Zodicatually: The Truth About A Fake Killer with Eddie McNamara

In this week's show we discuss the book Zodicatually: The Truth About A Fake Killer with Author Eddie McNamara. 

Who was the Zodiac Killer?
A sadistic murderer who claimed thirty-seven victims? A master manipulator who taunted the police with cryptic letters and mind-bending ciphers? Or a shadowy figure who terrorized California—and the nation—with an almost supernatural ability to evade capture? In an era when nearly 80% of homicides were solved, how could this killer escape justice? And more than half a century later, why does his identity remain one of history’s greatest mysteries? What if the shocking truth is this: the Zodiac Killer never existed?In Zodiactually, former police officer Eddie McNamara peels back decades of myth and sensationalism to expose the chilling truths behind one of the world’s most infamous cases. Through painstaking research of original police files, interviews, deep dives into newspaper archives, and analysis of thousands of pages of court records, McNamara delivers a groundbreaking revelation: the Zodiac Killer wasn’t a single, unstoppable predator but an urban legend set in motion by an unlikely source and amplified by the media and public imagination. Zodiactually unveils the hidden truths and forgotten stories surrounding the murders that captivated the
world—and the fear that turned them into legend. This groundbreaking book will challenge everything you think you know about the Zodiac and force you to confront how myth, media, and hysteria shape history.

Eddie McNamara is the author of the crime novel Brooklyn Hardcore, the vegetarian cookbook Toss Your Own Salad, and the short story collection Two Fare Zone. In a former life, he was a New York City Police officer and 9/11 first responder, and a columnist for Penthouse magazine.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to another episode of Mystic Skeptic Radio. On today's show, our guest is Eddie McNamara. He's the author of Zodiac Actually, the real story of the fake serial killer. Uh, you know, I'm a big fan of the movie with Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. Uh, we can go step by step on how did you become an author? What made you be interested in this true crime saga? And what is the evidence that brought you to your conclusion? But um just for people who are not familiar with the Zodiac Killer, can you tell us a little bit about the background of that story?

SPEAKER_01 0:43

Sure. The uh the Zodiac Killer, the story that's the you know, sort of the accepted story, is that a serial killer um working in the Bay Area of California between late 1968 and uh late 1969, uh there were five murders in four different locations linked to the zodiac. There were maybe two dozen letters from 1969 through 1978 attributed to the zodiac. Um the first attacks um occurred at Lovers Lanes in the North Bay of um like Venitia, California and Vallejo, California. The third attack took place at Lake Herman Road in uh Napa, California, and the fourth and final uh canonical zodiac attack took place in San Francisco.

SPEAKER_00 1:41

So as new documentaries are being made, such as the one about the son of Sam being a group of killers and things like that. Um was that something that made you uh consider uh looking into it as a real thing or as some type of media uh paranoia that came about? Or was there other reasons that uh made you look into it?

SPEAKER_01 2:04

Um well, in in my previous life, I was a before I was a writer, I was a police officer. Um so that that's my background. I was seven, I was a police officer for seven years in New York. Um and I had written a book, um, it was a punk rock novel, like a punk rock crime novel uh called Brooklyn Hardcore. And I wanted to do something else after that. And I um a writer I really liked, uh Jared Kobeck, I really like him. He wrote two books about the Zodiac case where he used library science to look into who the letter writer in the Zodiac case could be. And I thought it was very interesting. So I decided to learn more about this zodiac case myself. And um I was uh sort of disheartened by the content that was online. It seemed to be uh a bunch of people with theories that weren't willing to listen to each other, so I decided to go to the primary sources and read the police reports, read the FBI reports, um, watch television programs that featured the investigators uh that worked the Zodiac case. Um so I got very immersed in that. And you know, I started noticing a lot of inconsistencies between the story, you know, say in the um in the Fincher film or the Gray Smith book, which are both excellent. I think they're both fantastic, but the um what I was reading in the FBI files, or what I was reading in the Vallejo police reports, or what I was reading in the Solano County Sheriff's Reports, weren't necessarily reflected in the sort of larger zodiac stories. So I started to question things, and you know, it's it's very obvious that, and these guys tried to say it for a long time, the detectives that worked on the first two murders, which took place at Lake Herman Road, so it's two teenagers at a Lover's Lane, a 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen and 17-year-old David Faraday. Um, they're murdered um with a 22 pistol. Um, they're in his car and and they're killed there. And by 1970, and you know, you can see this in some old newspapers, uh, there were a few articles about it, but uh not too much. Um the detectives working that case and the Vallejo detectives helping them um were starting to believe that Zodiac they doubted that Zodiac committed those two murders. But he had taken credit for them in a series of letters and gave facts that supposedly only he and the police would know to um to verify his credentials. But the local cops had multiple informants um giving a different name, this guy, David Luis Magress, who did uh they they said he did it, um, and he then confessed to being at the scene and witnessing the crime. He gave information such as what the kids were wearing when they were killed and how they were killed, and specifically that um Betty Lou was allowed to run from the car and shot in the back five times. It appears to be a thrill killing that a group of young men um did, and he was one of the young men involved in it. So the 1991 and 92 cold case detectives were also satisfied that this different group of people committed the first two murders, and it had nothing to do with Zodiac. So the very foundation of the story is already um diminished by the people who worked the case in in 68, 69, 91, and 92 didn't believe that the first two murders were zodiac, and they said this on multiple media appearances. Uh, they said this in books uh where they were interviewed. Um, you know, they were on lots of shows in the 80s, 90s, and 2000s, and they were they were not shy about this. So the true crime community has to take, make a very concerted effort to ignore the fact that the people who the very people who worked the case were saying that the first two murders were not zodiac. So it's it's very inconvenient for the story. It sort of torpedoes the whole zodiac narrative, and people pretend like that never happened, that the actual investigators weren't saying that you know this wasn't Zodiac and we know who did it. Even David Fincher, the filmmaker, uh, he's aware of the Dave McGrath's uh business, and he said that he believed that the first two murders were um inspiration for Arthur Lee Allen um on July 4th at Blue Rock Springs. So I found a lot of inconsistency right away looking at even just the first two murders.

