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

Beast.

“Hey everyone, I'm Megan Kelly, welcome to The Megan Kelly Show and today's true crime mega episode.”

We've got some wild ones for you today, including a deep dive into the Unibommer story. I love, love, love, love this behind the scenes look at it. Also, deep dive into the Karen Reed case that captivated the nation.

And one of our first true crime shows ever on the Zodiac killer.

Enjoy this and we'll see you Monday. Today's show focuses on a twisted genius who terrorized this country for nearly two decades. Building and sending bombs so untraceable, our best law enforcement agents could not figure out who was behind the carnage.

“The targets, universities, airlines, and sometimes random other places to throw off the investigators.”

Three people, ultimately, were murdered nearly two dozen others injured in many cases severely. That is until the feds finally got a break in what would become known as the Unibommer investigation. The man behind the bombings sent a 35,000-word manifesto to multiple newspapers and TV stations across the country, claiming to explain his motives and vowing to stop the attacks if they would publish it. They did.

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

On April 3rd, 1996, Ted Kazinski's reign of terror came to an end. Investigators arrested him in Montana at a primitive cabin with no electricity or plumbing. And there they found a wealth of bomb components, 40,000 handwritten journal pages, and one live bomb, ready to be sent. Today, Ted Kazinski spends his time in a federal prison in Colorado, put there, in large part. Thanks to my next guest.

Terry Turkey has been described as the heart and spirit of the investigation. Between 1994 and 1998, Terry directed the Unibom task force as it was known that helped identify and then arrest Kazinski. He retired from the FBI in April 2001, having served as the first deputy assistant director of the newly created counterterrorism division. His book is Unibommer, how the FBI broke its own rules to capture the terrorist Ted Kazinski. Terry, thank you so much for being here.

Big and thank you very much for having me. It's a riveting story. I've read your book, cover to cover. I've watched a bunch of movies now and TV series on the Unibommer. So I feel like I have a decent handle on how it all went down.

But my biggest takeaway in reading your book was how it was a meticulous painstaking teaspoons in the ocean effort. Bit by bit day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year, to put together the evidence that cumulatively would ultimately be used to take this guy down.

“Well, that's a really good description, Megan, and I think that description also matches the team that eventually came together to make all of this happen.”

And we often joke and of course back then we weren't joking too much. We were really serious and and usually stressed out, but we really look back on this and think that we were very fortunate that all of the people who were in all of these places at the right time really played an important role in making this all happen. And when I say that I'm thinking of Jim Freeman, the special agent charge of our office and San Francisco, who was in charge of all the investigations that San Francisco did in the FBI there.

Max Noel, who was a just a tremendous awesome criminal agent who never wanted to be assigned a unibom and was pulled off of his organized crime work to go work there.

Joel Moss and Kathy Puckett both of whom work with me on counter intelligence in San Francisco, they've all adhered to come over from counter intelligence and work on this case. And then of course director free and Janet Reno who was the attorney general at the time. And someone named Molly Flynn, who was an FBI agent who played a major in key role in our Washington metropolitan field division. So all of this came together, a number of agencies, the Pulseville inspection service, the FBI, the ATF and I was I was really proud to be able to serve with that team and on that team and be a part of that and it's because of so many people and certainly those people I mentioned that so much of this came together.

I love this character, Max Noel, I mean, I realize he's a real person, but in the book I love him as a character because he is the constant naysay or he's the one saying, this is BS, you can't put together a profile based on comparing words of one thing towards that sounds similar and another thing.

The guy, I mean, we now know as Ted Kozinski, he was so clever, he was brilliant in hiding his identity, 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, but it was in fact an attempt to mislead you.

“He actually spent just as much time doing that Megan just as you laid out as he did building the bombs.”

For example, at one point, and of course we confirmed all this later, we found this out and we searched his cabin, but at one point he was in the men's room in the bustation at the in Mosul amongst him, and he found a couple of hairs on the floor, and later he would put those two human hairs between layers of electrical tape and one of his bombs. What was he thinking about? Well, he was thinking that when we found a 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 his case.

