Zodiac Killer /// Part 2 /// 796

Summary

Podcast Summary: True Crime Garage - "Zodiac Killer /// Part 2 /// 796"

Episode Information:

• Title: Zodiac Killer /// Part 2 /// 796
• Release Date: October 23, 2024
• Hosts: Nic and the Captain
• Guest: Dr. Mark Hewitt, Author of the Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy

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Introduction

In episode 796 of True Crime Garage, hosts Nic and the Captain delve deep into the enigmatic case of the Zodiac Killer. Joined by Dr. Mark Hewitt, the conversation explores advanced theories surrounding the Zodiac's identity, including a provocative connection to Ted Kaczynski, the infamous Unabomber.

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Geographical Profiling of the Zodiac Killer ([03:13] - [07:39])

Nic: "When it comes to the profiling of this particular killer, did you factor in or attempt to use any geological profiling when attempting to unmask, as they say, the Zodiac?" ([03:13])

Mark Hewitt: Discusses the application of geographical profiling to the Zodiac case, highlighting that the Zodiac may have been strategically moving from remote areas to more populated ones like San Francisco to gain publicity. Hewitt suggests that if the Zodiac was moving frequently, it would render geographical profiling less effective.

Captain: "So the Zodiac is changing victims' locations and the manner in which he attacks his victims. Is that to create this overall threat to society?" ([07:08])

Mark Hewitt: Agrees, positing that the Zodiac's shifting patterns aimed to instill pervasive fear, suggesting that anyone could be a potential victim anywhere.

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Arthur Lee Allen: A Suspect Under Scrutiny ([08:03] - [25:21])

Nic: Introduces Arthur Lee Allen, a suspect often linked to the Zodiac case, seeking Mark Hewitt's insights on his validity ([08:03]).

Mark Hewitt: Outlines the reasons Allen was considered a suspect:

• Symbolic Connections: Allen wore a Zodiac Seawolf watch, linking him to the killer's symbol.
• Behavioral Traits: A former coworker reported Allen's desire to be the Zodiac, enjoying the attention and taunting the police.
• Investigative Shortcomings: Despite thorough investigations, including search warrants, no conclusive evidence tied Allen to the crimes.

Nic: Expresses skepticism about the numerous individuals claiming personal connections to the Zodiac over the years ([13:09]).

Mark Hewitt: Confirms that despite widespread suspicions, Allen's personality and actions—particularly his openness about being investigated—contradicted the calculated and reserved nature attributed to the Zodiac.

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Case Breakers and Gary Post Claim ([29:46] - [35:17])

Captain: Inquires about the 2021 Case Breakers' identification of Gary Post as the Zodiac Killer ([29:46]).

Mark Hewitt: Expresses skepticism towards the Case Breakers' claim, questioning the validity of matching forehead scars to composite sketches and highlighting inconsistencies in their evidence.

Nic: Criticizes the methodology and reliability of the Case Breakers' evidence, emphasizing the lack of concrete forensic proof ([33:30]).

Mark Hewitt: Points out that the revised Zodiac composite sketch added features not present in the original, weakening the Post hypothesis.

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Connecting Ted Kaczynski to the Zodiac Killer ([40:14] - [67:42])

Nic: Encourages Mark to present his theory linking Ted Kaczynski to the Zodiac Killer ([40:14]).

Mark Hewitt: Presents a comprehensive argument for Theodore Kaczynski being the Zodiac:

• Timeline Overlap: Kaczynski's two-year gap between leaving UC Berkeley and moving to Montana coincides with the bulk of Zodiac activities.
• Modus Operandi: Similarities in bomb-making sophistication and the use of codes between the Zodiac letters and Kaczynski's manifesto.
• Mathematical Aptitude: Both individuals exhibited high intelligence and a penchant for mathematical concepts, evident in their communications.
• Disguises and Secrecy: Kaczynski's cabin contained materials reminiscent of Zodiac's modus operandi, including disguises and bomb diagrams.
• Handwriting Analysis: Both used block lettering for addresses and printed their letters, masking their true identities.

Captain: Notes additional similarities, such as the use of bomb diagrams ([44:11]).

Mark Hewitt: Elaborates on the meticulous nature of both criminals, emphasizing Kaczynski's efforts to disguise himself and eliminate evidence tying him to past crimes.

Nic: Highlights the logical consistency in Mark's theory, arguing that Kaczynski's profile aligns with the Zodiac's behaviors and motivations ([51:38]).

Mark Hewitt: Details the extensive research required to establish this connection, categorizing evidence into six clusters that collectively support the theory.

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Comparative Analysis: Zodiac vs. Unabomber ([51:57] - [67:42])

Nic: Encourages swift summarization of Mark's main points linking Kaczynski to the Zodiac ([51:57]).

Mark Hewitt: Addresses key similarities:

• Bomb Expertise: Both utilized intricate bomb designs with fail-safes.
• Communication Style: Use of codes and mathematical terminology in their correspondence.
• Psychological Profiles: Both exhibited a desire for control and manipulation through their communications.
• Symbolism: Shared use of specific symbols and a calculated approach to instill fear.

Captain: Observes that unlike typical serial killers who maintain consistent profiles, the Zodiac's evolution mirrors Kaczynski's own transformation into the Unabomber ([44:54]).

Mark Hewitt: Reinforces that the evolution from Zodiac to Unabomber represents a strategic shift in criminal tactics while maintaining underlying similarities in intelligence and communication methods.

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John Douglas's Perspective ([62:09] - [64:11])

Nic: References John Douglas's profiling of the Zodiac Killer and his thoughts on the intelligence of the perpetrator ([62:09]).

Mark Hewitt: Shares Douglas's observations:

• Intelligence: The Zodiac exhibited more intelligence than initially presented in his letters.
• Bomb-Making Skills: Demonstrated meticulousness in creating bombs, aligning with the Unabomber's approach.

Nic: Notes that Douglas never connected Kaczynski to the Zodiac directly, maintaining professional boundaries in his profiling ([61:38]).

Mark Hewitt: Agrees, emphasizing that while similarities exist, Douglas did not formally propose that Kaczynski was the Zodiac.

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Conclusion: Evaluating the Theory and Final Thoughts ([70:32] - [75:42])

Nic: Summarizes the theory and its implications, expressing enthusiasm for the connections drawn between Kaczynski and the Zodiac Killer ([70:32]).

Mark Hewitt: Highlights additional evidence from Kaczynski's cabin and his efforts to purge incriminating evidence, drawing parallels to what would be expected if he were the Zodiac ([67:42]).

Captain: Encourages listeners to explore Mark Hewitt's extensive work on the Zodiac Killer through his books ([75:06]).

Mark Hewitt: Promotes his Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy and memoir, inviting listeners to engage further with his research ([73:02]).