SPEAKER_00 6:42

Um I'm a little confused. You mentioned that the cases were in the 60s and 70s, and then you jumped to the 90s. What's the cold case from the 90s?

SPEAKER_01 6:51

Oh, it's Zodiac as a cold case. They never solved Zodiac. So in um in 1991, the Vallejo of the Police Police Department uh commissioned a retired detective and an active duty police captain to uh work Zodiac as a cold case. They had a suspect, Arthur Lee Allen, at the time, and uh there were informants against him uh saying that he was the Zodiac. One of them was uh like this mob guy who was in trouble for uh armed robbery and he was facing 30 years, so he um decided to cooperate with police in uh 1991, and he gave up Arthur Lee Allen as the zodiac. Um but those detectives in the early 90s they did not they also investigated the late Herman Rhodes murders, which um happened uh December 20th of 1968, and they did not believe that those were zodiac, they believed that it was a separate group of people.

SPEAKER_00 7:54

What happened to the suspect?

SPEAKER_01 7:57

Um nothing. Uh ultimately nothing happened to the suspect. Um they got a warrant about a year later. They they questioned him. There were no um no forensics, uh there was no fingerprint match, there was no handwriting match, uh, there was no obviously DNA at the time. It was uh there was nothing to tie him to the murders. They served the search warrant on his home, uh, on his trailer, um, you know, multiple days they served multiple search warrants on the guy, and they could never link him to the crimes. Um so you know, nothing happened, and he died shortly after of uh, you know, I I think he died of uh heart failure at age 59, but he uh they never got anywhere with that suspect. And that's the suspect from the you know the Fincher film, the Arthur Lee Allen, the uh you know, the the big guy from um Vallejo with the Zodiac Watch that they had questioned. And uh yeah, so so he was considered the the top suspect or the primary suspect um in 1971 uh for a bit and then again in the early 90s, but ultimately they never were able to put the case on him, and they they did a lot of work with him as a suspect and didn't get anywhere.

SPEAKER_00 9:12

So without giving away your book, um what who was writing these letters and what was the significance of it in relation to the case and maybe making the case more popular than what it was meant to be?

SPEAKER_01 9:25

Um I think if you look at the 1969 letter, so the original letters start uh July 31st of 69, and um and they come with a three-part cipher. Um the information provided in the letters, in all of the 1969 letters, um comes from police reports and crime scene knowledge. Um, it's right out of if you look at some of the phrasing, it's exactly what was in the the local police reports. So I think the first batch of letters for sure um was written by someone with access to police reports. It's uh the wording is too similar to not, you know, to be a coincidence. Um, and it's written very much just the facts like a police officer. It uh you know, it's information from the reports. So I do believe that the initial writer, the initial zodiac letter writer was someone associated with the local police departments.

SPEAKER_00 10:29

Is it possible that it was the police department themselves trying to get funding or bring attention to their good uh crime investigation abilities or something like that?

SPEAKER_01 10:41

Well, the the first part's very interesting because the uh the Vallejo Police Department went on strike in the middle of the Zodiac investigation. Um there was a zodiac murder on July 4th of 1969, and I believe on July 17th, the police department actually went on strike. Um, the fire department went on strike. So it's a city of 66,000 people at the time, and they had maybe 23 first responders working, and they had to have people from other uh areas come to help. And during these um this strike, there were multiple false alarms coming in a day, multiple fake calls that the fire department was going out to, and there were when the fire department would get there, there would be writing, um, you know, taunting writing, like ha ha ha, and like you can't do a fake fire, and then lots of uh sort of sabotage uh for you know uh seemingly for the purposes of a labor dispute was happening. Um, you know, a garage was firebombed when the fire department was off on another call. Um you know, so so for the first part, uh to make people feel like they needed the uh this going on, yeah, that's entirely possible. Um it it does seem to be a very fear-based group of uh group of letters, but they certainly wouldn't be um showing off their ability as investigators uh or competent investigators uh with what was going on at the time because they you know here we are uh 58 years later and it's still an unsolved case. Uh there's still five unsolved murders, there's you know, uh five families never got justice, they never got uh an answer for what happened to their loved ones. So yeah, I think it's you know, it it it could be uh or it could be coincidentally uh someone who was involved in the strike and also um involved with one of the victims. Uh the victim Darlene Farron from the July 4th, 69 uh murder was she was a married woman with a young daughter, and she was having an affair with um at least two, possibly three, local police officers at the time of the murder. So that's uh, you know, in her sphere were police officers. The two officers that I know that she was dating were both fired, and it was very difficult to be fired by the police department in the 60s. One of them had a statutory rape case from a 15-year-old, and he would later become involved in a domestic violence assault on a woman and a shooting of a man. And the other one was actually even worse. He was fired for stealing evidence. Um, and a woman died at his home in 1972, and his former boss, the the police, his former police boss ruled it a suicide. Uh, she was shot in the stomach with a 357 magnum, and her children were a few feet away in another room, and that's not really a typical way that women would commit suicide uh just a few feet away from their children. So both of these guys were involved in violence against women, and both of these guys were fired from the police department and involved in some very shady things, and I think they both make fantastic suspects.