He would use wood and metals and putting these bombs together. At one point, the FBI lab referred to him as the junkyard bomber, and so he would file down the metal, so he could eliminate fingerprints if he thought there were any there. He would sand the wood. He thought of everything he thought of disguises when he would build purchase and acquire everything from junk and a junkyard to something he might buy at a hardware store. He would take the jackets off of batteries, so that we couldn't trace the batch of batteries.

“So he was doing everything he could think of to try and deceive and lead us in another direction and confuse, and I think that certainly worked to his advantage for those years.”

It's not in reading your book, and so on. It's not like the FBI was full of a bunch of fools who just didn't know what they were doing, though 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, and so the FBI kind of, you know, maybe die, whatever. It wasn't that the FBI was a bunch of dunderheads. It was that this guy was clever in a really disturbing criminal way. 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.

Like, the guy loved the bomb itself, though he hated anybody involved in sort of the university or industrial complex, and so they were, we'll get into the reasons he was doing it, but he loved his bombs. He was very, very careful, very meticulous, and put in 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.

When you see that in a number of these bombings, 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, I've got to build a lethal bomb, and that's the way he was thinking, 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. We simply hadn't had many cases like that, and we hadn't really shared information or been trained in that kind of thing.

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.

And so we actually built that into this case so that we can all be thinking of and learning as we went along, 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. 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. What is the profile of this person Kathy Pucket you mentioned, who, you know, try to come up with a psychological profile of what he was and what you could expect.

“And then, you know, nuggets of information, and I wonder, because one thing you don't get to in the book is, once you find him, how did it match up, you know, like, how'd you do?”

I want that needs to be part two, but we can, we can just try to handle it a lot. Okay, so let's just start before we get to all that. Let's go through a little bit chronologically, because I think that's probably the easiest way of understanding his crimes. And the, start with us, why, why was it called the, the unibom investigation, and why was he dubbed the unibommer? Certainly, well, in the first few years, the targets of his bonds seem to be university campuses, university professors and airlines, and especially the first four bonds.

So unibom became the name of this investigation major case that it was. And then, at some point, someone, I think, back he started referring to him as the unibommer.

So while unibom and unibom are not only, became how we identify with the case, but it also really stuck with the public when they finally started learning about the unibommer and what was going on.

“So that's how unibom came into existence.”

I, I never knew that until I started studying for this interview, I always thought it was like uni as in one guy, uni bomber, you know, and I guess I just never paid attention to the spelling or thought much about it. It's universities and airlines. That's how it started. Exactly. Yes. Fascinating. Okay. So first he starts off the first couple of bombs or at universities in Chicago. Yes. In fact, the first bomb and we'll go back and do this. How are you would like, but later on when we assemble that's the ultimate team that took this to the finish line.

We went back and reinvestigated all of these crimes. So we learned so much, but the first bombing was at the University of Illinois Chicago Circle campus and essentially a passer by a lady named Mary Gutierrez was walking by there one day. It's the science and technology parking lot of the campus and she saw a package between two cars, two parked cars. She picked it up. She looked at it and she took it home. And it's set there, you know, with her children on the floor for a day or two, she saw that there was a return address and there was also a recipient.

“The return address was a professor named Buckley Chris at Northwestern University and the intended recipient was a professor at RPI in Troy, New York.”

So she eventually called the police, the police come and get the package. They took it to Buckley Chris because his address was on there is the return address. He said, I don't know anything about that. So it was opened at school by a police officer named Terry Marker and he suffered some injuries because it turned out to be a bomb.

That was the first device the unabomber actually sent. But at that point in time, it was not looked upon as anything other than another bomb back in those days.

As you well know, the weather underground and all kinds of other organizations were committing bombings. They were attacking police. They were active on universities. So there was a lot of activity. So since this didn't hurt anyone and there wasn't much to go on, it just kind of got lost in the shuffle. Other than recorded at the HF lab and the evidence tucked away. And you know, there are quotes from the unabomber throughout the book and I know a lot comes from that 35,000 word manifesto. But he was writing letters from time to time. Was he not during the course of the bombings?

Actually, he only wrote two letters. The first letter during the course of the first 14 bombings.

The first letter was actually to Percy Wood, who was the president at the time of United Airlines. And in June of 1980, he received a letter from an individual identified himself as Enoch Fisher. Enoch Fisher said, "Look, I'm going to be sending you a book." And the book is called Ice Brothers by Sloan Wilson.

