In the Shadows [1]

The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast and do not necessarily represent those of iHeartMedia, how stuff works, or its employees. Christmas time, 1968. All was not calm. All was not bright. Sorry, could you briefly describe what apparently happened last night? We had a double homicide that took place out on a county road sometime after 11 o'clock. 16 year old girl and a 17 year old boy. How did this incident occur, apparently? Well, they were shot. Photographer Tom Bulmer arrived on the scene. The night of December 20 was an interesting one. Photographers back then were ambulance chasers. We had radios with the local police and fire frequencies and we followed what was going on. I remember a dispatch to Lake Herman Road in Benesha and they said that there were two victims there and they thought it was a murder suicide. The woman there that was shot was fairly small in size and they were thinking it was an adult and a child. That was what the original dispatch was, as I recall it. So I headed out that way. It was dark that night out in the boonies there. It was along the side of the road. It was fairly quiet. No traffic going by as I recall. Really not a sense of place there other than just out in the open. As it turned out, there was one person, his name was David Faraday. He had been shot and his girlfriend Betty Lugensen had also been shot. She was dead at the scene and they had taken him by ambulance. He had died en route. The woman's body remained under a blanket and the investigators came out. The blanket was between me and the investigators. They lifted the blanket with them behind it and looking so I never got to see but I shot a couple pictures of the investigators looking. The newspaper then ran the pictures on Sunday. The one thing a photographer learns to do right away is go into a work mode, just start recording and not experiencing. If you started to get emotional over everything you saw, you could never do anything. You have any idea what the possible motive might be for this killing? We have no motive at this time. Every time I see the word Zodiac, I flash back for the moment like, "Wow, I was there." You can say, "Hey, I photographed what then was thought to be the first victims of the Zodiac killer." That's something that not everybody has done. The boogeyman, a monster, a scare tactic, a mythical creature dating back to as early as the Middle Ages. If there's one thing I've learned from our first season, Atlanta Monster, it's that sometimes there's more fact than fiction to this elusive nightcrawler. After all, what's the difference between the boogeyman and a rampant killer, unidentified after nearly 50 years? The Zodiac killer is one of the most notorious serial killers to date. He's a dark mark on San Francisco's era of love. He wears his signature on his chest, like Superman, gone horribly wrong. It's the infamous crosshair symbol, a circle intersected with perpendicular lines, a target. The boogeyman may not be under your bed, but it can exist, and even more frighteningly, there's more than one. To examine this demon properly, it's important to understand what societal and psychological elements allow this evil to exist. This is our new exploration, the Zodiac killer. I'm Payne Lindsay. Last year, I worked with the team at How Stuff Works to create Atlanta Monster. Matt Frederick was one of those people. You may remember Matt from last season. A police officer who didn't know what a railroad trestle was became the Achilles heel of a murder investigation that cost more than $9 million. For any avid How Stuff Works listeners, you may know Matt from stuff they don't want you to know. It's a podcast about conspiracy theories, from the bizarre to the possible. Matt's a questioner and an information junkie. This makes him the perfect person to guide you through this story, presenting the facts and the follies that riddle this case. Take it away, Matt. I've been researching unsolved mysteries for over 10 years now, separating the truth from the noise. I first became aware of this case in 2007, when David Fincher's film Zodiac was released in theaters. I was hooked and I needed to know more. So I read the book from Robert Graysmith. It's also titled Zodiac. I started scouring websites and message boards. And I quickly realized that the book and movie had only scratched the surface. The story of the Zodiac is about much more than just a serial killer. It's about a country experiencing tremendous changes. In the late 60s, a perfect storm was brewing. And the eye was squarely centered around San Francisco. The summer of love is an expression of this awakening. We call upon the world to help us celebrate the infinite holiness of life. The summer of love is the summer of 1967, when something like 100,000 young people flocked to San Francisco. This is Peter Richardson. He's a historian and lecturer at San Francisco State University. They're told not to come by city officials, which is the best way to get people to come. And they do come. You know, you know, America is so obsessed with bad breath and with underarm deodorant. These are the biggest problems in the world. If you watch television, I think that a generation of kids which says, "We don't care about your concepts of friendliness as a revolutionary generation." When the LSD hits the streets, it really kind of changes, kind of morphs into the hippie counterculture that people are so aware of. It turns San Francisco into kind of a global rock capital. San Francisco police say that nine