SPEAKER_00 14:11

In an age where there's a lot of yellow journalism and sensationalism, do you think that uh the media could have been involved in um putting different cases together to build uh a serial killer that they could uh exploit, or that they could take a real serial killer case and blow it up to the point where you can't even solve the case because there's too much uh false information and eyes all around it?

SPEAKER_01 14:41

Well, I think both of both are um likely, both are likely that that that actually did happen. Um I you know, I I sort of chronicle it in the book about all the different cases that happened in the area that the media was linking to Zodiac. Um, there were all sorts of murders happening in California that the media was uh putting zodiac links to. And for years, there was a murder in Riverside, which is like eight hours away. Um, there was a murder in uh Nevada. There was a few uh you know somewhat local murders that for years were thought to be zodiac murders, but the local police didn't really think that. But the paper sort of put it in the paper and ran with the story. Um, there was a time when the Zodiac was taking credit for 37 murders, and you know, the papers were trying to basically guess which ones he was he was talking about. So it was a lot of sensationalism, and they were blowing up the story a lot because it was a very interactive story. If this person is sending in letters to the newspaper and the newspaper is then printing the letters, and he's sending in these cipher codes, it's almost like it's a it's a reason to buy the newspaper. Now you get to see his new letter, and now maybe at home you can solve the code. Uh the the first, the three-part cipher that he sent on July 31st of 69 was solved by two civilians, not the FBI, not the CIA, not the Naval Intelligence. It was two high school teachers from Salinas, California. They solved the first uh cipher. So, you know, there was another uh cipher the Zodiac sent in uh where he said, My name is contained in here. You know, so it's people at home who were you know enthusiastically picking up these newspapers and trying to solve this uh zodiac puzzle. So yeah, I think uh the newspaper definitely ran the story um, you know, to to uh to keep it going. And they they got nine years out of the story. Um, you know, I also think one of the lead investigators in the story, he had lots of uh the Mark Ruffalo character from the movie, he had lots of connections with the the San Francisco newspapers, and he in large part kept the story alive by giving um you know giving quotes to newspapers, talking to newspaper writers about the Zodiac case. Uh he was accused of faking a zodiac letter in 1978. Uh he admitted to faking letters, um, fan letters for himself to a newspaper columnist, uh, supposedly from young women and college women, talking about how handsome and interesting he was. Uh so he was involved in, and I can show I show in the book about how throughout the 70s and 80s um there was a San Francisco examiner columnist named Guy Wright, and he was putting these fake hero stories about how he, you know, was assisting with the murder of the Iranian general's son, which never happened in California or anywhere in the United States. Um, so it's fake crimes, and then sort of a week later, a bunch of letters come in talking about how great this detective is from people who do not who are not listed in the San Francisco directory. So it's it's very strange. And he was in large part responsible for keeping the story alive. It probably would have died in 1970 or 1971, but he, throughout the 1970s, and using the San Francisco media, uh, was linking it to other crimes and you know keeping it going, keeping the story going. He then became a um a big-time celebrity. The movie Dirty Harry is based on him. Clint Eastwood based his character on this detective Toskey um bullet with Steve McQueen. Uh, he based part of the character, at least stylistically, with the holster, on this Dave Toske. And then Mark Ruffalo played Dave Toskey in the Zodiac film, and he's one of the heroes of the film. And in real life, he was transferred out of homicide in disgrace and taken off the Zodiac case because of this uh notion that he was writing fake letters.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

How do you feel about all these uh serial killer and true crime podcasts? And I try to listen to one about this guy who was going around kidnapping women and raping them and killing them, and I was sick to my stomach uh with how detailed and specific it was. Um people get off on that or they enjoy uh, especially in Texas, we have the Texas Killing Field uh story. Um how do you feel about the popularity of this? And do you think that we have become desensitized or that it is some type of sickness that people have to kind of look at uh these type of train wrecks and and enjoy hearing about them?