Nic: Wraps up the episode by acknowledging the depth of the discussion and recommending Mark Hewitt's books for those interested in further exploration ([74:53]).

Captain: Closes with a reminder to "be good, be kind, and don't litter," maintaining the show's signature tone ([75:42]).

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Key Quotes:

• Mark Hewitt ([12:38]): "The Zodiac was given three monikers within the press prior to him giving us his own moniker...it remains a mystery what he meant by this is the Zodiac speaking other than to terrify people."

• Captain ([07:08]): "The Zodiac is changing victims' locations and the manner in which he attacks his victims. Is that to create this overall threat to society?"

• Mark Hewitt ([40:14]): "The only way to understand the Zodiac case is to understand its continuation as that of the Unabomber."

• Nic ([51:38]): "He's a better person of interest than a lot of other ones...You can see that Kaczynski's profile aligns with the Zodiac's behaviors and motivations."

• Mark Hewitt ([67:24]): "When they took apart Kaczynski's cabin, they found many books, disguises, codes, bomb creation material...these are precisely the things that we would expect from the Zodiac."

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Recommended Reading:

Mark Hewitt’s Books:

1. Hunted (Book 1 of the Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy)
2. Profiled (Book 2 of the Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy)
3. Exposed (Book 3 of the Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy)
4. Obsessed: My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer (Memoir)

Availability: All books are available through drhewitt.com and major book retailers.

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Final Note: This episode offers a thought-provoking exploration of the Zodiac Killer case, presenting a unique perspective that intertwines historical investigations with contemporary theories. Listeners interested in unsolved true crime mysteries will find Dr. Mark Hewitt’s insights both compelling and challenging conventional narratives.

Transcript

[Nick]

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[The Captain]

Just call me Cannonball Adderley. It's good to be seen and good to see you. Thanks for listening. Thanks for telling a friend.

[Nick]

Today we are still enjoying some hazy from Standard Deviate brewing. This hazy pale ale is a little grassy, a little fruity, and plenty of good ABV 4.8% garage grade three and three quarter bottle caps out of five. And here's some of our friends that helped us out with this week's beer run. First up, a big shout out to Darren in Fontana, California.

[The Captain]

And a big we like your jib goes out to Jeff from Paris, Tennessee.

[Nick]

And last but certainly not least, I love this, and there's no way that I cannot screw this up. A shout out to Finnegan Matabish from Sewanee, Georgia. That's right, everyone we just mentioned from California, Tennessee, Georgia and everywhere else in this beautiful world. Thank you for contributing to our beer fund. And if you would like to contribute to the beer fund in the Future, go to truecrimegarage.com and click on the pint glass.

[The Captain]

Yeah, BWR you and beer run. You need more True Crime Garage for your ear balls. Yes, you do. Yes, you do. You're a little bored. You need more to listen to. And we just did a great episode on Patreon and Apple podcast subscription on the Menendez brothers biopic. So you want to check that out And Colonel, that's enough of the business.

[Nick]

All right, everybody gather around. Grab a chair, grab a beer. Let's talk some true crime. When it comes to the profiling of this particular killer, did you factor in or attempt to use any geological profiling when attempting to unmask, as they say, the zodiac? Because typically we need at least three geological markers or locations. And here with zodiac, we absolutely have four. At the least, I mean. I mean, we have our four attack and murder locations.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah. Geographical profiling is something that has emerged in the 1990s, 90s, looking at places that perpetrators live or work in, trying to, from the geolog, geographic locations of the attacks figure out where they are comfortable with where they spend time. Some work has been done into the geographic profiling of the Zodiac. It may not be useful in some crime, some crime sprees. If not, the Zodiac may have been tied to Southern California crime scenes, in which case we say, well, does this say something about the individual? It is possible that the Zodiac was clever enough and criminally sophisticated to outsmart geographic profiling. There's some thought that he may not have been living in California continuously during the crime sprees. For instance, while the attacks occurred in greater frequency, the letters that he spent, that he sent were sent in different groupings, different clusters. Letters were sent a week or 10 days apart. That gives the idea that maybe the Zodiac came into town, wrote a letter, waited a week, wrote another letter, and then took off and wasn't actually living in California. If that's the case, then geographic profiling would be precisely useless. But the work that I've seen pinpoints the Zodiac is living somewhere around Vallejo. Maps have been generated of darker regions of where he more likely lived or worked based on where the crime scenes took place. But that's kind of obvious because the first two crime scenes took place in or near Vallejo. What seems to be occurring with the Zodiac is a progression toward greater visibility. In other words, he started in the North Bay Area in Vallejo, which was a rather small town at the time, moved to Lake Berryessa, which was even more remote. So the early attacks took place in very vacant, remote areas, and then moved to San Francisco because of the need, some need for publicity where he could get a greater visibility through Bay Area Press and the Bay Area Police Department. If that was his motive, then maybe geographic profiling says less about this type of criminal than it would about a criminal who was trying to keep secret, trying to not get caught. Something like the Golden State Killer or Ted Bundy or any number of other serial killers who don't look for publicity.

[The Captain]

So the Zodiac is changing victims locations and the manner in which he attacks his victims. Is that. Is that to create this overall threat to society? Meaning this can happen anywhere, anytime, with any object, and it doesn't matter if you're a man or woman. Everybody in society could possibly be a victim.

[Mark Hewitt]

That's a reasonable conclusion. That seems to be Starting in a remote area and ending up in downtown or in the confines of San Francisco, give the impression that anybody is vulnerable. And that may have been either part of his message or part of his intent to bring fear to everybody everywhere.

[Nick]

Mark, in your book, Expose Exposed, you expose who you believe the true identity of the Zodiac killer, the person you suspect of being the killer. Part of identifying the Zodiac as you include is how and why the Zodiac moniker originated. So could you take us. Let's start there with this part of our conversation. How and why did the Zodiac moniker originate?