persons have been arrested and they had narcotics raid on the headquarters of the Grateful Dead, a widely popular singing group. There are a lot of bands. They're very creative and innovative and influential. What was happening in San Francisco was something much more improvisational, exploratory. It was part of a larger art scene that included psychedelic posters and light shows. And even the hippies didn't realize how many of them there were. And they start getting publicity, national publicity. We're all children in the 1960s, orphans of America, children of blood. People stay down. The scene kind of unravels fairly quickly. Despite its utopian aspirations, the San Francisco counterculture is surrounded by all these other forms of strife. So it's not a peaceful place to live. The new communist campaign in Vietnam continues. Just after midnight, their time, a band of Viet Cong raiders blew up a power installation and attacked two police stations in Saigon. It's a really kind of heady mix by the end of the 1960s. There's a larger backdrop of real problems. Political violence begins to emerge. Dr. Martin Luther King, the apostle of non-violence in the civil rights movement, has been shot to death in Memphis, Tennessee. And that segues into what author David Talbot calls the season of the witch, where you get the Zodiac killer. It would sound like a cliche Hollywood script if it weren't true. A serial killer stalking victims, taunting police, even keeping bloody mementos from his slayings and boasting about his deeds to the news media. The randomness and the tone of the Zodiac killer was very, very troubling for people. We think of the Zodiac crimes as being urban crimes and associated with San Francisco, but most of the confirmed killings actually happen farther north, pretty far out there. And I think that adds to the creepiness. The places are so isolated, and there is a kind of theme in American cinema history where the really crazy stuff happens out in the country. It's in these isolated places that you really have to worry. From the studio who brought you the Pactin Masker and Murder 101, this is InCells. I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't date me either. From the dark corners of the web, an emerging mindset. If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you. A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. A seat of loneliness explodes. I just hate myself. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. At a deadly tipping point, InCells will be added to the terrorism guide. Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd killing 10 people. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge. This is InCells. Listen to Season 1 of InCells on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Karen in Georgia, and we just celebrated our 500th episode of My Favorite Murder. That's 500 podcasts filled with true crime, comedy, and some light girl math. We're about to podcast for you. Watch this. We have to think of something to say after "Welcome" every week, and we're doing it. Every week for 10 years. Almost 10 years. 10 years. 10. That's what 500 episodes sounds like. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to My Favorite Murder on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snaffoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snaffoo every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop! What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer. Maybe you feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched. You're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna. I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcast we were doing. Nick Kroll. I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snaffoo with Ed Helms on the I Heart Radio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward. And on season seven of Mind of a Monster, we're bringing you the story of Kristen Gilbert. We think that Kristen Gilbert is the most prolific mass murderer on the East Coast. The very person responsible for keeping you alive, your nurse, is secretly killing you. She said to the nurse manager, if this guy dies, can I go home? Listen to Mind of a Monster, the killer nurse, wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved. Until, a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy Gilbert, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her, and I did not kill her, or rape, or burn, or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season at free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Where, you know, everybody joined in the big auditorium, and it was a rally. We sat together, and when we walked home, I said bye, and she said, I remember she said, "Okay, I'll see you next year," and I go, "Oh yeah, I'll see you next year." And that was the last time that I spoke or saw Betty Liu. David and Betty Liu were high school students. They met at a church function, and were smitten with one another. This is Michael Butterfield. He's been researching this case for over a decade, and he's one of the people who knows this story best. Within two weeks, they were on their way to becoming a couple. David Faraday was a young, intelligent, very civic-minded individual, cared about other people, was well-liked, good student. Betty Liu Jensen was a very popular student, had many friends. She was also a very talented artist. When David Faraday asked her out, that was to be their first date together and her first date, totally. That night, they promised Betty Liu's parents that they