SPEAKER_01 19:49

Well, I I think there's a there's a few ways to look at it. Um I've I've spoken to a lot of people since I wrote a true crime book, and a lot of people told me that they like true crime, and this is this is especially women I've noticed this from, they like true crime um as a as an exercise of putting themselves in the situation and what would they do in that situation? So it's almost like uh like a preparation for a worst-case scenario thing. So I've heard that quite a bit. Um, I don't love true crime. Um, I don't love true crime at all. I um my intention with this book was to solve a crime and to debunk the sort of sensationalist true crime gory narrative. Um, you know, uh in this research, I had to look at a lot of cases in this time and place. And, you know, it's really sad that a lot of women were um being abused, being murdered, um, and nothing was done about it. If they were, say, someone who worked at a strip club or a go-go bar or someone who dated a drug dealer, and this is the late 60s or early 70s in this area of California, I don't think the police were doing that much to catch their killer. Um, I don't think, you know, I think uh, you know, a woman was shot in the back of the head, and one of the zodiac investigators said that, oh, it it could be suicide. You know, they were really not trying to do their job. So I think, in a way, uh I I I I think I hope anyway, with my book, um, because I I can link one person, one of my suspects, to possibly four murders um between 1968 and 1969. He was convicted for one of them and ended up in prison for that. But I think he was forensically linked uh to another murder of a black man who made the name Matthew Burrell, who was murdered on his 46th birthday, and it made the paper for one day. And it only made the paper because this guy's gun was linked to it for a different murder. Um, and that's something that if there's a police officer from that department, the you know, Vallejo or Solano County, it If um I I I want someone to be the cop who solves this cold case. I want them to read my book, see that this information is there, pick up a file, and do something with it. And they know who did it, and it's a it was a local gang. And um the the guys are all past now, but they could answer the question as to what happened there, and they could, you know, they they I I believe they could answer that. It would take maybe two or three pieces of paper that they probably have somewhere um that they haven't shared with me, but I believe they probably have it somewhere. So, you know, it true crime for me is to is to is to get this right because they got it wrong before. So I'm interested in real crime, and you know, I'm not interested in the salacious details. Uh I'm um I'm I'm interested in uh solutions, and I want the solutions to come. And I think there's uh enough for the early murders in uh in my book for someone to pursue, and I hope that that does happen.

SPEAKER_00 23:13

In your work as a police officer, did you experience um a lack of interest in um solving cases that involve minorities, women, or people who were of low repute and uh and maybe poor? And that if it was the the child of a congressman or uh the mayor or something like that, all all eyes were on it and they were trying to take care of that. Do you think that some of the issues with this case has to do with blue-collar people?

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Well, I definitely think in my experience, no, because we were dealing with we were just, you know, it was it was in New York City and it was in a traveling area, you know. In in I worked for the Port Authority in New York, so I was working at the World Trade Center, I was working at airports, I was working at the bus terminal. So it's it's really everybody. It's it's uh it's transportation centers, and it's you know, uh, but I do know that uh you know, I do know that historically uh in this country the rich and poor are not treated the same. I mean, you when when these cases go to trial, um, you know, a rich person will have an attorney dedicated to their case and their case only. Um a poor person will likely have a public defender who is one overworked lawyer uh fighting against the entire system of judges and cops and forensics and you know and and responders. So it's you know, there's definitely a a two-tiered justice system in this country, I would say for sure. Uh when it gets to court, I think it's even more it's more damaging when it gets to court because I, you know, everyone doesn't have the same access to the same level of criminal defense. Uh, you know, it's it's just not it's it's anyone with money and a dedicated lawyer, they they they will do, they will fare better, they will serve less time than someone with an overworked uh you know uh uh legal aid lawyer who is is basically asking them to take whatever deal the prosecutor is offering. And uh, and that that is a that's a major problem. But that's on on the end I worked, no, I didn't I didn't experience that. But I you know I know that through the legal system, it's certainly not a fair system that serves everyone, every American equally. No, it's it's it's it's not.

SPEAKER_00 25:37

And watching the movie, did you feel that they were like exploiting the the kind of um monster versus couple making love or going out on a date kind of trope where um I've heard even friends say that they're rooting for the killer because people are are acting crazy or doing wild things, and the killer comes and and uh gets rid of them. Did you feel that? Because um when the movie came out, um we've had um some tragedies in our family, and and I knew that some family members wouldn't be able to stomach the kind of the way that was depicted.