[Mark Hewitt]

Okay, thank you for mentioning the third book of my trilogy, Exposed, the Zodiac Revealed. In my first two books, I do not deal with any potential individuals. The. The only person I mentioned was Arthur Lee Allen because he was the. The. The police's suspect early on in the investigation and the only one that they were able to look into in any great depth in. With suspicions of being the Zodiac. I deal with the. The moniker of the Zodiac. The. The name the Zodiac. What I found really interesting in part of my research was that every other serial killer is given a name based on what they do, where they do it, maybe how they do it, maybe Jack the Ripper, the Hillside Stranglers, the btk, Bind them, torture them, kill them. Each one of these names, we know why that individual was given the name. It says something about them. But with the Zodiac, suddenly we have this serial killer who has a name, and we don't know why this individual has this name. In fact, the Zodiac was given three monikers within the press prior to him giving us his own moniker. He was called the Cipher Slayer or the Cipher Killer or the Code Killer. Each of these could have been picked up upon, picked up on by the. By the killer and used. But he didn't. In August of 69, he sent a letter with the very terrifying opening line. This is the Zodiac speaking. Now, what did that mean? It sounds like a godlike pronouncement or possibly something that an airline pilot would say, this is your captain speaking. It was an odd phrase, especially because the Zodiac was never known to actually say it. In the instances that we had when he made telephone calls to police departments or when he spoke to Brian and Cecilia at Lake Variesa, he never used that phrase. He never said, this is the Zodiac speaking. The only time he used that phrase was in a letter. So he wasn't actually speaking, he was writing. Well, it proved to be such a valuable tool for him that after his first use of it, every other letter, essentially every other letter that he wrote following that time began with that opening catchphrase. This is the Zodiac speaking. It brought palpable fear to individuals. People would joke about it in the neighborhood, in the communities that he attacked. But the question is, where did it come from? People suspected that maybe he had an interest in astrology. Robert Graysmith, the author of Zodiac, said that all of the attacks took place within three days of celestial events in the heavens. The problem with that is there are so many events in the heavens that pretty much every date in the calendar is within three days of some winter solstice or phase of the moon or whatever. So it remains a mystery what he meant by this is the Zodiac speaking other than to terrify people or why he chose the name the Zodiac to identify himself. And then along with that, he provided a symbol, which is a crosshaired symbol, a cross surrounded by a circle. Some people have said that, well, that just. That's just a symbol referring to zodiac or all 12 signs of the Zodiac. But why the killer gravitated toward it is not entirely clear. In fact, it's debated to this day.

[The Captain]

To me, this killer comes off as he's not interested in your thoughts or not interested in society's thoughts, and so you're not going to give me a name. I can only give myself a name. Does that make any sense at all?

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah. Yeah. And it's not unusual. BTK gave himself his name. The Son of Sam David Berkowitz in New York City gave himself a name, even though he was called the.44 caliber killer in the press. But it says something about an individual who refuses a name given to him in the press and comes up with his own name. But with Berkowitz and with Raider, we know what the names meant and how it functioned in their lives. With the Zodiac, we. We just don't know.

[Nick]

There's been some. Let's say some suspects. That, that is. Is laughable. And you can hear me cracking myself up there for a second. But I think I want to say that it started, you know, I'm of a certain age, so maybe it started well before this and I'm just not aware. But when I became aware of it would have been about the mid to late 90s, where maybe it's something in the water out there in California, but at some point it got to be where everybody and their cousin had a. An uncle, a stepfather, or their own, their biological father. People coming out of the woodwork saying, oh, my dad or my uncle, Stepfather was the Zodiac, and here's why. And a lot of Times it really boiled down to, like, well, he looks like the composite sketch. And he was a really. He was a really mean guy. News flash for y'all, the Zodiac is way beyond really mean guy. Okay? It takes. It takes. It takes a whole another level of hate and evil to do what he did and then go out and do it again. This whole thing with. And I feel like I just keep waiting for the next person to come forward saying that it's there, that it was their father.

[The Captain]

Well, it reminds me a lot of the Black Dahlia. It's like, yeah, if your father wasn't old enough to be the Black Dahlia murderer, then he's the Zodiac.

[Nick]

Well, there were even some that. If that wasn't good enough for you, my uncle not only killed the kill was the Zodiac Killer, but also was the Black Dahlia Killer as well.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah.

[Nick]

Just to be clear, in your book Exposed, you're not saying your father, your uncle, stepfather, anybody like that had anything to do with these killings?

[Mark Hewitt]

No, no. I have relatives who were not always the nicest people, but, no, I have no serial killers in my family, as far as I know.

[Nick]

Person that is often mentioned the most, and this goes back to Robert Graysmith's book Zodiac Unmasked, and then the movie that came out. What was that, 2006 or 7? Zodiac movie 7, which. I don't know what you're. You know, we don't have to play Siskel and Ebert here, but I loved the movie, and it's rare, or at least it used to be for a long time that a true crime story made its way to a blockbuster picture like that. Being a true crime buff, I always enjoyed when that happened. I thought that they. They carried it out very well. But Arthur Lee Allen is the suspect who is often discussed, Starting with Grace, Ms. Book, and again in the movie as well. Talk about Arthur Lee Allen and. And maybe give us even a little bit of a short pros and cons list for. For Mr. Allen. Why is he good? Why does he make a good Zodiac suspect? What? Why does he make a bad Zodiac suspect?

[Mark Hewitt]