would be home by 11 p.m. They did not go home by 11 p.m. At some point, the two of them wound up on Lake Herman Road, which is a kind of dark and isolated area that's known as a lovers' lane spot. Another vehicle pulled up into the area. We don't know for sure what happened after that because there are no witnesses, but the person got out of the car. There were some shots fired into the vehicle. David and Betty Liu escaped out of the passenger side of the Rambler station wagon. But David Faraday was shot at almost point-blank range in the head. Betty Liu Jensen appeared to have run away, and at that point, the killer shot at her at least five times, hitting her in the back. Shortly after that, a driver was passing through and saw the bodies laying on the ground, drove into town, notified the police, and then the police came on the crime scene. There was no discernible motive, no personal animosity, no rape, no robbery, and nothing like that. They're investigating people involved in the victim's backgrounds, people who may have had a grudge, career criminals, the so-called usual suspects. But none of that was working. This is a yearbook. This is very special to me because it's got Betty Liu in it. Bottom right, that's Betty Liu. I hold this just dear to my heart. I just think it's terrible. I've never been a situation where you knew somebody and they got killed. You know, it stayed with me. After a period of months had gone by, it was a cold case. The absence of any discernible motive made it virtually impossible to keep investigating it. Serial killers were not a national phenomenon back in the 1960s. The term "serial killer" did not even exist in popular language. Most law enforcement agencies were not experienced in investigating serial homicides. I'm so consumed to this day about Zodiac. I don't think he'll ever be caught. My ears just pop up if I hear the name Zodiac. They were used to dealing with a killer who commits a crime for a traditional motive and who could be tracked down through traditional investigation. When you have someone who commits a bunch of murders for no apparent reason, innocent people minding their own business out on a date, that's bad enough. But when a person brags about it, wants to taunt you and threatens going to happen again, that's a whole 'nother level of terror. A search goes on in San Francisco for the man known as the Zodiac Killer. Zodiac brags he's killed seven people. He tossed the police for not finding him and he says he will do his thing again. We have reason to believe that he's a maniac. Who is the Zodiac and where is he? The story that you hear about the Zodiac case is not the real story and as you examine the facts, that story starts to disintegrate and behind it is this other story. When I was 12 years old living in Phoenix, Arizona, I worked as a paper boy in my neighborhood. I was rolling the newspapers every morning and seeing stories about the Atlanta child murderer and all kinds of things. So I was already following true crime even as a young child. Around that time, another 12-year-old paper boy was abducted and apparently murdered in our neighborhood. That was the first time that I ever really realized that there were people out there that wanted to kill you. Here in Phoenix, they stopped the paper boys. That's when your newspaper started being delivered by an adult in a van who was throwing a paper out the window and it woke me up. And so that was the end of innocence in my life in many ways, but it really wasn't until the 1990s that I started doing what you might call legitimate research. And with all of this research, Michael created a massive online archive dedicated to the Zodiac case. It's called ZodiacKillerFacts.com. Gathering all the police reports I could, the FBI files and everything and then interviewing those who were involved in the case, the original investigators, surviving victims, some of the witnesses, suspects and the people who accused them and their families. And so over a period of years, I built up a database, you might say, of information. I've devoted my website to spreading information for people who are out there just like I was years ago, struggling to find something and not being sure what's true and what isn't true, what's fact and fiction. I try to devote my research and make some use of all the work that I've done by providing accurate information so people can separate fact from fiction and reach their own conclusions. There are a lot of major differences between the true story of the Zodiac and the myth. A major component of the myth is that the Zodiac was some kind of master criminal who was playing some sort of elaborate game who knew the victims, who was an expert marksman, who was responsible for dozens of murders. It's easier for someone like me who doesn't have a suspect or a theory, when I'm asked a question, it's easier for me to say, "I don't know," because that's the truth and that's the most honest answer someone can give you. But a lot of people aren't satisfied by the truth and they're not satisfied by a mystery. People crave answers and if someone's telling you, "I have all the answers," that can be very attractive, very compelling for a lot of people. And I think, like a lot of things in society, someone would rather be satisfied with the wrong answer than be satisfied with no answer at all. The name Zodiac is very much like the boogeyman, especially it's the American version of Jack the Ripper in many ways. We don't know who the Zodiac was. He's a mystery. That name, for me, it still scares