The Megyn Kelly Show - Unabomber Look Back, Karen Read Trial, Zodiac Killer Deep Dive - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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00:00:30.000 Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show, live on Sirius XM Channel 111 every weekday at New East.

00:00:42.360 Hey everyone, I'm Megyn Kelly. Welcome to The Megyn Kelly Show and today's true crime mega episode.

00:00:48.960 We've got some wild ones for you today, including a deep dive into the Unabomber story.

00:00:53.720 I love, love, love, love this behind the scenes look at it.

00:00:56.760 Uh, also deep dive into the Karen Reed case that captivated the nation

00:01:00.720 and one of our first true crime shows ever on the Zodiac Killer.

00:01:06.540 Enjoy this and we'll see you Monday.

00:01:09.320 Today's show focuses on a twisted genius who terrorized this country for nearly two decades.

00:01:16.360 Building and sending bombs so untraceable,

00:01:19.660 our best law enforcement agents could not figure out who was behind the carnage.

00:01:24.740 The targets? Universities, airlines, and sometimes random other places to throw off the investigators.

00:01:33.640 Three people ultimately were murdered, nearly two dozen others injured, in many cases severely.

00:01:40.680 That is, until the feds finally got a break in what would become known as the Unabomber investigation.

00:01:46.660 The man behind the bombings sent a 35,000-word manifesto to multiple newspapers and TV stations across the country,

00:01:57.280 claiming to explain his motives and vowing to stop the attacks if they would publish it.

00:02:03.780 They did.

00:02:04.900 And it caught the eye of someone very unexpected who ultimately flagged him to the FBI.

00:02:11.280 On April 3rd, 1996, Ted Kaczynski's reign of terror came to an end.

00:02:18.160 Investigators arrested him in Montana at a primitive cabin with no electricity or plumbing.

00:02:23.860 And there they found a wealth of bomb components, 40,000 handwritten journal pages,

00:02:29.700 and one live bomb ready to be sent.

00:02:33.240 Today, Ted Kaczynski spends his time in a federal prison in Colorado,

00:02:36.520 put there, in large part, thanks to my next guest.

00:02:41.180 Terry Turchie has been described as the heart and spirit of the investigation.

00:02:46.340 Between 1994 and 1998, Terry directed the Unabombe Task Force,

00:02:52.180 as it was known, that helped identify and then arrest Kaczynski.

00:02:57.060 He retired from the FBI in April 2001,

00:03:00.640 having served as the first deputy assistant director of the newly created

00:03:04.140 Counterterrorism Division.

00:03:06.520 His book is Unabomber,

00:03:09.380 How the FBI Broke Its Own Rules to Capture the Terrorist, Ted Kaczynski.

00:03:14.580 Terry, thank you so much for being here.

00:03:17.000 Megan, thank you very much for having me.

00:03:19.000 It's a riveting story.

00:03:20.820 I've read your book cover to cover.

00:03:22.480 I've watched a bunch of movies now and TV series on the Unabomber,

00:03:26.660 so I feel like I have a decent handle on how it all went down.

00:03:29.080 But my biggest takeaway in reading your book was how it was a meticulous, painstaking,

00:03:38.660 teaspoons-in-the-ocean effort, bit by bit, day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year,

00:03:45.560 to put together the evidence that cumulatively would ultimately be used to take this guy down.

00:03:53.260 Well, that's a really good description, Megan.

00:03:56.700 And I think that description also matches the team that eventually came together to make all of this happen.

00:04:03.720 And we often joke, and of course, back then we weren't joking too much.

00:04:08.020 We were really serious and usually stressed out.

00:04:12.080 But we really look back on this and think that we were very fortunate that all of the people

00:04:18.040 who were in all of these places at the right time really played an important role in making this all happen.

00:04:24.180 And when I say that, I'm thinking of Jim Freeman, the special agent in charge of our office in San Francisco,

00:04:29.480 who was in charge of all the investigations that San Francisco did in the FBI there.

00:04:33.860 Max Knoll, who was just a tremendous, awesome criminal agent who never wanted to be assigned a Unabomb

00:04:41.680 and was pulled off of his organized crime work to go work there.

00:04:45.740 Joel Moss and Kathy Puckett, both of whom worked with me on counterintelligence in San Francisco,

00:04:51.300 they volunteered to come over from counterintelligence and work on this case.

00:04:55.540 And then, of course, Director Free and Janet Reno, who was the attorney general at the time,

00:04:59.780 and someone named Molly Flynn, who was an FBI agent who played a major and key role in our Washington Metropolitan Field Division.

00:05:07.760 So all of this came together, a number of agencies, the Postal Inspection Service, the FBI, the ATF.

00:05:14.440 And I was really proud to be able to serve with that team and on that team and be a part of that.

00:05:22.300 And it's because of so many people and certainly those people I mentioned that so much of this came together.

00:05:27.720 I love this character, Max Knoll.

00:05:30.420 I mean, I realize he's a real person, but in the book, I love him as a character because he is the constant naysayer. 1.00

00:05:37.160 He's the one saying, this is BS.

00:05:39.380 You can't put together a profile based on comparing words of one thing to words that sound similar in another thing.

00:05:45.320 You need hardcore criminal evidence.

00:05:48.000 That's how you make a case.

00:05:49.420 And almost to the end, he had real doubts about whether this was the guy.

00:05:52.960 But the kind of evidence Max wanted was it was so hard to get in the Unabomb investigation.

00:06:01.120 The guy, I mean, we now know as Ted Kaczynski, he was so clever.

00:06:06.100 He was brilliant in hiding his identity.

00:06:09.500 He was at least a couple of steps ahead of you guys on how you might detect identity and even actively taking steps to plant evidence in his bombs that he knew you'd run down to make it look like it was accidentally placed there.

00:06:24.300 But it was, in fact, an attempt to mislead you.

00:06:26.380 He actually spent just as much time doing that, Megan, just as you laid out, as he did building the bombs.

00:06:34.020 For example, at one point, and of course, we confirmed all this later.

00:06:37.820 We found this out when we searched his cabin.

00:06:40.240 But at one point, he was in the men's room in the bus station at the in Missoula, Montana, and he found a couple of hairs on the floor.

00:06:51.800 And later, he would put those two human hairs between layers of electrical tape in one of his bombs.

00:06:57.200 What was he thinking about?

00:06:58.400 Well, he was thinking that when we found the debris in this terrible crime scene, he would actually we would actually think that it was someone's DNA, probably the bomber, when, in fact, it would have nothing to do with this case.

00:07:10.980 He would use wood and metals in putting these bombs together.

00:07:14.800 At one point, the FBI lab referred to him as the junkyard bomber.

00:07:18.740 And so he would file down the metal so he could eliminate fingerprints if he thought there were any there.

00:07:24.060 He would sand the wood.

00:07:26.180 I mean, he thought of everything.

00:07:28.220 He thought of disguises when he would go purchase and acquire everything from junk at a junkyard to something he might buy at a hardware store.

00:07:35.720 He would take the jackets off of batteries so that we couldn't trace the batch of batteries.

00:07:41.840 So he was doing everything he could think of to try and deceive and lead us in another direction and confuse.

00:07:49.940 And I think that certainly worked to his advantage for those years.

00:07:54.520 Right, because it's not in reading your book and so on. 0.98

00:07:56.920 And it's not like the FBI was full of a bunch of fools who just didn't know what they were doing, though. 0.66

00:08:01.100 There was a lack of appetite for a period of years to really devote all the resources necessary toward this case because he went quiet for about six years. 0.97

00:08:09.800 And so the FBI kind of, you know, maybe die, whatever. 0.97

00:08:13.280 It wasn't that the FBI was a bunch of dunderheads. 0.98

00:08:16.220 It was that this guy was clever in a really disturbing criminal way. 0.93

00:08:23.080 When I heard your description of the bombs, the one just now and the ones you give in your book, it occurred to me, weirdly, there was love put into them.

00:08:33.300 Like, the guy loved the bomb itself, though he hated anybody involved in sort of the university or industrial complex and so on.

00:08:41.000 Like, we'll get into the reasons he was doing it.

00:08:42.920 But he loved his bombs.

00:08:44.000 He was very, very careful, very meticulous in putting those bombs together and would really take it hard when he would later read, as he was doing his research, that the bomb didn't function properly.

00:08:56.680 And you see that in a number of these bombings. 0.85

00:08:59.080 He would later write something to the effect that, damn, I messed this up or I didn't do this right, really bothering me, really making me angry. 0.98

00:09:08.800 I've got to build a lethal bomb. 0.98

00:09:11.080 And that's the way he was thinking.

00:09:12.960 And to kind of add to one of the points you made, we also didn't understand at that period of time as much as we thought we did about the lone wolf serial bomber.

00:09:23.360 We simply hadn't had many cases like that.

00:09:26.120 And we hadn't really shared information or been trained in that kind of thing.

00:09:30.620 So we had to almost put together our own training, our own educational process, not only for us who were responsible for the case, but for everyone who was touching it.

00:09:40.260 And so we actually built that into this case so that we could all be thinking of and learning as we went along.

00:09:46.280 And also, we wanted to make sure we could pass all of this along if, in fact, it all came out as it ended up so that other people would be able to use some of this and some of the things we did later on.

00:09:58.460 Yes, I definitely want to get into that, like what was learned, because what's fascinating about the story is you spent all this time trying to figure out who this was.

00:10:08.080 What is the profile of this person?

00:10:09.640 Kathy Puckett, you mentioned, who tried to come up with a psychological profile of what he was and what you could expect.

00:10:16.500 And then nuggets of information.

00:10:18.000 And I wonder, because one thing you don't get to in the book is once you find him, how did it match up?

00:10:24.420 You know, like, how'd you do?

00:10:26.180 I want that needs to be part two, but we can we can just try to handle it live.

00:10:30.360 OK, so let's just start before we get to all that.

00:10:32.220 Let's go through a little bit chronologically, because I think that's probably the easiest way of understanding his crimes.

00:10:38.720 The start with this.

00:10:40.000 Why why was it called the Unabomb investigation?

00:10:44.120 And why was he dubbed the Unabomber?

00:10:47.000 Certainly.

00:10:47.740 Well, in the first few years, the targets of his bombs seem to be university campuses, university professors and airlines, and especially the first four bombs.

00:10:59.100 So the FBI, particularly on major cases like this, finds that it's helpful to add some sort of title such as we added to this.

00:11:08.980 And they call this case Unabomb for UNA universities and and airlines bombing.

00:11:17.260 So Unabomb became the name of this investigation, major case that it was.

00:11:22.540 And then at some point, someone, I think, back east started referring to him as the Unabomber.

00:11:28.360 So Unabomb and Unabomber not only became how we identified with the case, but it also really stuck with the public when they finally started learning about the Unabomber and what was going on.

00:11:40.420 So that's how Unabomber came into existence.

00:11:43.780 I never knew that until I started studying for this interview.

00:11:46.220 I always thought it was like uni as in one guy, Unabomber, you know, and I guess I just never paid attention to the spelling or thought much about it.

00:11:54.640 It's universities and airlines.

00:11:56.540 That's how it started.

00:11:58.040 Exactly.

00:11:58.780 Yes.

00:11:59.300 Fascinating.

00:11:59.860 OK, so first he starts off the first couple of bombs were at universities in Chicago.

00:12:06.900 Yes.

00:12:07.460 In fact, the first bomb and we'll go back and do this however you would like.

00:12:11.200 But later on, when we assembled as the ultimate team that took this to the finish line, we went back and reinvestigated all of these crimes.

00:12:20.120 And so we learned so much.

00:12:21.200 But the first bombing was at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle campus.

00:12:27.840 And essentially a passerby, a lady named Mary Gutierrez, was walking by there one day. 0.71

00:12:33.880 It's the science and technology parking lot of the campus.

00:12:37.320 And she saw a package between two cars, two parked cars.

00:12:41.540 She picked it up.

00:12:42.600 She looked at it and she took it home.

00:12:44.980 And it sat there, you know, with her children on the floor for a day or two.

00:12:48.700 She saw that there was a return address and there was also a recipient.

00:12:52.040 The return address was a professor named Buckley Crist at Northwestern University.

00:12:59.160 And the intended recipient was a professor at RPI in Troy, New York.

00:13:06.780 Yep.

00:13:07.160 So she eventually called the police.

00:13:09.980 The police come and get the package.

00:13:11.580 They took it to Buckley Crist because his address was on there as the return address.

00:13:15.960 He said, I don't know anything about that.

00:13:17.420 So it was opened at school by a police officer named Terry Marker.

00:13:22.040 And he suffered some injuries because it turned out to be a bomb.

00:13:25.600 So that was the first device the Unabomber actually sent. 0.83

00:13:29.280 But at that point in time, it was not looked upon as anything other than another bomb.

00:13:34.240 Back in those days, as you well know, the Weather Underground and all kinds of other organizations

00:13:39.280 were committing bombings.

00:13:40.600 They were attacking police.

00:13:42.240 They were active on universities.

00:13:44.180 So there was a lot of activity.

00:13:46.180 So since this didn't hurt anyone and there wasn't much to go on,

00:13:51.180 it just kind of got lost in the shuffle other than recorded at the ATF lab and the evidence

00:13:56.440 tucked away.

00:13:58.440 And, you know, there are quotes from the Unabomber throughout the book.

00:14:02.260 And I know a lot comes from that 35,000 word manifesto.

00:14:06.560 But he was writing letters from time to time.

00:14:09.440 Was he not during the course of the bombings?

00:14:11.600 Actually, he only wrote two letters.

00:14:14.800 The first letter during the course of the first 14 bombings.

00:14:18.240 The first letter was actually to Percy Wood, who was the president at the time of United

00:14:25.280 Airlines.

00:14:26.160 And in June of 1980, he received a letter from an individual who identified himself as Enoch

00:14:32.700 Fisher.

00:14:33.080 And Enoch Fisher said, look, I'm going to be sending you a book.

00:14:37.460 And the book is called Ice Brothers by Sloan Wilson.

00:14:41.240 And this is a book that you should pay great attention to because you make decisions regarding

00:14:46.040 the social welfare of people.

00:14:48.060 And so when you get the book, think about that.

00:14:51.100 So Percy Wood subsequently got the book.

00:14:53.340 He went to open the package and then open the wrapping.

00:14:57.220 But essentially, the book was hollowed out and it was a bomb.

00:14:59.920 It was an explosive device.

00:15:01.060 And so this was the fourth Unabomber device, by the way.

00:15:05.440 And that letter was interesting, but there wasn't much they could do with that either.

00:15:11.780 So that became later on something that actually first got us into the words of the Unabomber.

00:15:17.860 And we'll talk about that probably later.

00:15:19.760 But so that was the first letter.

00:15:22.800 During one of the Unabomber events, as we started calling them, of 1985, he sent his second

00:15:29.820 letter.

00:15:30.160 And that letter was to an individual named James McConnell.

00:15:34.840 James McConnell was a professor at the University of Michigan.

00:15:38.780 And what the Unabomber sent him was a letter saying, I'm a student.

00:15:44.420 I'm doing a thesis on something called the history of science.

00:15:48.140 And I'd like you to consider being my thesis advisor.

00:15:51.860 And that letter was signed, Walf C. Kloppenberg.

00:15:56.020 And of course, this was in a three-wing binder, like it would be some sort of student's essay,

00:16:01.180 maybe.

00:16:01.380 And when Professor McConnell's assistant went to open that package, it exploded, just very

00:16:09.100 similar to the book that Percy would receive.

00:16:11.340 Again, we were fortunate that they suffered injuries, but certainly they did not suffer

00:16:17.300 something critical or die from those explosions.

00:16:19.660 Those were the two letters that the Unabomber wrote between 1978 and around 1993.

00:16:26.900 In 1993, all that changed when the Unabomber started corresponding with the New York Times and

00:16:35.380 eventually with the New York Times and several other entities and people.

00:16:39.960 So that is kind of how his letters would evolve over the years between 78 and 93, and then

00:16:48.960 subsequently through 96.

00:16:51.440 And then later, when you finally started to figure out who it was, you managed to get a

00:16:54.920 treasure trove of letters between the Unabomber and his family members, which would prove really 0.88

00:17:00.500 helpful and useful eventually.

00:17:02.640 So he's bombing universities, he attempts to bomb an airplane, and this is still back in

00:17:09.660 the late 70s, I gather, but it didn't work, thank God.

00:17:14.220 Well, it went off, but it kind of fizzled, and it didn't bring down the airplane, although

00:17:17.960 it did cause a lot of injuries to the people on board the plane.

00:17:21.420 You were so right, Megan.

00:17:23.460 In 1979, an American Airlines flight, 444, was leaving from Chicago, headed for National

00:17:30.360 Airport.

00:17:30.740 And the plane got up in the air, suddenly the pilot and the passengers felt this jolt.

00:17:37.960 The plane started having some problems.

00:17:40.760 And it turns out that there was a package on board that plane, put in the mail stream.

00:17:46.920 The U.S. Postal Service was actually able, subsequently, to determine the path that mail

00:17:54.060 package had taken when the bomber put it in the mail in Chicago.

00:17:58.840 So they were able to trace a package that a witness had touched and eventually got on

00:18:04.880 board this flight 444.

00:18:07.460 And it turns out the bomb that he designed had some deficiencies with respect to the explosives.

00:18:13.440 So when it detonated, instead of blowing up, it started smoldering, and it started burning

00:18:20.560 in the cargo hold.

00:18:22.440 So as the plane was getting closer and, of course, declaring mayday, wanting an emergency

00:18:26.680 landing, it was diverted to Dulles Airport, where they had the equipment to deal with this.

00:18:31.480 When the plane landed, the pilots were actually prepared to testify many years later when we were

00:18:37.580 ready to start the Unabombers trial, that had they not landed the plane on the tarmac when

00:18:42.760 they did, they were literally minutes or seconds maybe away of the fire in the cargo hold burning

00:18:49.980 through the main hydraulic system.

00:18:52.680 They said if that had happened, the plane would have fallen out of the sky and everybody would

00:18:56.080 have been killed.

00:18:57.220 So this is one of the reasons, certainly, that in 1979, this became a significant major case.

00:19:03.640 It was a crime aboard aircraft, it was an explosive device, and so we knew from that point on we

00:19:09.920 had a real problem, but it wasn't until Chris Rone, who was a laboratory supervisor and explosives

00:19:17.040 examiner, started looking at this, and he felt that this is the first time I've seen this kind of

00:19:23.100 craftsmanship in putting together a bomb, because all bombers do their bombs differently.

00:19:30.500 No two bombers build their bombs the same, and that goes whether it's an international terrorist

00:19:35.220 or a domestic terrorist.

00:19:36.720 They all do something a little differently.

00:19:38.740 He had not noticed this before, but he thought that the bomber had to have put together other

00:19:43.720 bombs because it was done so well.

00:19:46.140 So he sent out a bulletin to other law enforcement agencies.

00:19:49.880 This is all back in 1979.

00:19:52.960 And the ATF, which had handled the first two Unabombs devices, again, in that era that we talked

00:19:59.020 about, actually responded and said, you need to see these other two devices, because they

00:20:05.180 kind of sound like what you're describing.

00:20:07.580 And Chris Rone was then able to say, we have a serial bomber at large.

00:20:12.400 So it was on the third bombing, the attack on the airplane, that we knew we now have a 0.56

00:20:17.660 serial bomber.

00:20:18.820 And shortly after that, in 1980, we would have the fourth device, the attack on Percy Wood,

00:20:23.800 the president of United Airlines.

00:20:25.260 Later in the investigation, as the Unabomber gets better and more efficient at making deadly 0.76

00:20:33.220 bombs, he will threaten to take down another aircraft.

00:20:37.340 And you can see from Terry's description why they took that so seriously and were so concerned

00:20:43.340 he could do it and had the will to do it as well.

00:20:47.320 There's so much more to go over.

00:20:49.240 The profile of the Unabomber, what drove Ted Kaczynski to do this?

00:20:53.420 How and how did the FBI ultimately nab him?

00:20:58.200 Don't go away.

00:20:58.840 More with former FBI agent Terry Turchi on the Unabomber investigation.

00:21:08.100 Okay, so Terry, let's fast forward.

00:21:10.380 So he tried with the airplane.

00:21:11.640 He failed.

00:21:12.100 He continued bombing.

00:21:13.940 But it wasn't until 1985 that he had his first kill.

00:21:19.320 He managed to kill the first person out of all those he attempted to kill, though he had

00:21:24.140 wounded many.

00:21:25.320 So who was that and what happened with Hugh Scruton?

00:21:28.880 Yes.

00:21:29.480 In December of 1985, the Unabomber finally got what he wanted. 0.98

00:21:33.520 He wanted to kill someone.

00:21:35.400 And Hugh Scruton was a businessman.

00:21:38.420 He ran a very successful computer store in a outside type mall, outdoor mall in Sacramento,

00:21:44.140 California, and he walked out into the back of the store one day and saw what looked to

00:21:50.900 him like a road hazard, Megan.

00:21:52.720 And it was essentially two by fours nailed together with nails protruding out of the wood.

00:21:59.580 And so his thought process was this could hurt somebody.

00:22:03.060 Somebody could pull up here with a car and have some problems.

00:22:06.020 So he leaned over to remove the road hazard and to put it in a nearby dumpster.

00:22:12.860 And at that point, this was what we call the passive device.

00:22:16.080 As he broke the connection between the ground and that device, the two by fours were actually

00:22:21.360 hollowed out and the Unabomber had built a lethal bomb inside the wood.

00:22:25.620 And Mr. Scruton just simply took the full impact of that explosion and died outside in the back

00:22:36.880 of his store from that device.

00:22:39.300 And it would be two years before we would hear from the Unabomber again. 1.00

00:22:44.000 But in 1987, using the same model, the same kind of plan with the two by fours, even cut

00:22:51.920 from the same pieces of wood, he made another similar bomb and was involved in placing it

00:22:57.980 outside of a computer store called CAMS on February 20, 1987 in Salt Lake City.

00:23:04.720 And this time, as he kind of knelt down to finish up preparing the bomb so that it would

00:23:11.820 detonate, one of the employees of CAMS named Tammy Fluey was looking out a back window. 0.98

00:23:18.620 And she started yelling that someone is out here doing something in the parking lot.

00:23:23.180 What happened within minutes is the son of the owner of CAMS, Gary Wright, pulled up.

00:23:30.040 He saw this and he thought the same thing because he would tell us later, I thought it was a road

00:23:35.580 hazard.

00:23:35.920 I thought it was something that would hurt someone.

00:23:38.020 So I went to move it.

00:23:39.420 But instead of kind of leaning over the two by fours, when he went to pick them up, he

00:23:45.620 kind of knelt and then kind of brushed against it before he actually picked it up or moved

00:23:51.960 it.

00:23:52.280 And the bomb exploded, but he was spared the full blunt of that explosion.

00:23:57.620 And so this is when the Unabomber was seen with the gray hooded sweatshirt and the aviator

00:24:03.240 sunglasses.

00:24:03.880 So after all of these years, between 1978, 1987, and all these stops and starts on this

00:24:11.540 investigation, someone had finally witnessed this individual who up until then was a major

00:24:17.520 mystery.

00:24:18.280 And this is when everyone kind of got involved.

00:24:20.920 I mean, Reader's Digest did a big story on the composite.

00:24:25.220 They did a big story on what he looked like with the hooded sweatshirt and the aviator sunglasses

00:24:31.060 that you're showing there.

00:24:31.900 And so they also became very familiar with that word Unabomber.

00:24:37.160 Later, as we reinvestigated all of this, something else significant happened.

00:24:43.060 And so I think this is a good time to tell you the story.

00:24:46.060 During the investigation in 1987, that witness was interviewed by the police, by the FBI.

00:24:53.120 She had a really good recollection of what she saw and what she was hearing.

00:24:59.480 So someone told her along the way, we think the police officer, to take notes and make

00:25:06.360 sure those notes were with her and kept fresh in her mind.

00:25:09.820 And somebody would stop by later and pick them up.

00:25:13.280 Well, no one ever stopped by to pick up those notes.

00:25:16.040 And even in subsequent interviews, no one asked about those notes.

00:25:19.460 And so in fast forward to 1994, Max Knoll had reinvestigated those two, a couple of those

00:25:28.340 events that were related, the CAMS bombing and the Rentech bombing.

00:25:33.560 And so Max was interviewing Tammy and she mentioned the notes.

00:25:38.000 And he said, wait a minute, what notes?

00:25:40.700 And she went and retrieved them.

00:25:43.300 She's on these notes.

00:25:45.180 And so what appeared to us is that she was never comfortable with the initial composite.

00:25:52.080 So about that time in San Francisco, in the Bay Area, there was another very, very significant

00:25:57.900 investigation.

00:25:59.220 And that was the disappearance and subsequent murder of Polly Klass.

00:26:03.100 And we ended up having a major break in that case, because, again, Jim Freeman, who was

00:26:09.300 a special agent in charge of the FBI in San Francisco, ran that as well.

00:26:13.560 And Jim ended up bringing in a artist named Jeannie Boylan to do a composite of who somebody

00:26:21.100 had seen in the vicinity when Polly Klass disappeared.

00:26:28.120 And so it turned out that that composite was almost a spitting image of Richard Allen Davis.

00:26:33.100 who was eventually convicted of murdering, kidnapping and murdering Polly Klass. 1.00

00:26:38.400 So Jeannie Boylan was contacted by Max.

00:26:41.940 We said, Max, go find Jeannie.

00:26:43.720 See if she can do a composite this many years later and sit down with Tammy and see if Tammy 0.58

00:26:49.600 would be more happy and more satisfied with whatever Jeannie Boylan comes up with based

00:26:54.360 on Tammy Floyd's description.

00:26:56.220 So lo and behold, she came up with a composite.

00:26:59.460 You just showed it.

00:27:01.760 And it was a composite that Tammy Floyd really, really liked.

00:27:06.460 She said, that is the person I saw on February 20, 1987.

00:27:11.100 So eventually we ended up taking the other composite, getting rid of that and showing this.

00:27:18.760 It was introduced by Jim Freeman at a press conference with the media back in around the

00:27:24.060 end of 1980, 1994.

00:27:27.000 And it was a major step for us and a major break for us because we had a witness now satisfied

00:27:33.020 with what she was trying to articulate.

00:27:35.100 And we had a composite, which we really believed in.

00:27:38.780 And, you know, now, now, of course, we know what Ted Kaczynski looked like.

00:27:41.620 And I have to say, it's pretty striking. 0.97

00:27:44.060 This Tammy did a damn good job. 1.00

00:27:46.040 You think about eyewitness testimony and how notoriously unreliable it is, but her, if you 0.86

00:27:52.460 pictured, you know, we'll show Ted Kaczynski in the YouTube version of this, that guy was

00:27:56.840 very scruffy and sort of the perp walk we saw him in.

00:27:58.940 But you picture him years earlier with a hoodie and the aviator glasses, and you could see how

00:28:06.500 accurate she was.

00:28:07.480 And she went on saying he's a white male.

00:28:09.580 I think he had strawberry blonde hair.

00:28:10.980 He had a mustache.

00:28:11.700 He was on 5'10", about 165 pounds, a reddish complexion, gray hooded sweatshirt.

00:28:15.880 Aviator-style sunglasses.

00:28:16.940 I mean, this is an eyewitness that's a dream, right?

00:28:20.240 It's like, you don't get a lot of these.

00:28:22.840 It was wonderful.

00:28:24.100 And as you can imagine, we were really buoyed at that time, because when you're years later

00:28:28.800 trying to put all this together, and you get a break like that and a witness like that,

00:28:33.180 it really is important.

00:28:34.660 One funny story, though, earlier we were talking about Max Knoll, and you mentioned the word

00:28:40.000 brusque.

00:28:40.520 Well, Max took Jeannie out to Salt Lake and sat down with Tammy Floyd.

00:28:44.400 But while Tammy Floyd was articulating this to Jeannie Boylan, she had a daughter.

00:28:50.540 So Max was there entertaining the daughter by showing her the Lion King.

00:28:57.140 So he was crawling around on the floor showing Lion King while the business was taking place

00:29:02.500 in the other room.

00:29:03.220 So, you know, we do a lot of different things, but that was the call of duty for Max at that

00:29:07.580 particular couple of hours.

00:29:08.600 That's amazing, this senior respected FBI agent trying to solve a serial bomber case

00:29:12.960 out there.

00:29:13.280 But this would have been right up Max's alley because he was like, hardcore evidence, not

00:29:17.780 BS word comparisons.

00:29:19.520 Eyewitness pictures, like that's up his alley.

00:29:22.380 Okay, so while you're getting the eyewitness ID shorn up and so on, the FBI is trying to

00:29:29.320 gather data.

00:29:30.640 Like, what can we figure out about this guy?

00:29:32.560 We've had bombings in Chicago, we've had bombings in California, we've had bombings

00:29:37.100 in Utah, and you're trying, I mean, it sounds like so simple in retrospect once you know

00:29:42.200 who he is, but it truly is like trying to find a needle in a haystack because, yes, you

00:29:46.920 can come up with a profile of somebody who lived here and then there and then this third

00:29:50.500 place and this fourth place, but you don't know when the person was born.

00:29:54.860 You figured out he was probably a college-educated guy, right?

00:29:57.620 How do you begin, and you talk about this in the book, to create systems that will siphon

00:30:04.600 down the enormous pool of people who would fit into those descriptions?

00:30:11.000 So when I first came over, Jim Freeman said, here's what I want you to do.

00:30:14.340 This is the first thing I want you to do.

00:30:16.120 Give me a proposed strategy for how we're going to address exactly what you said, Megan.

00:30:21.200 So I went out and I met with Max, I met with everybody on the UTF, and started reading

00:30:26.300 files, and then sat down with everyone, the entire UTF at that point in time, which was

00:30:32.440 about 25, 30 people from those agencies we talked about, and said, here's what I think,

00:30:38.780 and here's what I've learned, and I'm going to articulate this to the SAC.

00:30:42.500 First of all, we need to reinvestigate all of these Unabomb crimes one more time, only this 0.97

00:30:48.420 time we're going to do it different.

00:30:49.800 We're not going to use the FBI system of lead offices and auxiliary offices and office of

00:30:55.860 origin.

00:30:56.580 What we're going to do is send Unabomb task force teams back to these offices where all 0.99

00:31:03.500 these police departments or the FBI and the other agencies, ATF and Postal, had already

00:31:08.360 done investigation.

00:31:09.920 And we're going to have these teams that are currently on Unabomb take a good, clean look

00:31:16.580 at all of these crimes again.

00:31:18.440 So secondly, I want everybody to partner up.

00:31:21.080 Find a partner because it's going to be a long, hard show.

00:31:24.180 And so I want you to get somebody that you like being around.

00:31:27.900 You're going to be basically living with these people or with each other.

00:31:31.460 So they all chose up sides.

00:31:33.680 It didn't matter if you were an ATF and FBI agent.

00:31:35.860 It didn't matter to me what it was.

00:31:37.500 Just choose a partner that if you're going to go work out in the morning before you start

00:31:41.660 the day, fine.

00:31:42.480 But the rest of the day, you're going to be together and maybe late into the evening

00:31:48.320 even.

00:31:48.520 So that's what we did.

00:31:50.980 And we started the reinvestigation.

00:31:52.760 But then as we started having tons of new information come in, we've talked about the

00:31:58.200 example of the composite.

