← The Trial: USA
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- [00:03]
Josh Boswell
The Crime Desk Arresting Podcasts.
- [00:08]
Kayla Brantley
For more than half a century, two names have haunted American true crime. The Black Dahlia, the brutal unsolved murder of Elizabeth Short, an aspiring Hollywood actress that shocked Los Angeles in 1947. And the Zodiac Killer, a serial murderer famous for his cryptic ciphers and taunting of the press who terrorized Northern California and then disappeared. They've always been treated as separate mysteries, different eras, different crimes, different suspects. But what if they weren't? For this special holiday bonus episode of the Trial usa, we're bringing you a story that could reshape both cases. A theory suggesting the same man may be responsible for both the Black Dahlia murder and the Zodiac killings. The theory comes from a cold case investigator who has spent years working on this case, and we've been granted access to the documents, timelines and evidence behind it. Daily Mail journalist Josh Boswell has spent weeks reviewing that material, speaking to sources and examining how his theory fits with what we already know.
- [01:19]
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- [02:45]
Paige Desorbo
Hi, it's Paige desorbo from Giggly Squad. You Ever stand in front of your closet and just say, I have nothing to wear, while you're literally surrounded by cloth? Because same. So I started listing pieces. I'm over on Depop, and honestly, it's been amazing. You can sell what you're done with and someone out there will love it. And the best part about it is there's no seller fee, so the money you make actually stays in your pocket, which feels very chic. It's also insanely easy. I listed something while watching tv and it sold before the episode even ended. So download the Depop app and list your first item today because your old outfit could be someone else's new favorite. Depop, where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees, boosting fees still apply. For more info, visit depop.com.
- [03:34]
Kayla Brantley
Welcome back to the trial USA. Josh Boswell, senior reporter. Thanks for joining me.
- [03:40]
Josh Boswell
Thanks for having me.
- [03:41]
Kayla Brantley
You've been working on this story for a while now, and it's finally out there in the world. The Black Dahlia, the Zodiac Killer. Those two cases are connected. To give our listeners a refresher, both of these cases happened decades ago. Can you tell us the basic facts of each case?
- [04:01]
Josh Boswell
Yes. So the earliest case is the Black Dahlia. 1947, a woman's body was found on the side of a street, brutally butchered. I mean, her body was in two pieces. It was really quite shocking. It shook not just Hollywood, but really the entire country. At the time, this was a massive case, and it's been unsolved. There's been many different proposed suspects, but that case still remains unsolved. And really, it's the brutality of it and then also the way in which the killer taunted the police in letters afterwards that made it a case that stuck in people's memory. That's the Black Dahlia. She was called that by her friends, a nickname because of a movie that was out at the time and how she liked to wear all black. So that's how that name of that case came about. Then you have the Zodiac, and this is probably the most famous serial killer in the world. That is a serial killer who was active in Northern California mostly from 1968 to 1969. There were four attacks against seven victims, five of whom died. There are also other killings potentially connected to him. But it was someone who targeted young couples, mostly on these lovers lane stabbings and shootings, that really shook up the entire country in just the same way that it did with the Black Dahlia. And then the extra creepy aspect of this case was that the Zodiac sent these Encrypted letters, these codes to local newspapers in San Francisco, taunting them, giving certain details of the crimes that only the killer would know, giving even sometimes cuttings of pieces of evidence like clothing, blood stained clothing, sent to police and sent to these newspapers. It was a case that has been unsolved to this day. People are still working on it, have been for decades.
- [05:56]
Kayla Brantley
Okay, so we have two huge cases that have gone down in history, really, two cold cases, and for the first time ever, we are connecting the two of them. Josh, can you walk us through exactly what, what's being claimed here?
- [06:09]
Josh Boswell
So we have a cold case investigator who's come to us with this theory that we've been looking into for the past couple of months now. What he claims, Alex Baber, he claims that he has managed to crack the code that the Zodiac sent to a newspaper saying, my name is. And then a 13 character sequence of, of symbols that supposedly has his name. So Alex Baber reckons that he's cracked that code. He got a name of someone that might be the Zodiac, and that person, it turns out, is also a suspect in the Black Dahlia killing. And so you've got a potential solution to these two very famous cold cases. That is really what makes this story explosive.