Well, I love the movie Zodiac. I've seen it dozens of times. Probably because of the content of the movie. It's a subject near and dear to my heart. Particularly the first half hour of the movie is very accurately done. There's some Hollywood liberties done to that that aren't exactly correct. But Fincher did a lot of effort into. Put a lot of effort into making sure the costumes were accurate and much of the dialogue was correct or reasonably correct. The first half hour of that movie gives a very accurate portrayal of the different attacks that are recorded on film. The rest of the movie is dialogue driven, and so many people find it a little bit slow. And the fact that the Zodiac was never identified leaves the movie with kind of an empty ending. But I think that's all part of the experience that who is the Zodiac and why did he kill, why did he appear, why did he disappear? That's all part of the mystique. But with respect to Arthur Lee Allen, he was the police's only real suspect in the early years of the case. He was brought to the attention of police departments in the early in 69, while the attacks were still taking place. But why precisely he was brought to the attention of the police is not exactly known. We don't know from police reports who turned him in and why. But Arthur Lee Allen was kind of a weird individual. So it's not surprising that he was turned into the police. Throughout the Bay Area, every person who was a little bit different got looked at. In fact, many, many people turned in their husband or their father or their cousin or their ex husband or their ex boyfriend, saying, oh, they must be the Zodiac. So thousands of people were looked into. But Arthur Lee Allen seemed to have some connections to the case that the police could not overlook. For one, he wore a watch that had a crosshair symbol on it. A Zodiac symbol. It was a Zodiac Seawolf watch. And very few places in human society the word Zodiac and the crosshair symbol occur together. Well, they occur together on the watch that he wore. So maybe he, maybe he was drawn to that symbol for that reason. It was also somebody came forward, a former co worker and former friend of Arthur Lee Allen's came forward to the police and said, you know, Arthur Lee Allen claimed that he wanted to kill people and he wanted to call himself the Zodiac and he would kill strangers so that they would never connect it with him. Those are the reasons why he was looked into. A number of people were absolutely convinced that Arthur Lee Allen was guilty. They just couldn't prove it. One of whom was Robert Graysmith, who wrote the book Zodiac and then the follow up book Zodiac Unmasked. And it was from those two books that the movie Zodiac was comprised. So also Dave Toski, the lead investigator for SFPD Homicide, who headed up the Zodiac investigation for nine years. He was convinced that Arthur Lee Allen was responsible, but he just couldn't prove it. Part of the reason that Arthur Lee Allen became the only suspect is because nobody else really fit the bill. And they had nobody else to look at. And so he was given an awful lot of attention. Part of the problem for investigators was the fact that Arthur Lee Allen enjoyed the attention. Like the Zodiac, he seemed to enjoy needling the police, which was not an uncommon pastime back in the 19th century 60s. So it, it, it seems in the larger picture that Arthur LE Allen was throwing the police department's red meat of information that seemed to implicate him in the crimes that he might be responsible. And so that only tormented them more and wanted to look into his life and his activities more. At least two search warrants were executed on his, on properties of his. But no case was ever put together. And it's my suspicion that no case could be put together because it just wasn't him. None of the forensics matched. But at the same time, the police were never absolutely certain that the fingerprints or later a DNA shred or other information implicated him. He's not the type of person who would be the Zodiac, at least by my mind. In my research, Arthur Leigh Allen spent three years in custody for child molestation. Well, people with a sexual interest in children do not go out and kill heterosexual couples engaged in sexual behavior in lovers lanes areas. It's just not the way serial killers think, and it's not the way they work. Serial killers tend to stay within their own community. In other words, a gay serial killer will kill gay victims, A heterosexual individual will kill heterosexual victims, and a child molester is, if they were to become a serial killer will kill children. For me, a big reason that I was able to exclude Arthur Leigh Allen was because of his personality. As I have gotten to know the cases, the attacks, the letters, choices that the Zodiac made in various times, and the contact that he had with people, I came to the conclusion that he was a very cerebral person, a person who was very quiet, who was calculating, but very hesitant in front of other people. There were great stretches of time that Brian Hartnell recorded at Lake Berryessa, reported that the Zodiac didn't seem to know what he was doing and didn't know what to say next. The. The police officers who received the phone calls from the Zodiac said that he appeared to be reading from a script, that it wasn't a natural conversation that he was having. In fact, he spoke over at least one of the individuals that he was talking with. He wasn't conversing with them. That says that. That's completely the opposite of the idea that we get from Arthur Lee Allen's personality. Arthur Lee Allen had a kind of A verbal diarrhea where he would talk, talk, talk, talk. And he wouldn't want to talk about the Zodiac or he wouldn't want to talk about anything that he was involved in, but he would tell talk about something. Arthur Lee Allen was the type of person who was able to get attention when he needed it. When he was in large groups of people, or even small groups of people, he would do something to impress other people, whether it be he was a skilled diver or a skilled swimmer. But when he couldn't get positive attention, he knew how to get negative attention. By making threats, by appearing scary, by doing something outrageous. That's exactly the opposite type of person that the Zodiac has revealed himself to be in his attacks and in his letters.

[Nick]

It didn't help that Alan would play into this idea that he's the Zodiac or suspected of being the Zodiac. Right? He, he almost very boisterous, would tell people, I'm being investigated, I'm. They're looking at me because they think I'm the Zodiac. And he seemed to get he an excitement or at least get something out of telling people that. And he didn't mind. As strange as it sounds, he didn't mind being a air quotes Zodiac suspect.

[Mark Hewitt]

No, he reveled in it. He told people he was being investigated as a Zodiac, which he was. But he also told people he was incarcerated for three years in a Tascadero because he was the Zodiac. Well, he wasn't. Or at least that's not why he was incarcerated for three years. But that's what he told people. He shared the trait with the Zodiac of liking to needle the police and get attention and be the center of focus. But that doesn't make him the Zodiac.

[Nick]

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[The Captain]

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[Mark Hewitt]

I.

[Nick]

Think of because of what he really was. I mean he was a pedophile and I understood unfortunately made the mistake of reading the police reports on those the charges that he faced and the accusations from the the boy and from from the things that he was accused of and let's be clear, convicted of. He was a pretty hardcore pedophile and and especially with this this one particular victim. But I think that he, I think that he enjoyed telling people that he's being investigated as the Zodiac or was locked up for being the Zodiac because it. It. It was an ability. It was a way of hiding or masking who. Him being a pedophile, which is, I mean, the most disgusting criminal that many can think of. And so I think that he thought that this. I think he wanted people to think that he was something superior, some kind of mystery, something interesting. I. At the end of the day, I think he wanted people to think that he was anything other than what he really was, and that was this pervert, pedophile.

[Mark Hewitt]

That's reasonable. Yeah.

[The Captain]

What are your thoughts on? I believe they came out in 2021, the case breakers. 40 independent investigators got together, did their research, and then came out saying that they identified the Zodiac as Gary Post.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, I've not had real good feelings about the Case Breakers. I believe the group has grown to more than 50 now. And these are a collection of people who have been in law enforcement or been investigators or whatnot, retired police departments, and they have supposedly formed a group of ex officers who want to solve cases. It seems to be more a case of a group of people wanting to be on television and wanting to be part of the next documentary, whatever that may be. Supposedly, the casebreakers have solved the DB Cooper case. They've solved the Zodiac case. They've solved other cases as well. What does it mean that 50 investigators have solved the Zodiac case? They've named a person. Well, do all 50 of these investigators sign on to the fact that they believe that this is the Zodiac? Because at the same time they're saying that they have solved the case. They're also demanding that current law enforcement look into the DNA possibility that there's a match between Post and the Zodiac. Well, if you know who the Zodiac is and you can prove it, why are you looking for a DNA match? So there are a lot of questions on my mind. I have never seen any evidence that convinces me that Post is the Zodiac. A photograph of him in that era, I think it's the 1970s or the 1980s, shows evidence that Post had a scar on his forehead. Well, the claim of this group is that that matches the markings on the head of the Zodiac, because the picture that was created in the aftermath of the Paul Stein murder shows folds or lines on the Zodiac's forehead that seem similar to the scar that Gary Post has in the photograph. The problem is the original photograph that was the original picture that was created by investigators did not have forehead lines on it. And a revised picture was made when somebody, presumably a police officer, said, no, we don't give the age between 25 and 35. We give the age between 35 and 45. So the artist felt compelled to add some age to the Zodiac picture and drew a couple of lines on his forehead, folds of what wrinkles may look like in his forehead, but as far as anybody could tell, these were not composed that were not added because of a report that somebody said that he had a scar or lines in his forehead that looked a certain way. So that seems to be the major point of tie between Post and the Zodiac. I'm very skeptical. If they have more information, I'd love to see it. But from what I've seen, it appears to be someone looking for. Getting involved in a documentary. And evidently, the. The group has already done one documentary on D.B. cooper.

[Nick]

Yeah, well, and you can't use lines on. On a picture of someone from the circa 67, 68, 69 lines on someone's forehead and compare them to a composite sketch with lines on the suspect's forehead. That's not a fingerprint by any standard, and it's. It's so far from a fingerprint. Is Mike Mageau still alive, do you know?