00:32:00.120 Well, there was tons of new information that we had missed the first time around and in

00:32:05.680 subsequent tries at this.

00:32:08.020 So we had to have a way to sort it out.

00:32:11.200 And we realized at a certain point as we were together as the kind of modern day UTF in

00:32:17.400 the 1994-96 timeframe that there was a lot of Unabomb myth.

00:32:23.300 There was a lot of fiction.

00:32:25.660 There were a lot of theories.

00:32:27.620 And sometimes those had crossed the boundaries and Unabomb myth or fiction had become Unabomb

00:32:33.620 fact.

00:32:34.340 So we realized this is toxic and we're going to have to separate all this.

00:32:38.660 So we created something called Unabomb fact, fiction, and theory.

00:32:43.740 And everyone on the Unabomb task force, when we had the first draft of this document, received

00:32:50.580 a copy.

00:32:51.380 And every single week when we brought everything together and we brought everything together

00:32:55.780 by separate types of meetings that went on all week, every week, we had to be familiar

00:33:02.800 with.

00:33:03.160 I mean, it was your responsibility.

00:33:04.640 I mean, almost your solemn obligation, be familiar with the most updated version of

00:33:10.580 Unabomb fact, fiction, and theory.

00:33:12.920 Another thing, since you know how the FBI works, Megan, we did something that we hadn't

00:33:18.680 done before either.

00:33:19.740 And that is whether you were an FBI agent or you were an FBI analyst or you were an FBI

00:33:25.560 support employee that did something in connection with the logistics or the hotline.

00:33:29.800 Everybody was expected to be at Unabomb meetings.

00:33:34.060 Everybody had a seat at the table.

00:33:36.420 Everybody's opinion and eyes and ears was important.

00:33:39.980 And everybody was encouraged to speak up because we needed every voice and every brain we could

00:33:44.140 get.

00:33:44.820 So that was our guide to those discussions, the Unabomb fact, fiction, and theory document.

00:33:49.440 But finally, to really get to your question and the point here, over all those years of

00:33:55.300 investigation, all kinds of agencies assembled this information through all kinds of databases.

00:34:01.320 None of them were compatible.

00:34:03.400 So we brought in an outsider.

00:34:05.680 The Bureau approved this.

00:34:06.960 They brought in an outside consultant who, for one year, from 1994 to the, I'd say, early

00:34:14.360 summer of 1995, took this massive amount of literally millions of bits of data, put it all

00:34:23.200 together in one system, and prepared it so that we could do one thing.

00:34:29.600 And that was to suddenly turn Unabomb into a proactive search for Unabomb suspects who we

00:34:36.320 could tie, even when we first opened the case up, to specific geographical areas.

00:34:42.300 And we'd never been able to do that before.

00:34:44.980 And that was the entire purpose of doing this major computer project.

00:34:48.540 And by the time that the Unabomber actually started getting more active and corresponding

00:34:54.320 with us, we were ready to actually flip the switch, got approval from FBI headquarters for

00:35:01.500 a 24-7 operation to then send analysts to work in San Francisco during around the clock.

00:35:09.320 And what was really ironic is when we asked for terrorism analysts, the Bureau said, well,

00:35:14.280 we don't have terrorism analysts, but we'll send you all the analysts that we can send you

00:35:18.860 so that you can get this job done and staff a 24-7 operation.

00:35:22.580 And that's exactly what they did.

00:35:24.440 So shortly after that, and after the attacks in 1995, we began the 24-7 operation of developing

00:35:33.720 proactive Unabomb suspects, which would eventually teach us so much that when the right person

00:35:42.180 came along, it was almost miraculous.

00:35:44.940 It just all started to fall together.

00:35:47.620 Well, it was fascinating because, first of all, it's very interesting that this is during

00:35:50.600 the Clinton administration and preceding as well.

00:35:53.320 And we had no counterterrorism force going in the FBI.

00:35:57.320 And of course, we all know what happened at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency and the

00:36:00.460 beginning of George W. Bush's with 9-11-2001.

00:36:03.240 We learned a lot in the ensuing decade about the need for that kind of analysis, proactive

00:36:09.440 analysis.

00:36:11.340 But one of the things I wondered in sort of watching all this unfold was at what point did

00:36:16.860 it become clear to the public that there was a Unabomber? 0.99

00:36:19.800 Because one thing you think about is, why was anybody opening a package that they weren't

00:36:25.660 certain was safe and from someone they knew, you know, past bomb number three, right?

00:36:31.620 Like, did it need more publicity?

00:36:33.800 Were we not publicizing it enough?

00:36:36.420 Like, how could people still be confused into opening unknown packages?

00:36:41.520 I think one of the big problems was that as these investigations were perceived right after

00:36:46.640 a bombing, people became very familiar with something, particularly after Hugh Scrutton

00:36:50.660 was killed, was murdered by the Unabomber. 0.85

00:36:52.500 And then after 1987, when the composite came out and places like Reader's Digest ran these

00:36:59.100 big articles, people were tuning into that.

00:37:03.140 But then as the leads in the investigation would run out, the contacts with the press would

00:37:08.980 kind of stop and the FBI would become distracted by other things.

00:37:14.080 And same for the Postal Inspection Service, same for the ATF.

00:37:18.300 We always had one agent.

00:37:20.380 His name was John Conway.

00:37:22.120 And he's an amazing guy because during all this time, he was still assigned as the case

00:37:28.120 agent for Unabomber.

00:37:29.440 And at one point in time, you earlier had mentioned that break in Unabomber activity from 87 to 93.

00:37:37.580 And that's after he was spotted, after he was spotted by the eyewitness, Terry.

00:37:42.660 Exactly.

00:37:43.780 And so during that time, someone at FBI headquarters actually told John he should close the Unabomber

00:37:52.320 case because the Unabomber was probably dead since we hadn't heard from him for years.

00:37:57.200 Wow.

00:37:57.880 And John Conway, singularly working that case with no big authority helping him at all,

00:38:06.100 said, look, that's just a bad idea.

00:38:09.100 You cannot close this just because we haven't heard from this guy.

00:38:13.180 He cannot be presumed dead.

00:38:14.740 And indeed, he was not dead because come along June of 1993, there were two more bombings within

00:38:21.560 48 hours and 3,000 miles of one another.

00:38:26.200 And I want to go back to Kathy Puckett for a minute, the behavioral assessment person.

00:38:32.740 And she had concluded that, and I'm quoting here from your book, safety, security, and

00:38:38.260 secrecy are of paramount importance to the Unabomber. 0.93

00:38:41.600 He has a strong sense of self-protection.

00:38:44.140 He would have no direct connection to either of the individuals targeted, saying that would

00:38:50.480 have risked exposure.

00:38:52.940 His careful and cautious nature, she believed, is what drove him underground after having been

00:38:58.560 spotted by Terry.

00:38:59.760 So in a way, that eyewitness moment with Terry could have saved a lot of lives.

00:39:04.080 I mean, who knows?

00:39:05.080 He might have been above ground bombing for all that time.

00:39:08.120 But it took seven years before he regained his confidence.

00:39:12.280 And what was the nature of the bombings in June of 1993?

00:39:15.860 In June of 1993, after not hearing from the Unabomber, we heard from him, as you said, simultaneous 0.99

00:39:23.020 bombings.

00:39:24.040 The first one was directed at a geneticist, Dr. Charles Epstein, who lived in Tiburon, California.

00:39:31.620 And he received a bomb one day in his home.

00:39:35.240 And the device went off when he went to open it.

00:39:38.800 It was a much smaller, compact bomb.

00:39:41.260 It was about the size of a videocassette, as far as a package.

00:39:45.580 And later, we would see the Unabomber write that I took the time off, or while I was taking

00:39:51.600 the time off, I perfected, or we, he always referred to Unabomber as we, the terror group

00:39:57.620 FC.

00:39:58.200 And I should make sure I say that here.

00:40:00.020 And we perfected a smaller, more lethal bomb that we can put in the mail stream.

00:40:05.640 And that's exactly what Professor Epstein went to open, and was very, very seriously

00:40:10.800 injured.

00:40:12.080 Two days later, on the entire opposite coast at Yale University, a computer scientist,

00:40:19.800 Dr. David Galerter, received a bomb in the mail.

00:40:22.580 He was at his office at Yale.

00:40:24.280 And when he went to open his package, the same thing.

00:40:27.860 And right after that, the New York Times has a letter postmarked before it, and before those

00:40:34.600 events.

00:40:34.880 And they get a letter from the Unabomber, the terror group FC, as he calls them.

00:40:40.440 And it says, look, our group is providing you with a number.

00:40:43.840 This is our own secret identification number.

00:40:47.200 The FBI knows of us.

00:40:48.860 We're the terror group FC.

00:40:50.760 Now, the reason he said that is on some of the bomb, on the plugs of the pipes, and on

00:40:57.000 debris in the bomb crime scenes, we had found, embedded on the metals, the letters FC.

00:41:04.680 So not on all the bombs, but on some of them.

00:41:07.660 So we knew that the Unabomber was also going by the letters FC.

00:41:13.060 So he told the New York Times this.

00:41:16.300 And of course, the New York Times turned the letter over to us.

00:41:19.540 And now we know, and this was significant, and it certainly was significant to the then

00:41:25.780 AG, Janet Reno, and FBI Director Free, both of whom were relatively new on the job.

00:41:31.940 They knew that the Unabomber now has come back to life in a big, big way. 0.98

00:41:36.400 We hadn't heard from him for all those years.

00:41:38.840 Now he's back.

00:41:40.220 Now he's killed two or almost killed two people on each coast.

00:41:43.780 And so we have to really get after this.

00:41:47.000 And so they ordered that a task force be established, that it be set up in the San

00:41:52.800 Francisco Division of the FBI.

00:41:54.660 And they sent FBI officials out from FBI headquarters to run that task force.

00:42:01.300 So between June of 1993 and around April of 1994, eight or nine FBI officials were running

00:42:09.220 the Unabomber investigation from San Francisco.

00:42:12.980 And this is when, according to your book, Max Knoll pulls aside.

00:42:17.000 Some top FBI officials, I believe it was at a meeting where the director, Free, was present

00:42:21.920 and says the truth, which is, we're not getting the resources we need.

00:42:26.540 Loops are not being closed.

00:42:28.340 This needs to be taken more seriously.

00:42:30.360 I want my evidence.

00:42:31.840 And he gets taken very seriously.

00:42:33.960 The FBI does start to throw resources at this after these double bombings.

00:42:37.620 But two more people were about to die.

00:42:39.880 That's where we're going to pick it up with Terry on the Unabomber investigation right after

00:42:43.680 this quick break.

00:42:47.000 The book intersperses bits of Ted Kaczynski's manifesto, the Unabomber's manifesto, in between

00:42:55.060 the crimes and helps us get to know him and understand him to the extent one can.

00:43:00.140 There are quotes like this, quote, since committing the crimes reported elsewhere in my notes,

00:43:05.080 I feel better.

00:43:06.780 You can see him working something. 0.78

00:43:08.140 I'm starting to feel better now that he's starting to hurt more people and kill more people.

00:43:12.220 And Kathy's assessment of him was that this is a guy who wanted to present himself as

00:43:18.960 a rational revolutionary, attacking the industrial technological system that he opposes for the

00:43:25.120 good of the public.

00:43:26.260 She said he's simply seeking attention for himself.

00:43:28.900 She believed he had obsessive compulsive personality.

00:43:32.280 His devices are meticulous, a real pride in its workmanship.

00:43:35.420 She says people like this are very organized perfectionists, can be very polite, may seem

00:43:41.320 very cold to others.

00:43:43.160 I would later find this interesting, Terry, myself, because he probably was obsessive compulsive

00:43:48.380 and a perfectionist.

00:43:49.280 But when you guys found him, he was totally unkempt and disgusting and smelled bad and

00:43:53.040 hadn't showered.

00:43:54.400 And I just that was one of the things that sort of jumped out at me is like, oh, how how

00:43:57.780 weird you think of that, you know, obsessive.

00:43:59.460 You think it'd be, you know, rigidly clean.

00:44:01.420 But anyway, so to jump back, you're trying to figure out a psychological profile and now

00:44:06.660 you've got the full team on it.

00:44:07.900 Now Director Free has stepped in.

00:44:09.240 Jana Reno has stepped in there.

00:44:10.500 They're listening to you guys finally giving you the resources.

00:44:13.660 And yet two more people are about to die.

00:44:15.980 And that's within six months of you guys really sort of lighting a fire under the powers that

00:44:20.420 be.

00:44:20.840 Take us to December 10th, 1994.

00:44:24.760 Yes, it was a it was a terrible day.

00:44:27.200 Jim was it was a weekend.

00:44:28.780 I got a call from the East Coast and there'd been a bombing in North Caldwell, New Jersey,

00:44:34.120 and it turned out to be at the home of Thomas Moser, who was a major ad executive at the

00:44:39.960 firm Burson Marsteller.

00:44:41.800 And he had been traveling out of the country.

00:44:46.440 This was near Christmas.

00:44:47.600 So the family was getting ready to go and find a Christmas tree.

00:44:51.660 So he was in the kitchen going through his mail.

00:44:54.020 And one of the things he picked up was this package that looked like a video cassette.

00:44:58.280 And the kids had just left the kitchen when he went to open this.

00:45:02.780 And this was such a terrible, lethal bomb that it it killed Mr. Moser just about instantly.

00:45:10.100 And it the shrapnel from this bomb filled, you know, how people will have their frying

00:45:17.040 pans over their stoves, those kind of presentations.

00:45:20.700 So some of these nails, actually, the force of the blast drove them through these cast iron

00:45:26.920 skillets.

00:45:28.240 And so there was debris everywhere.

00:45:30.460 I called Jim Freeman, told him what had happened, told him what we were thinking might be going

00:45:37.300 on.

00:45:38.220 We couldn't exactly say or declare it was a unabomb crime scene at that time.

00:45:42.320 But I called Tom Manal in Washington, D.C.

00:45:46.060 Now, at the time, Tom was our main laboratory examiner.

00:45:49.960 And Tom was this fabulous bomb explosives person who not only knew unabomb, but he could

00:45:57.100 just about talk with his eyes closed about bombs and explosives.

00:46:00.460 And so we asked him to go.

00:46:02.380 I'm sorry.

00:46:03.360 Was he the postal service guy?

00:46:04.700 No, he was at the FBI lab and was our FBI lab examiner who actually had the ticket on

00:46:11.080 unabomb as far as forensics now, because all of the lab examinations that had been done

00:46:15.980 all those years, we folded into just the FBI lab.

00:46:19.400 So he was kind of in the hot seat when there was an explosion.

00:46:22.940 So Tom went to New Jersey.

00:46:25.840 He called when he got there.

00:46:27.440 They got him to the house in North Caldwell.

00:46:29.480 He called before he went in.

00:46:30.840 And we had to wait a while because after an explosion, there are significant gases in

00:46:35.840 the house.

00:46:36.320 There are a lot of things going on.

00:46:37.600 You have to be really careful, of course.

00:46:39.360 And so when Tom went in there, he almost came out immediately, Megan, and he got on

00:46:45.180 the phone.

00:46:45.620 He said, he called me back.

00:46:46.680 He said, Terry, this is unabomb. 0.87

00:46:48.420 I saw the fragments on the floor, some of the switches that were fragments of switches

00:46:54.100 from this bomb.

00:46:55.540 All of this has unabomb written all over it.

00:46:58.020 So called Jim.

00:46:59.380 Jim came into the office.

00:47:01.160 Called and dispatched some of our, a couple of our agents and a postal inspector to New

00:47:06.400 Jersey.

00:47:07.000 They would work on the ground there and help coordinate the actual investigation.

00:47:11.520 And then by Monday morning, that was on the weekend, by Monday morning, we were having

00:47:16.020 conferences with FBI HQ.

00:47:18.560 Of course, this now really raised the temperature.

00:47:22.700 And during one of those conferences, someone at FBI HQ said, well, Turchia, you need to be

00:47:28.640 back in New Jersey.

00:47:29.600 Jim Freeman basically put his finger on the mute part of the phone.

00:47:35.000 He goes, I'll answer that question.

00:47:36.940 And said, no, you're not going back to New Jersey.

00:47:39.220 Told them I'm not coming back to New Jersey.

00:47:41.340 And about this time, Max said, and another thing, you people don't even know this case.

00:47:48.160 You don't even understand some of the leads were working in the case.

00:47:50.920 And so that started us down the road of what you mentioned at the break before we knew it

00:47:55.880 a few weeks or a couple of weeks later.

00:47:57.980 Director Freeh was on his way to see us all at the FBI in San Francisco.

00:48:03.940 And of particular concern, and kind of to show you how things can work in the Bureau, he put out the word and he told the SAC, you don't need to be at this meeting.

00:48:12.940 I want to talk to the Unabom agents and the people working Unabom and Turchia.

00:48:18.800 So, of course, you can imagine how Jim is feeling about all this.

00:48:22.920 So Jim met him at the airport.

00:48:26.020 They had a cordial meeting.

00:48:27.260 And then we had a meeting of all the brass from the other agencies.

00:48:31.540 And then I found myself, it was like all of a sudden, OK, Terry and I are going to go down and address the Unabom task force.

00:48:38.080 And I found myself alone in the hallway with the FBI director and walking down the hall.

00:48:43.260 And I referred to him as Director Freeh, and he immediately turns and says, call me Louie.

00:48:50.040 And so we walk in, we walk into the, and I couldn't do that.

00:48:54.020 It was just hard to say that.

00:48:55.580 But anyway, we walk into the office and the UTF is there.

00:48:59.380 And you can imagine, or maybe you can't imagine, or maybe many people couldn't, how you feel when the case is now dramatically different.

00:49:09.080 You've been working to identify and get this person off the street.

00:49:13.020 But now on your watch, someone else is murdered.

00:49:16.660 And this now is happening to us.

00:49:19.280 It was our absolute most worst nightmare.

00:49:23.160 And that's how everyone felt.

00:49:24.860 I mean, everyone was absolutely depressed.

00:49:28.280 I mean, I think people look at FBI agents as, well, they're the professionals.

00:49:33.360 They're going to get this done one way or the other.

00:49:36.060 We were absolutely devastated.

00:49:38.880 And so this is the backdrop as Director Freeh walked in to address all of us.

00:49:44.160 So during this conversation, and he was very gracious and very nice, and we had a very good talk.

00:49:50.800 But at some point, Max said, look, I have to tell you, there's a lot of things that are not getting done.

00:49:57.420 I've sent 62 questions off to the FBI lab about previous bombings.

00:50:03.100 They've still never been answered.

00:50:04.940 Terry's been on the phone, but they're still not answering our questions.

00:50:07.920 We are trying to do certain things with leads and with investigation.

00:50:13.960 And many of the special agents in charge aren't prioritizing this.

00:50:17.120 Exactly.

00:50:17.760 So let me just pause you there.

00:50:19.600 Let me pause you there because there's so much to pick up on.

00:50:22.040 Because Max, you know, I won't say lit a bomb, but lit a fire, as did your small group.

00:50:28.640 And finally, they listened.

00:50:30.740 How they caught the Unabomber right after this break.

00:50:34.180 So by the time, Terry, of that meeting with FBI Director Freeh and Max going off and you and Jim Freeman just trying to jump up and down and say, you know, we need resources.

00:50:50.180 Come on.

00:50:50.720 Like, this is inexcusable.

00:50:52.160 And he listened and you got him.

00:50:54.880 The Unabomber had already just killed another man. 0.90

00:50:58.220 He would go on to kill yet another man, Gilbert Murray in Sacramento.

00:51:03.400 And then he would threaten to bring down an aircraft in flight, which you took very seriously for the reasons we discussed earlier.

00:51:11.260 So but the biggest and most important break in the case was about to come.

00:51:17.540 When did you first get word of the, quote, manifesto?

00:51:23.120 So, Mr. Murray, as you mentioned, had been murdered in Sacramento, California in April of 1995 and just several days after the Oklahoma City bombing.

00:51:35.160 So a number of people were concerned that maybe the bombing in Oklahoma City is connected to the Unabomber.

00:51:40.460 Well, Kathy was very significant there as well because she provided the opinion that, look, our guy is a very meticulous killer of individual people.

00:51:51.980 I mean, he's sending singular bombs to people and he's very careful in doing it.

00:51:57.700 The person who wreaked havoc in Oklahoma is a mass murder.

00:52:02.920 They're two separate kind of people.

00:52:04.560 And I had worked with Kathy for a long time.

00:52:08.080 So whenever she had an opinion like that, to me, it was as close to gospel as you were going to get.

00:52:14.180 Well, the FBI agreed with that.

00:52:16.320 So we were able to maneuver through that because you can get distracted very easily in something like this.

00:52:20.840 So now the Bureau has two major things going on because within days of the Oklahoma City bombing, we have the death of Gilbert Murray at the hands of the Unabomber, another terrible crime scene. 0.92

00:52:33.960 Tom Minol came out.

00:52:35.200 He actually went to Oklahoma City to gather evidence and get things back to the lab.

00:52:40.140 Then he came to San Francisco, went up to Sacramento and helped us with that as well.

00:52:45.220 And so all of this is going on.

00:52:47.300 And in the wake of this, the Unabomber starts firing off more letters.

00:52:53.100 And they went to the New York Times.

00:52:56.220 Eventually, they would go to Bob Guccione at Penthouse Magazine.

00:52:59.160 They would go to a couple of Nobel Prize winning scientists, to a University of California professor named Tom Tyler.

00:53:06.720 And they all have a little different theme.

00:53:08.560 But by and large, the Unabomber wanted the world to know that the terrorist group FC has a manifesto.

00:53:16.500 And we want it published.

00:53:18.620 And if it's published, we will desist from committing acts of terror.

00:53:24.640 But we will reserve the right to commit espionage.

00:53:28.940 And that always was interesting, Megan.

00:53:31.480 But I have to tell you here very quickly that a number of years ago, you did an interview of William Ayers, a radical weather underground terrorist.

00:53:40.940 And he said something very similar.

00:53:43.340 He reminded you that, look, we only went after people or after property.

00:53:48.680 We didn't go after people.

00:53:50.240 Well, that is exactly what the Unabomber, the lone serial terrorist, was telling us years later.

00:53:56.400 And I found the mindset interesting.

00:53:58.960 And, of course, the question that is begging there is that, look, you can't guarantee that you're only going to damage property.

00:54:05.600 You're going to kill people.

00:54:07.220 And so you must not care. 0.94

00:54:09.080 And so that was where we were at with the Unabomber. 1.00

00:54:11.500 And again, Kathy weighed in.

00:54:13.260 And she said something very, very interesting that would factor into our deliberations eventually on what to recommend about publication.

00:54:20.240 And that is that the Unabomber will probably not be able to stop himself from sending other bombs, even if he says he wanted to. 0.85

00:54:30.080 This is something that he does.

00:54:32.180 This is who he is.

00:54:33.800 So getting a promise or a pledge from him is almost as useless as it can be.

00:54:39.040 So this is the situation we found ourselves in as we were trying to determine what to do.

00:54:45.160 And as we then received the call from the Bureau, what is going to be your recommendation?

00:54:53.400 What are you going to ask about the demand from FC, from the terror group FC, to actually publish this manifesto?

00:55:01.060 I mean, it's so much responsibility.

00:55:03.540 If you don't publish it and he bombs again, there'll be second guessing.

00:55:08.560 If you do publish it and he bombs again, there'll be second guessing.

00:55:12.340 It's like you've got people's lives in your hands here.

00:55:14.820 Before I forget, Terry, just quickly, what did FC wind up standing for?

00:55:19.980 We're never really going to be sure.

00:55:21.920 We never, of course, were able to talk to Theodore Kaczynski about it.

00:55:26.900 And there are some suggestions that it stood for Freedom Club, something like that.

00:55:32.940 But nothing certainly that helped us on the trail of trying to identify who the terror group FC was.

00:55:40.160 Okay.

00:55:40.260 So you ultimately decide, publish it, tell them to do it.

00:55:44.640 And you really thought in the end, there will be somebody out there in reading a 35,000 word manifesto who will recognize phrases, words, ideas, philosophies that this guy holds so strongly.

00:56:00.140 There's no way he hasn't expressed them to others.

00:56:02.960 And you did it.

00:56:04.700 The Washington Post, right, printed the manifesto.

00:56:08.580 You had FBI agents staked out at the various locations in the relevant location where you thought the Unabomber could possibly be California watching.

00:56:17.200 No, no luck.

00:56:19.280 But there was there was luck in one particular person who read that manifesto.

00:56:25.120 Can we jump to that part of the story?

00:56:27.120 Sure, we can.

00:56:27.700 So between the time of the publication of the manifesto on September 20th or 19th, 1995, and the middle of February, we received probably close to 55,000 phone calls and tips with people turning in, you know, wives turning in their husbands for the rewards, girlfriends turning in boyfriends and all that kind of thing.

00:56:51.480 But by this time, we really knew a lot about the Unabomber. 0.91

00:56:55.100 In fact, the behavioral science unit said, look, you basically solved the case.

00:56:59.680 You just don't know the guy's name.

00:57:01.620 And we're all looking at each other like, well, that would be hopeful, wouldn't it?

00:57:05.640 So when we got the manifesto and we recommended eventually publication, it was based on the idea that we had a lot of meetings, as I mentioned to you.

00:57:16.140 And I mentioned in one of the meetings that I had a high school teacher.

00:57:19.440 His name was Larry Lawson, and he taught creative writing.

00:57:22.440 And ironically, I stayed away from math and tried to stay into stuff like creative writing in high school.

00:57:28.300 And he told us, no two people write alike.

00:57:32.540 And so we talked about that.

00:57:34.800 And so we said, look, we know so much about Unabomber.

00:57:37.960 We need to recommend now that there's one piece we're lacking.

00:57:42.460 This manifesto could now be the thing that gives us that piece.

00:57:45.820 And so we need to recommend publication.

00:57:48.880 And so off we went, Jim Freeman and Kathy Puckett and myself to Louis Free.

00:57:56.920 We had a meeting with all the bureau brass there, briefed the case and said, we recommend publication of the Unabomber Manifesto in the Washington Post.

00:58:05.760 We went across the street to the AG, did the same thing.

00:58:09.800 They approved it, and it was published on the 19th.

00:58:13.160 And by February 14th, we got the call we needed.

00:58:18.160 And it was essentially, like all things Unabomber, it didn't come easy. 0.54

00:58:23.560 It was on the overhead speaker system.

00:58:26.440 There was a paging.

00:58:27.840 Anybody from the Unabomber Task Force, can you pick up on such and such a line? 0.99

00:58:31.460 Well, Joel Moss, who was the supervisor of the suspect squad, listened to this paging for about three tries.

00:58:38.880 And finally, he puts down what he's doing.

00:58:41.300 He picks it up because he obviously hoped somebody else would answer it.

00:58:44.740 He's up to his eyeballs in alligators with thousands of Unabombed suspects.

00:58:49.320 And he gets on the phone with another agent, Molly Flynn in Washington Metropolitan Field Office.

00:58:54.340 She has received a 23-page essay from an individual, an attorney named Anthony Bussegli in Washington.

00:59:03.360 Anthony Bussegli had dealt with the FBI before.

00:59:05.860 He had a client approaching who gave him this, and they were worried that someone close to them could be the Unabomber. 1.00

00:59:12.380 But they wanted to find out a little bit before they volunteered who they were.

00:59:16.380 So Molly Flynn sent the essay to the bureau, and the bureau lab looked at it, and they came back and said, this isn't typed on the Unabomber's typewriter.

00:59:29.080 And that was it.

00:59:30.720 Well, she didn't stop there. 0.97

00:59:32.380 She thought, wait a minute.

00:59:33.620 You know, this is what we're all about.

00:59:35.800 So she called the San Francisco UTF.

00:59:39.200 She ends up getting a hold of Joel Moss.

00:59:41.300 She starts explaining this.

00:59:43.180 Joel listens for a while.

00:59:44.180 He said, get it to me right away.

00:59:45.480 He immediately understood the significance or potential significance of some of the passages she read.

00:59:52.320 So he came to my office after he had a fax copy of this, and after he and Kathy had talked, they said, let's go to lunch.

00:59:58.160 I said, I can.

00:59:58.940 I'm committed to going to lunch with Jim.

01:00:01.320 And Joel literally, the three of us had worked together a lot.

01:00:05.000 He grabs him about the arm.

01:00:06.260 We go to lunch, and I cancel out on Jim.

01:00:09.100 Well, we end up sitting there when Jim Freeman comes into the same place for eating.

01:00:12.420 And so you stood me up for your friends here, huh?

01:00:16.340 Well, we had the talk about the 23-page essay, started reading it that night, and our world had changed forever.

01:00:26.000 You could not read the 23-page essay, believe in the strategy we were following, and not believe that this was the golden ticket.

01:00:34.460 There were phrases that he used in both what turned out to be letters to his brother and in the manifesto that were just too identifiable and unique to him, Ted Kaczynski.

01:00:50.860 It was chilling.

01:00:53.280 I took it home that night, took home my copy, and my wife was watching television, and I was laying on the couch in the family room.

01:01:00.140 And I just jumped out of the couch and headed into the den to get my copy of the manifesto.

01:01:06.400 Because in the 23-page essay, there was a phrase, the sphere of human freedom.

01:01:12.040 Well, that exact phrase was in the Unabot Manifesto.

01:01:14.440 And I went and I started looking at other things at that point in time.

01:01:17.960 I called Joel, I called Kathy, and I went back in and I just told my wife, I'm going to go on in and work some.

01:01:25.080 And I just said, I think we might have found the Unabomber. 0.99

01:01:28.380 And that's all I said to her.

01:01:29.760 And the next morning, of course, our entire discussion now turns to the 23-page essay and the manifesto.

01:01:37.480 And as it turned out, David Kaczynski, Ted's brother, was married to a woman named Linda.

01:01:46.220 And she would later describe the genesis of her suspicion as between the two of them, she apparently was the first to suspect that it was Ted, David's brother.

01:01:55.520 You write in your book, she was in Paris in August 1995 when she read an article about the Unabomber in an international edition of a newspaper.

01:02:01.700 Her anxiety grew as the Unabomber was described as a loner, probably from Chicago, check, check, who had likely lived in Utah and Northern California, check, check.

01:02:13.980 Linda had never met Ted, but this was consistent with her knowledge of him.

01:02:18.100 And it goes on from there.

01:02:19.640 And then it had excerpts of the manifesto, which seemed a lot like Ted's letters to her husband.

01:02:25.280 And you go on to say that one of the things she realized was that she and David had been asked by Ted Kaczynski, David's brother, for money a couple of times.

01:02:38.700 And he'd been living like a hermit in the middle of Montana in some cabin.

01:02:41.720 So they were a little puzzled by why he would need money anyway.

01:02:44.220 But they deduced that he used their money to make bombs.

01:02:50.180 They were mortified.

01:02:51.020 Exactly.

01:02:52.660 And especially the last two bombings in November of 94, he'd asked for $1,000.

01:02:57.880 And in December of 94, he asked for $2,000.

01:03:01.460 And so, of course, we had the December 94 event involving Mr. Moser and then the follow up, Mr. Murray in 95.

01:03:08.700 So it was just frightening to think that they were absolutely right.

01:03:14.920 And we felt really badly that that could be the case.

01:03:18.360 But in fact, that's what it turned out to be.

01:03:20.520 He was getting money from them to finance those last two bombings.