me a lot, to be honest with you. It's terrifying what he did and what he got away with, the fact that he got away with it at all is terrifying. So when I hear that name, the first thing that pops into my mind is he's still out there. We don't know who he is. We don't really know anything more than what we did almost 50 years ago about him. He could be anyone. He could be, you know, that guy that lives across the street from you and comes out to pick his newspaper up in the morning or someone in your family. The name Zodiac, it's come to stand for many different things in the popular culture about true crime. You know, he's either a master criminal or he's some kind of drooling maniac or whatever. But for me, I've always viewed him more as a person. That makes him much more terrifying to me. At this point, I had heard and read so much about the Lovers Lane on Lake Herman Road, but I'd never seen it with my own eyes. I wanted to know exactly what David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen saw when they encountered the Zodiac that night. So the team and I, including our executive producer Jason Hoke, flew out to the Bay Area and the Lake Herman Road site was our first destination. We headed east from Vallejo on Lake Herman Road for a little over three miles. One of the first things you see is a huge rock quarry on the left and then the relatively small Lake Herman on the right. But other than that, it's just rolling hills and very few signs of civilization. The site itself is located about a mile across the current Benisha, California line. What we're referring to as a Lovers Lane is actually just a small turnoff to a private road. That road leads down the hill to a Benisha Police Department shooting range. There's a large metal gate blocking the road and it's secured by numerous single key locks. It's strange. This is it. This is the turnoff. Yeah. There's nothing here. The car is right here. It feels unlikely, right? It feels very unlikely. This is in the middle, kind of a country road with a little pull-off. So if you're standing here at the entrance where the gate is and you look out, there's no human beings. I think this is the kind of place that a Zodiac killer knows kids come and make out in a car, knows they're going to be vulnerable. They just pitch black. It's like easy prey for him. Just beyond the fencing, there's an old sign that says "No trespassing and no dumping." And on the front of this sign, someone, at some point, spray-painted a large black Zodiac symbol. If I can't have you, girls, I will destroy you. A kind of subculture, a hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women. A seed of loneliness explodes. I just hate myself. I don't know why you girls aren't attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it. At a deadly tipping point, in cells will be added to the terrorism guide. Police say a driver intentionally drove into a crowd killing 10 people. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. I will have my revenge. This is In Cells. Listen to Season 1 of In Cells on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, it's Karen in Georgia, and we just celebrated our 500th episode of My Favorite Murder. That's 500 podcasts filled with true crime, comedy, and some light girl math. We're about to podcast for you. Watch this. We have to think of something to say after "Welcome" every week, and we're doing it. Every week for 10 years. Almost 10 years. 10. That's what 500 episodes sounds like. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to My Favorite Murder on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. Hey, it's Ed Helms, and welcome back to Snaffoo, my podcast about history's greatest screw-ups. On our new season, we're bringing you a new Snaffoo every single episode. 32 lost nuclear weapons. Wait, stop? What? Ernie Shackleton sounds like a solid 70s basketball player. Who still wore knee pads? Yes. It's going to be a whole lot of history, a whole lot of funny, and a whole lot of guests. The great Paul Scheer. Maybe you feel good. I'm like, oh, wow. Angela and Jenna, I am so psyched you're here. What was that like for you to soft launch into the show? Sorry, Jenna, I'll be asking the questions today. I forgot whose podcast we were doing. Nick Kroll, I hope this story is good enough to get you to toss that sandwich. So let's see how it goes. Listen to season four of Snaffoo with Ed Helms on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm criminal psychologist Dr. Michelle Ward, and on season seven of Mind of a Monster, we're bringing you the story of Kristen Gilbert. We think that Kristen Gilbert is the most prolific mass murderer in the East Coast. The very person responsible for keeping you alive, your nurse, is secretly killing you. She said to the nurse manager, if this guy dies, can I go home? Listen to Mind of a Monster, the killer nurse, wherever you get your podcasts. All I know is what I've been told, and that to have truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy, we know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava For Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better wake the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season at free, subscribe to Lava For Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. As callous as it sounds, this was just an unsolved crime in a small town. Until that is, the following summer, when the Zodiac Killer struck again. The next crime occurred at Blue Rock Springs Park, which is approximately two and a half miles away