[Mark Hewitt]

I don't. He was interviewed in 2007 in conjunction with 2007 release of Fincher's movie. I have not heard of news of.

[Nick]

Him since because he's remained very under the surface, and I think for obvious reasons. But, you know, in 92, as the story goes, Mike Mageau picked Arthur Lee Allen out of a police lineup, saying, that's him. He's the man that shot me. I mean, these case crackers, case breakers, whatever. Whatever they're called. You know, let's maybe. Maybe show Mike Mageau or somebody that we can get better confirmations rather than some lines on. On a photograph compared to lines of a drawing of an unknown individual. One theory that became rather popular when Joseph D'Angelo was identified as the Golden State Killer. One someone who moved around, changed the way, changed the type of crimes that he was committing. We do know that there was some level of communication from him as well, mainly to victims. But what are your thoughts on Joseph D'Angelo being a good or bad Zodiac suspect?

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, he was arrested in early 2018, and people who know the Zodiac case immediately said, no, this isn't the guy. D'Angelo was involved in three separate criminal campaigns as a serial killer. He started out as a burglar, somebody who went into people's homes and took things. It wasn't a matter of trying to enrich himself because he left cash that was out in the open and took things that had very little value. He started out as a burglar, became a rapist, and then became a murderer. Somebody who killed in conjunction with his rapes. The Zodiac was never known to burgle. He did what he was not a rapist that had. That functioned in no manner whatsoever in any of his attacks. And he didn't kill in order to cover up his crimes or to silence witnesses or to kill people that he had first raped. So therefore there's very little comparison between the two. The motives seem entirely different. D'Angelo did not seek attention, did not attempt to terrorize a neighborhood, and he did inadvertently, but he attempted to stay under the radar as much as possible. The only phone calls he made or the correspondence that he had with with citizens was following up with victims and re terrorizing them by contacting them. He was not known to contact the police. He was not known to look for headlines. He was not known to taunt the community.

[Nick]

And one thing we should probably point out here too, in regard to Arthur Lee Allen, I mentioned the. The word fingerprint here. Arthur Lee Allen, from my understanding, was at one point dismissed by police after fingerprint and handwriting comparisons. They said at the time in 71 did not match.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah. And even the Mike Mageau's interview with the police where he met with George Bauert and looked at a lineup of suspects, he did indicate Arthur Lee Allen. He said, that's the man who shot me. I'll never forget that as long as I live. Which sounds really great. It sounds like a match. It sounds like, hey, we have him. But then Mike Mageau turned and looked at another picture and said, yeah, he had a face a little bit like this guy. So in the end, Mejot was only able to give an 80% certainty that Arthur Lee Allen was responsible. The fact that he indicated other pictures had similarities to the person who attacked him made his identification essentially worthless. Somebody in a defense attorney in court would absolutely tear to shreds Mike Mageau trying to say that Arthur Lee Allen was responsible. In the same way, a defense attorney would absolutely tear apart the case breaker, saying that, look, this line, this scar on post looks very similar to a picture on a artist created rendering of the Zodiac. That's just not usable evidence.

[Nick]

And the other thing too, that makes it difficult, right, Is the timing of the attack on Mike Mageau.

[Mark Hewitt]

It.

[Nick]

It would have been very dark at that time. It's very likely that the killer, the shooter, used a flashlight. Has he just been looking for that face in the Dark for decades. And finally, he's being presented with faces.

[Mark Hewitt]

No, that. That's not the case at all. At the time following the attack, Mike Mageau said, I don't want to look at pictures. I don't want to make a composite because I only saw the killer in profile. And as you said, it was at night, so the lighting was bad. There was a flashlight waving around, likely striking him in the eyes as well. So he said he was not able to identify the victim, identify the perpetrator. He did look at a number of books and books of photographs of potential perpetrators. He never was able to say he looked more like this guy than this guy. He just looked at them and said, you know, I don't recognize any of these people. The identification in 1992 in no way represents what Mike Mageau was saying, you know, immediately after the attack.

[Nick]

Let's get to your suspect then, because one day you decide to write a letter to your suspect. Can you tell us about writing that letter, why you chose to put pen to paper, and who you address that letter to?

[Mark Hewitt]

Okay, first of all, I don't like the term suspect. It has a legal connotation. When the police department identifies somebody as a potential perpetrator and calls them a suspect, immediately that individual is granted extra protection under the law. And so even police departments don't like to use that word. You'll notice police departments will say somebody is a person of interest or somebody exists under an umbrella of suspicion, similar wording that that allows them to continue an investigation without being worried about all of the extra protection that an individual has. When. When amateur detectives say they have a suspect really doesn't mean anything. It means that they know a little bit about the case and they've picked a person that they think is responsible. But probably the word suspect is not a good one to use. What I say in my research is that I present my research conclusions. What I have concluded based on the evidence that I've gathered and the way I look at the evidence and I attempt to make conclusions based on facts, not based on what I think. A lot of times people, when they say they're suspect to so and so, they're referring to their opinion. And I've even seen people on the Internet say, well, my top three suspects or my top five suspects, that really concerns me because that says that at least two or more people are entirely innocent, but they're being dragged through a mud of suspicion. As I came to know the case. Let me back up. When I first looked into it, I assumed that Arthur Lee Allen was responsible. I did that because of my knowledge of the case from Graysmith's books. I figured that as I leaned into the case and got to know the details, I would either convince myself that, yes, indeed, Arthur Lee Allen was responsible, or else I would come to know, on a psychological level, some perpetrator that I might never name, somebody who may have been lost to history. As I came into knowledge of the case and grew in my understanding, both of those original suppositions were eliminated. I came to believe that Arthur Lee Allen had nothing to do with it other than he liked attention the same way the Zodiac did. And my research conclusions led me to somebody who is not lost to history. Through great detail and looking at the case, I came to the conclusion that the Zodiac is Theodore Kaczynski, also known as the Unabomber. It's not a wildly popular theory on the case, but as I put together the evidence and as I collected it, it occurred to me that the only way to understand the Zodiac case is to understand its continuation as that of the Unabomber. And the only way to understand the crimes of the Unabomber is to understand its precedent. The crimes of the Zodiac serial killer. The Zodiac, who disappeared in 1970, as far as anybody knew, reemerged in 1978 under the guise of the Unabomber, a separate and different campaign designed to look very different than that of the Zodiac. And yet the similarities between the two are incredible. And there appears to be a great progression in crimes and in the need for publicity from the Zodiac that is continued on through the crimes of the Unabomber.