01:03:24.800 Now, another phrase in the in the writings that matched that there was a comparison between he would write, you can't eat your cake and have it, too, which is a reversal of the saying.

01:03:37.900 The saying is you can't have your cake and eat it, too.

01:03:39.560 And he reversed it.

01:03:41.420 And and what like where did you see that?

01:03:43.740 How did that come together?

01:03:44.780 Yes.

01:03:44.980 Eventually, we would see that in several places.

01:03:47.480 But that showed up in the the manifest the the 22 page essay.

01:03:53.280 And it showed up when we went to visit Wanda and his mom and she had information and all kinds of things in a steamer trunk that Theodore owned.

01:04:04.620 And and he had left her with her many years earlier and said, I don't want it anymore.

01:04:08.340 Do whatever you want.

01:04:09.440 Well, she kept it all these years.

01:04:10.740 So it was essentially abandoned property.

01:04:12.500 And we went into the steamer trunk and found written on a draft of of the essay.

01:04:19.800 You can't eat your cake and have it, too.

01:04:21.500 And so all of these things start coming together.

01:04:23.980 And there are just too many of these coincidences, I guess you could call them.

01:04:30.440 But it was all about words.

01:04:32.720 It was all about language.

01:04:33.860 And and so earlier when we when you and I spoke and we talked about those two early letters, the Ralph Kloppenberg letter and the history of science and then the Enoch Fisher letter that had prompted us to do a project.

01:04:47.680 And we had a number of investigative projects that we worked on.

01:04:50.560 And one of those projects had to do with interviewing professors at universities.

01:04:55.400 So we had become in fact, Joel had become our expert on the history of science.

01:04:59.780 And we found that there were 44 American universities and colleges across the country that enrolled 400 people in the the discipline history of science.

01:05:11.320 None of us had ever heard of it.

01:05:12.800 And we just wanted to mark this territory, not to forget it.

01:05:15.800 So he actually went, Joel actually went to a history of science convention one year in New Orleans.

01:05:21.060 And I guess that was a big splash.

01:05:23.060 They loved having the FBI there.

01:05:24.500 It was very exciting.

01:05:25.520 But he was there to learn about what history of science means.

01:05:30.140 So all of this is fresh on our mind when Theodore Kaczynski shows up as a suspect.

01:05:35.380 And lo and behold, when we go to start doing all the basics that we always did with any suspect, and one of them was to get all their school transcripts, lo and behold, there's a course that Theodore took early on in Harvard or University of Michigan called History of Science, The Introduction to History of Science.

01:05:52.860 So he had a creative side, and he would pull on that when he was putting together these bombs or putting together ideas.

01:05:59.720 So this is how all of these things, whether they were phrases or those kinds of things from the investigation or passages from the manifesto or passages from the 23-page essay that matched the manifesto.

01:06:14.560 So all of this started falling together, and these pieces became the foundation, the building block of this search warrant.

01:06:23.580 The thing is, this was not DNA.

01:06:26.200 This was not fingerprints.

01:06:28.020 This was not eyewitness stuff.

01:06:30.120 This was words.

01:06:31.920 And so DOJ said, knock yourself out, but this is a probable cause.

01:06:37.880 And, of course, our response was, wait a minute.

01:06:39.800 This is as good as any of the things you just mentioned, almost, because, first of all, this is all we have.

01:06:47.700 But knowing all of this and seeing every day more stuff was coming together, I mean, there was no question.

01:06:53.580 More and more of these pieces were coming together.

01:06:55.980 We always would do a timeline.

01:06:58.120 And one of the things David was able to do eventually is he gave us well over 100 envelopes with postmarks on them.

01:07:05.840 They represented the envelopes that the letters between he and Ted, that he had received from Ted, had received over 30 years.

01:07:13.960 He kept all of that.

01:07:15.660 And we had thus a timeline during the entirety of the Unabom series of events.

01:07:20.620 And we only ended up finding one contradiction in that entire 16 years, using all these postmarks and all the other things we used.

01:07:30.160 So it was all falling together, and we kept going back and saying, no, we're close to having what we need to get into that cabin, and we need to do it.

01:07:41.020 And DOJ was not sold.

01:07:45.240 And eventually it took the FBI director, Louis Free, and the attorney general to simply bypass all the advisors and committees set up to give us advice about this.

01:07:56.560 It took the two of them to say, look, we trust the UTF.

01:08:01.500 We trust the people on it.

01:08:03.200 We've been following this case.

01:08:04.740 We know this case like the back of our hand.

01:08:06.420 I mean, Janet Reno would carry around her copy of Fact Fiction and Theory. 1.00

01:08:11.120 And you had to be careful if you were talking to her because she'd listen and then you'd go, wait a minute.

01:08:15.140 Isn't this part of theory?

01:08:16.840 And so she was that into this case.

01:08:20.120 And, of course, Director Free was really into it from day one.

01:08:23.440 So that was the kind of relationship we now have.

01:08:26.400 I mean, we're almost – it may be that they're high-level government officials, but everybody, as we said at the beginning, everybody was at the right – for us was the right person in the right spot at the right time.

01:08:39.860 And, you know, the egos had been tossed to the floor.

01:08:43.960 The emotion, you could show your emotion.

01:08:47.460 I mean, it was amazing.

01:08:49.200 I mean, I look back on it now, and as I'm talking to you, I almost have chills because it wasn't like people might think.

01:08:55.620 The Attorney General, the Director of the FBI, the SAC of San Francisco, the agents, we were all equal in this boat.

01:09:03.780 And if we didn't help each other, we were all going to drown in it.

01:09:07.840 And I think that at some point that became the reason that we were successful in bringing all this together.

01:09:15.020 Hence the piece of the title about breaking the rules.

01:09:20.300 They got their search warrant, this group.

01:09:23.460 Not the arrest warrant.

01:09:24.520 They got the search warrant, which wasn't all they wanted, but it was good enough, as it would turn out, and wound up in the snowy mountains of Montana.

01:09:33.680 Tons of agents waiting for Ted Kaczynski.

01:09:38.300 There was a whole ruse, as you can imagine, had to be executed very carefully so that no one got hurt, understanding this is a bomb maker inside of this cabin.

01:09:45.880 Suspected, but for very good reason.

01:09:48.520 And eventually they would have to affect that arrest under circumstances they never foresaw.

01:09:55.120 We pick it up there right after this.

01:09:56.920 So now you go out to the mountains of Montana, the middle of nowhere, and you've got to start putting the pieces in place for, you know, what you hope will be an eventual arrest.

01:10:12.860 And the question I had in reading your book where you're talking about, you know, now you've got to start interviewing the locals.

01:10:17.820 You get some important locals on your side.

01:10:19.500 You start interviewing bus drivers because Ted Kaczynski only has a bicycle.

01:10:23.380 So how is he getting from the middle of nowhere down to Sacramento, into Utah, wherever he's going?

01:10:29.000 There's got to be a way.

01:10:29.740 So you've got to find bus drivers.

01:10:30.700 You've got to figure out routes taken.

01:10:31.900 You've got to see where did he stay.

01:10:33.680 Do we have any receipts?

01:10:34.880 Let's get the bank accounts.

01:10:35.800 Let's build a case, a case that Max would love to show actual proof that this guy has been in the places we suspect he's been during the relevant time frames. 0.99

01:10:45.440 And what I kept thinking, reading how you guys had to do this, was, A, just arrest the damn guy. 0.99

01:10:50.160 You know it's him, right? 0.99

01:10:51.020 You can't do it that way.

01:10:52.300 And, B, weren't you worried someone was going to leak either, you know, outside, you know, to random people who might spread it, or, B, to Ted Kaczynski?

01:11:04.260 Like, how could you assure yourself that people weren't friends with him?

01:11:08.420 Or maybe they just blabbed to some random person, like, the FBI contacted me.

01:11:12.000 They asked me all these fun questions.

01:11:13.200 They think that there's some guy in the woods.

01:11:14.620 And then word would get out.

01:11:15.820 You know, how do you control that?

01:11:18.200 Megan, everything you said was so right on.

01:11:20.440 And we were worried about so many things that that was the most stressful time of this entire investigation.

01:11:27.860 There could be leaks.

01:11:29.140 He could have something in the cabin that eventually is going to hurt somebody.

01:11:33.580 He could get on a bus and place another bomb or mail another bomb.

01:11:37.400 All these things are going on in our minds.

01:11:39.820 And so we had to try to deal with each of these contingencies.

01:11:43.180 So what we did is that around, I don't know, it was probably around the third week of February, called Max.

01:11:52.900 Max was on leave at the time.

01:11:54.280 I said, we're sending you to Montana.

01:11:57.200 I know you don't think much of Theodore Kaczynski as the Unabomber, but you're the guy that has to be in Montana all the time to take care of and manage the small team we're going to send with you. 0.92

01:12:09.700 And we need you to go to those hotels, motels, try to try to somehow place this guy out of that cabin, start interviewing people.

01:12:18.560 And, of course, all this has to be done discreetly, and we can't even mention the word Unabomber.

01:12:25.240 So Max, of course, being Max, he came right back.

01:12:30.020 He goes into Montana, buys all his winter clothes, and sets about doing what he has to do.

01:12:36.380 And he and I talked several times every day, and he directed a team of about three people, which would start to grow almost every day after we first got started.

01:12:47.040 But in that time, a lot of things happened, and we needed all these things for our search warrant.

01:12:54.240 Max was able to go pay a visit to Butch Gehring.

01:12:57.200 It was on the Butch Gehring lumber mill property that Theodore Kaczynski and his brother David had actually purchased the house or the land for the cabin that Kaczynski built in 1971.

01:13:09.420 So Max went and had a talk with Gehring to learn about the Unabomber or learn about Kaczynski.

01:13:15.640 And Gehring was, as we said, wearing the team jersey after that.

01:13:20.560 He was willing and ready to help and provide whatever kind of information or help to us we needed.

01:13:26.020 So that was kind of secured.

01:13:29.060 So then Max was able to develop Jerry Burns.

01:13:33.180 Jerry Burns became just vitally important.

01:13:35.340 Everybody's heard of the U.S. Forest Service.

01:13:38.320 Very few people know that the U.S. Forest Service has their own special agents and law enforcement.

01:13:43.920 And I've worked with so many of these people over the years, and they're really, really good.

01:13:48.200 Well, Jerry Burns was absolutely amazing.

01:13:51.980 And so we befriended him and kind of put the team jersey on him.

01:13:56.080 His supervisor agreed that he didn't need to know what Jerry was doing on behalf of the FBI.

01:14:00.380 But Jerry was briefed on everything.

01:14:02.860 He was brought into the whole Unabomber picture of this. 0.87

01:14:05.800 And so he was able to be a goldmine of information about Kaczynski because he was always running into him out into Kaczynski out in the forest.

01:14:13.060 That was important.

01:14:14.100 The SSRA, the Senior Supervisory Resident Agent in Helena, Montana, was an individual named Tom McDaniel.

01:14:22.380 He was amazing and was there every step of the way with us.

01:14:26.160 And then finally, Bernie Hubley, Bernie was the assistant U.S. attorney in the district there.

01:14:32.900 And lo and behold, our luck again, Bernie Hubley was a former FBI agent.

01:14:38.060 So he was brought into this and almost fell over on a bar stool one day when Max briefed him and said, here's why we're here.

01:14:44.840 And we're here because in your territory.

01:14:47.560 It's so crazy.

01:14:48.380 It's crazy to think about like these guys being like, wait, what?

01:14:51.180 The Unabomber?

01:14:52.040 Like the most notorious criminal in the country right now at large?

01:14:55.020 So, OK, eventually I got to skip ahead because there's so much more important things to get to.

01:15:00.400 So you do get your search warrant.

01:15:02.040 It wasn't easy.

01:15:02.980 But just long story short on that, so much of that painstaking FBI work went into it.

01:15:09.120 And it wasn't a guarantee that you were going to get it.

01:15:11.240 But all those years and hours of collective effort paid off.

01:15:15.520 You got the warrant.

01:15:16.760 You go to execute the search warrant.

01:15:18.940 Jerry, who you mentioned, the local, who Ted knew, he was important.

01:15:22.380 He was the front man.

01:15:24.660 And then there are two other guys who went to knock on the door with a ruse about we need to check your property line.

01:15:29.400 And it was something Ted Kaczynski had to see Jerry's face.

01:15:31.940 Otherwise, he wouldn't have opened that door.

01:15:33.720 He would have been suspicious.

01:15:35.000 So he was critical.

01:15:36.640 And lo and behold, he was home, Ted Kaczynski.

01:15:39.320 And you got him.

01:15:40.900 You grabbed him.

01:15:42.080 He said he was going to go back in.

01:15:43.240 He would show you the property lines.

01:15:44.200 He's just going to go back in and grab his coat.

01:15:45.620 And no, he was not going to grab the coat.

01:15:47.140 The FBI grabbed him, pulled out a SIG Sauer.

01:15:49.920 That was the end of his attempt to go back in the house.

01:15:52.900 And he was not placed under arrest, but taken to another cabin where questioning began.

01:15:58.840 And I have to ask you, you know, after all this effort, right, he's in this cabin.

01:16:06.100 You've got him, you and your team.

01:16:08.760 And like, what are you thinking at this point?

01:16:11.320 You know, because the pictures do show this disheveled, crazy looking mountain man who looks just like he hasn't seen a brush or a shower in 20 years.

01:16:20.720 Like, what are you thinking?

01:16:22.560 Well, Max couldn't wait to take a bath.

01:16:26.180 I mean, he already felt really dirty.

01:16:28.380 He wanted to get away from here and take a shower as soon as he could.

01:16:30.880 But he would end up being with Kaczynski just about the rest of the day and end of the night at about one o'clock.

01:16:36.260 I was thinking more of what we had to do next.

01:16:39.960 I mean, it was almost like, okay, that part of this is over.

01:16:45.620 And now we can breathe a little easier, but not really, because we've got a lot of work to do.

01:16:50.520 So now we start bringing in everybody else, all these evidence response teams.

01:16:55.040 And then we call the Bureau.

01:16:57.440 But now the Bureau is saying, well, you don't have anything but a search warrant.

01:17:01.520 What are you doing?

01:17:02.800 Well, we're taking him out and putting him into another cabin to be on ice here for a while while we decide what to do.

01:17:08.920 And, of course, our plan was to take him up the mountain and over to Helena.

01:17:12.420 And, of course, DOJ said, you can't do that.

01:17:16.280 You can't arrest this man.

01:17:17.540 Well, we're not going to let him go back in the cabin.

01:17:20.660 And so by late that night, after hours of debating that occurred back east, we'd already taken Theodore Kaczynski into Helena.

01:17:29.780 He was in the car with Max and Tom and Paul Wilhelmus, a postal inspector.

01:17:34.120 They took him into Helena to get him booked at the jail eventually.

01:17:37.260 And Jim and I were following him up the mountain and into Helena.

01:17:41.840 And we were eventually on the phone with the director.

01:17:45.580 And he's getting kind of a lot of information that I'll call it what it was.

01:17:50.740 It was fiction from DOJ people that had no clue of what they were talking about.

01:17:57.260 And so people were a little concerned.

01:17:59.000 Are you making an arrest that you can't make?

01:18:01.000 But by about midnight, Howard Shapiro, the FBI chief legal counsel, got on the phone with me.

01:18:08.440 I said, just let me go through everything that's going on in the other room.

01:18:12.260 And lo and behold, he said, I don't need to hear anything else.

01:18:15.360 I'll brief the director.

01:18:16.380 Do what you're doing and get this person locked up.

01:18:19.080 And we'll deal with the rest of this tomorrow.

01:18:21.220 And that's exactly what happened.

01:18:22.340 You eventually, after sort of de-rigging the house and making sure it was safe to enter,

01:18:29.400 and there were all sorts of things, you got to read Terry's book to hear like the painstaking

01:18:33.600 efforts to make sure that it was safe.

01:18:35.080 But you get into his cabin.

01:18:37.560 And this to me is where it all comes together.

01:18:43.120 20 years of clue gathering would match up with what you found in that cabin.

01:18:50.980 And forget enough to make an arrest.

01:18:53.440 Now we're talking, we need enough to put this man away for the rest of his life.

01:18:58.400 And it was all there.

01:19:01.820 You know, I think about, let me just give you one.

01:19:03.700 I think about Terry, the eyewitness.

01:19:08.560 Tammy, Tammy, sorry, Tammy, the eyewitness who had given us the aviator sunglasses and

01:19:13.300 all that back at the one bombing years ago.

01:19:15.300 Now, nobody ever made an eyewitness.

01:19:17.200 Nobody ever matched that picture up with Ted Kaczynski and said, I know that guy.

01:19:20.980 So, okay.

01:19:21.760 Did she really make a difference?

01:19:23.520 A hundred percent.

01:19:24.680 Because tell us about some of the things she described that you found in Ted Kaczynski's

01:19:30.540 cabin.

01:19:31.500 Well, of course, the infamous portrait of the aviator sunglasses and the guy wearing the

01:19:36.880 gray hooded sweatshirt.

01:19:38.040 And lo and behold, there in the cabin were aviator sunglasses and gray hooded sweatshirt hanging

01:19:43.600 up on a hook over in the corner to the left as you were facing from the outside.

01:19:48.700 We found a live bomb on the second day of the search, wrapped and ready to mail.

01:19:54.820 Ironically, it had a return address of the Seattle FBI office.

01:19:58.800 And so he was getting ready to taunt us again.

01:20:02.720 We saw across the cabin.

01:20:05.280 Remember the cabin, nine by 12 in size, and then it had a loft.

01:20:10.260 So across from where we were looking through the only door of the cabin were all kinds of

01:20:15.900 containers, cartons, and bottles.

01:20:17.800 Some were labeled.

01:20:18.520 They were labeled with explosive or ingredients that you could use to make explosives.

01:20:23.580 And in fact, the Unabomber's early bombs had some of these combinations, like potassium

01:20:29.220 chlorate and sodium chlorate and things like that.

01:20:31.880 We found a oatmeal container, a Quaker oatmeal container with pre-made switches that he had

01:20:37.900 already made ahead of time.

01:20:39.360 So he could literally reach onto the shelf and pull off a switch that he might use in a

01:20:43.720 bomb he wants to construct.

01:20:44.880 We found thousands of pages of typed or handwritten notes, and we found an autobiography of him.

01:20:55.960 He had literally laid out his entire life in all of these notes.

01:21:02.040 And we also found admissions and or confessions to all 16 Unabomber devices.

01:21:09.440 Now, what, in fact, we did find with about 500 pages of those admissions is that he had taught

01:21:16.900 himself Spanish, and he wrote those admissions and confessions in Spanish.

01:21:21.820 So now we had to get on the phone and start assembling every FBI Spanish speaker we had so

01:21:28.820 that we could get those translated and stop any bombs that might now still be in the maelstrom.

01:21:34.140 So we had all these things still going on because of this guy's nature and personality.

01:21:41.640 One question I wanted to ask you, having read the book, was one of the queries, one of the oddities

01:21:48.580 was the FBI agents analyzing the case before you knew who it was believed that the forensic experts,

01:21:57.680 they said the Unabomber is melting scrap aluminum for his more recent bombs.

01:22:02.980 He would need an electric powered kiln to do that.

01:22:07.720 And Ted Kaczynski only had like a wood burning stove in there.

01:22:11.460 He had no electricity.

01:22:13.560 And so did we ever solve the mystery of how he melted scrap aluminum with just a wood burning

01:22:20.460 stove, which the forensic experts said he could not do?

01:22:22.800 Well, they may have said he could not do it, but we've all learned about experts and the experts

01:22:30.180 were simply wrong.

01:22:31.620 And he had the potbelly stove and he had a big fire pit dug in front of the cabin and

01:22:36.340 he melted his own aluminum the hard way.

01:22:39.740 And that's how he was meticulously making these bombs.

01:22:43.660 And I know we knew this from the manifesto, but we haven't really gotten into it in this

01:22:47.220 interview.

01:22:47.700 But from the manifesto and the materials you found in his cabin and the interviews with his

01:22:51.840 brother, David, and so on, because Ted was not talking, he clammed right up.

01:22:56.680 What do we know about why, about the reason for his terror campaign over 20 years?

01:23:04.920 Yes, he actually goes into that.

01:23:06.920 And he says, people are going to give a number of motives to what I'm doing.

01:23:13.780 But I'm doing this because I'm getting personal revenge.

01:23:17.680 I'm doing this because I'm angry.

01:23:20.680 There was really no rationality to all of these things that look so organized, like he might

01:23:27.800 have had an anti-technology beef.

01:23:29.560 Of course, he kind of did.

01:23:31.240 But it was all when you get down to it, when you think of airlines, he was mad because the

01:23:36.500 planes flying over the wilderness area where he lived made too much noise.

01:23:41.620 So then he'd write, I'm embarking on a plan to get even.

01:23:44.860 And this is kind of how he was thinking.

01:23:48.000 And as Kathy had said early on, this is about anger.

01:23:53.440 It's about what a person like this, a serial killer, a serial criminal, has welled up inside

01:24:01.500 them.

01:24:01.980 They're angry.

01:24:03.000 And certainly, Theodore Kaczynski was angry.

01:24:05.500 And so he wrote about his anger.

01:24:07.320 He wrote about personal revenge as a motive.

01:24:09.480 And he gave other motives, of course.

01:24:13.160 But this is what it all came down to for him, anger and revenge at what he thought were

01:24:18.880 slights against him.

01:24:20.800 And we'll get into more about his past in one second.

01:24:24.040 But before we get to that, there's a reason why he was not facing the death penalty by the

01:24:31.940 time you got your hands on him and he would have to face justice.

01:24:34.620 Can you explain just with the criminal trial, what happened?

01:24:37.560 You didn't have to try him.

01:24:39.300 And there was a reason why death was not on the table.

01:24:43.560 In the lead up to this, David had requested that we have some sort of deal where he will

01:24:49.180 help us, but there will be no death penalty.

01:24:51.040 Well, of course, we had to say no to that.

01:24:52.540 We couldn't talk like that with anybody before any kind of trial.

01:24:55.980 So ultimately, there was death penalty attached to the indictments that or the trial process

01:25:02.500 in both Sacramento and had we gone there in New Jersey on the main cases that we were

01:25:08.120 we were indicting him on.

01:25:10.200 But at some point in time, right before the trial jury was to come in and we were going

01:25:18.520 to start the trial, he just kind of threw it in.

01:25:21.600 You know, he didn't want to plead guilty at all to anything.

01:25:24.160 They tried to have a conditional plea where we would, you know, kind of take his plea,

01:25:32.300 but he could appeal things all his life.

01:25:34.600 We said no.

01:25:35.640 And finally, they said, well, look, if you if you take the death penalty off the table,

01:25:41.100 you know, we'll plead guilty unconditionally to all of these crimes.

01:25:44.300 And that's exactly what happened.

01:25:46.220 And that happened literally.

01:25:47.900 I mean, the beginning of that happened literally minutes before the judge had kind of read his

01:25:53.520 final words and told the courtroom, OK, I'm going to bring in the jury.

01:25:58.060 And all of a sudden, you know, Kaczynski basically threw something or made some noise.

01:26:03.660 They were done.

01:26:04.480 The attorneys got up.

01:26:06.000 The whole thing was over that day.

01:26:07.580 And within an hour, we were told he's he wants to plead guilty.

01:26:11.560 I mean, so terrified about having his own life taken from him and of course, not a shred of

01:26:18.500 concern or care for the lives he took and and the people he maimed.

01:26:23.360 And, you know, I think about those poor children and that wife of poor Thomas Mosser, who had

01:26:30.580 to run into that kitchen after they heard a bomb go off and see the remains of their loved

01:26:34.200 ones.

01:26:34.620 I mean, like and Ted Kaczynski's worried, of course, to the end about himself and what

01:26:39.680 he might have to go through.

01:26:42.140 Has he ever spoken, Terry?

01:26:44.440 Has he ever given an interview or, you know, done anything other than the manifesto to help

01:26:50.080 people understand?

01:26:53.580 No, not really.

01:26:54.800 He's he's turned down most interviews.

01:26:56.980 I think he eventually might have spoken with someone briefly.

01:26:59.840 I but I'm not sure.

01:27:02.000 I remember vaguely at some point he might have.

01:27:04.380 But he certainly is not talking to us.

01:27:06.820 He he has developed or he had developed, I think, a relationship of some sort with Timothy

01:27:13.640 McVeigh before he was executed.

01:27:17.040 And of course, he's on he's at the supermax.

01:27:20.960 And I think right down the row from him is Eric Robert Rudolph, another loner serial bomber

01:27:27.360 from the Olympic bombing of 1996.

01:27:29.840 So he's really never talked.

01:27:32.600 He's really never said much.

01:27:34.060 And I don't think he plans to say anything.

01:27:36.160 He's never talked at all since then to his brother.

01:27:40.120 And of course, he hadn't talked to his brother for years before that.

01:27:43.120 Right.

01:27:43.700 He would he cut off his brother and his mom.

01:27:47.060 And I think his dad was alive for some of that.

01:27:50.340 Unclear why that the brother married a college professor when it was a question about whether

01:27:54.840 he was he was upset about that.

01:27:56.900 He didn't like universities, as we covered earlier.

01:27:59.640 And yet the brother loved him.

01:28:02.460 David Kaczynski loved his brother, Ted, and really seemed to wrestle with that phone call

01:28:07.820 he made after reading the manifesto.

01:28:10.540 And, you know, again, he tried to bargain for his brother's life, but knew he had to

01:28:14.600 do the right thing.

01:28:15.280 I mean, he's he's really kind of an unsung hero in the whole thing, because even though

01:28:19.420 we have so many FBI agents working tirelessly around the clock for years to catch the guy.

01:28:23.900 Boy, boy, oh, boy, you know, a lot of people would say I wouldn't I wouldn't do it, wouldn't

01:28:27.780 turn my own brother and I'd do something else.

01:28:30.660 But he did the right thing.

01:28:32.160 And in large part, you know, he he played a major role in apprehending the brother.

01:28:36.600 OK, the profile of Ted Kaczynski is where I want to pick it up next, because I read some

01:28:41.560 crazy stuff about this guy and I would love to go through some of it with you.

01:28:46.400 Not it wasn't in your book, but I want to understand Ted Kaczynski a bit better and lessons

01:28:51.240 learned now that now that you can look back on your investigation and know who it is.

01:28:56.100 What would you have done differently?

01:28:57.740 OK, we're going to pick it up there with Terry Turchy on the Unabomber investigation next.

01:29:06.120 So an important piece of the story is who was this guy?

01:29:09.160 Like what turns, you know, some normal American who, by all accounts, didn't have an extraordinarily 0.52

01:29:15.420 odd childhood into a serial killer?

01:29:18.820 That's what Ted Kaczynski is, a serial killer.

01:29:21.780 So let's just start with what do we know about his, you know, one through 20, about that

01:29:26.620 period of his life?

01:29:28.680 Sure.

01:29:29.300 Well, his brother kind of sums that up the best, I think, because he thought a lot about

01:29:33.260 that.

01:29:33.760 And he would constantly remind us we came from the same family.

01:29:38.020 We were raised in the same way by the same people.

01:29:41.900 I don't even understand how he can attach certain meaning and value to some of the things he was

01:29:47.700 taught and the way he was raised that he talks about.

01:29:49.940 That's what he would say about Ted.

01:29:51.620 I don't understand how we could come from the same family because my recollections and

01:29:55.840 memories of growing up are nothing at all like his.

01:29:59.660 I have no idea how he got these notions.

01:30:02.400 And therein, I think, lies the problem for us in future cases and in trying to identify

01:30:08.980 or prevent some of these types of things.

01:30:11.180 I think it's very difficult to figure out how to see these people ahead of time, how

01:30:16.800 to figure out how one person is going to be fine and how another person becomes a serial

01:30:23.520 terrorist.

01:30:24.280 I don't know if we're even close to that kind of assessment right now.

01:30:29.680 I know we've tried to articulate things that were missed.

01:30:33.240 And yet they're only on the surface, like someone acted a certain way in school or didn't

01:30:42.000 get along with anybody or was constantly angry.

01:30:45.260 Kathy says that, and she did a major study.

01:30:48.040 One of the things we did to try to answer your question is when I went back to the Bureau

01:30:52.920 at the end of my career, we got the money and we brought Kathy back to do a study on loan

01:30:58.060 serial bombers.

01:30:58.800 And she concluded that these are people who are trying to make a mark in society.

01:31:05.500 They want to be known.

01:31:07.020 They fail at being known.

01:31:08.640 They fail at group identity.

01:31:10.240 They cannot become part of a group.

01:31:12.160 They simply cannot socialize to where they can become part of any kind of group.

01:31:16.380 So what they start to do is create their own group.

01:31:20.980 Thus, the Unabomber created, Theodore Kaczynski created the Terror Group FC.

01:31:24.740 And then they seek this major type of event, like a bombing, a terrible tragedy, to get

01:31:32.100 traction and be known.

01:31:33.440 And so that's about as close as we can get.

01:31:36.800 But she based that on a number of serial killers and a number of people, because we don't have

01:31:41.700 many serial bombers, of course.

01:31:43.960 But there are certainly very similar patterns going on there.

01:31:47.660 So we passed that study along to the Bureau.

01:31:54.220 I mean, it was Bureau of Property.

01:31:55.800 We passed it along to use in the future.

01:31:58.200 And in fact, it was used initially when they were trying to deal with the Anthrax case.

01:32:03.960 Because if you recall, there was a real wave, a very strong wave initially, that the Anthrax

01:32:10.200 attacks on the East Coast had to be committed by an international terrorist.

01:32:14.980 It just had to be.

01:32:17.200 And Kathy and I, at the time, were in the Lawrence Livermore lab.

01:32:20.120 We'd retired.

01:32:20.920 We were working there.

01:32:21.900 And the Bureau actually called.

01:32:23.520 And they said, we have a meeting coming up.

01:32:25.200 And we're trying to be the voice in the wilderness, telling the entirety of the rest of the government

01:32:30.300 that the FBI thinks the Anthrax attacks are domestic terrorism.

01:32:35.000 And we would hate to see them go off in a different direction and end up attacking Iraq or 0.98

01:32:40.440 something based on this.

01:32:41.860 And so that's the kind of thing that can happen in the kind of discussion that we were literally

01:32:47.160 having after that study and after we had left.

01:32:52.880 So just a couple of items.

01:32:54.300 He was brilliant.

01:32:55.660 He, I read that he skipped two grades.

01:32:59.020 He went off to Harvard at age 16.

01:33:03.180 He graduated with a PhD in mathematics in 1967.

01:33:06.520 He would go on to teach mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley.

01:33:11.300 Of course, we would see, you know, bombings in California and the universities there.

01:33:15.280 Abruptly returned to Chicago to live with his parents.

01:33:18.900 And then he wound up purchasing this land in Montana and living in this cabin.

01:33:24.640 Now, I also read online that he was, at one point, he considered himself trans and actually

01:33:31.460 went to seek the operation or at least psychiatric affirmation of that.

01:33:38.180 Is that true?

01:33:40.060 I think there's some discussion in his journals of something like that.

01:33:45.420 Uh, to be honest, I don't, uh, I didn't pay a lot of attention to that, uh, at that time,

01:33:51.960 but, uh, I think he wrote something very similar to that.

01:33:55.720 Yes.