- [06:58]
Kayla Brantley
And who is that?
- [06:59]
Josh Boswell
And that is Marvin Margolis. His other alias that he went by is Marvin Merrill, which is the name that appears in that 13 character cipher.
- [07:09]
Kayla Brantley
And what do we know about Marvin Margolis or Marvin Merrill?
- [07:13]
Josh Boswell
So Marvin Margolis was this former Marine who served in Japan in World War II, came back to the United States, and he was connected to the Black Dahlia case because he, he spent 12 days living with that victim, Elizabeth Short, in her home in Los Angeles. He also had several different aspects of his life that tied him to this case, made him one of 22 suspects that the FBI identified in the Black Dahlia investigation. He then left la, moved around the country, but came back to California a couple of years before the Zodiac killings began. And there are various elements of his life that also tie him to those killings as well, which is what we are going to explore.
- [08:02]
Kayla Brantley
Josh, what do we know about this man's background, some of his movements, his behavior, and how exactly does that overlap in these two timelines?
- [08:10]
Josh Boswell
So looking at Marvin Margolis and what connects him to the Black Dahlia case initially, you've got him living with the victim, Elizabeth Short, for a few days. He is the only person who was connected to her, who's an ex Marine and was in a romantic relationship with her at the time, 1947, there was this crucial piece of evidence, which was a female police officer who said that a woman who she later realized was Elizabeth Short came up to her hours before the killing was discovered and told her that she was afraid for her life from this crazy ex Marine boyfriend of hers. Now, the only person who seems to fit that profile was Marvin Margolis.
- [08:57]
Kayla Brantley
Yeah.
- [08:57]
Josh Boswell
The other thing is that this brutal butchering of Elizabeth Short was done so precisely that cut her in half, avoided all of her organs, and was done very cleanly such that investigators believed it must have been someone with a medical background. Now, if we look at Marvin Margolis's background, he was a USC student for medicine. He was actually working on cadavers at the time that he was at university. And more than that, he expressed an affinity for doing that when he was in the military. According to his records from his time in the Marines, he kept on requesting to be moved to the surgical unit, and they denied him and denied him, and then eventually they kicked him out with mental health discharge and where he got half pay and was released from the military. So you've got two things there that really make him fit the profile for the potential killer. The military also, in their discharge documents, described him as tending towards aggression or violence. So you've got a picture of someone who could potentially be a killer there.
- [10:08]
Kayla Brantley
And, Josh, how exactly did this all come onto your radar? Why now?
- [10:14]
Josh Boswell
So it came onto our radar because this investigator came to us wanting to discuss the case, wanting to get it out there in the media because he really believes that he has cracked both of these cases. We decided to look into all of his evidence. And the more that I looked into it, the more striking it became. So initially, I was very skeptical, right? This guy, he's not a licensed private investigator, Alex Baber. You know, I don't have any other big cases that I can see that he's cracked. You know, lots of people claim to have solved the Zodiac or the Black Dahlia. Is this just another one of those?
- [10:50]
Kayla Brantley
Josh, is there any evidence that links Marvin Margolis to both the Black Dahlia and the Zodiac killing?
- [10:57]
Josh Boswell
Now, Alex Baber reckons that he solved one of the zodiac ciphers, that Z32, that seems to be giving some coordinates for a location in the Bay Area. Alex's solution points to the grave of Elizabeth Short, which was a stunning link between the Zodiac and the Black Dahlia killing. That particular solution has not been verified yet by the cryptographic experts, but it'll be very interesting to See what their opinion is on that.
- [11:27]
Kayla Brantley
What is the one piece of evidence that was the most compelling to you?