[The Captain]

One of the things that you point out that I thought was very fascinating was when you look at comparing serial killers, there's not a ton of similarities between what Bundy did and what BTK did. But when you compare the Unabomber to the Zodiac, you have a lot of similarities. And also a thing that you brought to my attention that I've never even heard before was not only were there letters to. Not only did the Zodiac give letters, but he also drew bomb diagrams and sent those out with the letters.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, on the surface of it, the Zodiac seems very different than the Unabomber. And it's led a number of professionals to lay their professional reputation on the line and say, there is no way that the Zodiac could be Theodore Kaczynski because the Unabomber is so different than the Zodiac. And they've gone on to say, you know, the Zodiac did this and the Unabomber did that. And it looks Entirely different. The problem is what we know about the Zodiac is what the Zodiac wants us to know about the Zodiac. We see his attacks, and we can gather information on them. But the bulk of what we know about the Zodiac we have gathered through the letters that he has sent. Well, who says the Zodiac has to tell the truth through his letters? And with respect to the Unabomber, we got to know the Unabomber through the Unabomber manifesto that was sent out a year prior to Ted Kaczynski's arrest. And a lot of people have read the manifesto and said, oh, okay, I get the Unabomber. I get the manifesto. I know what he did and why he did it. Well, what's to say that Ted Kaczynski had to tell the truth in the manifesto? And, in fact, there seems to be an awful lot of deception within the manifesto. And in fact, his very reason for killing as the Unabomber doesn't really hold up to light when you begin to look at it in any great depth. So that the truth about the Zodiac and the truth about the Unabomber is an awful lot closer than people have been led to believe. And people have concluded. I don't believe the media did a very good job of reading the manifesto and presenting the Unabomber to the general public. There's a lot of misunderstanding. It led writer Alston Chase to say, everything you know about the Unabomber is wrong, which is quite a blatant statement. But I have come to believe it, that the more you look into his life and his actions and what he has claimed about himself, a lot of it doesn't hold a lot of weight.

[Nick]

No, he. He is. And that's the thing that made me so damn angry about the manifesto. And look, the. What is, we've studied and we've studied. We've put our best women and men on it. We've studied serial killers. What makes them tick? Why do they do what they do. Nature, virtues, nurture. There's no end of what can be studied, what could potentially be learned. But then each serial killer is in ways, contradiction to the previous one that you studied before. And. But the one commonality that they all share, they're liars. The Zodiac. The Zodiac was a liar. Ted Kaczynski was a liar. Whether they're one and the same, it doesn't matter. They were liars. And the thing. The thing here is you read that manifesto, and I'm so glad that you said that, because that's one of the things that angers me the most. About the Unabomber case is. Oh yeah, I get it. He was a man on a mission. He was a mission oriented killer. Bullshit. He was a holier than thou, you know, do what I say, not as I do type of, type of guy at the end of the day. And he, he stole from his neighbors. He, he fantasized about killing, about shooting teenagers or children. He, he was, he was, he wasn't just scum for mailing bombs to people that maimed and killed. He was, he was scum because he was scum when he woke up in the morning and he was scum when he went to bed every night. That's, that's who he was. And he had a deep seated hatred for so many people that he had to go live out in the damn woods to be by himself. And so this look like to the captain's point earlier, you spend enough time by yourself, you can come up with some brilliant things to say. Well, that's what the manifesto was. He spent enough time by himself that he could orchestrate this and piece this whole thing together for the rest of us to read and try and for a second to believe, to have somewhat of an understanding of this very flawed, very complicated man who likely didn't understand his own intelligence and clearly had a lot of problems with the emotion and with connecting on a real human level with anyone else.

[Mark Hewitt]

Nick, I have never heard a more accurate description of Ted Kaczynski. And believe me, I've heard a lot. I'm working right now on a rather comprehensive biography of Ted Kaczynski, and you hit the nail on the head. As far as my research into the man he poached, he was not an environmentalist, as he seemed to proclaim within the words of the manifesto. John Douglas has written that when Ted Kaczynski took a six year break from his bombing, it was his prediction. He claimed that Ted Kaczynski would work on, number one, improving bombs, but also, number two, developing a justification for what it was that he was doing. So in many ways, the manifesto is a justification for his activities, his murders. And he has claimed that the reason that he killed people was to give his ideas a fair hearing. Well, the truth is, a lot of people have ideas and a lot of people want their ideas to be heard. But the idea that he went out and killed people because he needed to get his message out, it was such an important message and he was such a benevolent person that he wanted to help humankind. None of that made any sense. The truth is, when you look very Close into Ted Kaczynski. The reason he killed is because he enjoyed killing. And so the words of the Zodiac apply very closely to Ted Kaczynski. He likes killing because it's so much fun.

[The Captain]

So if, if we're on a speed date, right, and you had a couple minutes to make your case for Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber being the Zodiac, what. What would your major points be?

[Nick]