01:33:56.100 And there was never a woman in the picture from what I, I never hear anything about

01:33:59.840 this girlfriend, that girl, no ex-wife, like no women. 0.68

01:34:05.180 There weren't.

01:34:06.060 And he was very disappointed and bothered by that.

01:34:08.360 And in fact, so disappointed that he put an ad in a newspaper in the, uh, San Francisco

01:34:14.620 Bay area, in the Oakland Berkeley area.

01:34:16.920 And, um, the ad is probably the reason he never got what he wanted.

01:34:20.440 He said he was, uh, individual seeking a squaw, uh, someone who could live a wilderness life 0.99

01:34:26.500 and essentially be told what to do.

01:34:28.580 And, uh, he said he was shocked.

01:34:30.380 No takers?

01:34:31.660 He was, he was, he was shocked in his journal because then he wrote it and I'm shocked.

01:34:37.440 No one responded.

01:34:40.380 So I, I mean, maybe I'm so smart in some ways and not so smart in other ways.

01:34:45.920 Now, what about, um, there was some reporting that when he went to Harvard, they did this

01:34:50.480 experiment.

01:34:51.320 It was voluntary to take part in it, but he was a young kid when he started.

01:34:54.640 I mean, 16 is very young to be at university.

01:34:57.000 Um, he participated in it with some sort of an experiment to see how well you handled stress

01:35:02.140 and criticism given to you, like on a loop about you, about your writings and, and some

01:35:08.580 theorized this may have been a turning point, you know, like somehow it drove him crazy.

01:35:13.740 What do we know about that?

01:35:15.600 Well, Megan, we know that's a theory.

01:35:18.080 He never says much about it.

01:35:19.520 There's a, there's another kind of companion thing that he was involved in some, unbeknownst

01:35:24.220 to him, some secret kind of experimental testing that the CIA was doing in some places using

01:35:29.640 students.

01:35:30.600 Um, but he doesn't really look at any of that as the reason, uh, that these things happen.

01:35:37.080 He himself says, people are going to ascribe all kinds of motives and all of these things

01:35:43.300 to me as the reason I'm doing this.

01:35:46.100 They're all wrong.

01:35:47.240 I'm doing this because I'm angry and I'm revengeful and this is how I'm going to get

01:35:53.720 even.

01:35:54.560 And that's really the strongest thing we have to go by.

01:35:57.540 Everything else pretty much falls back into the old fact fiction and theory, but there's

01:36:02.560 so many people out there now because, you know, they have access to a lot of his, uh,

01:36:06.520 library of journals and documents and things.

01:36:08.820 And so now everybody is going to weigh in on what Theodore Kaczynski must be thinking.

01:36:13.460 But as you mentioned, does he take questions and does he get involved in discussions?

01:36:17.820 And sadly, in some ways, the answer is no, we'll never know for sure.

01:36:21.420 What's, what's he, what he's thinking.

01:36:23.280 He hated technology.

01:36:24.340 He hated advancement.

01:36:25.400 He wanted rural caveman type living and really hated anybody or anything that pushed for,

01:36:31.760 I would say now 21st century type advancements.

01:36:35.240 And I can't imagine what the, what the Ted Kaczynski of the bombing years, you know, 1998 minus

01:36:41.060 20 would have thought of Twitter and Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and all of it.

01:36:47.020 Uh, I mean, I'm sure I, I know, but so, so final point, looking back now at the investigation

01:36:53.460 and then comparing it against the real killer, what, what do you think were the biggest lessons

01:37:00.120 learned?

01:37:01.820 I think the biggest lessons learned are, uh, kind of almost contrast with each other.

01:37:06.520 First of all, you have to follow the basics.

01:37:09.220 You can't overlook things that you would do in any case, whether it's a bank robbery case

01:37:13.480 or anything else, you have to follow the basics and get them recorded.

01:37:16.600 And then, uh, remember what is important as you're doing that.

01:37:20.300 And at the same time, you can't be tied to a system, which doesn't move fast enough to

01:37:26.460 keep up with what you're trying to do.

01:37:28.560 And in this case, when you've got a bombing and then you could have another bombing and

01:37:31.580 another bombing, uh, you've got to be getting that information out and distributed and then

01:37:36.920 assessing it, uh, a lot for a long time in all, all kinds of cases, the biggest criticism

01:37:42.640 of the FBI is that it has all this information.

01:37:45.200 Its biggest weakness is it, uh, it doesn't really know what it, uh, what it has and, uh,

01:37:51.360 because it has so much.

01:37:52.380 And so, uh, that is what we try to overcome.

01:37:54.780 Um, and, uh, so you have to be doing that, but then the, the other significant thing that

01:37:59.700 I think, uh, you see all through this.

01:38:01.780 And I think today it is true and it will always be true.

01:38:04.760 And it was true before I ever became an FBI agent.

01:38:07.440 Um, we are nothing without the public, without the help of the public, without the trust and

01:38:15.560 support of the public.

01:38:16.700 And if we lose that and, uh, we can debate how people may feel today.

01:38:21.180 If we lose that, we're in trouble and that ought to be at the forefront of every mind

01:38:27.000 who runs the FBI, works in the FBI at any level, that if you lose that trust with the

01:38:32.800 public and you don't trust them to help support you and help you with these cases, then you've

01:38:38.180 got some big problems.

01:38:39.440 Law enforcement in a, in a constitutional republic in a free country is about the people.

01:38:45.040 And it's about teaming up with those people.

01:38:47.500 The FBI used to have an old pamphlet.

01:38:49.860 It was called cooperation, the backbone of law enforcement.

01:38:53.720 And by golly, uh, that was the basis of all of our media of everything we did.

01:38:58.880 And if I had it to do over, I would have done it faster in greater quantity.

01:39:02.880 Uh, and, and by golly, uh, I would be educating everybody who ever walked into law enforcement

01:39:09.540 that it's about you and the public and they've got to trust you and you've got to depend upon

01:39:14.120 them.

01:39:14.400 And that's, that's the kind of relationship we have with David.

01:39:17.260 And that's where we are today.

01:39:20.120 Boy, oh boy.

01:39:21.120 I have things changed since you were solving this case and have things and how they need

01:39:26.520 to change back.

01:39:27.280 The FBI is seen very differently now.

01:39:29.220 And you know what?

01:39:29.780 Reading how the media worked with you guys on the leaks and trying to protect the public

01:39:33.860 made me think about how the media has changed too, and not for the better.

01:39:37.400 Uh, so appreciate your hard work.

01:39:39.740 You're telling the story.

01:39:41.100 Uh, it's an honor to know you, Terry, but I hope you can come back too.

01:39:43.780 Thank you, Megan.

01:39:45.180 You too.

01:39:45.640 Thank you very much on behalf of every other work, this case.

01:39:48.940 All the best to you.

01:39:50.100 Thanks for joining us today.

01:39:51.140 Download the Megan Kelly show on your podcast, youtube.com slash Megan Kelly to watch it.

01:39:55.320 Thanks.

01:39:55.720 Karen Reed's courtroom drama has sparked intense debate, raised questions about police conduct

01:40:06.860 and fueled fierce divisions online.

01:40:09.460 And the legal saga is far from over.

01:40:11.780 In fact, there's new development.

01:40:13.460 There is a new development just this month, not just one, actually more.

01:40:18.400 Peter Tragos, attorney and host of the lawyer, you know, on YouTube, he's so good on this.

01:40:23.320 He's covered every twist and turn of this case.

01:40:25.880 You will love listening to this conversation.

01:40:28.460 And he joins me right now.

01:40:31.340 So let's just start back at the beginning for people who may not be as up to speed on this

01:40:35.360 case as you are.

01:40:36.740 Karen Reed was who she was, she's living in her private life in Massachusetts.

01:40:41.040 Who was she before all this happened to her?

01:40:43.080 She was a single woman dating a law enforcement officer, had a great job, um, in finance.

01:40:48.940 And her family was a close knit family, loved each other for all intents and purposes.

01:40:54.000 When she reconnected with this boyfriend who was, um, an officer and they go out for a

01:41:00.060 night on the town, they had a bit of a tumultuous relationship.

01:41:02.700 And then, um, that night after some drinking at the bar, hanging out with a bunch of friends,

01:41:07.940 everything changed forever.

01:41:08.780 So the prosecution, which would ultimately be charging her alleges that they left this

01:41:19.240 bar, they drove over to a friend's house, another cop, and that her boyfriend got out

01:41:27.440 of the car that he then walked up to the, the front door of the friend's house.

01:41:35.220 And when, sorry, this is what she alleges.

01:41:39.540 She, she alleges he went to the front door of the house.

01:41:41.600 He went inside and something terrible happened to him.

01:41:44.520 The prosecution said, no, he got out of your car.

01:41:48.060 He never made it inside because you ran him over.

01:41:51.820 You backed up into him at something like 24 miles an hour, hurting him, casting him into

01:41:59.200 the snow bank where he then later died from blunt trauma and hypothermia.

01:42:04.100 Is that the basics?

01:42:05.540 Yeah.

01:42:05.700 I mean, the, the, it turns on what happened after they got to 34 Fairview.

01:42:09.720 Everybody's basically on the same page.

01:42:11.240 They went to a couple of bars.

01:42:12.720 They were hanging out together.

01:42:13.620 They were drinking together.

01:42:14.960 Karen Reed is driving her Lexus.

01:42:16.580 Nobody disputes that John O'Keefe, who was her boyfriend and the victim in this case,

01:42:20.020 sitting in the front seat.

01:42:21.360 They drive to 34 Fairview to hang out with the McCabe's and the Alberts, um, who are all 0.61

01:42:26.120 connected to law enforcement and connected to people in Canton.

01:42:29.500 She drops him off.

01:42:30.560 He gets out of the car.

01:42:31.320 There also seems to be third party witness testimony that he gets out of the car.

01:42:35.260 After that, that's where the stories kind of turn.

01:42:38.580 Uh, if you believe the prosecution and the witnesses inside 34 Fairview, he never makes

01:42:42.960 it inside the house.

01:42:43.960 She backs up, hits him with her Lexus because she's angry at him about, you know, a multitude

01:42:48.320 of things and they're fighting and she wanted to end his life, I guess is, is their point

01:42:52.900 of view.

01:42:53.360 If you believe Karen Reed, she said he walked in towards the house.

01:42:56.440 She didn't see John O'Keefe again.

01:42:57.700 He stayed inside.

01:42:58.920 He was supposed to come back out, kind of tell her what's going on.

01:43:01.720 She gets pissed off, drives back to his house, calls him, leaves him all these angry text 0.84

01:43:05.860 messages and he never comes home.

01:43:07.740 That's Karen Reed's story. 0.84

01:43:10.000 Mm-hmm.

01:43:10.400 And it wasn't until the wee hours of the next morning, you know, like five, six in the morning

01:43:15.160 that she and another then start searching for him.

01:43:18.640 Like what happened to him?

01:43:19.580 Where's John?

01:43:20.240 And oh, wow, he's dead in the snowbank.

01:43:22.380 Um, how'd that happen?

01:43:23.680 Now, there are two competing facts that I want to ask you about as I was just listening to

01:43:28.880 this.

01:43:29.100 I didn't follow this case as closely as you did at all.

01:43:31.600 But as I was listening to it, the best fact, well, there's two that I think the prosecution

01:43:36.940 has, um, are as follows.

01:43:39.300 Number one, that she allegedly said, I hit him, I hit him, I hit him.

01:43:45.460 And that an emergency worker, like a paramedic, uh, heard that.

01:43:50.040 And now she denies that, but you've got a third party witness saying she said that.

01:43:54.140 So that's a very good fact for the prosecution.

01:43:56.140 And they also have tailgate plastic in his clothing, like from where her tailgate of her 0.99

01:44:05.120 Lexus hit him.

01:44:06.540 So it doesn't look like he got beaten up inside.

01:44:09.020 It looks like he got hit by her car, not just any car, but her car.

01:44:12.700 So those are very good facts for the prosecution.

01:44:15.220 On the other side for Karen Reed, the best fact I saw for her defense, because her, again,

01:44:22.000 her defense is no, he walked into the house.

01:44:23.980 I didn't run him over.

01:44:24.640 He went into the house and then there was some cop on cop violence.

01:44:29.680 Some old score got settled and they beat him.

01:44:32.900 They beat him to death and then threw him in the, in the snow bank and tried to say that

01:44:36.800 I ran him over.

01:44:37.780 And the best evidence I saw for Karen Reed's theory was that someone inside that house allegedly

01:44:46.840 Googled something to the effect of how long can you be out in the snow before you die?

01:44:53.320 Before they found the body, before they found the body, you know, before she even had allegedly

01:45:00.920 hit him.

01:45:01.480 And that would certainly suggest the people inside the house were up to no good.

01:45:05.360 Now a trial, they disputed that piece of testimony.

01:45:07.960 So can you walk us through that evidence?

01:45:10.580 Those, those, do I have like the best facts on both sides or have I missed something critical?

01:45:14.260 Yeah, honestly, there's just so much.

01:45:15.420 So we'll go with what you're asking.

01:45:17.100 Cause it's really fascinating for somebody who's kind of followed it from a cursory point

01:45:20.400 of view.

01:45:20.660 And maybe, you know, you've heard some of the highlights or seen some of the shows reporting

01:45:23.920 on it because it was fascinating.

01:45:25.620 And it's really a case unlike any other I've tried personally myself or followed even, you

01:45:30.720 know, since I've been following these cases in the media and you, you've brought up some

01:45:34.600 big points of contention and the prosecution absolutely pushed the, I hit him comments as

01:45:40.500 a confession.

01:45:41.220 That's what they continue to call it a confession.

01:45:43.840 She confessed to law enforcement, to EMS right there on the scene.

01:45:49.560 Karen Reed's team cross-examined those witnesses and said, if you had somebody that confessed,

01:45:53.900 why didn't she get arrested? 0.94

01:45:55.200 Why, why wasn't that immediately the investigation?

01:45:57.440 And they knew exactly what happened.

01:45:58.840 Why was there any unknown?

01:46:00.180 Why wasn't the investigation and the crime scene taken as they knew exactly what happened

01:46:04.700 that she hit him with her Lexus and Karen Reed's team responds with, it was, did I hit

01:46:10.000 him?

01:46:10.320 Could I have hit him?

01:46:11.300 Which there are some other people that say that could have been.

01:46:13.600 Standby.

01:46:14.000 Let me just play that.

01:46:14.640 Cause she, uh, she spoke to Dateline.

01:46:16.280 She didn't testify at her trials, but she did speak to Dateline.

01:46:19.340 Here's Karen Reed trying to clarify that point and sought 51. 0.93

01:46:23.200 I said, could I have hit him?

01:46:25.340 Did I hit him?

01:46:27.060 How could that have been?

01:46:28.120 I mean, you dropped him off at the house.

01:46:29.100 I don't know what else could have been.

01:46:30.840 It was howling wind.

01:46:32.020 I had YouTube blasting on the stereo and I thought, did he somehow try to flag me down,

01:46:38.320 which was the reaction I was hoping to garner as I slowly pulled away from the house.

01:46:42.480 Did he come out and maybe trip or, or, or bend over to pick up his cell phone and, and I

01:46:48.060 ran over his foot and, and then he passed out drunk.

01:46:51.060 I mean, I, I didn't think I hit him, hit him, but could I have clipped him?

01:46:55.880 Could I tagged him in the knee and incapacitated him?

01:46:59.080 Um, he, he didn't look mortally wounded as far as I could see, but could I have done something

01:47:05.300 that knocked him out and, and, and his drunkenness and in the cold didn't come to again.

01:47:11.680 And just to be clear, Peter, this was after, so that the night goes on, you know, the,

01:47:17.540 she allegedly hit him around right just after midnight, but according to her testimony,

01:47:21.620 she didn't hit him.

01:47:22.560 She waited for him to come back out of the party.

01:47:24.240 He didn't, she got mad.

01:47:25.420 She went back over to his house.

01:47:26.740 And then by the next morning, by like five or 6 AM, she, and this other gal were like

01:47:31.420 looking for him.

01:47:32.320 And lo and behold, there he was dead in the snow bank at the location of the party.

01:47:35.840 So go ahead.

01:47:37.020 Right.

01:47:37.220 And, and that, that is one of the big points of contention.

01:47:39.300 And as you know, one of the big things now that there's competing civil lawsuits that we

01:47:43.920 may talk about later when we're talking about the criminal case and you're saying, here's

01:47:47.380 the best evidence for one side and here's the best evidence for the other.

01:47:50.180 The prosecution in this case has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what happened that

01:47:53.280 night.

01:47:53.580 And that was one of the big difficulties when you have maybe some EMS and some people

01:47:57.440 said, she said, I hit him.

01:47:58.760 Some people said, did I hit him?

01:48:00.760 Based on her conversations and a lot of what else happened that night, maybe it wasn't as

01:48:04.620 clear of a confession.

01:48:05.280 And nobody seemed to think that at the time that it was a clear confession.

01:48:09.720 And then when you flip to his injuries, which you mentioned them as kind of good evidence

01:48:14.980 for both sides that her taillight pieces were, you know, on him in his sweater, kind of

01:48:20.420 attached to him.

01:48:21.040 How would they get there unless she hit him with her Lexus? 0.93

01:48:23.680 And then she says his injuries match a fight, getting beat up by cops inside, you know,

01:48:28.640 as he had raccoon eyes, he died from hitting the back of his head.

01:48:31.940 And, you know, the, the evidence shows maybe it was on a ledge and not a flat ground.

01:48:36.200 You know, that was a little, who was actually going to prove what injury was the cause of

01:48:40.120 death and how he got it.

01:48:41.440 So that was a big point of contention throughout.

01:48:43.900 And if you looked at a lot of the medical evidence and the accident reconstructionists, to

01:48:49.480 me, that's really where Karen, that was a, that was a, yes, that was a good fact for

01:48:54.040 her.

01:48:54.300 The fact that the Lexus like expert at, at a trial that said there was nothing recorded

01:49:01.760 on this car of hitting somebody of going 24 miles an hour or whatever it was and running

01:49:07.300 over another person like that, that he would have expected something to register in the

01:49:11.640 car's brain and nothing did.

01:49:13.260 Yeah.

01:49:13.360 And that's one of the problems with so many facts in this case is there was kind of competing

01:49:16.060 theories on that, where if you hit a man, that's 200 pounds, maybe that's not going

01:49:20.500 to be enough to register an event when you have, you know, a very heavy Lexus like that.

01:49:24.780 And then there were some people that said, well, maybe it should have, and there's nothing

01:49:27.700 on here that actually did register it.

01:49:29.760 But even more so Karen Reed had accident reconstructionists that were actually hired by the FBI while they 0.98

01:49:36.040 were investigating this investigation, which we'll get into the shady stuff happening there

01:49:40.200 as to why the FBI would even get involved.

01:49:42.700 But Karen Reed ends up hiring those guys as her experts and they do all sorts of different

01:49:47.520 testing and they can never create the same action where something hitting that taillight

01:49:53.400 would explode out into the yard and on John O'Keefe the way that the prosecution said it

01:49:59.420 happened in that case.

01:50:00.420 It just wouldn't happen, especially with some of the videos and pictures where the taillights

01:50:05.340 are still working without busting those little actual light bulbs inside.

01:50:09.840 It was really fascinating.

01:50:11.180 Which was the case here?

01:50:12.720 Correct.

01:50:13.400 The lights were still working.

01:50:16.580 So in other words, this was faked.

01:50:18.960 In other words, the point is those guys killed him inside.

01:50:22.380 They brought him out and then they were the ones who hit her car to make it look like

01:50:27.840 it had bumped into him.

01:50:30.100 So partially they somewhat point the finger at the guys inside the house for beating John O'Keefe

01:50:35.420 to death and leaving him on the lawn.

01:50:36.800 But they allege that law enforcement actually cracked the taillight, placed the pieces there,

01:50:42.440 mixed everything together so it would look like that taillight hit John O'Keefe.

01:50:46.880 And they went so far as to Alan Jackson, one of the defense lawyers in this case, had a chart

01:50:51.720 of all the glass that was found at the scene.

01:50:54.020 And there was a cocktail glass that was found on Karen Reed's car that was found nowhere else

01:50:59.180 at the scene.

01:51:00.180 So how really would it have gotten there but for somebody placing it on the bumper of

01:51:05.520 Karen Reed's car, which was driven away from the scene, driven around the next morning,

01:51:10.320 put on a tow truck, driven back.

01:51:12.280 And we're supposed to believe that some of this cocktail glass stayed on there.

01:51:14.820 And there was one hair that stayed on there that they said was John O'Keefe's hair.

01:51:18.680 Things that just were really hard to believe that the Commonwealth was trying to explain

01:51:22.360 to a jury in this case.

01:51:23.300 Okay, so what the theory of the prosecution is easy to understand that she and John hadn't

01:51:30.840 really been getting along.

01:51:32.380 He had talked about possibly breaking up with her.

01:51:35.860 She was very angry that night.

01:51:37.160 She was drunk.

01:51:37.940 And in her drunken anger, she ran him over. 0.57

01:51:42.660 And there was some debate about whether they overcharged the case.

01:51:45.640 Should they have just charged it as a manslaughter?

01:51:47.900 They went for murder, too, which definitely raised the stakes for this jury.

01:51:51.020 Like it was intentional. 0.67

01:51:52.240 She wanted to kill him. 0.99

01:51:53.300 As opposed to just like heat of passion, she did something crazy. 0.66

01:51:58.620 But the defense had a totally different version of events.

01:52:02.900 And so for the clueless juror just walking into this case, why would John O'Keefe's fellow

01:52:09.540 cops want him dead?

01:52:12.440 It's a great question.

01:52:13.640 And if you look at the two criminal trials, because this went to trial twice.

01:52:17.220 The first one was a hung jury.

01:52:18.340 The second one was a not guilty verdict on all of the charges dealing with ending John O'Keefe's

01:52:22.320 life.

01:52:22.820 She was convicted of OUI operating under the influence.

01:52:25.880 But the big difference in the theme and theory of the defense case from trial one to trial

01:52:30.440 two was this was a big conspiracy in trial one.

01:52:33.980 Everybody was involved.

01:52:35.200 The people inside the house ended his life.

01:52:37.380 The cops covered it up.

01:52:38.880 And there was a hung jury.

01:52:39.720 In the second trial, it's you can't prove anything.

01:52:42.840 This investigation was so bad.

01:52:44.680 These cops didn't do the interviews properly.

01:52:46.700 They didn't record them.

01:52:47.740 They didn't secure the scene properly.

01:52:49.360 This evidence doesn't make sense.

01:52:50.780 It looks like it could have been planted.

01:52:52.240 These guys have been terminated.

01:52:54.040 These text messages are disgusting how they talk about Karen Reed and other people.

01:52:57.660 And that was a not guilty verdict that they couldn't prove the case.

01:53:00.840 So two very different theories.

01:53:02.420 But when they were trying to prove that somebody inside the house killed John O'Keefe, it was

01:53:06.540 based on jealousy because somebody inside the house had been texting flirtatious text with 0.96

01:53:11.640 Karen Reed, had kissed Karen Reed. 0.98

01:53:13.860 And the defense was trying to use some videos in one of the bars as if these two guys were

01:53:19.660 grappling and, you know, play fighting.

01:53:22.000 But they were kind of getting in the mood to fight, I guess.

01:53:24.560 Some of it was, you know, a little bit of a reach.

01:53:26.900 But they were trying to say that they looked over across the bar and pointed at John O'Keefe

01:53:30.540 and told John O'Keefe to come to 34 Fairview because basically they wanted to fight.

01:53:35.160 And that was kind of their theme and theory of why somebody, what the motivation for somebody

01:53:39.920 being wanting to kill John O'Keefe inside that house.

01:53:44.120 When when would the defense have posited if they did that law enforcement broke her tail

01:53:50.340 light to make it look like it was Karen Reed, because under this scenario, he goes inside

01:53:55.080 the house, he gets murdered.

01:53:57.320 But we've already talked about how she took off.

01:53:59.820 She was there for a short time.

01:54:01.040 Then she left with that SUV.

01:54:02.800 Did they posit that her tail light was broken later when she drove back in the morning and

01:54:07.720 found the body?

01:54:08.780 So this tail light, there was so much litigation about this tail light.

01:54:12.220 First, the defense says there was a video that shows she backed up very slowly into John

01:54:17.080 O'Keefe's car at John O'Keefe's house.

01:54:19.720 And that's how she cracked her tail light. 0.98

01:54:21.660 And there was just a little crack in it.

01:54:23.080 Um, not when she hit John O'Keefe, the prosecution says, no, it was totally damaged, destroyed.

01:54:28.040 And they had in 46 different pieces.

01:54:29.940 But what made the tail light so interesting is it was towed to the Sally port where law

01:54:34.560 enforcement is.

01:54:35.380 And when they tried to show when the SUV was dropped off, they showed an inverted video,

01:54:40.460 a flipped video.

01:54:41.420 And they were like, Hey, nobody even went near this tail light.

01:54:44.440 But then when you realize it's a flip video, which they did in the middle of trial, then you

01:54:49.120 realize there are people that walk by that tail light.

01:54:51.100 And when you look closer at the entire time it was in the Sally port, there are blips and

01:54:55.940 cuts in and out and huge chunks of time missing where you don't see what's going on with that

01:55:01.960 Lexus.

01:55:02.760 And the defense said, well, where are those chunks?

01:55:05.120 And the Commonwealth says, well, you know, it's motion activated.

01:55:07.960 So it might not be there.

01:55:09.020 And then when they secured the crime scene the first day, they found a couple pieces of

01:55:14.200 tail light in the yard, right where John O'Keefe's body was found.

01:55:17.360 But days and weeks and months went by and they continued to find tail light piece after

01:55:22.840 tail light piece after tail light piece in this front yard that they didn't find the

01:55:27.260 first time they went, the second time they went, the third time they went.

01:55:29.820 They just happened to be driving by and they'd find another piece of tail light.

01:55:32.480 Very sketchy, unlike just about every investigation you've probably ever seen.

01:55:38.140 So what does that imply?

01:55:39.840 So they're implying that they would go back to the yard, put the pieces in the yard after

01:55:43.900 they busted it at the Sally port, and they would find it every day, more and more pieces

01:55:47.540 of tail light that they didn't find the first day, the first week.

01:55:50.560 And they just kept planning pieces of tail light and going and getting it to make sure there

01:55:54.660 are text message that said, we're going to pin it on the girl and we're going to make 0.98

01:55:58.700 sure that nobody in the house catches any crap. 0.97

01:56:01.540 We're going to make sure he's a Boston cop, so we're not even going to look into him. 0.97

01:56:04.980 So there were all kinds of text messages that the defense made look like they were trying

01:56:08.580 to protect the people in the house and make sure Karen Reed caught charges for this.

01:56:13.500 Oh, well, that sounds really bad.

01:56:15.180 I actually hadn't realized that there were explicit text messages saying we're going

01:56:18.160 to pin it on the girl.

01:56:19.140 That's from cops?

01:56:19.960 That's from the people inside the house, from people inside the house, inside 34 Fairview.

01:56:24.880 Some of them are cops or related to cops.

01:56:27.220 And they said they would make comments like, oh, she did such a good job explaining this

01:56:31.340 or make sure they're getting all their testimony straight to say, make sure we all say the

01:56:35.940 guy never came in the house.

01:56:37.740 You know, they were making sure they were all staying consistent there.

01:56:40.500 They weren't necessarily being forthcoming with who was actually in the house that night.

01:56:44.940 It was just what happened.

01:56:47.220 I don't think we'll ever know because the investigation was so bad.

01:56:49.660 And the lead investigator ended up getting terminated because he was found to have shown bias in this

01:56:54.880 case, sending some of the most disgusting text messages you would ever think about a

01:56:59.740 defendant that you are doing an investigation on, supposed to be protecting and serving and

01:57:04.200 being an unbiased party, just doing your investigation and going where the evidence

01:57:08.400 leads you.

01:57:09.200 I mean, these text messages were so horrible.

01:57:11.060 He had supervisors thumbs upping those text messages.

01:57:14.600 It was just a good old boys club that looked really, really horrible, I think.

01:57:19.120 How bad were they?

01:57:20.440 The ones I heard about were he was saying, like, I'm looking for nudes now on her phone.

01:57:25.780 That was about as racy as I heard.

01:57:27.640 But I was listening to Dateline.

01:57:29.300 They don't tend to go to the fully R-rated place.

01:57:31.700 Yeah.

01:57:31.960 I mean, they were talking about there are certain things that, you know, we would probably

01:57:35.700 both condemn, but that were not necessarily as bad as some of the biased ones where is she

01:57:39.880 hot? 0.99

01:57:40.280 Yeah, she's kind of hot, but no ass. 1.00

01:57:42.180 She has, you know, this Boston accent or whatever. 0.99

01:57:44.140 They were objectifying her, which is one thing, doesn't necessarily mean they're going to

01:57:47.900 pin some crime on her.

01:57:49.260 But then they started to say that we're going to make sure the owner of the house doesn't 0.99

01:57:54.100 catch any shit. 1.00

01:57:55.140 He's a Boston cop. 1.00

01:57:56.160 That's a quote from the text messages.

01:57:59.200 And they would talk about how she had a balloon knot because she had some, you know, surgery

01:58:05.040 or issues, gastro internal issues.

01:58:07.680 They would talk about how she had leaky poo.

01:58:09.820 They would talk about how she, you know, some of the text messages with the person that she

01:58:15.280 was having the affair with were back and forth and racy and talking about John and how we

01:58:19.360 need to hide this from John.

01:58:20.660 And then that person went to the police station that night at 2 a.m.

01:58:26.620 and said he was moving cars around, but was instead moving bags back and forth between

01:58:31.940 different cars, going inside the police station with his hood up and just sketchy thing on top

01:58:37.020 of sketchy thing from all these law enforcement officers involved.

01:58:40.860 Wow.

01:58:41.560 So listening to you, Peter, I feel like you, you may believe that Karen Reed is actually

01:58:47.020 innocent, factually innocent, not just found not guilty, which she was, but may in fact

01:58:53.160 truly not have done this.

01:58:54.460 You know, it's really hard for me to say like beyond a reasonable doubt.

01:58:58.540 I don't think either side would ever be able to prove this.

01:59:00.960 And because of that and because the investigation was so horrible and I just don't feel like I

01:59:04.460 can trust anything the cops say or did in this case, you'd never get a conviction.

01:59:08.220 This is a case I would never want to try.

01:59:10.100 I prosecuted cases.

01:59:11.160 I would never prosecute this case.

01:59:13.100 This is just not one you can, I would have felt ethically comfortable with putting in

01:59:16.760 front of a jury on the civil side.

01:59:18.760 Will they be able to get enough to prove to a jury by the greater weight of the evidence?

01:59:24.240 Fifty one percent.

01:59:25.740 I think it's possible, but it's just so hard to know what happened inside that house of

01:59:30.260 34 Fairview.

01:59:31.080 So while I if I had to choose, is she factually innocent or is she factually guilty?

01:59:36.000 I would choose that she's factually innocent.

01:59:38.340 I'm just not overly confident of that.

01:59:40.920 I don't think I would be able to say that beyond a reasonable doubt, because I really

01:59:44.160 don't think anybody's ever going to be able to prove what happened that night.

01:59:49.640 OK, let's talk about the civil suit.

01:59:51.480 So she was found not guilty.

01:59:53.340 First, there was a hung jury.