“And this is a book that you should pay great attention to because you make decisions regarding the social welfare of people.”

And so when you get the book, think about that. So Percy Wood subsequently got the book. He went to open the package and then opened the wrapping. But essentially the book was hollowed out and it was a bomb. It was a explosive device. And so this was the fourth unabomb device, by the way. And that letter was interesting, but there wasn't much they could do with that either.

So that became later on something that actually first got us into the words of the unabomb room. We'll talk about that probably later. But so that was the first letter. During one of the unabomb room events, as we started calling them of 1985, he sent his second letter. And that letter was to an individual named James McConnell. James McConnell was a professor at the University of Michigan. And what the unabombers sent him was a letter saying, "I'm a student.

I'm doing a thesis on something called the History of Science." And I'd like you to consider being my thesis advisor. And that letter was signed Wild Sea Clop in Bird. And of course, this was at a three-wing binder like it would be some sort of students essay maybe.

Again, we were fortunate that they suffered injuries, but certainly they did not suffer something critical or die from those explosions.

“Those were the two letters that the unabomber wrote between 1978 and around 1993.”

In 1993, all that changed when the unabombers started corresponding with the New York Times and eventually with the New York Times and several other entities and people. So that is kind of how his letters would evolve over the years between 78 and 93 and then subsequently through 96. And then later, when you finally started to figure out who it was, you managed to get a treasure trove of letters between the unabomber and his family members, which would prove really helpful and useful eventually.

So he's bombing universities, he attempts to bomb an airplane, and this is still back in the late 70s I gather, but it didn't, it didn't work.

Thank God, the one that went off, but it kind of fizzled and it didn't bring down the airplane, although it did cause a lot of injuries to the people onboard the plane. You were, you were so right, Megan, in 1979, an American Airlines flight, 44, was leaving from Chicago, headed for National Airport. And the plane got up in the air, suddenly the pilot and the passengers felt this jolt, the plane started having some problems, and it turns out that there was a package on board that plane put in the mail stream.

The US Postal Service was actually able, subsequently to determine the path that mail package had taken when the bomber put it in the mail in Chicago. So they were able to trace a package that a witness had touched and eventually got onboard this flight 44. And it turns out the bomb that he designed had some deficiencies with respect to the explosives. So when it detonated, instead of blowing up, it started smoldering, and it started burning in the cargo hold. So as the plane was getting closer and of course declaring Mayday, wanting an emergency landing, it was diverted to dollars airport where they had the equipment to deal with this. When the plane landed, the pilots were actually prepared to testify many years later, when we were ready to start the Unibomers trial, that had they not landed the plane on the tarmac when they did.

We're literally minutes or seconds maybe away of the fire in the cargo hold burning through the main hydraulic system. They said if that had happened, the plane would have fallen out of the sky and everybody would have been killed. This is one of the reasons, certainly that in 1979, this became a significant major case. It was a crime of war day aircraft. It was an explosive device. And so we knew from that point on, we had a real problem. But it wasn't until Chris Roenay, who was a laboratory supervisor and explosives examiner, started looking at this and he felt that this is the first time I've seen this kind of.

Craftsmanship in putting together a bomb because all two all bombers do their bombs differently. No two bombers build their bombs the same and that goes where there is an international terrorist or a domestic terrorist. They all do something a little differently. He had not noticed this before, but he thought that the bomber had to have put together other bombs because it was done so well. So he sent out a bulletin to other law enforcement agencies. This is all back in 1979.

“And the ATF, which had handled the first two unit bomb devices, again, in that era that we talked about, actually responded and said, you need to see these other two devices because they kind of sound like what you're describing.”

And Chris Roenay was then able to say, we have a serial bomber at large. So it was on the third bombing, the attack on the airplane that we knew we now have a serial bomber.

Shortly after that in 1980, we would have the fourth device, the attack on Percy Wood, the president of the United Airlines. Later in the investigation, as the unibommer gets better and more efficient at making deadly bombs, he will threaten to take down another aircraft. And you can see from Terry's description why they took that so seriously and we're so concerned he could, he could do it and had the will to do it as well.

“There's so much more to go over the profile of the unibommer, what drove Ted Kozinski to do this, how, how. And how did the L of the FBI ultimately nab him?”

