

by Donald and Bettye Harden, they did it completely by hand.

Over the course of 20 hours' worth of work,

they were able to use trial and error

to come up with the right answer.

Beeson: It said, "I like killing people. It's so much fun.

It's more fun than shooting wild game in the forest.

Because man is the most dangerous animal of them all."

Of course, it didn't lead to who the killer was,

but they knew that they were dealing with somebody

that wanted to take credit for these crimes,

and they knew they had something

really, really strange on their hands at that point.

**

Nock: Why write a letter to take credit for a crime?

Isn't that a really risky thing to do?

I think the Zodiac Killer is addicted to risk.

And he doesn't want to actually get caught,

but he wants people to know

that there's one single person behind all of these crimes

and that perhaps he is smarter than the teams of policemen

and detectives who were all trying to solve this puzzle.

Horan: What was the motive for writing the letters?

The motive apparently was to get this

three-part, coded message published in three newspapers.

Well, if it's easy to crack, what's the purpose

of putting it in code in the first place?

Is there some other message here?

Oranchak: A very real possibility might be that Zodiac

hid a message within the message.

There are well-known techniques in cryptography

for doing such things.

One of them is called null cipher,

where you look at something that looks like a normal letter,

but if you look at, say,

every second letter of each word,

it might spell something significant.

And this was a technique used a lot by prisoners.

They'll try to write letters to people outside of the prison,

but they'll put hidden messages, an order for a hit

on a rival gang member or something like that.

So that's something Zodiac could have known about.

**

Horan: As an English professor, these Zodiac letters

were what got me interested in the case in the first place.

They were fascinating.

They're short, but they're very well-written.

And this series of letters, very artfully crafted,

created this compelling character.

He was cold, calculating, ruthless.

He was perfectly conscious of his actions.

He chose to be evil.

But the initial response was skepticism.

No police spokesman says,

"Oh, my God. We have this terror..."

No, they express a lot of healthy skepticism.

But the public now are getting information

from a person claiming to be the killer.

I think the fear was that the public

would believe these letters,

and I think that's what happened.

The more time that goes on,

they believe more and more in the Zodiac,

and it really does start to skew their investigations

toward certain suspects, away from certain suspects.

**

Darlene Ferrin -- her first husband was a guy

named James Phillips Crabtree.

He was a suspect at one point.

**

Butterfield: Vallejo detectives eliminated him as a suspect

after talking to him.

Now, it's possible that they could have been wrong,

but it's important to remember that looking at the ex-husband

of a victim is basically just standard procedure,

and he's part of what you might refer to as the usual suspects.

**

Nock: Is he passed away?

No.

I believe he's still alive.

**

**

Can you first tell me your name?

Jim Crabtree.

Should I develop a "deer in the headlights" look?

I've read that your name was also Jim Phillips.

Yes.

Tell me about when you first met Darlene.

There were some people that I went to high school

who were in San Francisco.

And a little girl I grew up with

took me over to the Haight-Ashbury.

Boom!

That's where I met Dee.

Everybody called her Dee.

She had a job at AT&T, and she lived in the city.

She lived in the Haight-Ashbury for a while, too.

And she lived in the city, close to it,

because she wanted to be close to her job.

When I met her, I felt like I got lucky.

"Wow. I got lucky with this pretty girl."

When we got together, we --

I decided we needed to go to New York, and she agreed.

And then I got a job offer in Albany.

So I went up there.

So you asked her to marry you.

We just thought we should get married.

So, how long were you together?

Um, geez. I don't know.

A year?

How was your relationship with Dee?

I heard it was kind of love/hate relationship?

Is that fair? Or tumultuous?

No. No. [Bleep] no.

I don't get tumultuous with people, except guys.

I don't get tumultuous with women.

[ Chuckles ] Are you crazy?

Nock: Did she ever talk to you about the type of relationship

she had with Jim?

Chambers: It was stressful, I thought.

She always tried to play it down,

you know, and be happy around me.

But I think that it was not going anywhere good.

Why did you and Dee break up?

I started realizing

that this is not a woman I want to be with.

She's too, as we say,

accessible to the male desires.

I should have probably just put her on a plane.

But I felt responsible since I'd taken her so far from her home.

"I'm gonna deliver you back to your parents."

So that's what I did.

Came back. Stayed in a motel there.

We were in that motel about three days,

and suddenly she's in love with a guy

in the International House of Pancakes.

Oh, that's Dean, right? Yeah.

So I felt like I could get the hell out of there.

I drove off in our Corvair.

And when I left,

I regretfully said,

"Whatever's happened here,

you're gonna get it back nine times over."