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Right. I mean, I think uh David Fincher tried to as accurately as possible portray the uh the murder scenes, and I he consulted with the two surviving victims uh in that were involved in those scenes. But yeah, it very much is the trope of like a lover's lane, and you know, people are a couple is together and you know the monster comes to attack them. You know, this is what we see in every slasher movie, this is what we see in you know in in horror entertainment. So, you know, that um yeah, that that was apparently done as closely to the truth as possible. But um in my opinion, and the way I'm watching the movie, I'm watching the movie as a movie about obsession, where the uh the character uh played by Jake Gyllenhaal and the character played by Mark Ruffalo basically uh ruined their lives because they're obsessed with this case and it takes over their, you know, the uh the um the Robert Graysmith character played by uh Jake Gyllenhaal. He loses his family, he loses his marriage, he you know, he he he loses out on life chasing after this ghost of a you know of a of a legend of a serial killer. And uh, you know, I think that's I think that's what Fincher was saying the most. Instead of you know, I he definitely did have violent, horrible scenes of you know a serial killer being a serial killer, but I think he was also showing the toll the case took on the the this person who became obsessed with it, and he was showing that obsession. And uh, you know, and it's um you know, I'm of I'm of two minds about it. I mean, Robert Graysmith did write a very interesting book in 1986 about uh all of this, and you know, um he wasn't completely factually accurate with everything. Uh he did his he did, I believe, the best job he could, but he, you know, he had to write a book that was very entertaining and he had to keep it to a narrative and he had to have a bad guy. He couldn't leave it open-ended. So he um he had Arthur Lee Allen as his suspect. And yeah, I do think, you know, uh I also think those two guys, uh Toskey and Graysmith, who were, you know, Gyllen Hall and Ruffalo, were the only two people who benefited from the Zodiac case. Um, I think everybody else suffered because of it, and the movie does show a bit of suffering from them, but I think they both benefited in sort of having this heroic reputation and you know being thought of as you know, people who dedicated their life to pursuing justice.

SPEAKER_00 29:02

Have you ever thought about how some of these depictions uh give people ideas or they uh romanticize the villain as someone who can get away with stuff, someone that has a vendetta against society, and then uh young people or people who with some type of um mental health crisis, they go about and and follow after them?

SPEAKER_01 29:29

Yeah, um, that actually happened. Um there was a New York zodiac in the early 90s, I think his name was Humberto Seda, and he watched a documentary about the Zodiac Killer on public television, and he um he actually was obsessed with astrology, and he went around with um a zip gun, homemade zip guns, and he went around his neighborhood shooting people uh based on star signs and astrological uh positions. And in this is the late 80s, early 90s in in New York City. He lived in Brooklyn, I'm from Brooklyn, and uh it was a really scary thing. There was uh, you know, he actually was more of a zodiac than the one we're talking about from the 1960s. He was uh, you know, he was a serial killer, and they did not catch him until he signed the letter. Um he was in for another arrest. Uh he shot his sister in um in a domestic uh her his sister and her and her husband, and he shot them, and he was signing uh a piece of paper for the police, and he signed it with the zodiac symbol at the very end. Uh and when they interviewed, and then they figured out that this is probably the guy that's and he was writing letters as the zodiac, also inspired by the 1960s zodiac. So, yeah, there's a very real case of someone who did this, and he's in prison still now, who um who did exactly that, who was inspired by this, and before that he never had any history of violent crime, and he decided he was gonna be the zodiac, and and he did, and he's still alive, and he's uh he's in prison now. But yeah, it's it's it's a horrible thing. He shot a lot more people than you know the person in the 1960s, uh just terrorized people, all ages, all you know, um all walks of life um in Brooklyn, New York. And it's uh yeah, it's a horrible story. And it was he and he admitted um readily that he got the inspiration from the Zodiac and from watching uh television program about the zodiac. So yeah, I think there is uh you know, there's too much, there's too much. Um I think a lot of people who've produced uh zodiac books or documentaries, they paint them as some type of mastermind who outsmarted the police and who's you know, it's almost aspirational. And I think a lot of serial killers uh in in film and television have been based on this person playing a cat and mouse game with the police. And yeah, I think it's it's it's it's not good to uh give some kind of hero status or some kind of you know genius, brilliant status to this person. This is uh, you know, this is a terrible person if they were real. It's a it's a terrible person if they're fake and they were writing fake letters to take credit for murders they didn't commit. Um the whole thing is a mess and something that no one should aspire to be.

SPEAKER_00 32:28

Have you done research on other uh killers such as the Nightcrawler or Ted Bundy or people like that? I made a mistake to watch a documentary on the Nightcrawler, and it was truly disgusting because they would uh emphasize uh the victims and how they were killed. So um again, you know, the exploitation of people suffering. Um, but have you uh has it piqued your interest in looking at other cases and how they were um described by the media or addressed by the public?

SPEAKER_01 33:01

Um not really. Um I'm I'm not much of a true crime person. Uh I have a slight interest in Manson because I think that story is completely the Charles Manson story is completely overblown and misunderstood. But um I haven't done any deep dives like I did with uh with Zodiac. Um I I don't love true crime because I think uh unless the true crime is trying to solve something and not glorify the criminal. Um and I think Manson also got the same type of treatment where he was thought to be this mastermind, and uh I don't think he was at all. I think he was you know simply someone who was a pimp and had access to drugs, and they turned him into, you know, maybe one of the most famous people of the 20th century in the United States. And uh he's not a genius. He has uh, you know, he was barely literate, he had a third grade education, um, and he was a pimp, and he was able to pimp his girls to some influential people in Hollywood. Uh, but you know, uh as far as the murders go and the gory details, I'm not at all interested in that. I'm uh I'm interested in getting setting the record straight, uh sticking to facts, and getting away from these narratives that are involving, you know, the CIA or other famous serial killers um and combining them into one person. I think it's uh I think a lot of these people are just you know bad people who are not brilliant and they just uh are being treated different, you know, being shown in the media as being a lot more than they really are. So that would be my interest, and uh more so than I don't on the gory details. I I have zero interest in that.