Don't go away more with former FBI agent Terry Turkey on the unibommer investigation.

And it, but it wasn't until 1985 that he had his first kill. He managed to kill the first person out of all those he attempted to kill, though he had wounded many.

“So who was that and what happened with Hugh Scretten?”

Yes, in December of 1985, the unibommer finally got what he wanted. He wanted to kill someone. And Hugh Scretten was a businessman. He ran a very successful computer store in a outside-type mall out normal in Sacramento, California. And he walked out into the back of the store one day and saw what looked to him like a road hazard Megan. It was essentially two by four as nailed together with nails protruding out the out of the wood. And so his thought process was this could hurt somebody, somebody could pull up here with a car and have some problems.

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

“And at that point, this was what we call a passive device as he broke the connection between the ground and that device.”

He two by fours were actually hollowed out and the unibommer had built a lethal bomb inside the wood. And Mr. Scretten just simply took the full impact of that explosion and died outside in the back of his store from that device. And it would be two years before we would hear from the unibommer again. But in 1987 using the same model, the same kind of plan with the two by fours even cut from the same pieces of wood. He made another similar bomb and was involved in placing an outside of a computer store called CAMs on February 2019-87 in Salt Lake City.

And this time as he kind of knelt down to finish up preparing the bomb so that it would detonate. One of the employees of CAMs named Tammy Fluey was looking out of back window. And she started yelling that someone is out here doing something in the parking lot. What happened within minutes is the son of the owner of CAMs Gary Wright pulled up. He saw this and he thought the same thing because he would tell us later. I thought it was a road hazard. I thought it was something that would hurt someone.

So I went to move it. But instead of kind of leaning over the two by fours when he went to pick them up, he kind of knelt and then kind of brushed against it before he actually picked it up or moved it. And the bomb exploded, but he was spared the full blonde of that explosion. And so this is when the unit bomber was seen with the gray hooded sweatshirt and the aviator sunglasses.

So after all of these years between 1978, 1987, and all these stops and starts on this investigation, someone had finally witnessed this individual who up until then was a major mystery.

And this is when everyone kind of got involved. I mean, readers digested a big story on the composite. They did a big story on what he looked like with the hooded sweatshirt and the aviator sunglasses that you're showing there.

“And so they also became very familiar with that word unit. Later, as we reinvestigated all of this, something else significant happened. And so I think this is a good time to tell you the story.”

During the investigation in 1987, that witness was interviewed by the police by the FBI. She had a really good recollection of what she saw and what she was hearing. So someone told her along the way, we think the police officer to take notes and make sure those notes were with her and kept fresh in her mind. And somebody would stop by later and pick them up. Well, no one ever stopped by to pick up those notes. And even in subsequent interviews, no one asked about those notes. And so in fast forward to 1994, Max Noel had reinvestigated those two of a couple of those events that were related to the camps bombing and the rentack bombing.

And so Max was interviewing Tammy and she mentioned the notes and he said, wait a minute, what notes? And she went and retrieved them. She's on these notes.

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

So about that time in San Francisco in the Bay Area, there was another very, very significant investigation. And that was the disappearance of subsequent murder of poly class. And we ended up having a major break in that case because again, Jim Freeman, who was a special agent in charge of the FBI in San Francisco ran that as well. And Jim ended up bringing in an artist named Genie Boylan to do a composite of who somebody had seen in the vicinity when poly class was,

it couldn't happen in murdering poly class. So Genie Boylan was contacted by Max. We said, Max, go find Genie.

“If she can do a composite this many years later and sit down with Tammy and see if Tammy would be more happy and more satisfied with whatever Genie Boylan comes up with based on Tammy Floyd's description.”

So low and behold, she came up with a composite. You just showed it and it was a composite that Tammy Floyd really, really liked. She said, "That is the person I saw on February 20, 1987." So eventually we ended up taking the other composite, getting rid of that and showing this. I introduced by Jim Freeman at a press conference with the media back in around the end of 1984. And it was a major step for us and a major break for us. Because we had a witness now satisfied with what she was trying to articulate and we had a composite which we really believed in.

And now, of course, we know it Ted Gazinski looked like and I have to say it's pretty striking. This Tammy did a damn good job. You think about eyewitness testimony and how notoriously unreliable it is. But if you pictured, you know, we'll show Ted Gazinski in the YouTube version of this. That guy was very scruffy and sort of the purple walk we saw him in, but you picture him years earlier with a hoodie and the aviator glasses.