For that, I regretted that.

It just blurted out of my mouth. I don't know why.

Well, there's -- She was shot nine times.

But that was like years after I had seen her.

How did you find out that Darlene had been murdered?

Well, this highway patrolman

stopped me for a taillight broken,

and I didn't have my driver's license with me,

so I had to go to the Santa Cruz County Courthouse

to show my driver's license.

So I went up to the judge. I showed him my license.

You know, I'm done here.

And I turned around, and the entire courthouse

was filled with uniformed police.

And four detectives heading towards me

with their hands on their guns.

They said, "Well, come with us."

So they took me across the street to another building.

**

One of them said, "Did you know Darlene?"

And I said, "Yeah."

They said, "Did you know she was murdered?"

"No. I don't follow her scene."

You know?

So they said, "Well, we need to look at your house."

So I said, "Sure, but under the proviso

that you're not gonna bust me for my dope."

They said, "We don't care about the dope."

And I thought, "Oh, Jesus. This is serious."

So they came to my house.

They took pictures of all my books

about magic and horoscopes

and the car and everything.

They put all this together.

So then they took me to Vallejo,

where I did writing samples.

Nock: So, they asked you for a handwriting sample

because they thought you may have written the letters

to the press from the Zodiac?

Oh, yeah, sure.

The police were finally able to talk to him

about six months after the murder.

And by that time, you have to understand --

it's just a couple of weeks after Darlene's murder

that the newspapers start getting these letters

from this guy calling himself the Zodiac,

taking credit for these murders.

So now Jim doesn't just have to be a good suspect

for Darlene's murder.

He has to be a good suspect for all the murders,

and his handwriting has to match the letters

in order for the police to further investigate him.

**

Crabtree: I spent two or three days in the jail there.

Everybody knowing in the jail

that I had been arrested as the Zodiac.

**

Why would the police think that?

Aside from being the ex-husband, what else did they think

connected you to the Zodiac killings?

I think it was probably because I was a cryptographer.

I worked with codes. I didn't realize

that you studied cryptography in the Army.

Yes, I was trained as a cryptographer.

I had about three months

at Fort Gordon Crypto School.

When those cops showed up, I thought, "I'm [bleep]."

**

I'm a cryptographer.

I have books on magic.

I thought, "I'm [bleep]."

What was your alibi when the police asked you?

Every 4th of July during those years, I took acid.

And on that particular day,

I parked my 1929 Ford truck

down at the foot of Boulder Creek Road

outside of Boulder Creek, California.

And I walked up that road, spent the day up there

just playing in the mud and the sun.

They asked me where I'd been, and I told them.

**

Then I walked back down that road. It's about 3 miles.

And as I came down,

there was a family gathered here,

having 4th of July, and I said, "Hey. Hi. How are you?"

And they waved, and I kept walking.

Turned out that man was a Federal Court judge.

[ Chuckles ] And he did see me.

And he did wave at me.

I wasn't there.

Nock: I have found no record

of a judge verifying Jim's story,

but in the police reports, I can see

that one of the investigators on the case,

a sergeant named Mulanax,

independently interviewed Jim's new wife at the time

and corroborated his alibi.

Remember, by the time of Darlene's murder,

she and Jim had been broken up for over two years

and both had remarried.

And they came back and said, "Oh, he's clear."

Tell me about this picture.

[ Chuckles ]

So, who's in that photograph?

Oh, well, that's Dee right there.

And they kept accusing me of being this [bleep] guy.

This is a dork! Dork! [ Chuckles ]

Nock: Do you think Jim has anything to do with Darlene's death?

I did at first.

I think he was mean enough to definitely do it.

I want to show you this picture.

I've seen that picture quite a bit.

I thought it was Jim because Jim has

similar characteristics like that.

Tall and skinny. And I think he wore glasses.

Crabtree: I recognize the sweater

because I bought it for her for Christmas as a gift

for going through, uh --

You can't really see it here,

but she had just had a knee operation.

She fell. We were skiing on Mount Shasta.

This is the doctor who did the operation on her knee.

The guy's a goddamn dork. It's an insult.

Look at that thumb. Look at that guy's thumb!

That's not my thumb! [ Chuckles ]

Can I show you one more picture?

So I guess this is their proof that it is you.

Yeah. Yeah. They say that's your high-school photograph,

and that looks like the same guy.

Have you seen that before?

Yeah, it is. [ Chuckles ]

Whew! Jesus!

I was even more dorky than I thought.

You know, people in the Zodiac community say

that when you put it all together

and you line up these two images --

this mystery man here with Darlene

and your high-school photograph --

they look pretty similar.