01:59:54.440 Then I guess we'll play it because there was an extraordinary moment on June 18th, 2025, when

01:59:59.360 she was found not guilty.

02:00:00.540 And you could hear the crowd cheering outside.

02:00:03.320 She had quite a groundswell of support that had begun in the beginning of the first trial.

02:00:08.500 Here's that moment.

02:00:09.320 Stop 53.

02:00:10.580 Zero zero three.

02:00:11.400 What say is the defendant at the bar leaving the scene after accident resulting in death?

02:00:16.120 Defendant not guilty or guilty?

02:00:18.600 So say you, Mr.

02:00:19.540 Foreman?

02:00:20.160 Yeah.

02:00:20.660 So say you all?

02:00:21.700 Yes.

02:00:22.000 Juris, hearken your verdict as the court records it.

02:00:24.500 You upon your oath say the defendant on zero zero one is not guilty.

02:00:28.240 On zero zero two is guilty of operating in the influence of liquor.

02:00:31.780 And zero zero three, not guilty.

02:00:34.380 Thank you.

02:00:36.180 All right.

02:00:37.180 Juris, everybody, please be seated.

02:00:40.240 Juris, we thank you for your service.

02:00:42.280 And the crowd support for her, Peter, would be relevant because the prosecution witnesses

02:00:51.880 and the family of the victim really object objected and felt this colored their right

02:00:58.880 to a fair trial.

02:01:00.460 Yeah, it's it's brutal to think about the victim's family.

02:01:03.340 This the O'Keefe's and all of this, regardless of what happened and who did what inside 34 Fairview

02:01:09.220 were law enforcement, they lost John O'Keefe and that family has gone through.

02:01:12.320 I don't know if you know any of the backstory of that family.

02:01:14.160 They have gone through more loss than most people would in their entire lives.

02:01:19.960 And, you know, to continue to feel that way and not get justice, they clearly believe

02:01:24.120 Karen Reed is guilty.

02:01:25.860 They clearly believe the witnesses in the inside 34 Fairview.

02:01:29.060 They've all gotten a lot closer as this litigation has continued.

02:01:32.420 So I feel horribly for them.

02:01:35.140 But I think that the fault lies with law enforcement.

02:01:38.200 The fault lies with the prosecutors in how this case was prepared, how this case was

02:01:43.240 investigated, how this case was litigated.

02:01:45.620 Some of the other text messages with the cops were basically guaranteeing that Karen Reed

02:01:49.080 is guilty the next morning before an investigation had even taken place.

02:01:53.100 And then, you know, you have just that confirmation bias where you want you want to be correct

02:01:58.220 and you're going to do everything you can to make sure you're correct.

02:02:00.520 That's what it felt like more to me than maybe a big conspiracy to cover it up and protect

02:02:05.060 the people inside the house.

02:02:06.060 But, I mean, we've seen cases where law enforcement gets locked in on somebody and they're going

02:02:09.820 to make sure that's the right person and they start, you know, getting to know the victims

02:02:13.200 and it's so sad and you want to bring justice and you think you're crossing a line for the

02:02:17.380 right reason and it just blew up in their face in this case.

02:02:20.120 That item that I asked you about before, so when she went back and she was looking for

02:02:27.920 John's body or John and then stumbled upon his body, this is around 6 a.m.

02:02:34.680 And there was her friend, last name McCabe, and that person Googled hose, meaning how.

02:02:44.120 She used an S instead of a W in typing, how long to die in cold.

02:02:50.420 And that to me seems like it should have been known very clearly what time she Googled that.

02:02:59.280 Because if she Googled that before she knew, like basically they were saying, well, I only

02:03:07.680 did that, her defense to Karen saying that the people inside the house have killed him.

02:03:13.380 And look, here's evidence you knew he was dead.

02:03:16.500 You Googled that before I even came back.

02:03:19.840 But her defense was, I didn't Google that when I was alone inside the house before you came back.

02:03:25.340 I Googled that with you once we realized that you had hit him and he was in the snow

02:03:30.760 and we were trying to figure out whether he was dead or alive, right?

02:03:34.540 Is that basically how this McCabe defended that?

02:03:37.280 But like, why isn't that just totally knowable?

02:03:40.380 What time she Googled that?

02:03:42.160 That the whole case should rise or fall around that Google.

02:03:45.800 Yeah, the way you explained it is exactly how kind of the arguments went on both sides.

02:03:49.180 Was it at two o'clock in the morning or six o'clock in the morning?

02:03:51.520 Because that makes all the difference in the world.

02:03:53.260 Because nobody knew he was dead at two o'clock in the morning.

02:03:55.520 So how are you possibly searching that unless you're the person that put him out in the cold

02:03:59.340 and you're wondering how long it would take?

02:04:01.600 And yeah, it was, again, unlike any other case I've seen.

02:04:05.280 Celebrite said one time, and actually everybody agreed at one point that it showed that it was

02:04:10.340 at 2.27 or something in the morning.

02:04:12.220 And then they got Celebrite involved.

02:04:14.520 Celebrite's like, well, that's not actually correct.

02:04:16.100 That's when the tab was open.

02:04:17.460 What's Celebrite?

02:04:18.440 Sorry?

02:04:20.360 What's Celebrite?

02:04:20.820 So Celebrite is like the program that they download the phone and it tells you,

02:04:24.380 here's all the Google searches.

02:04:25.720 Here's the time each Google search was made.

02:04:27.700 And that report said 2.27 a.m.

02:04:30.820 And then there's another different program called Axiom that does basically the same thing.

02:04:35.460 That said 2.27 a.m. as well.

02:04:38.260 But then Celebrite had, well, maybe it was at 6.04.

02:04:41.460 Is 2.27 the time she opened the tab?

02:04:43.780 And she was searching some sports team, Hockamock Sports.

02:04:46.860 And when she was in bed at night going to bed at two o'clock in the morning,

02:04:49.940 and that tab was left open.

02:04:51.660 And then when she searched at 6 a.m., it was showing the time she originally opened the tab.

02:04:56.180 So there were competing experts saying the search was at 6 o'clock, the search was at 2 o'clock.

02:05:01.380 And once again, like so many other facts in this case, it felt impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt,

02:05:07.400 which once again should be held against the prosecutor and not the defendant.

02:05:11.900 That's so frustrating.

02:05:14.280 As soon as I heard that piece of it, that somebody was Googling how long to die in cold,

02:05:20.740 and it happened at 2 in the morning before they found the body,

02:05:23.080 I was like, oh, the people inside the house definitely did it.

02:05:25.100 Karen Reed did not do this. 0.99

02:05:26.680 That's as good as evidence as you're ever going to get.

02:05:29.340 And then I read that thing you just said about how they were like, well, it might have been the time,

02:05:33.040 2 a.m. might have been the time she opened the internet for a search that came many hours later.

02:05:38.960 And as somebody who always has tons of tabs open on my phone, I can understand that happening very easily,

02:05:45.220 that you just use a tab that's already open to search something many hours later.

02:05:48.880 So unfortunately, that's not as clear as we would like.

02:05:51.020 Yeah, absolutely.

02:05:51.680 And it's like I've handled trials that have Celebrite reports.

02:05:55.180 I'm sure you've seen other trials with Celebrite reports.

02:05:57.220 I've never seen them attacked like this as just a report that they put out as a time that seems very simple,

02:06:01.900 is just absolutely completely wrong.

02:06:03.960 And this is something I'm going to keep an eye out now is this are more defense attorneys going to attack this.

02:06:08.700 And how often does Axiom and Celebrite give completely different reports like they did in this case?

02:06:13.360 Because Axiom, if you run a report right now on her phone, still says the search was at 2 27 a.m.

02:06:20.400 Wow.

02:06:21.120 The other question about we spent some time in the taillight.

02:06:23.480 There was a question about whether this Lexus, it was an SUV.

02:06:26.940 Yes, it was like the I think it's OK.

02:06:29.180 Whether this well, anyway, whether this Lexus SUV, even at whatever it was, 24 miles an hour, let's say,

02:06:36.800 whether it would whether the taillight would break upon hitting a man and that that this was they couldn't replicate this.

02:06:44.300 The defense as they tried over and over and over to recreate the scene of this alleged incident that the prosecution said happened here to take his life.

02:06:54.320 That makes some sense to me, too.

02:06:55.920 I don't know, like that a man made of flesh and bone might not be enough force to to take out the taillight on an SUV backing up into him.

02:07:06.020 What was what was the back and forth around that?

02:07:08.000 Yeah. And, you know, Megan, it's impossible to really fully dig into each one of these individual aspects in just an hour or six hours.

02:07:14.900 But if I showed you his body so so I'm a personal injury lawyer now, I handle a lot of truck accidents, car accident case, pedestrian accident case.

02:07:23.060 So a person that gets hit by a car and we all kind of know what that looks like, especially if somebody gets hit at 24 miles an hour.

02:07:29.080 I have had clients die at 24 miles an hour getting hit by a car.

02:07:33.020 But do you know what they look like?

02:07:34.580 They have broken bones.

02:07:35.820 They've got internal bleeding.

02:07:37.580 They've got serious head injuries.

02:07:39.780 They've got injuries below the waist.

02:07:41.600 John O'Keefe had none of that.

02:07:43.180 No broken bones.

02:07:44.440 No bruising anywhere on his body.

02:07:46.240 The back of his head hitting the ground, basically, or hitting a ledge was the cause of his death.

02:07:52.200 And one of the fatal flaws of the prosecutor's case the second time around is their expert showed an example of another pedestrian getting hit by a car and they passed away.

02:08:02.300 And they're saying, see, look, this can happen.

02:08:04.460 The problem is the report on that person had broken bones, internal damage, exactly what you would expect for somebody that got hit by a car.

02:08:13.220 And the M.E., who was not hired by either side, could not determine that he died as a result of a car accident or that it was a homicide.

02:08:21.760 It was undetermined.

02:08:22.980 And she did not see evidence that this was a result of a car accident.

02:08:26.280 No experts did, really.

02:08:29.580 Gosh, that's so tricky.

02:08:31.380 We did pull some sound from a couple of the jurors after the not guilty verdict.

02:08:36.420 It's always fascinating to listen to them if they'll talk.

02:08:38.440 In this one, you're going to hear first, it's the jury foreman, Charlie Deloach.

02:08:43.400 Take a listen to Stop 55.

02:08:45.900 It was intense because before I got to the last not guilty, the crowd erupted.

02:08:53.140 It was already cheering like it was a basketball stadium outside.

02:08:57.040 I didn't take one note.

02:08:58.380 I didn't have to after the first witness.

02:09:01.060 It was just like, oh, OK, I see where this is going.

02:09:05.100 During the trial, I just was waiting and just looking for that aha moment.

02:09:10.960 And there was none to to make her guilty at all. 0.99

02:09:16.840 It was just always like, oh, that witness sucked. 0.99

02:09:20.800 I was open minded. 0.98

02:09:21.960 I was willing to listen to both sides if she hit him or if there is corruption.

02:09:28.340 And then the corruption outweighed her getting hit, her hitting him with the car.

02:09:34.000 The case was it was leaning one way and it kept on leaning one way and up until the very end.

02:09:42.060 One more to play for you.

02:09:43.420 This is juror number four speaking up.

02:09:48.440 Jason, the jury found Karen Reed not guilty on murder and manslaughter.

02:09:54.680 Was it because they had reasonable doubt or because they thought she was innocent?

02:10:03.960 So I think for the jurors, there's a mix of some people thinks that she was definitely innocent.

02:10:11.060 And and the other people, there was a lot of reasonable doubt, at least to where you can't.

02:10:16.440 We didn't want to convict her.

02:10:17.660 I mean, I can only speak for myself.

02:10:19.180 I think that she was innocent.

02:10:21.340 It's hard to it's hard to tell exactly what people think deep down.

02:10:25.140 There was a lot of things thrown at us.

02:10:26.900 Do I think it was a corrupt police investigation?

02:10:30.620 I don't know.

02:10:31.760 There's no way for me to know.

02:10:33.500 I can't.

02:10:34.480 I wasn't there.

02:10:35.840 There was just there was holes in the case that left for reasonable doubt.

02:10:40.220 I think they could have checked some boxes or, you know, done some things differently.

02:10:46.300 But do I know that they were corrupt?

02:10:48.940 Absolutely not.

02:10:50.100 I don't know that there was any corruption going on.

02:10:52.640 But do I know that there wasn't enough proof or evidence secured by the police to convict Karen Reed?

02:11:02.160 Absolutely not.

02:11:03.620 There was no there was not.

02:11:05.240 Very interesting, Peter, that he's saying that we were between actual innocence and just not guilty, but did not speak of any holdouts saying, no, I think she did it.

02:11:16.560 Yeah, and I think that really goes to the investigation and the way that this case was presented.

02:11:21.840 There was holes everywhere, no matter where you want to look.

02:11:24.860 If you want to compare the experts, if you want to compare the medicine, if you want to compare the car data, if you want to compare the credibility of witnesses, because that was a really big thing.

02:11:32.260 If you noticed, juror number one, the foreperson said after the first witness, I was like, oh, wow.

02:11:37.280 And he still kept an open mind.

02:11:38.980 But so much of these trials is the jury looking at each individual witness and judging their credibility.

02:11:44.360 Are they telling the truth?

02:11:45.620 Are they being honest?

02:11:46.700 Do they have something to gain or lose by this testimony?

02:11:49.220 Does it make sense in the context of the rest of the testimony?

02:11:52.180 And I just think that their credibility was hurt throughout the trial by the cross-examination and the other evidence presented by the defense.

02:11:59.000 Do we know who the first witness was?

02:12:02.140 It would have been for the prosecution since they go first.

02:12:04.220 And my understanding is when they went back for the second trial after the first jury was hung, they eliminated some of their more problematic cops, like the guy who was like, let's see the nudes and referring to Karen Reed in those disgusting terms you mentioned.

02:12:18.740 He did not get called by the prosecution a second time.

02:12:21.380 So they learned.

02:12:22.280 So I would imagine they would have, you know, you always want to start with your best foot forward, your best witness.

02:12:26.860 Yeah, I think they started with an EMS person who I actually like.

02:12:31.220 I thought he was a good witness.

02:12:32.600 I thought he was trying his best.

02:12:34.240 He made a mistake.

02:12:35.520 I believe it's him that said John O'Keefe had like a really big jacket on and he didn't.

02:12:39.620 He just had like a short sleeve or a long sleeve thin shirt that you probably wouldn't be wearing out in the snow.

02:12:44.660 But I don't know.

02:12:45.060 Boston guys are probably tougher than me in the snow.

02:12:47.360 But I think that's what the defense was trying.

02:12:49.080 I was in Colorado, almost died from the snow there.

02:12:52.960 But so, you know, so they were trying to say, you know, you didn't even remember those details.

02:12:58.240 So and they were trying to say that that shirt would be more likely something that he had on inside versus outside.

02:13:03.180 And they dragged him outside and through it.

02:13:04.880 So there were all these little details.

02:13:06.320 But I didn't think the first witness was that bad, honestly.

02:13:08.660 And the way that the prosecution pared down the case from trial one to trial two was amazing.

02:13:14.500 They got a special prosecutor who's a big criminal defense lawyer there that they brought in specifically just to hire this case.

02:13:20.180 Nobody from within their office.

02:13:22.500 Much better at his presentation.

02:13:24.480 But I think he missed the boat a lot with the way he presented the case.

02:13:27.340 And one thing he did was he did not call Proctor, who was who you were referencing before, who was the lead investigator in the case.

02:13:33.420 They tried to pretend like he didn't exist.

02:13:35.400 And you can imagine the defense did not like that and they did not let that go quietly.

02:13:39.660 And they highlighted his name and said his name and besmirched his name as much as they possibly could.

02:13:44.400 And they didn't call him either.

02:13:45.700 So he was kind of like the boogeyman.

02:13:47.200 Why wouldn't they call the lead investigator?

02:13:48.980 You really want to side with them.

02:13:50.360 You can really trust this investigation.

02:13:51.700 They don't even trust their own guy.

02:13:53.240 It was not a good look.

02:13:54.400 That's not the way to do it.

02:13:55.660 No, one would think you'd call him.

02:13:57.200 You'd just front it all.

02:13:58.300 You'd have him do a full mea culpa. 0.99

02:13:59.980 I was a douchebag. 0.96

02:14:00.960 I've been fired. 0.99

02:14:02.000 So humiliated. 0.99

02:14:03.200 My wife, you know, she's forgiven me, but I just was acting like an ass. 0.97

02:14:07.460 But it doesn't mean I was corrupt. 0.89

02:14:09.060 I certainly wouldn't corrupt a murder investigation.

02:14:11.040 But like to not call him.

02:14:12.560 I mean, hindsight's 20, 20.

02:14:13.720 Obviously, I'm sitting here and this come from my studio, not like the prosecutor who actually had to get this done.

02:14:18.720 OK, so now let's talk about the civil suits, because this is pretty extraordinary.

02:14:23.920 It's not extraordinary to me that John O'Keefe's family is now filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Karen Reed.

02:14:32.380 That happens, you know, not infrequently.

02:14:35.540 It's like what Ron Goldman did to O.J. after he was acquitted.

02:14:38.780 You do have to testify as the defendant in this posture once you've already been acquitted and you get sued in civilly.

02:14:47.880 So like he is going to have to she is going to have to testify in this case.

02:14:50.720 But what's extraordinary is there's there's lawsuits going the other way against her by whom exactly.

02:15:02.060 So there are lawsuits against her and the bars by the O'Keefe family for wrongful death.

02:15:07.800 Like you said, that's normal, different burden, civil court versus criminal.

02:15:11.540 You can be found.

02:15:12.200 Sorry, I meant to say the opposite lawsuit by her against.

02:15:15.460 Yes.

02:15:15.700 So she has also filed a lawsuit against the aforementioned Michael Proctor, who is the lead investigator on the case.

02:15:21.780 Yuri Buchanek, who is another trooper who was Proctor's supervisor.

02:15:24.920 And then everybody's supervisor, Brian Tully, another law enforcement officer.

02:15:29.520 And then the five people in the house that she basically thinks are responsible for John O'Keefe's death.

02:15:34.360 Brian Albert, Nicole Albert, Jennifer McCabe, Matthew McCabe and Brian Higgins.

02:15:38.940 Higgins is who she had the affair with.

02:15:40.900 The Alberts are who owned the house.

02:15:42.780 McCabe is who searched house long to die in the cold.

02:15:45.120 So those are the people that she's suing for basically conspiring to pin this on her, violating her rights, civil conspiracy, trying to pin it on her and literally ruining her life.

02:15:57.600 That's crazy.

02:15:58.840 You never see that.

02:16:00.560 Never.

02:16:01.200 Because let's face it, nine times out of ten, more than that, the defendant actually is guilty, maybe got off on a technicality like O.J. or jury nullification in O.J.'s case.

02:16:12.040 And the last thing they want to do is go back into court with anybody.

02:16:15.880 You know, I was like, they know they kind of got away with it.

02:16:17.680 It's like, OK, I'm out of here.

02:16:19.320 But she is not in that posture.

02:16:22.000 She's like, let's go.

02:16:23.460 Now, she also appears to need money because I'll tell you, we invited her to come in this show and she wanted tens of thousands of dollars. 1.00

02:16:32.740 And we told her, goodbye, madam.

02:16:34.940 We're news people.

02:16:35.920 We don't pay for news, which does make me question how she wound up talking to Dateline and others because NBC is also not supposed to pay for news.

02:16:44.580 In any event, she clearly is hard up for cash. 0.98

02:16:47.400 So maybe it's just a money grab.

02:16:49.180 I don't know.

02:16:49.680 What do you make of it?

02:16:50.720 There was a lot there.

02:16:51.860 There was a lot there.

02:16:52.600 First, I disagree with some of your percentages, but we don't need to get into that.

02:16:55.760 How many of them are actually not guilty?

02:16:57.720 But I do agree with you that most of the time, once it's over, they want it to be done and they don't want to keep rehashing this.

02:17:03.020 Also, millions, millions of dollars in attorney's fees and costs.

02:17:08.600 She sold her house.

02:17:09.840 She's lost everything.

02:17:11.160 She was unhirable for all of these years.

02:17:12.840 So I'm sure she is in need of money, and I think she's entitled to get whatever money she deserves in the civil process. 1.00

02:17:19.260 It doesn't bother me one bit.

02:17:20.520 I don't know her personally.

02:17:21.660 I've never spoken to her.

02:17:23.400 So, you know, this is nothing like I know what kind of person she is or anything like that.

02:17:27.720 But if this is true, what she's alleging, then she does deserve to be compensated for it, in my opinion.

02:17:34.680 And I agree with you that she is standing on business basically at this point saying, I have the truth because she's been threatened and is going to be sued if it hasn't happened already for defamation, saying that she's defaming all these people, lying about them, creating this false narrative, which was one of the allegations in the O'Keefe complaint, in the wrongful death complaint.

02:17:52.800 They also sued her for intentional infliction of emotional distress, saying she created this false narrative and pushed it out there in the media, and that they were injured because of that, and she caused them damages.

02:18:03.940 So truth is an ultimate defense to defamation, and that's what she's standing on, that she has the truth.

02:18:09.440 She can prove it.

02:18:11.200 You know, she's got some gumption. 1.00

02:18:13.040 She's not afraid.

02:18:14.140 Her lawyers are not afraid.

02:18:15.300 They're sticking with her and pushing forward on this case.

02:18:18.180 And sometimes it's a money grab either way, right?

02:18:20.700 Like, when you have a criminal case that you lost as a victim, I know you're not technically a party, but, and you still go forward on a civil litigation, you can still get a settlement.

02:18:28.900 Often that's what would happen.

02:18:30.060 You wouldn't even go to trial.

02:18:31.320 And from her perspective, too, if she just needed money and she's going to file this lawsuit and just get some money out of it, fine. 1.00

02:18:37.440 It doesn't seem like that's what it is.

02:18:39.260 And if this ends in a settlement, I'm going to assume it was a huge amount of money.

02:18:42.620 So have those parties that she's now suing cross-filed against her for defamation yet?

02:18:52.100 Because right now, I thought the only lawsuit she was actively facing was John O'Keefe's family suing her for wrongful death.

02:18:59.680 But have those other parties that she's now messing with cross-filed against her for defamation yet?

02:19:03.800 They have come out and said publicly that they are going to file defamation cases, but the way it works in these civil courts is she files a complaint, they file their motions to dismiss first, and then if they can't dismiss her lawsuit, then they would file their answer and their counterclaims.

02:19:17.980 So that's coming in due time.

02:19:19.860 I would expect that it is going to come, though.

02:19:21.600 It's so interesting because the burden of proof is so much lower in civil court, as you point out, 51% more likely than not.

02:19:29.960 And now it's really on.

02:19:32.520 You know, in a way, we heard from the jurors, it was kind of easy for them because they were like, my God, they haven't come anywhere near this very high standard of beyond a reasonable doubt.

02:19:41.280 But the prosecution may have come near 51% more likely, 49% less likely that she did it, or the other way, could go the other way.

02:19:52.400 I don't know.

02:19:53.280 Like, how do you see this going?

02:19:54.580 What's really interesting is, you know, you mentioned what you would do if you were a proctor.

02:19:57.880 You put them on the stand, you just eat it, right?

02:20:00.020 They did that the first trial.

02:20:01.660 They also had a much more boring prosecutor, but just kind of a normal prosecutor who put everybody up there and was like, tell us what happened.

02:20:08.980 They repeated the same facts a million times.

02:20:11.400 And while reports from that jury room where they were all not guilty on second degree murder, there was a split.

02:20:16.900 And the majority thought that she was guilty of manslaughter or at least taking his life in some sort of way with the car in that first round of trial.

02:20:26.000 But it ended up being a split verdict and a home jury.

02:20:28.900 And everybody changed their way.

02:20:30.160 And I think the defense was much more successful round two.

02:20:33.500 I think they would have won regardless round two because they didn't try to prove the conspiracy within that criminal trial,

02:20:39.860 which can be very difficult.

02:20:41.160 It can kind of burden shift and confuse the jury.

02:20:43.660 But just like you're saying, there were some jurors that thought that she did hit him with her car throughout the first trial.

02:20:51.400 So there's obviously the possibility that that could be proven in a civil court.

02:20:57.500 But you would be amazed and appalled at the discovery that was not turned over in the first trial that was turned over before the second trial.

02:21:05.400 At the discovery they're going to be able to get in this civil litigation that they did not get their hands on in the criminal case.

02:21:10.680 I think there are going to be so many added factors and facts during the civil process that I'm not sure we know exactly what it's going to look like yet.

02:21:21.900 We mentioned a couple of these witnesses who were inside that house, the Alberts and the McCaves.

02:21:26.640 They spoke out after the not guilty verdict in June.

02:21:30.260 Let's take a listen to what they sounded like then.

02:21:32.540 Stop 56.

02:21:33.180 People turned this thing into a tailgate potty. 1.00

02:21:36.840 It looked like some days board games, cornhole, cookouts.

02:21:40.880 This is a guy that was murdered.

02:21:42.980 And it's atrocious for that family.

02:21:45.280 What they've done is they've dehumanized us to the sense where we're not real people.

02:21:50.720 We're almost like caricatures.

02:21:52.640 We're just we're pawns.

02:21:54.500 Have each of you been called murderers?

02:21:56.660 Like actual murderers?

02:21:57.540 Oh, yeah.

02:21:58.160 On a daily basis.

02:21:59.460 Anybody who's touched this case has been called a murderer at some point.

02:22:02.460 And anyone who's friends with us support cop killers.

02:22:07.880 The name Turtle Boy comes up a lot when you talk about what was happening outside the courthouse

02:22:15.100 and the generation of a groundswell of opposition to the people you just saw on camera there,

02:22:22.160 the people who are inside the house, including cops and their wives and so on.

02:22:26.180 Who's Turtle Boy?

02:22:28.400 So first, just to comment on what they're saying,

02:22:30.600 I think it's horrible that people's lives get ruined and people get accused of things

02:22:33.800 like this with very little evidence and, you know, go after their kids and their livelihoods

02:22:38.120 and things like that.

02:22:39.240 I also think that there are some fair criticisms like the Alberts who lived in the house never

02:22:44.160 came outside the entire morning when there were all these EMS people and witnesses and

02:22:47.940 everything outside and their friend is dead on their front lawn.

02:22:50.940 They never come outside to try to help.

02:22:52.740 Why?

02:22:52.840 They both have emergency or I know he has emergency training, was former law enforcement.

02:22:56.480 That stuff is really strange to me and hard for me to get over and the way they spoke

02:23:00.020 about John O'Keefe, somebody that was supposed to be their friend.

02:23:02.480 There's just so much strange stuff going on.

02:23:04.900 Turtle Boy is a journalist who looked into this case, found witnesses nobody knew about,

02:23:12.680 like a tow truck or a plow driver that potentially had evidence that could help Karen Reed, that

02:23:18.300 held everybody's feet to the fire, that was very loud with a megaphone about it, that had

02:23:22.460 his specific crass way of doing things and, you know, he's almost like a caricature where

02:23:28.460 he says the most hyperbolic thing he possibly can.

02:23:31.000 He calls everybody every name in the book.

02:23:32.680 He uses language that, you know, would make sailors probably turn red and he does it a

02:23:37.880 certain way and a lot of people don't like it and he has caught some witness intimidation

02:23:43.200 charges because the statute is really kind of weird there in Massachusetts with that.

02:23:48.120 But he has uncovered so much evidence that people did not know about and people know

02:23:54.360 about Karen Reed's case and exponentially more because of Turtle Boy.

02:23:59.700 So it's kind of like a love him or hate him.

02:24:02.180 He is who he is type of scenario for him.

02:24:05.940 What you're saying is, God forbid I ever get accused of a crime.

02:24:09.520 I want Turtle Boy on my side.

02:24:11.500 I would say he's a pretty good ally to have until he's not.

02:24:13.620 OK, and he was at both trials.

02:24:18.200 Yeah, I think he's been at everything, you know, and his whole case people are now following

02:24:22.060 as well.

02:24:22.440 His criminal charges that are going on.

02:24:24.040 I've actually gotten to know his lawyer, one of his lawyers a little bit, Mark Bedrow,

02:24:27.780 who's an amazing lawyer, awesome guy.

02:24:29.620 I've talked about this Karen Reed case a lot with him.

02:24:31.880 So I know he's got great representation and they've already won.

02:24:34.780 A couple of the criminal cases have been dropped because the DA and the law enforcement

02:24:38.780 there just can't get out of their own way.

02:24:40.100 They have all these prosecutors that that are conflicted off cases.

02:24:43.600 Nobody could end up prosecuting one of Turtle Boy's cases.

02:24:45.900 So they just had to drop it.

02:24:47.120 So it's a whole other separate saga himself.

02:24:50.800 So if you're teaching this class in a law school, Peter, what would you say this case

02:24:55.520 is about?

02:24:57.140 Oh, how not to investigate and prosecute a case.

02:25:01.060 I think I could do a lot of sessions on the appropriate way, what ethics look like.

02:25:05.600 Even if you think somebody is guilty, if you can't put the lead investigator on and you

02:25:09.760 can't put out your evidence on because you don't trust it yourself, maybe you shouldn't

02:25:12.900 be prosecuting this case and not staking your career and risking it all on one case and

02:25:18.400 realizing mistakes will be made in life and we just have to let the chips fall where they

02:25:21.820 may.

02:25:22.600 As a criminal defense attorney, you learn to fight, to dig, even if the judge sometimes

02:25:27.880 can be very difficult, even when it seems like everything is stacked against you.

02:25:31.480 Uh, it's also a lesson in PR, like the way the defense attorneys have done their interviews

02:25:36.660 and set up Karen Reed to do interviews in ways that I disagree with.

02:25:39.520 I would never have had Karen Reed do any interviews.

02:25:41.720 Um, they have, they said they welcomed them being played at trial.

02:25:44.900 So it could be some lessons on that, some great lessons on cross-examination, some great

02:25:49.340 lessons on civil litigation, how to try to get, uh, federal documents where you request

02:25:54.240 them from the federal government and then try to show them as unbiased third party, bringing

02:25:58.480 experts into the case, investigating an investigation.

02:26:01.600 Um, so many interesting nuances to this case that law students could learn from, but you

02:26:07.160 don't always want to learn from the exception, right?

02:26:10.860 Well, you know, the, what you said about the star witness reminded me of something when I

02:26:14.480 was a young lawyer, I tried a civil case in upstate New York and we were so clearly in

02:26:19.700 the right on this civil case.

02:26:20.740 It was just so obvious that, um, our guy was telling the truth and the other party wasn't

02:26:26.220 because we knew, we knew our star witness very, very well.

02:26:29.840 And we knew his entire employment history and all this stuff.

02:26:32.620 But the judge, the judge has always tried to push a settlement in a civil case and in a

02:26:36.960 criminal case too.

02:26:37.560 They try to push you to take a plea if you, if you're at all open-minded so they don't

02:26:40.340 have to try it to verdict.

02:26:41.260 It's much better resolution, uh, where it's agreed to.

02:26:44.440 And, um, he was looking at the other side, pointing out like all the evidence that they

02:26:49.080 were in the wrong.

02:26:49.880 And then I said, what's he going to say when he looks at us?

02:26:51.640 Cause we're, we're in the catbird seat here.

02:26:53.200 And he said, how do you like your lead witness?

02:26:56.680 And the judge was exactly right.