“And you can see how accurate she was. And she went on saying he's a white male. I think he had strawberry blonde hair. He had a mustache. He was on 510, about 165 pounds of reddish complexion, gray hooded sweatshirt, aviator style.”

I mean, this is a eyewitness that's a dream, right? It's like, you don't get a lot of these. It was wonderful. And as you could imagine, we were really boy at that time because when you're years later trying to put all this together and you get a break like that and a witness like that, it really is important. A one funny story, though, earlier we were talking about Max Nolan and you mentioned the word brus. Well, Max took Genie out to Salt Lake and set down with Tammy flew away. While Tammy flew away was articulating this to Genie Boylan, she had a daughter. So Max was there entertaining the daughter by showing her the lion king.

So he was crawling around on the floor, showing lion king while the business was taking place in the room. So, you know, we do a lot of different things, but that was the call of duty for Max at that particular couple of hours. I was using this senior respected FBI agent trying to solve a serial bomber case out there, but this would have been right up Max's alley because he was like hardcore evidence, not BS word comparisons. I witnessed pictures like that's up his alley. Okay, so, so while you're getting the eyewitness ID shorn up and so on, the FBI is trying to gather data.

Like what, what can we figure out about this guy? We've had bombings in Chicago. We've had bombings in California. We've had bombings in Utah and you're trying, I mean, it sounds like so simple and retrospect once you know who he is, but it's, it truly is like trying to find a needle in a haystack. Because yes, you can come up with a profile of somebody who lived here and then there and then this third place and this fourth place. But you don't know when the person was born, you, you figured out he was probably a college educated guy, right? So, like, how do you begin and you talk about this in the book to create systems that will siphon down.

And the enormous pool of people who would fit into those descriptions.

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

The first thing I want you to do, give me a proposed strategy for how we're going to address exactly what you said, Megan. So, I went out and I met with Max and met with everybody on the UTS and started reading files. And then set down with everyone, the entire UTS at that point in time, which was about 25, 30 people from those agencies we talked about.

“And said, here's what I think and here's what I've learned and I'm going to articulate this to the SAC.”

First of all, we need to reinvestigate all of these unibomb crimes one more time.

Only this time we're going to do it different. We're not going to use the FBI system of lead offices and auxiliary offices office of origin. What we're going to do is send unibomb task force teens back to these offices, where all these police departments or the FBI and the other agencies, ATF and postal, have already done investigation. And we're going to have these teens that are currently on unibomb take a good clean look at all of these crimes again. So, secondly, I want everybody to partner up, find a partner because it's going to be a long, hard show.

And so, I want you to get somebody that you like being around, you're going to be basically living with these people or with each other.

So, that's what we did and we started the reinvestigation.

“But then, as we started having tons of new information come in, we've talked about the example of the composite. Well, there was tons of new information that we had missed.”

The first time around and in subsequent tries to this. So, we had to have a way to sort it out.

And we realized at a certain point as we were together as the kind of modern day UTF in the 1994 or 96 timeframe that there was a lot of unibomb myth. There was a lot of fiction. There were a lot of theories and sometimes those had crossed the boundaries and unibomb myth or fiction had become unibomb fact. So, we realized this is toxic and we're going to have to separate all this.

So, we created something called unibomb fact fiction and theory and everyone on the unibomb task force when we had the first draft of this document received a copy.

And every single week when we brought everything together and we brought everything together by separate types of meetings that went on all week every week. We had to be familiar with. I mean, it was your responsibility and almost your solemn obligation be familiar with the most updated version of unibomb fact fiction and theory. Another thing, since you know how the FBI works, Megan, we did something that we hadn't done before either and that is whether you were an FBI agent or you were an FBI analyst or you were an FBI support employed that did something in connection with the logistics or the hotline.

“Everybody was expected to be at unibomb meetings. Everybody had a seat at the table. Everybody's opinion and eyes and ears was important and everybody was encouraged to speak up because we needed every voice and every brain we could get.”