Well, and I. And I think it has to. One thing that we've not gotten into yet here, Mark, is the, the chronologic. The chron, sorry, the chronology of Ted Kaczynski, where he was living at the time, what he was doing, and then comparing that to the Zodiac. The Zodiac timeline.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah. To really connect the two. It took me a 400 page book to lay out all of the evidence. So it's difficult to me to do speed dating, but I did gather the information into six or seven constellations, groups of evidence that seem to connect the two. It's been common in the Zodiac community to notice a scar on the forehead or the way somebody writes their ease or some minor piece of evidence, and then built up a philosophy that convicts this person of being the Zodiac. The evidence that I use to link the two is gathered into quite a large collection divided into six clusters or six constellations. With respect to timeline, Ted Kaczynski was a professor at UC Berkeley. He was on Christmas vacation, your Christmas break, during the murder at Lake Herman Road. One month after that, he abruptly sent a resignation letter to his school, which really shocked his superiors. His last day of being A professor at UC Berkeley was June 30, 1969. Four days later, the Blue Rock Springs park murder took place. After Kaczynski left UC Berkeley. There's a two year gap in his life where very little is known with specificity as to where he was, what he was doing. That two year gap of time ended in July of 1971. And that's the time that Ted Kaczynski purchased property in Montana and began to build his cabin. The bulk of the Zodiac activity happened during that two year break. The two year gap in Ted Kaczynski's life, the murders, the bulk of the letters, what the Zodiac did happen during that two years following Ted Kaczynski's move to Montana, only a single verified Zodiac letter was ever sent. And that was sent in 1974, three years after the Zodiacs, three years after Kaczynski had moved to Montana. So it's entirely possible that Ted Kaczynski traveled to the bay area in 1974 and at that time sent one final Zodiac letter. But the six clusters of information that I gathered include bombs. Some people say, well, you know, the Zodiac killed with knife and guns, and the Unabomber killed with bombs. And so they're very different, and there's no way the two could be one. But the truth is the Zodiac himself made that change, made that alteration in his own life. Following the murder of cab driver Paul Stein, he sent two different bomb diagrams to the press, saying, I'm going to start killing people with the use of bombs. Ted Kaczynski in Montana, rope bomb diagrams. Some of that he sketched out in three dimensions, exactly as the Zodiac did. The Zodiac improved from his first bomb, making it into a second, revised bomb diagram and improvement. Ted Kaczynski improved upon his bombs when he was in Montana. The Unabomber bombs were very distinctive and very easy to recognize for investigators because they took great, great pains to put in a second fail safe circuit. Kaczynski was worried that his bombs would not work, and so he often put a second circuit in. The Zodiac bomb diagrams contain two circuits or, or a circuit used also for a second use. So there are great similarities there. The Zodiac had a strong connection to mathematics if you think of what codes are. And the Zodiac sent four codes in his letters. Codes are, at base, a mathematical operation. Codes are symbols that need to be solved. Well, Ted Kaczynski was a Ph.D. mathematician who is a prodigy and a world class mathematician, as he was a professor at UC Berkeley. If you go back and look at the Zodiac letters, there's an awful lot of mathematics within them. The use of the word radians, many, many symbols, not only in the codes, but in the actual writing. And a number of illusions or ideas that the writer of the Zodiac letters was a teacher, a professor, and a mathematician are all there, so that I see many connections between the two, but also a great deal of effort putting into trying to make the individuals look different. When Ted Kaczynski was a professor, and following being a professor, people knew his handwriting. People had a familiarity with him, even if it was not very close. And so he put a great deal of effort into disguising his handwriting and disguising the tone with which he wrote his letters. And he was a young man at the time, he was 27 at the time of the Zodiac attacks as the Unabomber when he was arrested. A lot of people think of the Unabomber from Ted Kaczynski's arrest. He was Led out of his cabin and taken away in handcuffs at the age of 53, almost at the age of 54. He was at a very different time in his life. Therefore, it was very easy for Ted Kaczynski to present himself differently, to present himself more as he was in actuality, but not entirely. The Unabomber did enough to mask himself so that people didn't know that he was a PhD professor. And incidentally, we discussed earlier about the intellectual level of the Zodiac and how that's a hotly debated issue. Ted Kaczynski, as the Unabomber, did a fantastic job of presenting himself as possibly a blue collar worker, somebody who didn't have a lot of education. In other words, Ted Kaczynski was presenting himself in his letters and in his communications and in his manifesto as somebody who was not as intelligent as he actually was, but somebody who was trying to convince the investigation that he was more intelligent than he was. So investigators kind of snickered and said, yeah, here's this dumb blue collar worker trying to present himself as more. More intelligent than he is. But we know that he's only a blue collar worker. Whereas it seems that the Zodiac did very much the same thing. Presented himself as somebody who wasn't very intellectual, somebody who couldn't spell very well, somebody who didn't have good penmanship, but at the same time tried to throw in words like radians and photoelectric to get investigators to think that he was a dumb person. Masking himself as somebody who was more intelligent than he actually was.

[The Captain]

When you talk about his handwriting, I noticed some of Ted Kaczynski's letters. If you look at the actual letter, compared to how he addresses, the letter, almost looks like two. Two separate people.

[Mark Hewitt]

How do you mean how he addresses his letter? Do you mean the deck handwriting?

[The Captain]

Yeah. So, like, the handwriting when he is putting the address and everything is like in all caps and has one style. You know, any graphic artist or whatever would go, well, this is one font. And then when he writes the letter, it's almost in a completely different font.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah. Ted Kaczynski addressed envelopes in a block letter. And his brother David Kaczynski claimed that his whole life, at least since the time that the two of them were corresponding, his brother Ted always addressed his envelopes in block lettering. The Zodiac did the same. The Zodiac printed almost everything that he ever wrote, which for the 1960s was a little 60s and 70s was a little bit odd because most people knew cursive and use cursive. It's not in vogue today. It's not being taught any longer. But people generally wrote in cursive. The Zodiac never did. And neither did Ted Kaczynski. I corresponded with him for about two years. And all of his letters to me, the envelopes were in block lettering. And the letters themselves, sometimes pages, page after page, were done in a very careful printing. The only cursive that I ever received from Kaczynski was his signature at the end of a line where he wrote Ted Kaczynski in a very small script.

[Nick]

You mentioned John Douglas, legendary retired FBI agent and criminal profiler John Douglas earlier. We've had the privilege of interviewing him several times here in the garage. But you mentioned what he said about Ted Kaczynski. Now, let's go back and compare that to what he said about the unidentified. The unknown killer who. He profiled the Zodiac killer. When he profiled the Zodiac killer.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, he profiled. He actually had the Zodiac case files on his desk for only a single day back in the 1970s. His higher ups assigned him to work on the Zodiac case for no apparent reason, gave him the files, and he started to work on them. The very next day, the same files were removed from him. And they said, no, we don't want you to work on this any longer. You need to work on something else. He wasn't sure why he was given the case or why the case was taken away. It was never explained to him. But he said something very interesting. He said that the Zodiac was more intelligent than he let on in his letters and that the Zodiac had the meticulousness of a bomb maker. I thought that was really interesting. Even despite the messy script that the Zodiac wrote, John Douglas realized there was a certain amount of skill and intricacy to what it was that the Zodiac was doing. I don't believe he ever made the case that Kaczynski was the Zodiac. In fact, he has written on both the Unabomber and on the. And on Kaczynski said many of the same things about the two of them, but has never made the leap of saying that they were the same person.

[Nick]

Yeah. As far as suspects go, or, sorry, persons of interest go, he was more willing to work the angle of words that were said by the Zodiac Killer when interacting with the victims at Lake Berryessa and maybe clues that he dropped or, of course he could be lying, but even if he were to have been lying, he had to have some knowledge of what it was that he was saying at the. The time there.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah. I believe Douglas Came down on the fact that the perpetrator was Arthur Lee Allen or somebody similar to him. Somebody. Somebody who was ineffective and socially incompetent.