02:26:59.200 Because even though the facts were totally on our side, our star witness was not likable

02:27:04.780 and the judge knew it.

02:27:07.720 And we stuck by him.

02:27:10.240 Of course we were like, Oh, he's good.

02:27:11.280 He's fine.

02:27:12.300 He wasn't.

02:27:13.520 The jury didn't like him and they found against us.

02:27:17.480 We got it reversed on appeal, but he wasn't wrong. 0.99

02:27:20.900 Like having a bad chief witness can make or break your case.

02:27:26.140 And in this case, the prosecution had, it sounds like a terrible chief witness, whether

02:27:30.880 it was just juvenile talk on those texts or not.

02:27:34.220 The reason he got fired is because he cost them this investigation.

02:27:39.620 Yeah.

02:27:39.860 And it wasn't just the text message.

02:27:41.520 There's just so much more than that.

02:27:42.820 But you know, the number one thing is probably the, the roles of each job of a lawyer, because

02:27:47.980 you just described the civil situation and as a criminal defense lawyer, the way you want

02:27:52.420 to look at it and what your duty is and how you try a case, how you handle a case, all

02:27:56.580 of those roles are incredibly different than a prosecutor who is only there to find truth

02:28:02.060 and justice.

02:28:02.640 And sometimes that's making hard decisions and letting people you think might be guilty

02:28:06.960 go and not prosecuting those cases because you have all the leverage, all the power to

02:28:11.240 ruin people's lives.

02:28:12.260 There's very little repercussion when you lose.

02:28:14.360 And that's a very big responsibility and power that you have as a prosecutor that makes that

02:28:19.500 job very different than a criminal defense lawyer or any type of civil lawyer.

02:28:23.620 And that to me was where this case could have been handled more appropriately.

02:28:29.940 It's crazy to me that there was no ring camera on anybody's door, you know, like everything's

02:28:35.260 on cam these days.

02:28:36.500 Yeah.

02:28:36.720 I mean, there was some talk that there was a ring camera and then there wasn't, and maybe

02:28:39.980 somebody accessed the ring camera and maybe they didn't.

02:28:42.640 And somebody across the street had a ring camera.

02:28:44.420 Or even on your car.

02:28:45.700 Doesn't your car have one of those things?

02:28:46.960 Like there's a camera on my car now that shows me what's happening behind me.

02:28:50.000 Yep.

02:28:50.480 Yeah, absolutely.

02:28:51.140 There's, there's cameras all over the place, but somehow during that period of time, there

02:28:55.400 was no camera on any house in that neighborhood that could have caught it or even back at John

02:29:00.460 O'Keefe's house.

02:29:01.780 There was some ring, ring camera, but not that could show anything that we needed to show to

02:29:06.420 prove the accident.

02:29:07.160 This case is a mystery.

02:29:11.260 I'd love to know the truth.

02:29:13.180 You know, I was like, usually I hear these stories and I'm like, I have a pretty good

02:29:15.960 idea what happened.

02:29:17.080 This one, I, I remain uncertain.

02:29:19.340 Um, really don't know.

02:29:20.580 And I mean, I don't think I haven't been persuaded by anything.

02:29:23.360 I've heard that she intentionally killed him.

02:29:25.000 I am open-minded to the theory that in her anger, she backed up too quickly and ran him

02:29:31.320 over and either didn't realize it or did and didn't care.

02:29:35.160 But yeah, I haven't heard anything that would lead me to believe she, she's an intentional

02:29:38.420 murderer who would just take out her, her anger by killing somebody.

02:29:41.300 That was just a mistake for, for them to even go for that was such a mistake.

02:29:43.940 They were never going to be able to prove anything like that.

02:29:45.700 And I'll tell you the number one thing.

02:29:47.260 And again, it's probably based on my experience, what I do so much of seeing injuries in these

02:29:51.200 pedestrian accidents, it is just so far from anything I think is remotely scientifically

02:29:56.380 or physically possible for that Lexus to just break on the taillight, not have any other

02:30:01.080 dents and damages on it.

02:30:02.420 And then the injuries that corresponded John O'Keefe and we didn't even get into the bite

02:30:06.760 marks versus scratch marks or any of that, but the injuries just an animal may have attacked.

02:30:11.400 Yeah.

02:30:11.780 They just, they just don't line up to me, the injuries for it to be a car accident, the way

02:30:16.040 that the prosecution described.

02:30:17.060 And that's so hard for me to get over.

02:30:20.200 Wow.

02:30:20.560 All right.

02:30:21.320 Thank you so much, Peter Drago.

02:30:22.520 So good to see you again.

02:30:23.600 This has been the most clear, easy to understand explanation of a very complex case I think

02:30:30.340 I've ever heard.

02:30:31.340 It makes me miss you all the more.

02:30:32.740 Thanks for being back with us.

02:30:34.240 Thanks for having me.

02:30:39.280 The Zodiac was a serial killer who terrorized the Bay Area in California in the late 1960s.

02:30:45.960 He committed a series of murders across California in acts of pure violence.

02:30:50.400 He taunted the press and the authorities, calling by payphone on more than one occasion to take

02:30:56.120 responsibility for the murders.

02:30:57.660 He sent letters to major newspapers detailing the killings and mocking the police.

02:31:02.780 Some of those letters included ciphers, which he demanded be printed on the front pages of the papers.

02:31:10.560 In a chilling 1969 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, the killer stated,

02:31:15.000 school children make nice targets.

02:31:17.920 Think about that. 0.50

02:31:19.040 Sick, sick, causing increased safety concerns across the region.

02:31:24.300 This went on for years as he claimed more and more victims.

02:31:27.820 Now, there are five confirmed Zodiac killings, but the real number is believed to be much higher.

02:31:35.440 And after years of investigating, our case here remains technically unsolved.

02:31:41.040 But our guest today, Tom Colbert, is an investigative journalist and author and founder of a group called

02:31:47.980 The Case Breakers that deals in cold cases.

02:31:50.740 And his team of highly trained experts has spent years investigating the Zodiac.

02:31:57.200 They think they know who it is.

02:31:59.740 Before we get to Tom, I want to tell you that you're going to hear during this show

02:32:03.240 who Tom and his team believe the Zodiac killer was.

02:32:07.600 We're going to discuss his theory at length, and he is convincing.

02:32:10.740 But I also want to point out to you that we do not know who the Zodiac killer was.

02:32:15.920 And there are so many theories on this.

02:32:17.740 I could have put on a different expert with a different theory today.

02:32:21.140 In fact, on my NBC show back in February 2018, I had two guests on who were convinced they knew

02:32:26.140 who the Zodiac killer was.

02:32:27.980 Listen to that.

02:32:28.960 So there's a question about how extensive his murder spree was.

02:32:35.200 The Zodiac killings.

02:32:36.520 The truth is it may be up to 20 plus, 30 plus people who were killed by the Zodiac killer.

02:32:42.540 Well, he claimed 34 in a letter in 1974.

02:32:45.540 He the Zodiac killer?

02:32:46.660 Yes.

02:32:46.960 Whoever that may be.

02:32:48.420 Right.

02:32:48.740 From the time he started killing in 1945 until the time he got caught in 2009, it was unbelievable

02:32:56.120 how many he killed.

02:32:57.040 Just in the eight-month period, he was with Wayne's grandma.

02:33:00.740 He killed eight, and two of them in my hometown on a lover's lane.

02:33:05.340 And so that was the start.

02:33:06.320 Well, you're conflating Ed Edwards plus the Zodiac killer.

02:33:09.540 And I know you believe Ed Edwards was the Zodiac killer, right?

02:33:12.980 Yes.

02:33:13.240 What is your best evidence that Ed Edwards was the Zodiac killer?

02:33:17.460 There were two cryptograms sent in by the Zodiac killer, one in 69 and one in 70.

02:33:22.240 They were like puzzles.

02:33:23.020 And he basically said, if you solve these puzzles, you'll have my name.

02:33:26.860 And in 2010, when we confronted Ed Edwards about being a Zodiac killer after we solved the 13-character cipher, Edward Edwards' name is 13 characters.

02:33:37.180 And what he had done is taken the letters in his name and reversed-imaged the letters as hieroglyphics.

02:33:44.340 So you could never solve the Zodiac case without knowing the name Edward Edwards.

02:33:48.760 And once we did, we confronted him.

02:33:51.060 He sent us a letter saying, it's me.

02:33:53.360 You don't know the whole story.

02:33:54.880 I have a lot to tell you.

02:33:57.740 And that he framed people his whole life.

02:34:00.260 Later in the interview with Tom, I ask him about this guy, Ed Edwards, and that theory.

02:34:04.800 You'll hear what he has to say.

02:34:06.200 And then at the end of today's show, we're going to bring you a sound bite from a longtime cold case investigator who we really know and trust.

02:34:14.540 And he, too, has looked into the Zodiac case and has a word of caution for everyone.

02:34:20.380 So you will make up your own minds.

02:34:23.080 But I think you're going to enjoy the exchange.

02:34:25.260 Now, my interview with Tom Colbert.

02:34:27.860 Welcome to the show, Tom.

02:34:29.820 Thanks so much for the invitation, Megan.

02:34:32.840 Of course.

02:34:33.500 All right.

02:34:33.720 So let's go back.

02:34:35.640 As near as I can tell from what I've read,

02:34:38.220 that the murders that we know the Zodiac was responsible for took place, began in the night, the late 1960s and then went on to like the early 1970s.

02:34:51.340 Five that we had to like how do we know that those are his?

02:34:55.680 It was defined by the San Francisco and Vallejo police departments who were in charge of all these murder cases strictly around the San Francisco Bay Area.

02:35:06.560 But I will tell you, and I may be jumping the gun, but our team is really believes it's now closer to 10 victims around the country from San Diego to Lake Tahoe.

02:35:18.840 During what time frame?

02:35:21.520 Time frame starts from 62.

02:35:24.560 A couple killed on the beach and all the way up to 1970 in Lake Tahoe.

02:35:32.200 And that victim is still missing.

02:35:34.360 We have a very good idea where she is.

02:35:37.440 What do you mean?

02:35:39.200 She is the only one never found.

02:35:41.960 And through, as you mentioned, the letters and the codes, we have an incredible source that brought this case to us a couple of years ago.

02:35:51.400 And he deciphered the codes, according to our team.

02:35:56.160 And that led us to a burial spot.

02:36:00.200 And?

02:36:00.760 That's TBA.

02:36:04.580 Okay.

02:36:05.340 You're working on something that you want to keep confidential?

02:36:08.640 Well, we not only are planning to go there, we have several other places to go.

02:36:15.240 We know also where we believe he buried his murder weapons at 6,500 feet in the High Sierra.

02:36:22.960 That will be another trip.

02:36:24.320 So, you think you know who it is.

02:36:27.860 And are you prepared to say that?

02:36:30.680 Gary Francis Post.

02:36:33.120 And we have mounds of evidence now after two years.

02:36:36.880 And again, it's because of this, you know, 1,500 years of skill sets with our 40-member team.

02:36:42.460 These are all volunteers.

02:36:43.680 We've gathered them from around the country in every part of forensics you need, from ballistics to DNA.

02:36:51.440 We have six universities and labs working with us, pro bono, to solve this.

02:36:58.020 Not for our egos, not for fame and fortune, for the 20 siblings of the dead.

02:37:04.500 All right.

02:37:06.300 Let's get to Gary in a minute.

02:37:07.700 We'll postpone that for one second.

02:37:10.100 Because we want to set up the crimes so people can have a feeling for what we're talking about.

02:37:15.860 So, you say the earliest one, I think you said 62.

02:37:19.340 I thought that the earliest confirmed one, according to police, was 68.

02:37:24.840 This was the attack on David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen.

02:37:28.540 Is that not correct?

02:37:29.520 Well, according to our team, and they've not been wrong in 10 years on this quest on cases,

02:37:38.180 they feel there are matching MOs and profiles of murders in other parts of the states.

02:37:49.480 The other part of the states have other bullets that match the caliber of the Zodiac in San Francisco Bay.

02:37:59.520 Okay.

02:38:00.340 And so, the one in 1962 was of whom?

02:38:03.020 That murder that you're talking about earlier?

02:38:05.340 That was a Navy couple on the beach of San Diego, walking on the beach.

02:38:09.840 A sniper shot them both, and then he up close.

02:38:15.420 Yes.

02:38:15.940 Okay.

02:38:16.240 That was actually very disturbing.

02:38:18.060 It's like people seem to have been minding their own business.

02:38:21.740 This is Johnny Swindle and Joyce Swindle, killed by snipers.

02:38:25.820 They walked along the San Diego beach.

02:38:27.120 Okay.

02:38:27.500 And that murder was committed with a .22.

02:38:30.440 She died almost instantly, and he died later that night.

02:38:34.260 The police believe the two were victims of a, quote, thrill killer, but that's as much

02:38:39.680 as I guess they would say.

02:38:41.680 So, that was February 7th, 1964.

02:38:45.980 And other than the fact that the bullets were the same, it was from a .22, as murders we know

02:38:52.420 he committed, the Zodiac.

02:38:54.160 What's the evidence tying him to that crime?

02:38:57.980 Same caliber, same MO, and similar to a Santa Barbara murder in 63.

02:39:07.900 There was also a cabbie killed in 62 in Oceanside Police Department.

02:39:14.200 All of these are the MO of what happened in San Francisco.

02:39:19.160 Again, we have ballistics experts that are about to compare the ballistics we have from

02:39:26.740 our alleged Zodiac.

02:39:28.520 We collected over 1,000 bullets with 24 calibers from neighbors in as high Sierra town.

02:39:35.240 And we have them.

02:39:37.680 There is a new technology that allows us to literally dunk a bullet into a liquid and off

02:39:45.960 falls the DNA.

02:39:47.460 And that is something we're going to be doing with these various calibers.

02:39:51.920 And again, particularly 9mm and .22s.

02:39:55.600 He had all sorts of guns after World War II, collected Polish guns, French guns, and so forth.

02:40:00.900 But the departments we are working with are saying 9mm and .22s are the key calibers they're

02:40:10.400 looking for.

02:40:11.560 And we're planning to meet with one of the departments with those calibers.

02:40:15.840 I mean, it's very common.

02:40:17.320 So it's not like a rare caliber gun.

02:40:20.440 And of course, just because a similar gun was used doesn't mean it's the same person.

02:40:24.660 But let's just go back.

02:40:25.640 So the first confirmed killings are David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen, December 20th,

02:40:30.160 1968, that we know from authorities were the Zodiac.

02:40:34.500 And the thing that grabs anybody when they're looking at the Zodiac killings is how heartless

02:40:42.040 they are.

02:40:42.800 I mean, there's no murder that is kind and loving.

02:40:46.520 But just there's no reason.

02:40:48.660 There's no robbery.

02:40:49.860 There's no beef.

02:40:50.840 There's no, you know, you look for some sort of sense, even though you can't make sense

02:40:56.480 of murder, because I think it makes us feel better.

02:40:59.020 It makes us feel like it won't happen to us.

02:41:01.000 But these felt so random and merciless, absolutely merciless.

02:41:06.600 So tell us what happened with David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen.

02:41:11.540 Tell me where the city is on that one.

02:41:14.020 That was, let's see, he approached their park station wagon at Lake Herman Road in Benicia,

02:41:23.080 Benicia, California?

02:41:24.400 Yeah.

02:41:25.100 Yeah.

02:41:25.700 Yeah.

02:41:26.100 That was an ambush in a lover's lane spot.

02:41:31.360 He went after lover's lanes couples twice.

02:41:35.420 And nine millimeter and 22s were involved in those cases.

02:41:40.720 And were they ever able to say why?

02:41:45.720 Because this case, like the others, no indication of a robbery, no indication of a sexual assault.

02:41:52.440 It appears that they were, that shots were fired into the vehicle to force them out.

02:41:59.140 Betty Lou exited the front passenger door first, followed by David Faraday.

02:42:04.160 He was 17.

02:42:05.800 She was 16.

02:42:06.940 He shot David once in the head at point blank range.

02:42:11.680 Betty Lou was shot five times in the back as she fled and she was killed instantly.

02:42:15.760 It was Betty Lou Jensen's first date, age 16.

02:42:19.540 No one understood why, like, what would you do?

02:42:23.120 And then six, why would you do it?

02:42:24.820 And then six to seven months later, there was another attack on another couple, Darlene Faraday

02:42:29.940 and Mike Mago.

02:42:32.720 He lived, this is in Vallejo.

02:42:34.720 He lived to tell about it.

02:42:35.820 And that was important.

02:42:38.640 Yes.

02:42:39.400 And there are two men that lived, young men that lived.

02:42:43.000 All the rest died.

02:42:44.500 And multi shots into cars, into people, stabbings.

02:42:51.100 The common thread of this is the why, Megan.

02:42:55.880 And it's, it's the why and being the son of a shrink.

02:42:59.660 I've heard these cases over the years through my father, from D.B.

02:43:04.580 Cooper, all the way up to Zodiac and Hoffa and Atlanta.

02:43:10.460 It's something my dad and I talked about when he was alive.

02:43:13.940 And he talked about, you know, the, the psychopath, the psychopath that, that would come into a

02:43:21.620 community and make no sense to anyone.

02:43:24.080 No robbery, no jealousy, no love triangle.

02:43:27.280 Uh, that is what we believe our suspect fits the profile.

02:43:33.060 Uh, and that's why we're so strongly in the belief that we're on the right man.

02:43:38.620 Hmm.

02:43:39.740 So if you look as an investigator, you've got to see what the similarities are.

02:43:44.660 Like, what is his MO?

02:43:45.840 What, how do we know it's Zodiac?

02:43:47.460 And, and this will become relevant when you try to extrapolate to these other cases that

02:43:52.120 you and your team are trying to figure out where, whether they were Zodiac cases or not.

02:43:56.420 The attack on Darlene Farron and Mike Magot, July 5, 1969.

02:44:01.900 Um, Darlene was 22. 1.00

02:44:03.680 Um, Mike was 19 again, parked at an isolated location in Vallejo.

02:44:12.060 They were talking a car, possibly a light Brown Ford Mustang or a Chevrolet Corvair pulled

02:44:18.760 into the lot a few feet away.

02:44:21.120 Now I'm imagining this is six or seven months after the other murder, but it's, it's as far

02:44:26.880 as we know, the only, the second like publicized murder, you know, of this type.

02:44:32.100 So they didn't necessarily know that somebody is running around killing young people who

02:44:36.300 park, you know, and talk or make out or whatever they were doing.

02:44:40.560 A man with a flashlight exited the vehicle, approached the couple, no other cars in the

02:44:45.060 parking lot.

02:44:45.640 They thought it was a cop, had their ID ready.

02:44:48.160 And just as in the other murder, we just discussed, the man began firing at them.

02:44:52.200 Five shots at the man. 0.82

02:44:54.440 Um, after five shots, the man walked slowly back to his car.

02:44:57.460 Mike screamed out in pain and the guy returned firing two more shots at each victim.

02:45:03.440 Mike was able to see the Zodiac.

02:45:07.260 And as far as I know, he's the only one who ever gave like a detailed description of him.

02:45:11.320 He said he was white, five, eight to five, nine in his late twenties to thirties.

02:45:16.360 Again, this would have been 1969.

02:45:17.740 So, uh, you know, subtract 30 years from 1969, he's born around, around 1940, um, stocky

02:45:26.500 build, round face, brown hair, no conversation.

02:45:30.760 Again, it's so disturbing.

02:45:32.400 He, there was no ask.

02:45:33.560 There was no attempt to negotiate. 0.98

02:45:35.720 There was no, it was just murder for the sake of murder, which really is a true psychopath.

02:45:42.140 Somebody once described the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath is neither one has

02:45:46.460 any empathy or feeling for the killing at all, but the psychopath actually enjoys it, like looks

02:45:52.120 forward to it.

02:45:53.920 Not only the psychological aspect of, uh, this is interesting to us, but obviously the evidence

02:46:01.460 and the, and the, the greatest spot for evidence was Riverside police department.

02:46:07.800 Riverside police department found, uh, military style boots, size 10, uh, that matches three.

02:46:16.460 Of the Zodiac other locations, size 10 military boots, uh, all sorts of other things, uh, in,

02:46:24.660 in Riverside, uh, the, the most intriguing one is a piece of evidence that the, uh, FBI,

02:46:32.220 which did the lab work and Riverside technically owns it for a potential case are four hairs found

02:46:40.320 in the hand of a college coed in Riverside, uh, and literally took it off his head. 0.67

02:46:47.140 This was 1966, way before DNA, but God bless the lab work and the coroners in Riverside County.

02:46:58.320 Uh, they kept those in a fridge until DNA came around that DNA, the hairs has cleared several

02:47:06.980 local boys in that town.

02:47:08.760 Uh, but for some strange reason, the department will not consider people that are not locals.

02:47:17.460 Uh, the only person, uh, in law enforcement, there've been nine police chiefs in Riverside.

02:47:23.620 The first one at the murder scene, uh, in, uh, with the coed, uh, what happened there was that.

02:47:33.920 Wait, just, um, can I, can I just reset? Cause I'm getting a little lost.

02:47:39.100 Riverside is not one that we've talked about yet, but you're saying that they had a boot

02:47:43.220 print size 10 that matched boot prints found at ones. We know the Zodiac did.

02:47:48.940 That's correct. Same size.

02:47:51.120 Okay. So it hasn't, if Riverside didn't actually get pinned on the Zodiac, but you're looking at it

02:47:55.640 and you think that we should test these hairs because given the boot print and the way it was

02:47:59.820 committed, it's worth seeing what the connection is. And if we can get a DNA match so much,

02:48:03.820 the better, but what happened in Riverside? What was the crime?

02:48:06.460 Well, you should also know though, that the FBI in 1975 declared the Riverside case as a Zodiac case.

02:48:15.160 For some reason, they pulled it off of that many years ago, uh, in about 2000, but he, uh, that was a

02:48:23.360 Zodiac case on an FBI memo. And I sent that to you. So that would interest your audience.

02:48:30.040 So what happened in Riverside?

02:48:31.800 This is a, uh, very, uh, junior college. Uh, a victim was at a library. She came out,

02:48:42.440 uh, her VW bug, uh, starter was unconnected. Uh, it just happened to be somebody watching her

02:48:50.940 in the library came out to help her said, I'll drive you home. And, uh, what proceeded was

02:48:57.320 one of the most horrific knife attacks attacks in the case. Uh, it was close to 40 stab wounds as the,

02:49:04.980 the police chief at the time said, uh, she was almost decapitated. Uh, this is the Zodiac because

02:49:13.160 of footprints. We know that the Zodiac, uh, our suspect, uh, was a painter. They found paint spots

02:49:22.040 on the watch that fell off of the attacker. Uh, he was also at March air force base, 15 minutes away

02:49:32.340 for regular medical checkups. So we have about a half dozen, uh, pieces of information that absolutely

02:49:43.040 have convinced, convinced our team that she definitely needs to be on the list.

02:49:48.300 And when you say he was at an air force, you're talking about Gary post. He was at an air force

02:49:51.540 nearby. Okay. Yeah. He was at several bases. He left in 63, but he continued with veteran care.

02:49:58.260 And he could be placed near the spot of this murder. This woman's name was Sherry Jo Bates,

02:50:04.100 October 30, 1966. She was 18. She visited the river city college library. And we know that her car,

02:50:12.180 her Volkswagen Beetle was disabled because somebody, whoever the killer was, we feel wrote a letter

02:50:18.540 explaining exactly what they did to her. I'm not going to read it because it's too disturbing,

02:50:22.640 but he said that he disabled her car, that, um, that she, he came upon her and, um, that they found

02:50:31.900 this time X watch in a military style heel print on site about size eight to 10, again, 10. And then

02:50:38.540 the watch was traced to a military post. Um, and the shoes could have been sold at, as at nearby March

02:50:44.560 air force base. Now the, the, the, the letter that was sent after this woman's murder was not signed.

02:50:52.060 It was not signed. So Zodiac did wind up, he started to send letters and that's why we know

02:50:57.620 to call him Zodiac. That's what he called himself. This one wasn't signed Zodiac, but it definitely

02:51:02.540 claims ownership of this murder and says, um, he's talking about how there was only one thing on his

02:51:09.880 mind when he killed her, making her pay for all the brush offs that she had given me during the years 1.00

02:51:15.740 prior. Now that's interesting to me because that seems like there's a motive behind this one versus

02:51:21.320 the others. Uh, you're absolutely correct. And that is the line I was about to talk to you about

02:51:27.740 that seems like a red herring line and the police departments, uh, after the current, uh, the police

02:51:36.700 departments, especially the chief of the murder date, uh, said, this is intriguing, but it, uh, it doesn't

02:51:46.020 mean it's a local guy, but all the other detectives disagreed. And there've been eight police chiefs

02:51:52.140 since that say, we're only going to go after local guys. You want to believe that in this day and age

02:51:57.720 traveling serial killers, they won't even look at, uh, that is the line that you just read that convinced

02:52:06.000 us that this was a red herring and could possibly be from the Zodiac. Here is something else you should

02:52:12.020 know. There is one word that's re there are three words that are repeated. I shall twitch and squirm.

02:52:21.160 Those are found in Zodiac letters in San Francisco, but here's what's key. Twitch is spelled T W I C H

02:52:29.320 in Riverside and the letters in San Francisco. Very intriguing.

02:52:34.440 Wait. Oh, in all you're saying it's misspelled in all three of those.

02:52:41.320 Correct. Oh, that's fascinating because your belief is that the Zodiac liked, he, he wanted credit sort

02:52:48.980 of, but he also would throw out misdirections. It's like, it feels like he wanted to get caught,

02:52:56.380 but he didn't want to get caught.

02:52:57.760 The letter was mailed from the town too, to make it in our view, extra, uh, clear that he

02:53:07.800 was a local boy. So you have them describing, she blew me off paraphrasing and mailing it from town.

02:53:16.660 Uh, what a great way to get them off the trail. And as I said, the chief at that time in 1968,

02:53:24.320 when the murders were identified as Zodiac in Vallejo and in San Francisco and so forth,

02:53:30.580 he contacted the whole task force and said, I have the same MO. I have the same details.

02:53:37.900 I have a size 10. I have this and that. So do you. I think it's the right guy.

02:53:44.080 No one agreed with him after that. It was always a local boy.

02:53:47.680 Hmm. How far away is Riverside from Vallejo? And, um, uh, the first location that we discussed,

02:53:55.500 I can't remember what town it was in those days, probably about three and a half, four hours.

02:54:01.720 Okay. So it's doable. I mean, why would they, that's an easy connection to draw. It's not like

02:54:07.320 they were, they were all in California so far.

02:54:09.540 And don't forget that the Vallejo, I'm sorry. Let me say it again. Don't forget that the, uh,

02:54:16.480 the air force base he was going to was just 15 minutes away from the murder site.

02:54:21.860 And he was there for several days for treatment.

02:54:24.900 Again, you're talking about your suspect, Gary post, but we, we don't know that this is the,

02:54:29.240 the actual killer. Now, actually I should ask you that separately,

02:54:32.260 whether he was Zodiac or not, do we know that Gary post killed anybody?

02:54:36.540 Gary post was in the air force, uh, radar systems, part of the early warning system in

02:54:43.760 Indiana. Uh, we know that, uh, he, he is not connected to any murders. He was in meticulous

02:54:51.980 and careful. Uh, and that's how he wound up in the middle of this because we found all the

02:54:58.520 evidence that connected him. Okay. We'll go there again in a second. Just wanted to see if we knew

02:55:03.680 we were dealing with an identified killer in under the heading of Gary post or not. And the answer

02:55:08.600 is no, but we'll get to why he's your, he's your favorite suspect, why Tom and his team believe he

02:55:14.380 did it. So we talked about the first two confirmed Zodiac and they look very similar to one another

02:55:19.800 with the, with the couples in the cars. And, um, then there was another one about two, three months

02:55:26.960 after that second one of Darlene and Mike Mago. Um, there was a, there was an attack on Cecilia

02:55:34.840 Shepard and Brian Hartnell, September 27th, 1969. And similar to the fact that Mike Mago survived that

02:55:43.120 earlier attack and gave that detailed description, uh, Brian Hartnell, the man survived this one.

02:55:49.040 Um, so what happened was they were relaxing on a blanket at a remote location by a lake in Napa.

02:55:56.360 The, um, Cecilia Shepard noticed a man approaching them wearing a costume, a black hooded costume with

02:56:02.600 a white cross circle stitched onto the front. That's interesting. Cause it's kind of like the

02:56:06.340 Zodiac sign, uh, and holding a gun described as a heavy build, no more than six feet tall. That would

02:56:13.000 match up loosely with what Mike Mago described. The man claimed he was a prison escapee from either

02:56:20.520 Montana or Colorado and needed money and a car to flee to Mexico. Uh, the, the man, Brian Hartnell

02:56:27.080 offered him his wallet and car keys, which of course they realized they were in trouble here.

02:56:32.260 And the, and the man did not take the wallet or the car keys after several minutes of conversation.

02:56:37.260 Uh, the man tied up the couple with plastic clothesline, a plastic clothesline and began

02:56:43.860 stabbing them, then casually walked away. And again, amazingly, Brian Hartnell survived. So here

02:56:52.020 again, you tell me, Tom, as the investigator, they're not in a car, they're in Napa. There's

02:56:58.460 conversation this time, all different things from the previous two. And of course, very different in

02:57:04.960 that they were tied up. And this was a stabbing, not a shooting. Is that unusual? Is that, you know,

02:57:11.380 for us, for a serial killer to change up his MO that much? Well, again, because of all the calibers he

02:57:18.740 had, uh, he, he was extremely brilliant. He would know to switch calibers, switch knives, switch locations.

02:57:26.840 Uh, the hammer hits on bullets. He would switch out the actual hammers so that they couldn't be

02:57:33.480 tracked from another investigation. Uh, this man, uh, you mentioned too, he is the same height,

02:57:41.700 weight of the Zodiac described in other locations. It is the only daytime attack of the Zodiac

02:57:50.280 suspected, uh, murders.

02:57:52.580 Now this murder and the one that preceded it have something else in common. And that's that he

02:58:03.420 appears to have called authorities on a payphone after he did it. Right. Jumping back to the, to the

02:58:09.280 murder of Darlene Farron and the attack on Mike Magot, um, at 1240 AM, there was a call to the police

02:58:17.700 police and it was to the Vallejo police department. The man said, I would like to report a double 0.96

02:58:24.500 murder. He didn't know that Mike Magot had survived. If you will go one mile East on Columbus

02:58:29.680 Parkway to the public park, you will find the kids in a Brown car. They were shot with a nine 0.60

02:58:34.900 millimeter, nine millimeter Luger. I also killed those kids last year. Goodbye. An apparent reference 0.99

02:58:42.180 to David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Then after the Cecilia Shepard and Brian Hartnell attack

02:58:47.500 in Napa, similar. And call to Napa County Sheriff's office at 7 40 PM. I want to report a murder.