- [11:32]
Josh Boswell
Well, there is this piece of evidence that made me just sit back and say, wow, let me set up the story for you. So once Alex Baber found this solution for the. The Zodiac cipher that supposedly has the name of the killer in it, he looked up that guy, Marvin Margolis. He found his son, and he went and visited the son's home, which is a castle on the wall. In there, there is a sketch that the son said that his father drew. And it is a torso and head of a woman, naked, with some strange marks around the body that seem to correspond with the wounds that Elizabeth Short sustained in that murder. It says Elizabeth on it, and the date is 92. So that's just after Marvin Margolis had been diagnosed with terminal cancer. And so this is potentially a deathbed confession. Yeah, is really what Alex Baber is suggesting. The thing that made me just sit back and think, wow, there's really something to this, is you have this connection with potentially Elizabeth Short, this woman that he's drawn. But where's the connection to the Zodiac? If you take a picture of that sketch? When you play around with. With the contrast and. And the. In the black and white coloring on a photo, you can expose some scribbles that were underneath, you know, other writing. And so what we did that, we played around with it. And when you do that, you see in the bottom right hand corner, the word Zodiac emerges, which would just took my breath away at that moment. This was not conclusive, of course, but when you have a picture of a woman called Elizabeth drawn by the guy who is a suspect in that case and the word Zodiac is in that picture, I mean, that's the story in a nutshell. The other piece of evidence that is a very interesting link is Marvin Maris. He served as a Marine overseas in Japan during World War II. And there is a newspaper photo of him with a Japanese rifle with a bayonet on it that he brought back to the United States. His son told the investigators that he remembers this bayonet being around at home, that it's still actually in his possession somewhere. He's just looking for it. Now, the Zodiac used something resembling a bayonet to stab this couple in the Lake berryessa killing in 1969. So the bayonet could be significant. And potentially that bayonet has DNA evidence on it. It was a very bloody killing. There would have been blood that soaked into this rifle that had a wooden side to it that was unvarnished and so could soak up blood and DNA material. If they can locate that bayonet, then we could have some forensic evidence that could tie Marvin Margolis to the Zodiac killings. One other point about the bayonets. At the bottom of it, there are these symbols carved into it. This is standard for that bayonet. One of the symbols is a circle with a cross through it that is almost exactly the same as the symbols that the Zodiac used in his ciphers. It's an interesting coincidence.
- [14:57]
Kayla Brantley
We're taking a quick break after this.
- [15:03]
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- [15:10]
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- [15:59]
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- [16:22]
Josh Boswell
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- [16:30]
Kayla Brantley
Can you explain how Alex Baber, the investigator, cracked the Zodiac killer cipher?
- [16:35]
Josh Boswell
Yes. So this is a fascinating solution. And my first thought when Alex Baber was saying, I've solved this cipher, I have. The name of the killer was. Lots of people have claimed to solve it. And one of the problems with it is that it's only 13 characters long. So you don't have a lot of information. There are millions of potential solutions to it. So how are you claiming that you have it and why now? And there are a couple of good reasons why he might have got it right. Firstly, one of the Zodiac ciphers. There were four that he wrote. One of them wasn't solved until 2020, decades after it was written Z408, and it's called Z4.8 because it's 4.8characters long. And these cryptographic experts finally cracked it. And that solution actually exposed some new methodology that the Zodiac was using. So he wrote this first cipher that was very quickly cracked just by a mom and pop who were solving it over the breakfast table like you would a crossword. So clearly, I think, the Zodiac realized that he needed to do some heavier encryption on his next one. And so this solution that was only discovered in 2020 showed that there were multiple layers of encryption that he used. Firstly, a character substitution and then rearranging the characters in a certain way. So that's the first breakthrough there that was recent. The second breakthrough was in 2022. It was only then that the census data for 1950 was was released digitally. So that means that it was only in 2022 that we had a digital list of every single person in the United States in 1950. And the. The real kind of clever, logical thinking that Alex Baber had here was, well, the Zodiac was a living male in the United States in 1950, so his name must be in that list of a few million people. So when you combine those two things, a potential looking at the methodology, we know how the Zodiac wrote his ciphers, and we know that the name must be in this list of people that gave him the tools to then potentially crack this code. The way that he did it was also very clever. He was saying, right, the Zodiac is probably just using a simple substitution, which is where you take, say, the letter A and you switch it for a character, like a circle with a cross through it. And that's one part of how you encrypt things. Every time there's a letter A in the cipher, it's instead this circle with a cross for it. That means that if there are repeated letters in the name, then you're going to see those characters repeated. And so even if you don't know what the characters are, you can say, okay, there's three lots of two repeated letters, and there's one time where one letter is repeated three times. So using that, he then ran it against all these millions of names in the census of the men in America at that time and was able to narrow it down suddenly to just a short list of a handful of names. Suddenly, you've got a potential, you know, bunch of names that you can really drill into. He then narrowed it down further by saying, what's the profile of the Zodiac? It's a man aged 35 to 55, according to the FBI. White and lived in California at the time. Pretty basic stuff. But once you apply those restrictions, you get one name. Marvin Merrill. You've got the double R, the double L, you've got the M's. Right? That. That's how he managed to narrow it down. And digging into Marvin Merrill, he saw, okay, this is a guy who, according to Social Security records, he changed his name sometime after the Elizabeth Short killing, the Black Dahlia murder. And his original original name was Marvin Martin Margolis, which, it turns out was Elizabeth Short's roommate, was one of the 22 suspects in the FBI's original investigation. And that really, I think, made Alex believe that he was onto something solid.