So, that was our guide to those discussions. The unibomb fact fiction and theory document. Finally, to really get to your question and the point here. Overall, those years of investigation, all kinds of agencies assembled this information through all kinds of databases. None of them were compatible. So, we brought in an outsider, the Bureau approved this, they brought in an outside consultant who for one year from 1994 to the, I'd say, early summer of 1995. Took this massive amount of literally millions of bits of data, put it all together in one system and prepared it so that we could do one thing.

And that was to suddenly turn unibomb into a proactive search for unibomb suspects who we could tie even when we first opened the case up to specific geographical areas.

And we've never been able to do that before and that was the entire purpose of doing this major computer project.

And by the time that the unibomb are actually started getting more active and corresponding with us, we were ready to actually flip the switch. Got approval from FBI headquarters for 24/7 operation to then send analysts to work in San Francisco during the around the clock. And what was really ironic is when we asked for terrorism analyst. The Bureau said, well, we don't have terrorism analyst, but we'll send you all the analysts that we can send you so that you can get this job done and staff at 24/7 operation.

That's exactly what they did. So shortly after that, and after the attacks in 1995, we began the 24/7 operation of developing proactive unibomb suspects, which would eventually teach us so much that when the right person came along, it was almost miraculous, it just all started to fall together. Well, it was fascinating because, first of all, it's very interesting that this is during the Clinton administration and preceding as well. We had no counterterrorism, you know, force going in the FBI. And of course, we all know what happened at the end of Bill Clinton's presidency in the beginning of George W. Bush's with 9/11, 2000, we learned a lot in the ensuing decade about the need for that kind of analysis proactive analysis.

“But one of the things I wondered in sort of watching all this unfold was, at what point did it become clear to the public that there was a unibommer?”

Because one thing you think about is, why was anybody opening a package that they weren't certain was safe and from someone they knew, you know, past bomb number three, right?

I think one of the big problems was that as these investigations were preceded right after a bombing, people became very familiar with something particularly after a huge strutton was killed was murdered by the unibommer. And then after 1987 when the composite came out and places like reader digests ran these big articles, people were tuning into that. But then as the lead in the investigation would run out, the contacts with the press would kind of stop. And the FBI would become distracted by other things and same for the postal inspection service, same for the ATF.

We always had one agent, his name was John Conway, and he's an amazing guy because during all this time, he was still assigned as the case agent for unibommer.

“And at one point in time, you earlier had mentioned that break in unibom activity from 87 to 93, and that's what he was spotted at unibommer.”

I was spotted by the eyewitness Terry. Exactly. And so during that time someone at FBI headquarters actually told John, you should close the unibom case because unibommer was probably dead since we hadn't heard from him for years. John Conway single, you know, singularly working that case with no big authority helping him at all said, look, that's just a bad idea. You cannot close this just because we haven't heard from this guy. He cannot be presumed dead, and indeed he was not dead because it come along June of 1993, there were two more bombings within 48 hours and 3,000 miles of one another. And I want to go back to Kathy pocket for a minute, the behavioral assessment person.

And she had concluded that, and I'm quoting here from your book, safety, security, and secrecy are of paramount importance to unibommer. He has a strong sense of self protection.

He would have no direction to either of the individuals targeted saying that that would have risked exposure. His careful and cautious nature, she believed, is what drove him underground after having been spotted by Terry. So in a way that I witnessed moment with Terry could have saved a lot of lives. I mean, who knows, he might have been above ground bombing for all that time, but it took seven years before he regained his confidence.

“And what was the nature of the bombings in June of 1993?”

In June of 1993, after not hearing from the unibommer, we heard from him as he said, simultaneous bombings. The first one was directed at a geneticist, Dr. Charles Epstein, who lived in Tehran, California. And he received a bomb one day in his home. And the device went off when he went to open it. It was a much smaller compact bomb. It was about the size of a video cassette as far as a package. And later, we would see the unibommer right that I took the time off or while I was taking the time off.

I perfected or we always referred to unibommer as we, the Tehran group FC, and I should make sure I say that here.

And we perfected a smaller, more lethal bomb that we can put in the mail stream. And that's exactly what Professor Epstein went to open. And was very, very seriously injured. Two days later, on the Tehr opposite coast at Yale University, a computer scientist, Dr. David Gallerter, received a bomb in the mail. He was at his office at Yale. And when he went to open his package, the same thing. And right after that, the New York Times has a letter postmarked before it and before those events.