02:58:56.640 No, a double murder. They are two miles North of park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen

02:59:01.940 Carmen Ghia. I'm the one who did it. What's that? What, what do we glean from these confessions,

02:59:09.780 which everyone seems to agree was Zodiac? Well, I'll give you another example too,

02:59:16.460 because it matches. Oceanside PD, first cab driver killed. And before he killed him,

02:59:23.680 he called the police department said, I'm going to, this is paraphrasing. I'm going to commit a crime

02:59:29.100 that you're never going to be able to figure out. And sure enough, after shooting him in the back of 0.99

02:59:34.840 the head, just like the San Francisco cab shot back in the head, he calls a few days later from that

02:59:44.840 area and said, I told you, you'd never figure it out. He was stationed at a Air Force base along the

02:59:51.920 coast in Santa Barbara area. And there is a railroad track that empties right at his base and is five

03:00:00.920 minutes from the murder scene of that cab driver in Oceanside. Now, I want to keep my crime straight

03:00:08.360 because the next crime we know is committed by Zodiac was of a cab driver. It seems like you're

03:00:15.980 talking about a separate one, but the one, let me just set this one up before we get to your one.

03:00:20.540 This is, this would be Zodiac number four confirmed. Again, he's claimed to have killed 37 people.

03:00:26.140 So it's, or maybe 34 or 37, but the list is very long. We're just going with the ones that

03:00:31.280 law enforcement has said, yeah, this is him. So Paul Stein, October 11th, 1969, his cab was hailed.

03:00:38.920 The cab wound up a block away from the destination that was asked for. Paul Stein, 29, was shot once in

03:00:47.400 the head at point blank range. Weapon was a nine millimeter. Three witnesses watched the suspect

03:00:52.900 from approximately 60 feet away as he wiped down the cab with a cloth after killing Stein. That's

03:00:59.100 interesting. So maybe different weapon, not a 22, not a knife. Now we're onto a nine millimeter and

03:01:05.120 someone sees him clean up, which is a new detail. They describe the man as a white male, 25 to 30 years

03:01:12.040 old. Again, that's all consistent with Mark, with Mike Mago. Stocky build, consistent, reddish brown

03:01:19.760 hair, consistent. Mike had said brown hair with heavy rimmed glasses. That's a new detail.

03:01:25.940 And they initially thought this was a robbery gone bad, but then they realized it wasn't. And

03:01:31.480 once again, Zodiac wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle this time. And he said,

03:01:37.180 I did it. And tell us why we had every reason to believe that was not a hoax letter. The person

03:01:43.420 writing it really did kill Paul Stein. Well, he also sent letters afterwards. And one of them,

03:01:51.200 he bragged, the reason they were not finding any prints of him was because he put glue on his

03:01:56.980 fingertips and that left no prints. And he bragged about it in a letter right after that too. So

03:02:04.160 it matches the Oceanside back of the head. That is a one shell that was recovered on the floor of the

03:02:12.920 cap. It is with right now, San Francisco PD. And our plans are to compare our nine millimeters to

03:02:21.400 there. This is the one, if I'm not mistaken, where with the letter he sent to the San Francisco

03:02:29.200 Chronicle, he included a portion of the bloody shirt of Paul Stein, which is just so chilling.

03:02:37.960 And his letter, this is the one I mentioned in the intro where he said, I'm the murderer of the

03:02:44.680 taxi driver. To prove it, here's a bloodstained piece of his shirt. I am the same man who did the

03:02:50.160 people in the North Bay area. And he goes on to mock the San Francisco police. And then he makes

03:02:55.480 the comment about school children making nice targets. I think I shall wipe out a school bus some

03:03:00.240 morning and goes on to in detail what he wants to do to the children. This is signed with a Zodiac

03:03:07.060 symbol. So he's getting more aggressive and he's getting needier, right? Like needier. This to me

03:03:14.020 seems like somebody who really wants them to know who he is. Well put. And that's exactly what happens

03:03:21.400 with a lot of the psychopaths. They're narcissistic sociopaths, psychopaths that are hoping someday they 1.00

03:03:29.740 can share with people who they are. And they sometimes leak it out. And that is just a perfect 1.00

03:03:38.580 profile in that particular case. Now that murder was October 11th, 1969. On your suspected killings

03:03:48.040 list. There's another cab driver. And is this the one you were referring to? It happened seven years

03:03:54.400 prior to Paul Stein. It was a murder of a guy named Ray Davis of the Checker Cab Company.

03:04:01.700 We believe that was the first killing by Zodiac because he was out of the military in 63.

03:04:09.220 But we believe he took a train down from the Air Force Base in Santa Barbara and conducted a similar

03:04:16.820 cab killing back of the head and then vanished. And again, bragging, no writing, no calling himself

03:04:23.880 Zodiac. But he said, you're not going to be able to figure this one out. And then he called him back

03:04:29.320 and bragged about it. OK, that's the one you were talking about. Now it's all coming together. Right.

03:04:34.180 He called the cops in advance, said, I'm going to commit a baffling crime.

03:04:38.780 Um, and, and soon after this guy, Ray Davis was killed. And again, no robbery, police couldn't find

03:04:48.020 a motive. Um, that, that is sketchy and it does follow a pattern of no motive shooting the back of

03:04:56.800 the head, uh, and telling cops either before or after I'm the one who did it. I'm the one like just

03:05:03.640 taunting them. I mean, I have to say, as I, as I listen to all the crimes with all due respect,

03:05:08.280 I feel like were the cops bumbling because I feel like in today's day and age, you could never get

03:05:15.620 away with this. Very well put. That's exactly true. Remember in that era from the sixties to seventies

03:05:23.620 and early eighties, cops had fingerprints and a hunch. There was no DNA. There was no other incredible,

03:05:30.840 uh, uh, uh, databases you could search things in. It was a very simple time and, and they did the

03:05:37.480 best they could. Uh, remember though, before our times, uh, in the sixties, when this was going on,

03:05:45.100 uh, there was a lot of drug experimentation, a lot of, uh, uh, violence and murders that people were high.

03:05:55.400 I mean, there's when we went through the California murders, we found at least a half dozen that could

03:06:03.140 fit the initial profile of this man, but it all came down to that. They were high. Uh, the six that

03:06:10.620 we looked at were, uh, extremely out of their heads. The, the reason he's known as Zodiac, as I said,

03:06:19.260 is he started signing these, these letters that he would send to the press with a little Zodiac symbol.

03:06:24.320 And then some of them, he signed it Zodiac, like the word Zodiac. Um, and his need to bring the

03:06:32.440 press into it kind of reminded me of the Unabomber. We did a special on him. That's right. You know,

03:06:37.860 he couldn't, he was totally getting away with it. Ted Kaczynski was getting away with being the Unabomber

03:06:44.160 and his own letters would wind up sinking him because his brother, they published them in the paper and

03:06:49.700 the brother saw one and read one and said, Oh my God, this is very familiar to stuff. He's my,

03:06:53.840 my own brother sent me one thing led to another. This guy kept writing to the press, but no one ever

03:06:59.060 had that revelation, but he used the LA times, the San Francisco Chronicle and others for what,

03:07:05.180 like, how would you describe his correspondence with the press?

03:07:07.940 You know, this is before social media. This is before the internet. This is before,

03:07:15.040 frankly, a lot of color TVs weren't in play. This was his way to, to be a celebrity in his own

03:07:23.660 warped mind. And that is in essence, what was happening. He was up. And by the way,

03:07:30.180 he talked about the shirt. He took slivers of that shirt and sent it to a very famous lawyer. He sent it

03:07:36.060 to the papers. Uh, he cut that shirt up so he could be definitively identified as the mystery man.

03:07:46.200 He wanted them to know, and he didn't, he, in some of the letters, he was like, that one wasn't me.

03:07:52.080 You know, like he, he wanted credit for his crimes and he didn't want to be saddled with ones he didn't

03:07:57.280 commit letter to the LA times dated March 13th, 1971. So this is right in the relevant timeframe of

03:08:04.120 the murders. We know, we know the Zodiac did, and this is what he writes. This is the Zodiac

03:08:08.940 speaking like I have. And there are lots of misspellings in here. FYI, like I have always said,

03:08:14.920 always has two L's. I am crack proof. If the blue meanies are ever going to catch me, they had best 1.00

03:08:22.260 get off their fat asses and do something because the longer they fiddle and fart around, the more 1.00

03:08:27.100 slaves I will collect for my afterlife. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside 1.00

03:08:32.800 activity, but they are only finding the easy ones. There are a hell of a lot more down there.

03:08:38.580 The reason I'm writing to the times is this. They don't bury me on the back pages like some of the

03:08:43.640 others. So it's, he's mad. He's not on the front page. He's shopping for media. And when San Francisco

03:08:55.220 finally realized that, hello, you're part of the problem. When you're putting it on the cover,

03:09:00.580 you're, you're integrating yourself into a hostage situation, a murder by, by exploiting

03:09:07.340 his, his language. And so they made a decision to bury it.

03:09:12.580 It's not so dissimilar from what we see now. Somebody was just positing on a show. I listened

03:09:18.380 to our podcast. I can't remember what they were talking about. Why do we not have the serial killers

03:09:23.060 today? Like we used to, you know, I was born in 1970. I grew up hearing these stories and being afraid

03:09:28.480 and son of Sam in New York and all of that. And they were saying, it's not really a thing anymore.

03:09:33.120 And the answer was, it's kind of moved on to mass shootings. You know, the, the, the murderous

03:09:38.700 crazed lunatic has chosen a different thing now. I, but, but both, both groups tend to want infamy. 0.50

03:09:46.540 And it's one of the reasons why a lot of security experts say, and I've been doing it for a long

03:09:49.680 time. Don't name the shooters in these mass shootings.

03:09:53.460 Exactly. Exactly. But I would also tell you that technology, uh, after 1970 exploded. I mean,

03:10:01.720 they had databases to track license plates. What in the last three or four or five years,

03:10:07.020 they have special banks for, for, uh, tattoos. I mean, they're tracking people left and right now.

03:10:14.340 And that's why serial killers can't stay out long. Uh, the, the cameras are everywhere. Megan,

03:10:20.140 there were no cameras back then. None. That's true. And so that's totally changed law enforcement.

03:10:26.040 And that's why serial killers have vanished. This was one of the last ones. And again,

03:10:31.260 he retired quote unquote, we'll talk about our man later. He retired in 1970, moved up to a high

03:10:38.420 Sierra town and spent the rest of his life up there. So, you know, he, he knew that they were

03:10:45.020 getting closer and closer and he finally made the decision. I really, he still wrote letters into

03:10:52.080 the, into the, uh, late eighties. Uh, but how many letters in all, how many letters do we think we

03:10:58.720 have from the Zodiac? We have, uh, right now, I'm just thinking they just eliminated two that turned

03:11:06.380 out to be a teenager in Riverside, believe it or not, who said she deserved to die. It was a terrible 0.54

03:11:12.180 thing. The FBI confirmed through a genealogy, uh, unit, uh, that he was, he, he confessed and he's now

03:11:20.900 an older man, but all the others, uh, there are approximately, I want to say 20, 26 or so I'd have

03:11:31.080 to double check, but it's 26 letters. Let's just say it's close to a couple dozen. Because as I was

03:11:36.520 reading up on this, one thought I had was if I'm a murderer back in the 1970s, I'm definitely writing

03:11:43.140 a fake Zodiac letter and pinning this on him, you know, like just to try to get the police off my

03:11:49.080 trail. So how did they figure out this one's the real Zodiac and this one's a phony trying to pin

03:11:55.660 his murder on this serial killer? Well, again, it was primitive back then. Uh, the handwriting,

03:12:03.360 there were handwriting experts. He wrote left and right, by the way. So does our suspect write left

03:12:10.440 and right. Same age, same shoes. Don't get me started. I'm going to in about 10 minutes.

03:12:17.560 But bottom line is, is that he wrote both ways. He was very clever. And there was some extremely

03:12:24.580 brilliant people that were able to, uh, not only identify the correct writing, but, uh,

03:12:33.180 they started to get into the coding. Okay. So now we haven't talked about that. What do you mean

03:12:38.320 coding? This is a military coding that goes back to a book. Uh, it's been around since world war one.

03:12:47.140 The Navajos used it in world war two to protect our radio communications between islands, uh, in

03:12:54.740 Vietnam. That's when the coding ended in Vietnam, because now with computers, of course, you don't

03:13:00.160 need coding. Uh, but, uh, it's the same code book. It's a 1950 code book. Uh, I have a Lieutenant Colonel

03:13:08.440 from Vietnam, uh, on the Cooper case who brought us that code book. When we found out these were codes,

03:13:15.520 I linked up the code buster from Cooper, who is a three time NSA man to work with. Stop. Nobody

03:13:24.200 knows Cooper yet. And nobody understands code yet. All right. So like when you're talking about codes,

03:13:29.300 that's okay. So that's, that's what I'm here for. Um, the codes we're talking about because he,

03:13:34.720 in his letters would, would offer like a cipher, like a little riddle for people to decode and made

03:13:43.300 promises. Like if you can decode this, you'll know who I am. So of course, everybody was trying their

03:13:49.040 hardest to decode this. And you're saying there's a military book that talks about how to make these

03:13:54.900 codes and who's Cooper. Why are you mentioning somebody named Cooper? DB Cooper is a Vietnam vet

03:14:04.020 who took over a plane and asked for $200,000. And then he said, fly me to Mexico. And he jumped by

03:14:10.940 parachute. Uh, that is one of our other cases that we believe we have solved.

03:14:17.440 How does that factor into this story?

03:14:20.960 The same code book used in Vietnam is the same code book that was used by our air force man,

03:14:29.380 our man, uh, Gary Francis post. It was used at all air force bases. These codes were used

03:14:37.160 to scramble signals as they spoke and protected our country back in the sixties and seventies.

03:14:43.160 So why couldn't an air force man back then take one look at that and say, I know what this says.

03:14:49.580 Well, there are, there is the code, but then there are words that are clues. Uh, he would embed,

03:14:59.500 uh, these clues so that the public couldn't just quickly get a code book. Uh, very clever,

03:15:06.600 very clever, uh, anagrams is how they broke it. Uh, and as I said, with the Cooper project,

03:15:13.580 we brought that NSA man, a code buster, three, the three tours in Vietnam to work with our team

03:15:22.420 on the Zodiac. And that's how we feel. We cracked it. It's the same code book.

03:15:28.360 Hmm. So it's, it is a, it's an interesting point because you can't come up with these

03:15:33.380 ciphers and elude police this well by being a complete lunatic who isn't smart, you know, 0.91

03:15:45.140 but he's got all the misspellings. So do we think the misspellings are, as you said earlier, 0.95

03:15:51.540 a red herring, you know, an attempt to downplay his own intelligence. Um, what do we think about

03:15:57.860 his level of smarts? We had some people on the team talk about, uh, describing him as an ADHD kid

03:16:06.040 who, uh, would only pay attention if he was interested. And, uh, he, uh, our suspect,

03:16:13.300 uh, was that type of person. Uh, he was sloppy, he misspelled, but he also planted words on purpose

03:16:21.620 so that he could point to them, you know, and he would give clues with certain words.

03:16:28.180 And that is how that code became so important on both cases.

03:16:34.200 Hmm. Now, as we discussed, he starts writing to the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco

03:16:40.680 Examiner, the Vallejo Times Herald, uh, as early as July 31st, 1969. And he includes these ciphers or

03:16:50.040 cryptograms, uh, which he claims contain his identity. And he demands that they be printed

03:16:56.560 on the paper's front page, or he would quote, cruise around all week, killing lone people in

03:17:01.500 the night and then move on to kill again until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend.

03:17:07.480 Interestingly, the San Francisco Chronicle published it on its third or fourth page.

03:17:13.140 The threatened murders did not happen. Um, and they eventually published all three parts of what

03:17:18.960 he had sent them. That's so interesting because it, boy, as a member of the press, that does put

03:17:23.140 you in an impossible situation. So they really did wrestle with the, the moral burden that he was

03:17:29.240 trying to place on them.

03:17:30.060 Do you remember Megan in, uh, the buses in that story in San Francisco, the buses, they threatened

03:17:37.940 to blow up buses with children on them. That is what our suspect in Oceanside did after killing the

03:17:47.100 cab driver there in 62, he calls in and said, I'm going to blow up some buses. Well, that, you know,

03:17:54.520 what would happen in that town? Everybody, all the police, the military were put on every bus,

03:17:59.700 bus, there were, uh, they, they blanketed this small town. And he, meantime, we believe our suspect

03:18:07.200 got on the train and went back to the air force space. And then he called in and said, told you.

03:18:19.780 He didn't thank God follow through with his threat when the San Francisco paper did not

03:18:24.380 do as he requested. I know. Thank God. Um, but they must've been in such a, such a moral

03:18:30.120 quandary there because my God, what if he had, you know, you need to feel like you, you had some

03:18:35.420 responsibility in it, even though of course you don't as the, as the newspaper. Um, yeah. So he

03:18:41.600 keeps writing, keeps writing now who's working on it. Is it the FBI's case? I imagine there are a

03:18:46.740 bunch of amateur sleuths trying to decipher everything. When it broke the FBI and we have

03:18:54.680 the memo, uh, they, all the agents in charge on the West coast were told stand down. The only thing

03:19:02.080 we're going to do, we're not going to get involved in these murders all over the state. We will provide

03:19:07.020 lab help, uh, fingerprinting help, uh, and occasionally to a small department if they need some technology,

03:19:14.280 but we are not going to get involved in these murders. And frankly, it, it, with the Lake Tahoe

03:19:20.740 killing, that's across state line, but they're not saying Lake Tahoe yet is a Zodiac case.

03:19:30.520 That's one of your suspected cases. So the FBI is basically saying this is an intrastate problem

03:19:34.940 hasn't crossed state lines. We don't need to touch it. Good luck, California. And so what was it?

03:19:42.280 What, like, so as local authorities town by town in California, was there any

03:19:46.080 mass coordination, you know, somebody running point?

03:19:50.120 There was a task force put together, uh, uh, four or five departments, uh, mostly in the

03:19:56.280 San Francisco Bay area after the cases you spoke of, uh, again, the cases we're talking about from

03:20:02.960 San Diego to Lake Tahoe, we're not in the task force, but there are some similarities and

03:20:08.620 our former law enforcement people have pointed that out.

03:20:12.440 So how, how, what, in what year did he stop writing his letters?

03:20:18.620 I want to say late, uh, mid to late eighties.

03:20:23.160 Oh, so it went on for 10 plus years.

03:20:26.080 And again, that's not official. The last official letters you mentioned were 69,

03:20:31.280 69, but we have letters from, from 1970, uh, again, to the late, let me correct myself from

03:20:40.440 the early 1970s, all the way to the end of, uh, 85 or 84. He was writing to newspapers.

03:20:49.500 And, but were, was he still committing murders? Like, do we, did he change his MO? Did he continue

03:20:56.100 to say things like he said in the early letters that would show you, this is definitely the murderer

03:21:00.580 and not just some lunatic trying to send us on a wild goose chase?

03:21:05.160 He was no longer talking about murders. He was commenting. He was, uh, talking about particular 0.61

03:21:13.480 movies involving murders. I mean, he almost became a commentator, uh, and sent these letters to

03:21:20.600 newspapers, as I said. Uh, and, and, uh, but the murders, his discussion of murders stopped in 1970.

03:21:28.240 Uh, and that was his last claim. Uh, and after that, that's the other part of the story.

03:21:36.880 So what, so flash forward to, you know, when did DNA become the everyday thing it is now? I mean,

03:21:45.080 2000 sometime in the 21st century, it really got hot, uh, and started to get used in all the criminal

03:21:52.440 cases and so on. I remember, I remember covering the Duke lacrosse case, you know, the fake rape

03:21:58.340 case down there in 2005. And they still were really struggling to explain what DNA is, uh, in that

03:22:05.440 case. And I obviously wound up falling apart, but I remember it was just as late as 2005, this was

03:22:10.680 still sort of a mystery to lawyers who had to try criminal cases. So eventually we got there. Now

03:22:17.100 there's all this evidence, there's shell casings and, you know, there's gotta be, I don't know if

03:22:22.600 there's any fingerprints, if there's what, what is there that they, with the benefit of now new

03:22:26.320 technology, they can go back in these crime scenes and see, okay, we got something.

03:22:31.260 Well, I'll be honest with you. We have thoroughly looked into all the cases, not our, not only our

03:22:37.300 cases, but the original cases. And sadly, uh, we brought them evidence to compare, uh, that they

03:22:43.840 wouldn't compare with our suspect. Uh, but what was intriguing is that, uh, they, a few years ago, uh,

03:22:51.760 on our, one of our members on our team, uh, approached, uh, the departments and said, check DNA on such

03:23:00.380 and such a letter flap or behind the stamp. Well, unfortunately, Megan, back in the sixties and seventies,

03:23:08.140 and even into the early eighties, nobody was keeping evidence in sealed paper bags, uh, in

03:23:15.920 refrigerators. They were just stacked in files, sometimes with the sun on them. So heat and, uh,

03:23:23.240 passage of time, they were not able to get any, uh, DNA off of shell casings and so forth.

03:23:30.360 Oh, we think we can update that technology because the only thing that we believe in the FBI agreed

03:23:38.720 in 75, those hairs have been used to clear people, but they have not shared the hairs with anyone else.

03:23:48.040 Hmm. Now, when you say we, we bring these things to them, are you talking about the FBI? Who do you

03:23:54.200 mean to whom do you bring the clues that you want evaluated? We, uh, went to the police.

03:24:00.040 Police departments that had bullet shells. Uh, we've gone to others that have, uh, DNA evidence. Uh,

03:24:07.360 we have gone for, uh, ballistics up to San Francisco. We're in discussions with them. Uh, and we've been

03:24:15.800 everywhere. And the only evidence left from the killings are those four hairs. Hmm. And by the way,

03:24:23.780 reiterate, uh, the, and by the way, the hairs are Brown, like our suspect. Hmm. I should reiterate 0.92

03:24:32.820 that your group, the casebreakers.org, um, it's 40 member task force of volunteers, retired bureau

03:24:38.880 agents. You have a combined 1500 years of skill sets. Um, you guys solve cases, you try to fund more

03:24:45.880 teams and you promote, uh, careers in all branches of public service. So you've been at this for a while

03:24:51.940 and you've got trained professionals with impressive, uh, histories trying to figure out

03:24:57.780 these unsolved crimes. So it's not like you're just some nutcase who walks into the police station

03:25:03.820 saying, go, go back and test that hair. You know, they, they know who you are and some are more 0.63

03:25:08.740 cooperative than others from the sound of it. I was a CBS newsman for 10 years in LA and I was

03:25:15.980 recruited by the state of California to go to an incredible school where I met my first team.

03:25:21.320 And that was California specialized training Institute at Camp San Luis. Uh, this is where

03:25:28.200 they teach everyone, uh, on every imaginable horror they have to face. And I was flown up for 18 years

03:25:35.860 every other month to teach crisis management, hostage situations, uh, you, you name it, uh, terrorism,

03:25:43.320 uh, all with a media angle. In other words, how do you get your case out without jeopardizing it?

03:25:48.720 Uh, that's how we created our first team. And then it expanded from 10 to 40 because the word got out.

03:25:56.460 Uh, and my wife and I have dedicated the rest of our lives to, uh, making this work, so to speak,

03:26:03.880 because frankly, Megan, there's not enough tax dollars in the world for more cops.

03:26:07.840 That's right. We have to go after the people in their fifties and sixties and, uh, that, okay,

03:26:14.840 they have a little arthritis or they can't climb the fences, but you know what, as my dad, the shrink

03:26:19.580 used to say, when we were in trouble, they have incredible brain brains, incredible brains. And

03:26:26.720 I, you know, can I give you one quick example? Yeah. We were up in the woods of Oregon. We were tipped

03:26:35.560 to the actual parachute site of DB Cooper, where he jumped and buried it. And we went 10 miles from

03:26:42.700 the nearest home to a particular spot. A, believe it or not, a former cop was tipped to this and called

03:26:49.360 us. We went all the way to that spot in the middle of the woods. We dug, we found something that looked

03:26:55.660 like a parachute, but we couldn't tell. We wondered if it was a potato sack piece. So the way our team

03:27:03.560 works is we can call them on their rowboats, uh, they're lazy boys with a grandkid, uh, on the golf

03:27:11.200 course, and they'll give us the technology. And we called and said, we have a piece of material

03:27:15.960 that we don't know if it's a potato sack or a parachute. And he said, take a strip of it,

03:27:22.460 light it. And we said, light it. And he said, light it, tried to light it. It dripped and smoked. He said,

03:27:28.400 that was dunked in non-flammable material. It's a parachute. This is how the team works. And so we

03:27:35.340 get their expertise wherever and whenever we want it. Uh, you should know, as far as my wife and I,

03:27:41.340 we've never been sued in 42 years. And those are the type of people we're bringing to our team.

03:27:46.520 They're phenomenal. But don't jinx it. Don't say, don't say things like that out loud, Tom.

03:27:51.520 Um, it does. I said, don't jinx it by saying something like that out loud, out loud, you know,

03:27:57.300 what a litigious society we have now. Well, yeah, but, uh, we're, we're very comfortable and

03:28:04.200 you, you, the, the zooms that we have with these people, we've got Republicans, Democrats,

03:28:10.360 every type of person, but you know what they have, they have souls and they are absolutely

03:28:15.460 committed to these families to get them answers. Well, and the other thing is the, the cops are so

03:28:21.340 undermanned right now. And just in general, they're not going to devote resources to something that

03:28:25.580 happened 50, 60 years ago. You know, they don't have the time or the manpower for that. Um, jumping

03:28:31.680 back, something you said reminded me of something I want to ask you about the hairs, the four hairs

03:28:35.980 that they have from what they believe is a suspect. Um, you know, they have that technology now

03:28:42.100 where you can, you can take DNA and create a picture of the person. They can find out enough

03:28:49.780 about the person's ethnic heritage and so on. They can engineer a picture that they will say,

03:28:56.420 this, this person was Nordic. This person probably had blue eyes. This person probably had a nose that 0.99

03:29:02.300 looked like this. It's crazy, but you know, they do it on Dateline all the time. Um, so has anybody

03:29:08.120 ever tried to do that with those hairs? Been there doing that. Oh, Oh, we are not being given the

03:29:16.120 hairs, but let me tell you, I have three attorneys all pro bono. They're going to convince Riverside

03:29:22.280 and the other departments, Hey, let us end the pain of these families. And, and that's our approach.

03:29:30.880 Uh, and, uh, that's about to happen. Okay. So because you think, you know, who did it,

03:29:36.320 and that leads us back to Gary Francis post, who after looking at tons of suspects, you believe

03:29:44.580 is the guy. The first thing I said to my team was, is Gary post dead or alive? Because if he's alive,

03:29:52.160 we're going to have to run a lot by him. He's dead, which is good. Maybe on a couple of fronts,

03:29:57.140 if he really was the guy. And also you can't defame a dead man. So, uh, let's talk about Gary post.

03:30:02.200 Who's no longer here to defend himself and tell us what's your elevator pitch for why he did it.

03:30:10.540 Gary, uh, we got tipped, uh, to this case by a wonderful man. Uh, and this man was a TV anchor

03:30:20.680 in Salinas who had one of these members of art of, of Gary Francis post. Let me start this,

03:30:29.600 this way. Gary Francis post left San Francisco area. Uh, he became a union painter. We have his

03:30:37.800 certificate. He moved up to a small town in the high Sierra. Uh, we have the, uh, background on his

03:30:44.920 move. Uh, and he befriended everyone as a painter. Uh, but when you're finding paint spots on a watch

03:30:55.300 in Riverside, uh, and when you find out that he has the same shoe size and has the, uh, same military

03:31:05.180 smarts on coding, we could go down a list of about 15 different things that have convinced us we have

03:31:13.680 it. And among those 15 are nine witnesses who, when one of Gary Francis posts posse members,

03:31:23.760 as he called it, a criminal gang ran for it in 2014, it freaked out the town. They had no idea the

03:31:31.920 painter could be the Zodiac and that's changed. And, and to this day, we believe the best evidence

03:31:40.440 is in that town. Now, wait, let me stop. Let's talk about the posse. Cause people are like,

03:31:46.380 what do you mean posse there? We do know enough about Gary post to know he, he didn't exactly

03:31:51.480 spend his youth gathering friends the way the average person does. Right. Well, uh, when Gary moved

03:32:00.640 up to this small town, he found a single mom, married her, a very simpleton woman. It was still alive. 0.51

03:32:09.120 And, uh, loved by a lot of people. Uh, he met this woman with a child and moved them up to a very

03:32:17.260 one street town in the high Sierra, just like the old West. And he became a father figure to about a

03:32:23.780 half dozen kids who barely got through high school. Uh, and they became his so-called posse. Well,

03:32:31.180 they became a criminal posse. He not only trained them how to avoid cops. He taught them how to take a

03:32:37.880 pipe bomb and make it a bomb that could blow up a house. When cops moved into that town, uh, he would,

03:32:44.640 uh, throw rocks through the bedrooms to get them out. He had this posse up there from about 85 and they

03:32:54.420 pretty much broke it up in about 2005. And there are about 10 people he was involved in with this

03:33:02.100 posse. He'd never take more than two or three up in the mountains at a time with mules, horses,

03:33:08.120 and so forth. And what, and so the one guy escaped, ran from the posse. And what, what's his story?

03:33:18.780 Will was one of the last ones. Uh, he, uh, appeared in 87 in town and Gary befriended him. He got in

03:33:27.180 trouble with the law and Gary was the unofficial lawyer in town. He had law books covering his A-frame

03:33:33.120 and convinced him, uh, that he could get him out of his charge. It was a minor charge. And he introduced

03:33:39.840 him to the gang and the gang would meet in the woods and have bonfires. And he would, uh, he would

03:33:48.640 provide marijuana and liquor. And he, in essence, uh, became like a Fagan. Uh, he trained them. Uh, 0.99

03:33:57.940 he trained them to kill every type of animal they ever saw. Like Fagan from Oliver Twist. Is that what

03:34:03.840 you mean? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And, and so, and, and, and that's how, uh, everybody loved this man,

03:34:13.300 but then he taught them how to kill everything on site. And they watched him. One story that has

03:34:20.440 been told to us by Will, that's the man who ran away, who's now in his mid fifties. At about 2000,

03:34:28.360 he started reading books and he loved books and he started getting into true stories.

03:34:34.740 And then one day he's given a book of serial killers and he opens it up and he looks at the

03:34:41.040 sketch in San Francisco and he has, holy cow, that's our guy. Now, all these kids were brainwashed,

03:34:49.100 took him 10 years to break away. He collected photos. He collected, uh, uh, examples of, uh, uh,

03:34:58.360 his writing. And he, uh, in essence was chased out of town when the other posse members heard he was

03:35:06.740 gathering these things and post literally tried to kill him with a hammer at 70 years old in his shed

03:35:15.040 when he heard this. And everybody came when the fight was going on and the kid ran for it,

03:35:20.860 took him a, he hiked through the mountain. They were all in tremendous shape. He hiked through the

03:35:26.420 mountains. He stayed off of roads. He hiked all the way to Sierra, all the way to Sacramento

03:35:31.520 and walked into a newsroom. And he said, the worst thing, Megan, that a news person wants to hear.

03:35:38.100 I have a long story to tell you. And, and I was the guy who had to answer that at CBS. And I,

03:35:45.120 and I, and I know what it, it paraphrases what I would say. And that is, can't you cut it down?

03:35:51.760 Could you give me the Evelyn Wood version?

03:35:53.580 No one would listen to him. So what did he do? He walks to San Francisco off of the freeway,

03:36:01.320 through the desert, through the land, gets to San Francisco, talks to newsrooms, same problem.

03:36:09.100 Then he talks to the FBI later. Nobody would confirm it.