- [20:44]
Kayla Brantley
That is very, very compelling evidence and a lot of research. How long did this take?
- [20:50]
Josh Boswell
Alex Baber, he was working on this for at least two years, which is, you know, it's a really impressive amount of work he's done. And you can see that this is being taken seriously, you know, not just by experts, but also by law enforcement. So you have his potential solution for the Z13 cipher. That my name is the Zodiac name that was verified by the NSA's former top code breaker and codemaker, Ed Giorgio. And I spoke to him, and he said, yeah, this methodology makes sense. And when you add it together with all of the circumstantial evidence, he believes that Alex has got the right name there. So that's one top expert validating it. And then you also have law enforcement getting on board with this. So he, Alex, and his team have met with the LAPD Chief of Police and head of Robbery Homicide. He's also met with a detective with the San Francisco Police Department who is in charge of the Zodiac cold case for that police department. And he introduced him to this interagency task force or group that they have on the Zodiac killing. That's the FBI, that's the various police agencies that were involved. Vallejo Police Department, Napa County Sheriff's Department, a couple of others. And they've been briefed on this evidence. They are taking it seriously. So this isn't just another person throwing out yet another name. This is a investigation that is being thoroughly looked at by law enforcement. And that's what makes us really want to take a closer look at it.
- [22:31]
Kayla Brantley
What are some motives that have come up in doing this research?
- [22:36]
Josh Boswell
So, looking at his background, those military records, this is someone who was potentially violent. This is someone who had an interest in surgery and. And dead bodies. Based on his USC studies, this is someone who was clearly in conflict with his girlfriend at the time. You know, that her complaining to police that, you know, she was scared for her life. Now, when you're looking at killings like the Zodiac, they are sick and twisted and. But it's also by someone who's very intelligent. So it's really hard to unpack from what we know about his personal life, Marvin Margolis, to see, you know, what it is that he is. He is motivated by. Exactly. But it does seem to all stem back to this original, very intense killing of Elizabeth Short that then he's almost reliving potentially in these Zodiac killings. If, in fact, he is the Zodiac killer. I think that what you can say is that he was someone who liked to play around with. In both cases, the. The Zodiac and the Black Dahlia, the killer was someone who liked to play around with police, with puzzles, with codes. He, in both cases, sent law enforcement sketches of daggers. He also, in his writing, this was one really interesting piece of evidence here. He sent them letters with phonetic misspellings, very particular kinds of misspellings. One example would be spelling laser with a Z instead of an S or. Or Christmas with two S's on the end. Odd misspellings that come up in both of those writings, but also come up in some writings that were by Marvin Margolis, the individual. When the sun released his. His files to the investigators, there was some writing, some schematics of a voice modulator that the dad had come up with, and other handwriting samples where you could see there were these same misspellings. There's also some analysis that's been done by an expert on Alex's team of the actual handwriting, and you can see some interesting similarities. Now they are wanting to get that reviewed by an independent expert. So I would say it's not conclusive right now, but looking at it myself, I can see, you know, the way that the M was written, it's this stick, and then a swoop on a separate stroke of the pen that looks very similar. So I can see why, you know, they're drawing that connection there.
- [25:21]
Kayla Brantley
And you mentioned that Marvin Margolis had a son. So obviously he went on to have a family and to have a life. What do we know about his son?