from Lake Herman Road, I think. It was a popular city. It was also a part of a port of entry, so there was a lot of sailors, lots of influx of people coming in. But it was still a bustling community with lots of good people in it. On the night of July 4th, 1969, Darlene Farron, a 22-year-old mother and waitress, picked up a friend of hers named Michael Mijot. They were friends. They had met at the diner where she worked, and they decided to go to Blue Rock Springs Park, which is located across the street from a large golf course, but it is sort of outside and isolated in some ways. But it was also another Lovers Lane area. Vallejo, California is the next town over, just northwest of Benicia, where the first murders took place. To put this into perspective, the location where Darlene Farron and Michael Mijot were attacked in Blue Rock Springs Park in Vallejo is only a seven-minute car ride away from the Lake Herman roadside, and it's a fairly straight shot. There's literally one turn, two similar shootings, two Lovers Lanes, just miles apart. Things were starting to add up, but in July 1969, no one had the full picture yet. Yeah, my name is Clarence Edward Rust, R-U-S-T. I'm the retired Vallejo Police Department Lieutenant. On the night of July 4th, 1969, I was working a late shift with my partner, John Lynch, when the Zodiac killing occurred in Vallejo. A man in a mask robbed, tied, and stabbed them, leaving them for dead. Subject stated, "I want a report of murder." No, a double murder. I did it. A man who wore a medieval-style executioner's hood carried a knife and gun and intended to use them. They have an arrest of me because they can't prove a thing. I'm not the damn Zodiac. Who is the Zodiac, and where is he? From iHeartRadio, HowStuffWorks, and TenderfootTV, this is Monster, the Zodiac Killer. This season, on Monster, the Zodiac Killer. Schoolchildren are nice targets. I shall wipe out a school bus some morning, shoot out the tires, and then pick off the kitties as they come bounding out. That was the threat of the Zodiac Killer. When you talk to the survivors of victims who've been killed, you get that this is not fun. There's nothing fun about murder. Vallejo police have submitted letters and envelopes from the Zodiac Killer to a private lab to obtain a DNA profile. I enjoy a good tussle, but hey, killing just for the pleasure of it? It's got to be him, and then the lab results would come back and it's an elimination, and that's just a crushing blow. He used to go there even long after he retired and park his car and sit there and think about, "What did we miss? Why didn't we catch him?" When these individuals are arrested, one of the things that strikes us is how ordinary they are. Their ordinariness is also deeply unsettling. If we can't pick these people out of a crowd, then we're faced with a situation where how do we know that anyone is safe? Monster, the Zodiac Killer, is a 15 episode podcast produced by I Heart Radio, How Stuff Works, and Tenderfoot TV. Donald Allright and I are executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV, alongside producers Meredith Stedman, Mason Lindsay, and Christina Dana. Jason Hoek is executive producer on behalf of How Stuff Works, along with producers Trevor Young, Miranda Hawkins, Ben Kieberg, and Josh Thane. Scott Benjamin provides additional voice talent. Matt Frederick is our host. Original music is by Makeup and Vanity Set. If you haven't already, make sure to check out the first season of Monster, called Atlanta Monster, about the Atlanta child murders from the late 70s to the early 80s. Download the 10 episode season right now. Have questions or comments? Email us at [email protected], or you can call us at 1-833-285-6667. Thanks for listening. A new true crime podcast, Crime List, Hillbilly Heist. From smartless media, campsite media, and big money players. It's a wild tell about a gang of high functioning nitwits who somehow pulled off America's third largest cash heist. Kind of like Robin Hood, except for the part where he steals from the rich and gives to the poor. I'm not that generous. A damn near inspiring true story for anyone out there who's ever shot for the moon, then just totally muffed up the landing. They stole $17 million and had not bought a ticket to help him escape. So we're saying like, "Oh God, what do we do? What do we do?" That was dumb. People do not follow my example. Listen to Crime List, Hillbilly Heist on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's what 500 episodes sounds like. New episodes every Thursday. Listen to my favorite murder on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Goodbye. On this podcast in cells, we unpack an emerging mindset. I am a loser. If I was a woman, I wouldn't pay me either. A hidden world of resentment, cynicism, anger against women at a deadly tipping point. Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge. This is In Cells. Listen to Season 1 of In Cells on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Listen to Season 4 of Snaffoo with Ed Helms on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Two rich young Americans move to the Costa Rican jungle to start over, but one of them will end up dead and the other tried for murder three times. It starts with a dream, a nature reserve, and a spectacular new home. But little by little, they lose it. They actually lose it. They sort of want nuts. Until one night, everything spins out of control. Listen to Hell in Heaven on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an I Heart Podcast.