SPEAKER_00 34:49

So not to get off topic, but when people say that there's uh MK Ultra connection with Manson and possibly the the killer of um Charlie Kirk or the Trump uh botch assassination attempt, uh is there any uh inkling in your mind that there could be some type of uh brainwashing going on, or is like you said, it's just people who have um some type of bad upbringing or desire to cause havoc?

SPEAKER_01 35:20

Well, I think in in the in the case of the in the case of Manson, uh, you know, I think Manson had a horrific upbringing. Um, you know, he he was a criminal his entire life, but we can't ignore, and it's a fact, we can't ignore that the CIA was running the hate-free clinic that he was bringing the girls he was pimping to for STD treatment. So there is a there is a crossover there. Um now, do I think Madsen was part of, you know, was he an agent or was he uh someone who was an asset to the government? Absolutely not. Um he was he would have been, you know, taking and giving out LSD regardless of MK Ultra, regardless of the CAA. Um you know, I think it's a link that should be looked at. Um I think uh uh Tom O'Neill does a fantastic job in the book uh Chaos about Manson. I think it's a fantastic book. Um, but I don't I think the answer is a little I I think there's a meat and potatoes answer. Like there's a simpler answer, and it's just it's what it looks like. It's that, you know, this guy's a drug dealer and this guy's a pimp, he's a bad guy, he's got some bad guy bikers around, um, his friend commits a murder. They try to make some murders look like the murder the friend committed with the writing on the wall, the political piggy, death to pigs, all that stuff. Um, I think that's a lot more of a reasonable explanation than Manson being some type of asset. Um, also uh something people bring up is that uh he was never parole violated uh and he should have been. But, you know, it's the time period I'm studying also for Zodiac, and lots of crimes and lots of criminals uh go unpunished in this time period. Uh things were a lot different than they are now. And, you know, there's cases, uh, you know, I I there's a case where someone's linked to one of my suspects, and he had three gun cases, violent gun cases, plus a home invasion in like a three-month period of 1969, and he got a suspended he got a suspended sentence every time, and they took his gun. So, you know, um the 60s weren't necessarily a time of law and order where people were punished, you know. So if you look at it by today's standards, Manson would have been parole violated and sent back to prison. But during his time, these things weren't followed up upon nearly as much as they are now. So it kind of makes sense. You know, if you look in the context of the 60s, in the context of now, it's it would seem strange, but looking at the time period is not that strange.

SPEAKER_00 38:22

Uh there is uh theory that sounds compelling about, and that is that uh the government wanted to demonize the hippie movement, and that one way to do that is to make them look like criminals and to be anti-police. Same with the peace movement, same with the uh black uh liberation and the civil rights movement. Um what do you think about that?

SPEAKER_01 38:47

I mean, I think there was definitely an incentive for the government to do that, but if we look at the history, in the 1968 presidential election, um, and this is the height of the hippie movement, 67-68, is the very height of the hippie movement. And you have the the Democratic Convention, the police riot basically in Chicago, where the police are beating hippies, and everyone in the country can see that these people are protesting the they're protesting the war in Vietnam, they're protesting uh racial injustice, they're protesting for uh women's liberation, they're protesting for gay liberation. Um, and you can see that the police officers are the ones that are attacking them. And this is the absolute height of the hippie movement. And during the absolute height in 1968, Richard Nixon is elected president of the United States, and Ronald Reagan is elected governor of California. So it already happened uh in 68. The movement was already discredited in 68. There was a massive conservative victory um in California and in the nation. By 69, when you have Manson, you have Zodiac, you have the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont where someone is murdered. Um it's the pop history end of the 60s, but it's not the actual history in 1968. Uh, this is all, this becomes Nixon's America. You know, so it's it's I don't think it tracks the same way. Manson is late '69, uh, Zodiac is 68, 69. I don't think uh there was a concerted effort to use these things to discredit those movements. I think the CIA used whatever they could, the FBI used whatever they could to discredit the civil rights movement, to discredit the anti-war movement. I think that's absolutely true. I just don't think uh Manson and Zodiac had anything to do with it.

SPEAKER_00 40:49

And again, not to go off topic, but uh have you looked at uh at murder rates in other countries and the amount of um cold cases? Because you know, I come from Mexico and um, you know, I watch Dexter and things like that, and I'm like, if they can't solve crimes in in Miami where they have tons of resources, back home, we used to read uh true crime comic books, and they would just um show people being blown up and raped and and set on fire and stuff like that. And it was common that like there was really no justice, like there was no end insight for these cases. So um, even though things are bad in the US and there is a lot of uh uh people that get kidnapped, and you know, you go to Walmart and you see the missing kids and it breaks your heart, um, compared to other places, uh like Ciudafares, uh Mexico with all the femicides and things like that, uh, we're okay or we're at least trying. Uh is that uh one of the lessons that you learn by looking into these things?