- [25:31]
Josh Boswell
So once they found this name, they traced the son and approached him. I've also spoken to him too. Interestingly. He was open to cooperate with the investigation, but he's skeptical that his dad was in fact, the killer. He doesn't believe it could be true. And, I mean, put yourself in his shoes, would you want to believe that your father was a serial killer? The most famous serial killer potentially in the world. You know, anyone would struggle with that.
- [25:58]
Kayla Brantley
And the son doesn't want to be named, obviously, so we'll protect his identity. But did he tell you anything about his dad, what kind of man he was?
- [26:07]
Josh Boswell
He said that his father worked in various different fields, was a hard working guy. He said that he was intelligent, inventive. He worked in construction engineering, computer programming. He was an artist, and you can see that from newspaper records during the short time that they lived in, in Kansas. He said that his father was a bookworm, very well read. And when he wasn't doing all of these different business ideas and hobbies, he had his nose in a book. He did say that his father could be violent. And that was one very interesting piece of evidence that came out in the conversations with the son. There was this one incident where his sister was in the house with the mother, and then the father, Marvin Margolis, got very angry at her for some reason, came at her, and the mother had to get in between them with a knife and threaten her husband, Marvin, to stop him going after their daughter. So that was actually one incident that led to their divorce. And it was an incident that I think sticks out as potential evidence that this man could be violent.
- [27:14]
Kayla Brantley
Obviously, there have been lots of theories over the years of who the Zodiac Killer could be, who the Black Dahlia Killer could be, having this new information. And if this theory really does hold up, how does this fundamentally change our understanding of both of these cases? And obviously Marvin Margolis has passed on. Why does this matter now?
- [27:39]
Josh Boswell
The reason that Alex Baber, the cold case investigator, says that he's driven to, to get this out there is that he, he wants to get an answer for the, the relatives of the victims. And the one surviving victim, actually, there is one man who is still alive, Brian Hartnell, who was stabbed at Lake Berry Essa in napa county in 1969 along with his girlfriend, Cecilia Shepard. He survived that attack. And, and so, I mean, he's been without an answer for decades. That's. There is value to him in knowing who this is if we can prove it. But there's also just the concept of justice, right? This is a huge unsolved case. This is a thorn in the side of law enforcement that they've never been able to figure this out. And so being able to at least as much as you can, crack that case and, you know, have a suspect that you believe is most likely the guy, I think, gives confidence in the ability to crack cases in general. And to say that no matter how long it takes, no matter how far away we are in time from these events, these cases are going to get solved and murders are going to be exposed and brought to justice.
- [28:55]
Kayla Brantley
All right, well, thank you so much, Josh. Make sure to read the rest of this excellent reporting. And that's it for today's episode of the Trial usa. Follow the show so you don't miss it. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a comment and a review. It really helps. I'm Kayla Brantley. Thank you for listening.
- [29:29]
Paige Desorbo
Hi, it's Paige Desorbo from Giggly Squad. You ever stand in front of your closet and just say I have nothing to wear while you're literally surrounded by clothes? Because same so I started listing pieces. I'm over on Depop and honestly, it's been amazing. You can sell what you're done with and someone out there will love it. And the best part about it is there's no seller fee, so the money you make actually stays in your pocket, which feels very chic. It's also insanely easy. I listed something while watching TV and it sold before the episode even ended. So download the Depop app and list your first item today because your old outfit could be someone else's new favorite. Depop where taste recognizes taste. Payment processing fees, boosting fees still apply. For more info, visit depop.com hi, it's Paige Desorbo from Giggly Squad. You ever stand in front of your closet and just say I have nothing to wear while you're literally surrounded by clothes? Because same so I started listing pieces. I'm over on Depop and honestly, it's been amazing. You can sell what you're done with and someone out there will love it. And the best part about it is there's no seller fee, so the money you make actually stays in your pocket, which feels very chic. It's also insanely easy. I listed something while watching TV and it sold before the episode even ended. So download the Depop app and list your first item today because your old outfit could be someone else's new favorite. Depop where taste recognizes taste, payment processing fees, boosting fees still apply. For more info, visit depop.com the other.
- [31:02]
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