03:36:14.240 What's he saying to them? What's he saying? Is he saying I've found the Zodiac killer or what's he

03:36:18.540 saying? I know who the Zodiac is. And I have a long story I need to tell you. So no one would

03:36:24.780 listen to him. Well, he goes down to Salinas because that's where he grew up with his parents.

03:36:29.900 And he said, you know, there's that newsman that I grew up with. I wonder if he's still there. And

03:36:35.500 that is Dale Julen. Dale is a retired newsman now. And Dale, he comes to his door at the station

03:36:44.340 and said, I have a long story to tell you. Well, Dale takes him to lunch. Now you might ask,

03:36:50.800 what is an anchor at a TV station spending several hours, as he called it, a wacko? You know, I took 0.96

03:36:57.700 a chance with a wacko. Well, here's the interesting story. Remember, we mentioned the buses and the

03:37:02.760 threats to blow them up. Dale was a Boy Scout on one of those buses. And he remembered the fear.

03:37:10.220 And he looked at and he never forgot it. And when he looked into the eyes of this 50-year-old kid

03:37:16.480 and this homeless guy who smells, he's been out in the street,

03:37:21.140 he took the chance. And that's how we have the case.

03:37:24.540 So this all started from him seeing a sketch in a book of what somebody, I assume this is based on

03:37:36.940 the eyewitness IDs that we've been discussing, said the Zodiac looked like. And that sketch was

03:37:41.980 so close to your suspect that he said, it's him. Like, that was enough? That plus all the weird

03:37:50.300 ways that they were living together. Yes. And what's very important to know,

03:37:56.120 when he was at the Air Force Base in Indiana, he was in a horrible Jeep accident. The driver died,

03:38:03.660 hit a bridge. And our guy had... Gary Post.

03:38:07.720 Gary Post had chest injuries, brain injury. They had to go in to fix the brain. He lost all his teeth.

03:38:16.700 They pulled them all out to save his life. And when he got out of that, months later,

03:38:22.040 he's back at that base. And what's sitting in the front, don't drink and drive, the Jeep all torn up.

03:38:28.260 And he demands, I got to get out of here. I can't see that every day. I can't see it every day. Well,

03:38:34.200 what do they do? They send him to the worst place for a radar guy on the ice of Greenland.

03:38:41.200 One guy in there with the screen. And we believe that's where, in the combination of the brain damage

03:38:50.760 and other things he faced, we believe that's where he lost his mind. He came back. He wound up in

03:38:58.360 Vandenberg Air Force Base, which is Santa Barbara. And he was there until... I'm trying to think.

03:39:11.140 Let me think for a minute. He was there for three years. And then he got out and moved to San Francisco

03:39:17.780 to be a painter.

03:39:19.420 So the cities line up.

03:39:20.840 Oh, yeah.

03:39:23.900 That would be one of the first things in check.

03:39:27.000 There's a murder in Santa Barbara, less than 15 minutes away from that Air Force Base.

03:39:32.500 And that was a couple on ditch day of high school.

03:39:35.920 Killed just like the Navy couple in San Diego. Sniper. They found bullets all over the sand.

03:39:44.220 He stuffed their bodies into a homeless shelter there on the cliffs.

03:39:48.080 Uh, and they have, the sheriff in that town, uh, found the boxes that he discarded there with the

03:39:57.120 bullets. And those shells with the code numbers on the shell box matched the gun shop on base at

03:40:06.780 Vandenberg for hunters. It was the only gun shop and the only place you could buy bullets at the time

03:40:12.600 for a hundred miles.

03:40:15.220 Why wouldn't the cops have been...

03:40:16.620 We believe that was our suspect.

03:40:18.080 Irrespective of whether that's Zodiac, a Zodiac murder, or Gary Post, why wouldn't the cops have

03:40:23.800 been all over that base at the time, even with the technology they had then, saying,

03:40:28.760 we want to witness, we want to interview everybody. We want to know, you know, who's been in here,

03:40:33.080 who on base, like, figure out where everybody's been. Like, everybody who's on the base should have

03:40:36.720 been a suspect. Well, it was about, uh, 15 to 25 minute drive. Uh, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's

03:40:46.300 Department held a big news conference several years later and say, we have looked at the forensics.

03:40:52.240 Now we have looked at these things. This was five, eight years later after that, uh, that murder of

03:40:59.080 the couple. Uh, and they looked at it and they felt there was some connection, but San Francisco did

03:41:06.560 not accept them as a official Zodiac case that happened in Oceanside happened in San Diego is

03:41:14.420 happened in, uh, Lake Tahoe. Those are the other outliers that we strongly believe are, are the same

03:41:22.000 man.

03:41:22.660 Why? Like, why, why won't they accept it as an official? Like, what does it have to have to be deemed

03:41:28.320 an official Zodiac case by authorities? Well, if you're talking about today, or are you talking

03:41:34.420 about back then? Well, I guess both. Cause it should be updated if they decided no back then.

03:41:40.280 And now today I've taken another look, but like, what did they need a letter from Zodiac with his

03:41:44.980 little cipher saying I did that one. Well, again, these departments at that time were very small,

03:41:53.020 no technology. Uh, they had their favorite detective. They had their favorite chief.

03:41:58.620 They had their favorite driver. They had their favorite, uh, sniper. And those are the ones they

03:42:04.160 lied on. There was no methodical, uh, who's the best person for this. We know a forensic guy who's

03:42:10.060 in another County. Let's bring them in. That was minimal back then. Now, even today, uh, you know,

03:42:18.140 if, if you looked at it today, uh, they're all so busy. I mean, Riverside, God bless them. Look,

03:42:24.880 they have over 200 unsolved murders in their own town. Do they really want to pick up a case as you

03:42:30.520 pointed out earlier, 50 years ago? Yeah. So those are, that's the dilemma, but that's why we have this

03:42:37.520 incredible team. So we put pictures on the board while you were talking. Our YouTube audience can

03:42:42.360 check this out and you should, if you're listening to this via podcast, just go to YouTube and check this

03:42:46.740 out, but it's a drawing 1969 of what I understand is the Zodiac based. That's the, that's the sketch

03:42:54.600 artists rendering of the Zodiac killer based on the people who survived his attacks. And then you have

03:43:02.220 a picture next to it. And that's of your suspect that, that right there with like on the right with

03:43:08.100 the actual photo is Gary post. They do look, they do look similar. I mean, I'm, I'm going to say,

03:43:14.480 and you're, we've got the red circle around what you think are scars.

03:43:19.840 We, that we know those are Gary Francis post scars on the photo in 1963. That was his last year of

03:43:28.400 military service on the left. It's 68. So it's five years apart. Uh, the scars, according to my FBI

03:43:36.000 members, and there's about, uh, 10 of them, of the 40 members said, this can't be, can't be put

03:43:43.860 ignored. This can't be, this can't be ignored is what they said to us. Look at the jawline.

03:43:50.040 It is a match and he's Nordic from Europe. He has two brothers that are still alive and we plan to talk

03:43:59.200 to them too. And what is the other picture of a man wearing a little Zodiac sign with a,

03:44:07.000 like a grocery bag over his head at that sketch? What is that? Cause I know you've got a split

03:44:12.020 screen of, um, Gary walking in the snow in 1974 up against what is labeled Zodiac 69 Lake attack.

03:44:21.780 But what is that Zodiac? Where are we getting that sketch from?

03:44:24.420 That sketch was done by an artist with the help of the police. The police had original sketches

03:44:31.180 of the Zodiac there, and that was defined or refined, I should say, by some artists and has

03:44:39.100 been used in several documentaries. And it does, it does appear to, there is even a police sketch that

03:44:46.240 has the so-called bag or the, the head cover. And again, this was the one we talked about the only

03:44:52.400 daytime. So he worked very hard to be covered up for that.

03:44:57.000 And this is like the reason, obviously you have a pose of, of the actual, you know, Gary Post right

03:45:03.500 next to that. And it could be anybody, you know, we have no idea, but the build is definitely

03:45:09.320 consistent. And Gary Post's build was consistent with what was described by those witnesses.

03:45:15.440 Same weight, same hair color as found in the hand in Riverside, uh, same height, same shoe size.

03:45:26.460 And no fingerprints at any of these crime scenes that we know are Zodiac or the ones you suspect?

03:45:33.140 No, there were, there were fingerprints found, but not of the victim or the suspect in Riverside

03:45:38.680 and all the others. They found a bunch of, look, this was a VW days back in the sixties.

03:45:43.640 You remember the, the old stories where you, how many kids can you put in a VW?

03:45:47.960 Yeah. I was one of those kids.

03:45:49.740 Oh, no comment. Well, anyways, so that in essence, that's how it was treated. They went and looked at

03:45:56.480 every print and couldn't match anything to any particular suspects in Riverside and elsewhere.

03:46:02.400 Again, I think he gave a pretty good explanation and that was putting the glue on his fingertips.

03:46:07.640 So you couldn't find his fingerprints anywhere.

03:46:09.860 Well, but if you didn't find, if you didn't find photo, if you didn't find prints of the victims

03:46:13.660 either, then that it's a different explanation, right? Then he would have had to wipe it down.

03:46:18.360 Yeah. Yeah. And, and because he only did two or three net, uh, knife stabbings, everything else

03:46:26.500 involved bullets and those bullets have been recovered. He did not pick them up. And again,

03:46:32.580 I think it's because he had, uh, the idea that the fingerprints would not show up. But as I said,

03:46:38.760 we have a incredible lab up in Salt Lake. Francine is the name of the owner and she has developed where

03:46:47.440 they can literally dunk a shell or a rock involved in a murder into this liquid and off balls, the DNA.

03:46:55.220 How did you get the bullets? Wouldn't the police departments be holding onto those and not giving

03:46:59.800 them to you? Well, we don't have the bullets, not the bullets shells. We went, we don't, we don't have

03:47:07.040 the bullets that were found on the ground. What we have are the bullets that he gifted to several

03:47:13.240 people in his small town. Uh, and they held onto them and then they contact, this was only two years

03:47:21.060 after he died. He died in 19, I'm sorry, in 20, 2018. He died in 2018 and he gave them all the shells

03:47:31.280 and, uh, the hammer hits, uh, pieces of the guns. Uh, he found artists. He found people that are

03:47:39.660 collectors. Well, they stayed in the boxes in the attics or in the closets for two years. And then we

03:47:46.100 got a call from the group and said, we heard about your Riverside situation. We think we have the

03:47:52.360 Zodiac here. And we have nine witnesses up there that grew up with the Zodiac and phenomenal stories.

03:48:00.620 But wait, if they're giving you boxes of bullets that they believe Gary Post handled

03:48:06.840 and you run a test on them, you should be able to figure out whether those are ideally,

03:48:12.320 whether those are Gary Post's fingerprints, that whether he handled those boxes, but that doesn't

03:48:18.000 answer the big question because we don't have fingerprints at a crime scene that we know the

03:48:23.620 Zodiac was at. We know the crime scene, but we do have hairs and we believe the DNA of those hairs

03:48:31.420 are going to match the DNA on the bullets. Oh, I see. You're going to get, okay. So you're looking

03:48:37.260 for DNA. That's the last DNA in the whole world on the whole page and they're not putting, here's the

03:48:42.940 other thing, you know, about CODIS. Does that need an explanation? Please. CODIS is the FBI's database

03:48:51.020 for DNA. And by law in California, when somebody commits a felony, they have to have their DNA put up

03:49:00.640 on CODIS to see if he has other victims, whether it be murder or rape or whatever.

03:49:07.280 Believe it or not, we brought DNA, Dale, Dale Julen brought DNA to San Francisco and Vallejo and said,

03:49:15.500 hold on to this. We may have a suspect in the future. This is before we were involved two years ago.

03:49:21.520 And so Dale left it with them and they thanked him. They passed it around to the cities. Nothing

03:49:27.740 would match because remember their evidence, whether it be a licked envelope or the shell casing,

03:49:35.640 none were secured forensically. They weren't even envisioning DNA testing.

03:49:41.060 We have it in the hairs and we have it from the shells. We also have, you'll love this. We even have

03:49:48.760 his backpackers sleeping mat. He slept on for 30 years with his posse. Oh man. And we found DNA on

03:49:56.860 that too. And that's going to be compared. Hmm. All right. Here's a, here's a different question I

03:50:03.720 have for you. Back when I was on NBC, we didn't interview. I interviewed the grandson of a man named

03:50:13.940 Ed Edwards. The grandson's name was Wayne Wolf. And he was coming out with a documentary at the time

03:50:21.700 called, it was him, uh, the many murders of Ed Edwards. And the grandson's story was just absolutely

03:50:29.840 compelling. It was like, he had done some DNA searching. It turned out his dad had a different,

03:50:34.440 whatever. There was some biological link that was, that was missing that he'd been told was legit.

03:50:39.340 And long story short, Ed Edwards was a murderer. That seems clear. Whether he committed any of the

03:50:46.820 Zodiac murders, less clear. But this documentary done by the grandson and featuring someone named

03:50:54.100 former Sergeant Detective John Cameron says Ed Edwards was the Zodiac killer. They said he pleaded

03:51:03.860 guilty to five murders, including couples on lovers lanes. They said, um, if you solve two of

03:51:12.720 the cryptograms that the Zodiac put out, cause he said, if you Zodiac said, if you solve these,

03:51:18.740 you'll have my name. And they said they solved it. And they, they determined that if you take

03:51:24.340 Edward Edwards, that name, Edward Edwards, and spell it backwards, it's 13 characters. You reverse the

03:51:33.200 letters. It's, it revealed, it matches up with the cipher, but you'd have to know the name Edward

03:51:39.700 Edwards in order to do that. And they only went there because they knew Ed Edwards was, had murdered

03:51:46.540 others and they decided to cross frame it. Now I will say this in my interview, this former Sergeant

03:51:53.720 Detective John Cameron basically said that this Ed Edwards killed everybody ever. Like he, it was like

03:52:00.320 Jimmy Hoffa, John Bay Ramsey, Scott, uh, Lacey Peterson. Yes. Lacey Peterson. So, which we all

03:52:09.060 disclosed, you know, we were having an interesting interview, but have you ever heard of Ed Edwards

03:52:13.900 and what do you, what do you think? There are a half dozen. We like to call, you know, in Cooper,

03:52:20.120 Cooper, Cooper Land and D.B. Cooper, we call them Cooper Rice. They're called Zodiacers. Uh, people 0.79

03:52:25.700 that have theories, have some interesting links, uh, and Hoffadites is the other group that thinks

03:52:33.580 they know where he's buried and, and, uh, surprise, surprise. We believe we know where he's buried.

03:52:38.820 That's our next one. Wait, Gary Post didn't kill Jimmy Hoffa in your story. Did he?

03:52:43.920 Uh, Bigfoot did. Okay. So it all goes full circle. I appreciate that. Yes. No, look,

03:52:51.520 everybody has their own theories. I appreciate that. Uh, there are some things they have that

03:52:55.920 we integrate into our investigations, for example, on, uh, accurate, uh, locations and, and ages,

03:53:02.820 and you know how the information changes. So you have to be really meticulous. Uh, and look,

03:53:09.240 we feel we're the only ones, all these people have theories, but you know what? We're the only ones

03:53:16.040 with a 40 member cold case team and the only ones with evidence. And that's why we're very drawn to

03:53:23.420 this. The story of him, of Gary Post, losing his mind and, you know, sort of going crazy is

03:53:29.260 interesting. One of his letters said, I'm, how did he put it? It says something. He said, I am insane.

03:53:35.100 He, he owned his mental illness. Um, and he clearly is, if you read the body of the Zodiac letters, 0.80

03:53:42.460 it's not like a Ted Bundy who's, who seems very logical and brilliant and methodical though evil,

03:53:50.560 right? This guy sounds like a lunatic that I'm amassing slaves for the afterlife. And now I think 0.95

03:53:57.400 I've got enough and the rest of you are all going to be screwed because you don't have any slave. Like 0.98

03:54:00.900 he doesn't sound well. No, he he's not. And, and there was one example, uh, from will, uh, and I

03:54:09.840 sent you some footage of will, uh, what's interesting about who escaped. I'm sorry. He's the guy who

03:54:16.340 escaped. Exactly. Uh, when will ran for it, uh, one thing that we, uh, learned from will was there was a

03:54:25.900 time when they went up in the mountains, three or four of the posse members with him. And he hung

03:54:32.120 some meat in a container up in a tall tree. And they went out in the, with the horses came back

03:54:40.080 several days later, he unfolds a chair and on the tree will notices there are salmon hooks on the tree.

03:54:50.460 And what had happened is there were three bears leading to death on those salmon hooks, trying to

03:54:58.180 get to the meat. And what is post do? He sits down and taunts and laughs at the animals till they die

03:55:05.140 for hours. Oh God. This is why we say this is the Zodiac. He would immerse his arms. We have photos

03:55:12.840 of him immersing his arms into the innards, the insides of dead animals, pulling out pieces,

03:55:19.380 laughing about them, throwing them. This man was in his sixties and fifties and seventies doing this

03:55:26.140 with the posse. Well, that was one of the kids had lots of nightmares after this. That was one of my

03:55:32.820 questions for you. How did he live out the rest of his life? Right. Cause you know, he died in 2018.

03:55:37.540 Was anyone onto him prior to that? Had anybody, I mean, Will had been running around saying, I think I

03:55:42.760 know who it is, but had anybody looked into him, had police ever visited him and was he married?

03:55:49.780 Does he have a family? Was there anybody that you could talk to about his mental state, how he was,

03:55:54.700 et cetera? We have phenomenal witnesses. Um, and, uh, it starts with, uh, neighbors. Uh, you want to

03:56:04.140 believe this? The Zodiac and his wife became babysitters for one of the neighbors. And that went on for

03:56:10.220 seven to eight years. And the young girl, uh, he would take them into the woods, his stepson and

03:56:19.020 this young girl, he'd take them into the woods, give them guns and show them how to shoot. And, and, uh,

03:56:25.540 this was children in the ages of five to 15. And the girl told us that she was going out. He would

03:56:35.480 take her out sometimes five days a week to shoot in the woods. That was the babysitting.

03:56:41.360 Maybe that's not unusual. I mean, like I'm a city girl. I don't like in the more rural parts of

03:56:45.400 America. The rest of it's not so normal, but like, wouldn't he, if he was this crazy, wouldn't 0.97

03:56:51.940 everybody who knew him say, Oh my God, Gary nutcase. And he, he got in trouble with the law here and have 0.88

03:56:58.160 a long history of interactions with the authorities. When we'll went to the authorities and the FBI,

03:57:05.500 they said, we don't believe you, but guess what? We have learned from the town that the FBI actually

03:57:10.860 went up there. Now, the thing about this town, it's on the top of the mountain. And when you're

03:57:16.240 going up there, they usually call ahead because the roads wash out the local sheriffs and our Zodiac

03:57:23.400 suspect was friends with a couple of deputies that we believe they tipped him because the minute they

03:57:29.880 showed up, he somehow had dementia. He couldn't remember things and he would, uh, uh, crash cars.

03:57:38.720 He'd put sugar in gas tanks and act crazy. He even told some of the kids, kids now in their fifties

03:57:45.880 that I, I knew this is how I'll never be put in jail. And it almost worked. He, he did abuse his

03:57:53.180 wife and have the last two years in jail, but, uh, that was just for abuse. And he died in jail.

03:58:00.800 Didn't he ever, did he, I feel like the Zodiac

03:58:04.520 like would have left a note, you know, he's a real prolific writer and loved writing notes about

03:58:11.380 himself. Wouldn't the Zodiac have owned it upon his death?

03:58:15.540 No, he chose to, uh, he did tell a half dozen people. We have three affidavits, two of them

03:58:24.980 from prisoners, one from will where he admits who he is. And we brought those to a courtroom in a very

03:58:31.600 remote County. And again, we have them, but no one has looked at them. Uh, and, and that'll be part of

03:58:39.300 the documentary that we're pursuing is revealing, uh, that he did tell three or four people very

03:58:47.500 close to him that he was the Zodiac. By the way, when he did die, that girl that was babysat by him

03:58:55.120 and his wife, when he died, the widow was called, uh, got a call from a 30 something woman. And that was

03:59:04.240 the little girl. And the minute she got on the phone with the widow, the widow said, I'm sorry.

03:59:11.680 And I'm paraphrasing. I'm sorry. I never told you about Gary. And I'm sorry, uh, uh, for what's

03:59:18.380 happened. It's, it was a stunning and they were stunned. That woman was stunned to get that call.

03:59:24.700 Then another neighbor called her and said, and she confirmed the same story with the other neighbor 0.99

03:59:31.460 that, but I mean, it could just be, I'm sorry, Gary was such a bastard and that you got stuck 0.96

03:59:36.620 with the worst babysitter ever, as opposed to, I'm sorry, you grew up being tutelaged, you know, 0.97

03:59:41.860 with tutelage from the Zodiac. Well, we do have her quoted talking about the Zodiac and the murders,

03:59:49.760 but you know how it is. Like in the same way, these guys said, Ed Edwards did it. Maybe this guy,

03:59:55.820 Gary was like, and I'm the Zodiac too. Well, I will tell you when the FBI went up

04:00:01.460 there in 2014 after Will ran for it. Um, what happened then is that the town split half believed

04:00:10.600 he could be the other half said, no, he's a painter. We love him. He's a great guy. This

04:00:15.420 is a town of 300 people, very small. And when several, we have nine witnesses, six of them,

04:00:23.940 very strong when they heard he could have been the Zodiac. These folks slept on their couches,

04:00:30.440 in their closets for months. They were freaked out, freaked out. And that's what happened to the

04:00:38.400 town. When Will ran for it, it split the town in two. This is all you say was on the top of a

04:00:44.840 mountain. This is in Northern California. This is in the high Sierra. Yes. Northern California.

04:00:50.200 Okay. And was anybody ever able to find people who knew Gary in his youth, you know, talk about what

04:00:56.720 he was like back then before he had these injuries. Have you, do you have any idea of

04:01:01.000 his childhood background? We have some of his veterans who talked about and remembers when he

04:01:06.480 lost his mind, uh, and remembers how it affected him, that accident and the surgery. That's one of

04:01:12.960 his veterans. We tracked him down. Uh, we have neighbors that knew him that worked with him in

04:01:18.420 his paint company and they all think he's a great guy. Well, he, he, he divided his world. You should

04:01:25.880 know he never went to funerals. He never went to weddings. When he went to the market, he'd make his

04:01:31.120 wife go in and he'd sit in the car. He was off the grid, Megan. There was, you know, no cell phones,

04:01:37.620 nothing. And so he stayed off the grid in this little town, uh, until he passed. And then out came

04:01:44.960 the bullets from neighbors. Wow. So what do you think? I mean, like, I know that not everybody's

04:01:51.980 cooperative and you're still working on it and you're going to do your test, but do you think

04:01:56.120 we'll know, do you think you'll get this to a place where it is beyond doubt that it was this guy?

04:02:04.660 I think it's going to happen because of our three attorneys. I hate to go that route, but we've taken

04:02:10.120 this evidence from Riverside to the task force forces on DNA and these hairs. We've been all the

04:02:18.560 way up to the attorney general of California who turned us back to San Francisco. Nobody wants to

04:02:25.160 deal with this 50 year old headache, but look, all we need is the hairs to compare. They're sitting in

04:02:31.220 that fridge. We have DNA to compare it to. Uh, it's just a matter of time. And the FBI, which did the

04:02:39.740 lab work on the hairs, I think it's going to be awfully hard. We hope awfully hard for the FBI to

04:02:47.320 not cooperate. We went to them a couple of years ago, not only with our Hoffa story, but Zodiac.

04:02:53.480 We met with the attorney, the, uh, agent in charge in Los Angeles who happened to be another, you know,

04:03:00.120 Hey Tom, I know a guy who knows a guy. One of our team members was buddies with him on the JTTF,

04:03:06.840 the terrorism task force in Chicago. So he arranged for me and our member, Jim Zimmerman to meet with

04:03:13.700 this agent. And he looked at the evidence and he literally said, I think you've got them. And I

04:03:20.900 think this is Hoffa. I'm going to take it to the crime division. This agent took it to the crime

04:03:26.260 division three times and they turned it down. Well, who did kill Jimmy Hoffa? Now that we're

04:03:34.860 down that lane. Well, we can't go there, but I will tell you he's, uh, buried, uh, in, uh,

04:03:41.520 the Great Lakes area and, uh, no, you know, I can't give you where, but, but I will tell you

04:03:49.200 that, uh, we sent a van up there and a couple of my guys with vests and hard hats and big foot long

04:03:57.140 sandwiches and sat where the exact spot he was buried. We were brought to on a deathbed cop,

04:04:04.680 a corrupt cop who worked for a mobster who cased Hoffa, uh, that cop on his deathbed gave us the

04:04:13.600 exact location in a map. Uh, he gave it to his niece who was another cop and that niece brought

04:04:20.740 it to her boyfriend of 10 years and he's a cop. And he said, and she said, I've got six brothers

04:04:26.920 and sisters. I don't want to break this. They'll go after my family. And the boyfriend said,

04:04:32.300 that's fine. You know, you do what you think is best. 25 years later, that boyfriend's on my team,

04:04:39.120 Jim Zimmerman. And he came into my office and said, you know, I have a 10 year girlfriend that

04:04:45.040 thinks she knows where Hoffa is. We went there with Jim and some other cops with a van set up

04:04:52.860 like we're workers, cops waving at us, rent a cops, and suddenly out rolls a, uh, ground penetration

04:05:01.760 radar machine from the van. We go to the exact spot in the middle of nowhere. And there it goes down

04:05:08.500 five feet to clay. You can't see through clay. And the geophysicist that looked at it said,

04:05:16.500 you know, I usually use words like anomaly and disturbance, but this is a backhoe job

04:05:22.320 in the middle of nowhere. And so we are now coordinating with universities and the state

04:05:29.820 involved and the attorney general probably to tent it so that there's no interruption because if we're

04:05:36.920 wrong, we're wrong. It's 50, 50. That's what I was going to ask you. If you're wrong and if you do get

04:05:42.000 a test on these hairs and they don't match Gary, will you accept that? There's a lot of things that

04:05:47.900 match Gary. I'm not worried about that one at all. I really am not. There's so much I haven't told you.

04:05:55.060 You know, there is so many pieces of evidence, so many clues, so many quotes, affidavits,

04:06:01.960 shoe size. I mean, everything is all in the right spot. Now, I think, and again, I think it's,

04:06:10.320 I have quotes from friends at DOJ, friends at police departments that I've known because of my

04:06:19.240 teaching. And they've told me, Tom, don't go there. You're going to just be, you're going to be

04:06:24.180 embarrassing us. Literally, that's what they said. Others said, I can't, after saying, getting very

04:06:30.220 excited, they go to the head of their department and they said, no, no, no. I, you know, I can't do

04:06:35.720 it. Nobody wants to be embarrassed. So that's what we're facing. And that's where we hope these

04:06:40.320 attorneys can help. Well, we will certainly continue to follow it and have you back once you get those

04:06:47.560 results, if you want to talk about it. Fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for walking us through

04:06:53.060 such a complex case and letting us understand how this, how this thing went down. Megan, I really

04:06:59.520 appreciate your invitation. If I may, I want to mention to the audience that there are three stats

04:07:05.420 they need to understand. One is quarter million. Another one is 6,000. The other one is 5%. There are

04:07:14.900 a quarter million unsolved murders now in this country, and it grows by 6,000 a year. And only 5%

04:07:23.320 of departments now can afford cold case teams. That's what this is all about. And my wife and I

04:07:29.780 are expanding. We are now a .org nonprofit. We've funded it for 10 years on this team to, we want

04:07:38.440 to spread these teams out in every state because there's no more cops coming. We're getting retired

04:07:44.780 cops to help solve these problems. Tom, thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. God bless.

04:07:51.420 Colbert and his team do some truly important work, but what about his theory on the Zodiac

04:07:57.140 killer's identity? It is just a theory. Later this week, we're going to bring you a fascinating

04:08:02.440 interview with Paul Holes. Paul is the real deal. He's a former cold case investigator who really was

04:08:10.500 the guy. I mean, he was part of a team, but he really was the guy who helped solve the Golden State

04:08:16.160 Killer case. Okay. This is a guy, lifelong law enforcement. He's got a book too on the cold

04:08:21.920 cases that he's looked into and so on. And one of them is the Zodiac. So I asked him about this

04:08:28.040 interview with Tom Colbert and what he thinks. And here's what he said. Can I ask you about Zodiac?

04:08:33.220 Because we had a guy come on the program. The guy's name is Tom Colbert, and he made the strongest

04:08:39.300 case he could, that the Zodiac killer was a man named Gary Post. And I asked him about a show I

04:08:46.080 did on NBC in which the filmmakers, because they had done a documentary, were saying the man that

04:08:52.580 the Zodiac killer was Ed Edwards. And he said, no, it wasn't Ed. I'm very certain it was Gary Post

04:08:58.720 and presented the case for Gary Post. As somebody who's looked into the Zodiac killer,

04:09:03.320 who do you think it was? What do you make of these pronouncements that it was definitively Ed

04:09:08.960 Edwards or it was definitively Gary Post? I put no weight on them whatsoever. You know, I

04:09:14.740 got involved in the Zodiac case in the late nineties into the early two thousands. I was dealing with

04:09:20.620 the early online sluice during that timeframe. You know, they all have what they call their POIs or

04:09:26.740 persons of interest, and they build these circumstantial cases. And oftentimes they're way off the

04:09:33.040 mark, even with the circumstantial cases. But they miss, you know, what we look at is we have to

04:09:40.640 find a nexus to the crime. We can't just say, well, this person lived in an area where these crimes

04:09:44.880 were committed or this or that. Working Golden State Killer, I have built tremendous circumstantial

04:09:54.860 cases against numerous individuals. Some of these individuals, I think to this day, circumstantially

04:10:00.620 match up better than D'Angelo and only I eliminated them with DNA. So when you start working these

04:10:07.260 cases with this type of notoriety, you cast such a wide net of suspects, you know, 10,000 people being

04:10:15.580 looked at, you are going to find individuals that have circumstantial aspects to them to where you go,

04:10:23.860 wow, this can't be coincidence. It must be him. And I will tell you, it's coincidence. Personally,

04:10:30.920 the only way I am going to believe that the Zodiac has been identified is if they do get that objective

04:10:38.740 identifying evidence that shows this is the guy. Do they match DNA if they get DNA from, let's say,

04:10:46.960 envelopes or stamps that the Zodiac sent in? Can they get DNA off of the bindings that the Zodiac

04:10:54.020 brought with them to the Lake Berry Essacy? Or does somebody find a shoebox, you know, in their, maybe

04:11:00.960 their dad's house after he dies that has, you know, Paul Stein's bloody shirt in it, you know, something like

04:11:08.640 that. Now I'm interested, but I've seen it too many times. They throw these, these names out there and

04:11:16.300 this is, this is a Zodiac. I'm not convinced. And I don't think the Zodiac has been identified yet.

04:11:24.240 For now, the mystery continues, but we're going to stay on it. We will bring you updates.

04:11:29.300 Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show. No BS, no agenda, and no fear.

04:11:38.640 We'll be right back.

04:12:08.640 Thanks for listening.

The Megyn Kelly Show - March 15, 2026

Unabomber Look Back, Karen Read Trial, Zodiac Killer Deep Dive - Megyn's ＂True Crime＂ Mega-Episode

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