SPEAKER_01 41:59

Yes, I think we are trying. And I think, you know, there's there's there's nothing that compares to Ciudad Adura's uh and and the femicides there that were going on for so long and going completely unsolved. Um there's something at the sort of the native uh reserves in in the US and Canada where there are lots of uh missing women, exploded women and murdered women, but to the scale, no, there's nothing like that. Um I think in the US we're trying. We're trying to, I think the you know, the we're trying to use science, we're trying to use DNA, we're trying to use databases, we're trying to use uh, you know, camera footage. Uh you know, I I I do think uh we're somewhat is more likely, even though the the closure rate of a homicide is lower now than it used to be. In the past it was like something like 80%, now it's about 50%. But I think they're getting the right people now. I think in the past they might have just uh found the usual suspect and put the put the case on them. Whereas I think now the investigative tactics are so much better and people are so much the police officers are so much better trained that um they're getting actual justice instead of just uh sort of symbolic justice. But yeah, I think um the technological advances, uh just DNA video cameras and having databases for fingerprints and databases for DNA that can be automatically run, that's massive. And you know, if that can go worldwide, I think that would be an incredible tool for any anywhere that uh has a backlog of cold cases to, you know, sort of but it you know it takes a lot of money and a lot of will. And you know, we still have in lots of cities in the US, uh, you know, tens of thousands of rape kits that have gone untested. So, you know, there there's still work to do, and it takes, you know, it's it it needs to be prioritized. What we want as a country. If we want to bring these people to justice, but then we have to prioritize uh the science of it, the uh you know, the forensic science of it.

SPEAKER_00 44:11

And with the development of AI technology and surveillance, uh, is there any concerns that you have that we're gonna be over policed and overly um surveilled to the point of almost like a uh pre-crime or uh science fiction scenario where it's so militarized and so uh police driven that uh it's gonna be a backlash, and then maybe that's why people are not pursuing uh criminal cases as much because they don't want to be under the thumb of the government?

SPEAKER_01 44:47

Yeah, I mean, I think you know, like a nightmare scenario would be like that film Minority Report, the Tom Cruise film, where they're sort of predicting crimes in the future, and that that would be a nightmare. And it's one of the reasons why I don't love profiling, like FBI profiling. And um, I don't I don't love that because that sort of you know it it it it isolates populations. I don't like when populations are isolated and you know it's said that this person is more likely to do this. Uh, you know, I think that's uh that's a dangerous slippery slope. I think AI is, as it stands, very dangerous because AI gives an answer and AI gives fake answers all the time. I've uh I've toyed with AI uh for research, for newspaper research, from newspaper stories that I was looking at from the 1960s, and I have the actual newspaper stories, but I asked AI about them, and AI was lying to me. They were giving me fake summaries, they were giving me fake stories about confessions. I uh I find it to be a very flawed tool for this type of uh investigative work. They were citing reports and articles that didn't exist, um, and I tried different ones. I tried ChatGPT, I tried uh Claude, I tried um Copilot. So I've tried a few of them just for you know compiling newspaper reports and sort of uh you know getting getting something of uh of those. And I found lots of really terrible mistakes uh where you know um where I have very low trust in AI as a tool for my purposes. So yeah, I think it's dangerous to put too much faith in AI, and it's dangerous to put too much faith in a profile of someone who hasn't done something yet. I think that's uh I think that's horrible. That's uh you know, that's a that's a nightmare dystopian future.

SPEAKER_00 46:45

And you mentioned the violence against uh Native American women. Um I have a theory about it, and it's very similar to the theory about the women of Juarez. There's an excellent podcast called Forgotten, um, the Women of Juarez. And what you get from these uh investigative journalists is that everybody's involved in kidnapping, raping, and tossing the women because they are from a low socioeconomic status, they are mostly indigenous, and they are easily replaceable in that factory-based society. But then in the Native American community, you have a lot of people coming through that are working on oil rigs or they're working on the forests or whatever, and women are seen as exotic, and then they're um used, abused, and and discarded. Um, that is very similar also to the Texas killing fields, where we have the oil uh areas and all kinds of random guys are passing through, and women are not safe. Um what do you uh think needs to happen for people to be a little more uh like you mentioned women thinking of the worst case scenario and how to um protect themselves? Do you think there needs to be more awareness also of uh the the perpetrators and people's ability to uh like defend women's rights or be more um respectful and more um you know cherishing people more than now people have become disposable?