Yeah. This is not me. That's the doctor.

I have to ask you. Did you kill Darlene?

Guy who was taking an acid trip when she was shot.

You know?

[ Chuckling ]

I've heard that her family absolutely said it was me.

You know?

Why, ain't you a little bitch? Why'd you do that?

You know nothing about me.

What do you believe happened that night to Darlene?

Oh, I think this asshole did.

The Zodiac. Whoever the Zodiac guy is.

You think that she was the victim of a serial killer?

Oh, yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean I think so.

I really don't know any of the details about her world

because I was basically just living my life.

So I really don't know.

**

Thank you, Jim. Oh, it was fun.

Thank you for listening to all this crap.

Of course. Thank you, Andrew.

Thank you so much for meeting with me

and talking with me and setting the record straight.

Yes, well, I don't know if I did that or not.

Well, that's what we wanted to do, right?

Set the record on fire.

You know, something funny happens when you turn 70.

What?

You don't give a shit about what you say anymore.

At all.

[ Chuckles ]

**

Nock: Okay, I'm gonna call Thomas Horan right now

and let him know about this conversation

I just had with Jim.

[ Line ringing]

[ Click]

Thomas? Yeah.

Jim Crabtree.

He -- You know, we met with him.

Well, he had a lot to say, and he did his best to,

you know, dispel the rumors that he had anything to do

with Darlene's murder,

anything to do with being the Zodiac.

He pretty much told me his whole story

about being in the military, being in a cryptography program.

I didn't know that. Did you know that?

That was bullshit. That was total bullshit.

He was a clerk typist,

and he was stationed in Germany for a couple of years.

See, this is what I'm confused about.

It was a very strange conversation.

He did his best to clear his name,

but then he said a lot of things

that just fuels the fire of speculation.

Like, he had top-secret clearance,

that he was a top cryptographer in the Army.

Why would he say that,

knowing that that would link him to the Zodiac?

Right. Right.

He said the last thing he said to her

after she had been cheating on him in Vallejo

when they lived in a motel there was that,

"It's going to come back to you nine times over."

And that's the number of times she was shot.

Right. And, see, victim blaming

is classic behavior on the part of the perpetrator.

I asked him about his alibi of the murder.

He said he did acid. It was a 4th of July tradition.

He went hiking in Boulder Creek.

And that -- The Boulder Creek does match up

with the police report.

The truth about him makes him look guilty

or very suspicious of being involved in Darlene's murder,

and nothing makes him look innocent.

Now, that doesn't prove he's guilty... Right.

...but everything makes him look guilty, and nothing --

There's nothing that makes him look innocent.

Nothing. Yeah, it's -- it's --

It's puzzling and a little disturbing.

I've got -- I've got to be honest.

**

Horan: When you look at Darlene's murder,

the most obvious suspect has to be Darlene's ex-husband, Jim.

Maybe he's not guilty, but you do have a prime suspect

who is worthy of further investigation.

But by the time the police catch up with him,

there's now this runaway narrative

that the murders were committed by one person

who's been writing these letters.

And the police couldn't prove that Jim

was the so-called Zodiac Killer, so they lost interest in him.

**

The letters are probably the number-one reason

none of these victims ever got any justice.

And here's a perfect example.

If the letter writer isn't the killer,

then we need to rethink

everything we know about this case.

And unlocking the mystery of those letters and ciphers

is the key to blowing this whole case wide open

and proving if there really was a Zodiac Killer

or if it's all a myth.

**

Nock: The so-called Zodiac Killer

ultimately sent over 20 letters and 4 ciphers to the media.

Many experts actually put the number at 32,

and they have been analyzed for fingerprints,

analyzed for DNA, analyzed for trace evidence.

The handwriting has been compared again and again.

So far, it's led to nothing.

So what's next? That's the big question.

Thomas Horan believes the letters could be the key.

I think if we're trying to prove his theory

about multiple killers, possibly multiple authors,

that's what we need to focus on.

There have been famous letters that have recently been cracked

by new scientific methods.

Case in point -- Q of QAnon.

Their identity was solved

with the help of computational linguistics.

Maybe that's the key to this Zodiac case.

[ Line ringing]

Hi, Florian. Hi, Jean-Baptiste.

-Hi, Andrew. -Hi, Andrew.

Nock: I found the two professors who used

computational linguistics to help identify Q.

It's been a few weeks since I sent you the Zodiac letters,

and what we're trying to understand about these letters

is not so much who wrote them,

but whether or not one single person wrote all those letters

or if there are multiple letter writers.

I'm dying to find out what you discovered.