[Nick]

One of the bigger arguments against Ted Kaczynski being the Zodiac is that, well, after he was apprehended, of course, they took apart the little shack that he was living in piece by piece with all the books that were in there with him, and went through everything. I mean, you want to talk about really throwing a guy and all of his belongings underneath a microscope, that's exactly what they did. And got several different sets of eyes to review and use that microscope to look at everything with this guy. And so the argument would be, well, they never found anything once they apprehended him to link him or to say that he was. Or suggestive that he was the Zodiac killer. But then you can take that same argument and apply it to Arthur Lee Allen as well. I mean, he. He's. I might be a little incorrect on some of the details here, but Arthur Lee Allen, at the age of 52, I think it was, suffers a heart attack, calls for help, and the paramedics arrive at his house. And so a lot of Arthur Leigh Allen's belongings and things were gone through, because it wasn't like he didn't become a suspect or a person of interest until after he had passed. And then later they had to go back and go, well, we missed out on this one. No, he was alive and well for a large part of when people were considering him as a possibility for being the Zodiac.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah, ironically, what you say is absolutely true. They looked at his. His belongings, Ted Kaczynski's belongings, and found nothing to specifically forensically tie him to being the Zodiac. But ironically, the search of his cabin is another of the clusters of evidence of showing a familiarity between Kaczynski and the Zodiac. When they took apart Kaczynski's cabin, they found many books. They found disguises that consisted of glass, sunglasses, and a hood, because, you know, the Unabomber used a hood and sunglasses as part of his disguise. They also found codes. They also found bomb creation material. These are precisely the things that we would expect to find in the home of the Zodiac were he to be arrested and his belongings gone through. If you think of the home of Ted Bundy or the home of Gary Ridgeway, the Green River Killer, or the home of John Wayne Gacy, any of these individuals would not be expected to have disguises, because as far as we know, none of them wore disguises. There would not be any Codes. And in fact, no codes were found in these individuals. We would not expect to find a lot of books. And yet these are precisely the things that we would expect to see from the Zodiac. And these are the classifications, the types of things that were taken from the Unabomber's cabin once he was arrested.

[The Captain]

And then I correct by thinking, though, too, Ted Kaczynski moves across the country to go to school, moves back across the country, and then moves far again. So I would. I would expect that he wouldn't have many personal belongings from his past, if any.

[Mark Hewitt]

Yeah. And in connection with that, Kaczynski was very meticulous about all of his belongings. He attempted to distance himself from a lot of his crimes by purging his. His belongings of things. He categorized everything in his life. And with respect to incriminating evidence, he would list something by how incriminating it was, what needed to be done with it, did it need to be burned? Could it be buried? Is it mildly embarrassing to him, or is it completely incriminating in felonious behavior? And because he wrote a lot about this, a lot of things in his possession, just a lot of things disappeared from his possession before he was arrested. He wrote about how he would destroy things and how he would hide things and what he would do to prevent himself from being caught. So while when he was arrested, there was an awful lot of evidence of him being the Unabomber, there was not evidence of other crimes he had committed in his life. And that gives us the idea that he may have entirely purged his life of the Zodiac crimes if he was responsible, one of his greatest fears. And he wrote about this regularly, and his brother confirmed this. He did not want to be considered mentally ill, even though he was diagnosed as having schizophrenia with paranoia, at least on a provisional basis through the courts. After he was arrested, as many schizophrenics, he attempted to present himself to the public as somebody who was entirely sane. He was afraid of his life's work, the manifesto not being believed or being ridiculed because maybe he was insane, maybe he was crazy mentally, Maybe he suffered from a mental illness his whole life. This is something he fought against. His father compared him to co worker who suffered from schizophrenia and ended up being institutionalized as a result of it. Ted Kaczynski appears to have fought against the whole notion that he was insane. Following the death of the murder of Paul Stein, when he became a letter writer because he was not killing any longer, the Zodiac letters became more and more desperate and more and more ridiculous. And bizarre. And people stopped taking them very seriously because, well, he wasn't killing anymore. And what he was writing about just was starting to be silly. So it appears that the Zodiac wrapped up that campaign and completely rid himself of it for fear that he would be considered mentally ill. One thing that.

[Nick]

When we started this, when the captain and I started True Crime Garage, we were eager to. We were already into true crime and eager to be a part of the true crime community. But one thing that, that I've never liked, you know, I like to have the open discussion. These cases are unsolved for a reason. We don't know until we know. And so I've never found it to be. I found it to be very off putting when someone says, oh, don't present me with your person of interest, because, you know, I got my own theory. And yet some of those people, if you don't like their guy, then you're wrong and they don't want to have a conversation. But the thing that annoys me so much was, and it's very few people, but, but some of those same people will then later look at investigations and go, well, the cops locked in on a, on a suspect too quickly, and then they built their case around, around that guy. Well, essentially, if you've locked in on a guy and you're not willing to have conversation, conversations about another guy, then you're doing the exact same thing. And I know you're not of that type. You're willing to have other conversations. And look, you're presenting a theory, and I enjoy the theory. I think that Ted looks as good for this as anyone else. He's a better person of interest than a lot of other ones. He separates himself from a lot of individuals simply because we know he's capable of murder. We know that he had murder on his mind, and he successfully did it, whether he was the Zodiac or not. So that sets him apart from a large portion of the population. And this whole idea, clearly, look, it was not lost on us. We didn't broadcast this or shout it from the mountaintops when we covered zodiac in 2021. But one thing we did with it, was purposefully done, was that we covered Zodiac in five episodes. The Tylenol Murders and 2. The Unabomber, and 2. And all of those episodes ran between the episode numbers of 470 and 483. So there was reason for putting those nine episodes within a 14 episode batch. So I love the theory. Before we wrap up here, Mark, please tell everybody where they can get your books or where they can find you.

[Mark Hewitt]

My books are available, as they say, wherever books can be found with respect to the Zodiac. I've written the Zodiac Serial Killer Trilogy, which consists of Hunted, Profiled and Exposed. And three weeks ago, I released my memoirs entitled Obsessed, My Relentless Pursuit of the Zodiac Killer. Some of the interesting material that you'll find in my most recent book is how I came to acquire and own the Unabomber's Cabin library. Also how I corresponded with Ted Kaczynski across two years. Kaczynski, of course, passed away in June of last year. He took his own life behind bars, partially because he had been diagnosed with cancer and was in the late stages of his life. I can be contacted through my website, drhewitt.com d o c T O R H E w I t t.com and I enjoy interacting with other people, answering questions, or just discussing the Zodiac case. And I really appreciate the opportunity to be here and to talk with the two of you.

[Nick]

Well, and now we want to thank you for joining us as well. And now the three of us will leave the garage together. We're going to walk to the nearest bar and consume as many aqua velvet cocktails as we can together. So thanks, Mark, for joining us. I know that this will be something really to enjoy by the listeners, and it's a lot of. A lot of thought will be brought forward and be had because of our conversation here today. So thank you.

[The Captain]

Want to thank you so much for joining us here in the garage. Thanks for telling your mother. Thanks for telling your brother. Thanks for sharing the cases on social media. That means the world. Colonel, do we have any recommended reading for the beautiful, beautiful listeners?

[Nick]

Yes, please, Captain. We have plenty of recommended reading for you this week. That's because the great Mark Hewitt, who you heard with us here in the garage this week, he's got four, count them, one, two, three, four books, all centered around the Zodiac and his investigation and research into this still unsolved case. So look for Mark Hewitt's books, all on the Zodiac. You can go to our website and check out our recommended page. We'll have them listed there for you. And while you're there, make sure you sign up on the mailing list.

[The Captain]

And until next week, be good, be kind, and don't litter.