SPEAKER_01 48:27

Yeah, I think that's the ultimate nightmare when people become disposable or discardable uh in situations like that. I mean, that's that we as a you know, as a world, as human beings, can't allow something like that to happen because that's probably the end result is that terrible things will happen to people if people don't count as much. So I think it's a top-down societal. We have to have you know, we have to believe in the value of our fellow human beings, um, that women cannot just be trafficked and women cannot just be, you know, is someone exotic and you know, someone to to have an affair with and then discard. And maybe that could mean physically discard, like, you know, get rid of the body or to traffic someone and have them working on, you know, uh as a sex worker, as a forced sex worker on uh, you know, on a on a on a ship or a barge or uh a trailer, and uh these are all terrible things, and you know, we have to sort of see from the top down that uh that that people are more valuable than that, and that people are, you know, it's we were talking about sort of inequity within the system, and these are these are things that are maybe systemic inequities, and you know, we have to do better and not just talk about it, but we have to, you know, we have to as a as a society start treating people more equally. I mean, more equally, equally, fully equally. We have to do that. And you know, until that happens, I think we will see tragedies like this. We will see um, you know, I think something we were talking about before about um profiling. Um, you know, early days, you know, the FBI profilers, they believed that serial killers were always going to be sort of white men between 35, 25, and 35 of above average intelligence, but not successful employment-wise, who have a bad relationship with their mother. And lots of serial killers in the US who didn't fit that profile, um, you know, black serial killers, Latino serial killers, women, um, you know, uh, Asian serial killers, uh, sort of were able to put up staggering body counts in the in the US because that's not who the police were looking for, because they had it in their minds that every serial killer was Ted Bundy, or Ted Bundy kind of guy, or a John Gacy kind of guy, or uh, you know, and they weren't looking at, like, say, like the grim sleeper in California, and there was uh there was someone in Texas who was along the border, he was along the rail lines, and uh they weren't looking, they weren't looking for the guy. They, you know, the the Atlanta child murders, um, you know, initially they were you know, they they that went on for a long time where they were they were saying that, well, it's a serial, so it has to be this like 30-year-old white guy who's frustrated and hates his mother, you know, and uh, you know, that that clearly wasn't what happened there either. So uh, you know, I I I don't love the whole uh predictive um nature of that. I think those these cases have to be you know um investigated with um with a full heart. Um I think the case that's happening now, the Long Island serial killer, the uh uh the GLo Beach killer, um, Rex Howerman in New York, um, years ago, one of the sex workers who went missing, her roommate told the police, this is 15 years ago or something, told the police that she had a really aggressive client, and it was uh a giant man, six foot seven, three hundred and fifty pounds, driving a Chevy Avalanche that was green. And that was the first year the Chevy Avalanche came out, but the police didn't do anything with it because, you know, like we were saying before, maybe they didn't value her as much because she was a sex worker, this is her roommate. Maybe the police think it's her pimp, they're not gonna follow up on this, maybe they think she just ran away. And it turned out in the area where these murders happened, only three people had that car, and only one of them matched the uh the person, and it turned out to be the person. And 15 years later, when they when they solved the case, it was one of the early leads in the case that wasn't followed up on. And that's something, you know, I noticed in the Zodiac case as well. I think it's the early leads that weren't followed up on that could would solve this case, would lead to an answer as to who committed these crimes. And, you know, I think it's it's important not to blow things off, and it's important to sort of, you know, you would love to see every police officer assign who is assigned one of these very important cases to treat it as if it was their family member, to treat it as as if it's the most important person in the world, because a lot of the times the person who committed the crime is right there in the file. Right away, it's one of the early people that they that they dealt with or a tip that came into them. So yeah, so I think there's uh there's some lazy or disinterested police work that sometimes leads to people getting away with murder.

SPEAKER_00 53:46

And just an interesting fact the railroad killer that you mentioned, uh Ángel Maturino Recendez, uh, he actually uh killed a female doctor a block away from my house. Back in um, I think it was 1997. So um, and uh his wife was interviewed and she's like, Oh, he was such a nice guy, and and he would get on a train from Mexico, come here, murder a bunch of people, and then go back. So it's it's insane the the type of um lashing out that happens. And I met someone who was interested in helping people who commit crimes and trying to rehabilitate them. And I was so impressed with this person because no one ever talks about that. No one ever uh thinks that there must be something that uh drives them to do that and not to dismiss their crimes, but to get to the bottom of it so it doesn't happen again.

SPEAKER_01 54:41

Yeah, I think that's that's majorly important. And the person I was talking about, Dave McGrasse, who um I believe is responsible or connected to four murders, he was given the death penalty in California. California got rid of the death penalty in 1972. He was paroled out in 1985. Um, he then dedicated the rest of his life to um working with death row inmates in other states, uh supporting their families, uh ministering to them, uh getting them counseling. That was something that helped him. And uh he died in 2023, and he he was a murderer. He certainly murdered people, and uh, but he dedicated the rest of his life from 1985 to 2023 to uh dealing with the prison population, uh especially people who were on death row. And I think that was uh that's if they're if we believe in rehabilitation, um, through you know, I I believe that this person may be a great example of that.

SPEAKER_00 55:44

Well, we want to thank you for your time. Uh our guest was Eddie McNamara, uh, author of Sodia Actually, uh the real story of a fake serial killer. And um since it's a nonprofit radio station, we can't um promote your your website or anything like that, but we can uh surely uh let people know about your work. And we want to appreciate your expertise and all the information you share with um our audience.

SPEAKER_01 56:12

Thank you for having me. And uh, you know, if people want to go to the public library and uh the local library ask for it, that would be great. Um I would rather they do that than you know go to Amazon or any of that nonsense. Uh yeah, support your library and uh yeah, thank you. Thank you for having me. And you know, just just you know, and get to the real stories, not the uh the sensationalized stories behind these things. I think that's very important.

SPEAKER_00 56:36

Thank you so much. Take care, brother.

SPEAKER_01 56:38

Thank you. Have a good night.