“And they get a letter from the unibommer, the Tehran group FC, as he calls them. And it says, "Look, our group is providing you with a number. This is our own secret identification number.”

The FBI knows of us. We're the Tehran group FC." Now, the reason he said that is on some of the bomb on the plugs of the pipes and on debris and the bomb crime seats. We had found embedded on the metals, the letters FC. So, not on all the bombs, but on some of them. So, we knew that the unibommer was also also going by the letters FC. So, he told the New York Times this, and, of course, the New York Times turned the letter over to us. And now, we know, and this was significant. And it certainly was significant to the NHE Janet Reno and FBI Director Frey, both of whom were relatively new on the job.

They knew that the unibommer now has come back to life in a big, big way. We hadn't heard from him for all those years.

And so, they ordered that a task force be established that it be set up in the San Francisco Division of the FBI.

“And they sent FBI officials out from FBI headquarters to run that task force.”

So, between June of 1993 and around April of 1994, eight, eight or nine FBI officials were running the unibommer investigation from San Francisco. And this is when, according to your book, Max Noel pulls aside some top FBI officials. I believe it was out of meaning where the director Frey was present and says the truth, which is, "We're not getting the resources we need. Loops are not being closed. This needs to be taken more seriously. By what my evidence and he gets taken very seriously, the FBI does start to throw resources at this after these double bombings.

But two more people were about to die. That's where we're going to pick it up with Terry on the unibommer investigation right after this quick break." The book interspersed bits of Ted Kozinski's manifesto, the unibommer's manifesto, in between the crimes and helps us get to know him and understand him to extend one can.

“There are quotes like this, "Since committing the crimes reported elsewhere in my notes, I feel better. You can see him working something I starting to feel better now that he's starting to hurt more people and kill more people.”

And Kathy's assessment of him was that this is a guy who wanted to present himself as a rational revolutionary attacking the industrial technological system that he opposes for the good of the public.

She said he's simply seeking attention for himself. She believed he had obsessive compulsive personality. The his devices are meticulous, a real pride in its workmanship. She says, "People like this are very organized perfectionists can be very polite, may seem very cold to others. I would later find this interesting Terry myself because he probably was obsessive compulsive in a perfectionist.

“But when you guys found him, he was totally unkempt and disgusting and smell bad and hadn't shoured."”

That was one of the things that jumped out of me is like, "Oh, how weird. You think of that obsessive. You think it'd be rigidly clean."

But anyways, to jump back, you're trying to figure out a psychological profile, and now you've got the full team on it. Now, Director Free has stepped in, Jan. Arena has stepped in. They're listening to you guys finally, giving you the resources, and yet two more people are about to die, and that's within six months of you guys really sort of lighten a fire under the powers that be. Take us to December 10, 1994. It was a terrible day. Jim was a weekend. I got a call from the East Coast, and there'd been a bombing in North Call, while New Jersey, and it turned out to be at the home of Thomas Moser, who was a major ad executive at the firm,

and he had been traveling out of the country. This was near Christmas, so the family was getting ready to go and find a Christmas tree. So it was in the kitchen going through his mail, and one of the things he picked up was this package that looked like a video cassette, and the kids had just left the kitchen when he went to open this, and this was such a terrible lethal bomb that it killed Mr. Moser just about instantly. And it, the shrapnel from this bomb, filled, you know, how people will have their frying pans over their stoves, those kind of presentations. So some of these nails actually, the force of the blast, drove them through these cast iron skillets.

And so there was debris everywhere. I call Jim Freeman, told him what had happened, told him what we were thinking might be going on. We couldn't exactly say or declare it was a unibomb crime scene at that time. I call Tom and all in Washington to see not the time, Tom was our main laboratory examiner, and Tom was this fabulous bomb explosives person, who not only knew unibomb, but he could just about talk with these eyes closed about bombs and explosives. Yes, I'm sorry. Who's he the postal service guy? No, he was at the FBI lab, and was our FBI lab examiner who actually had the ticket on unibomb as far as forensics now, because all of the lab examinations that had been done all those years, we folded into just the FBI lab.

So he was kind of in the hot seat when there was an explosion. Tom went to New Jersey, he called when he got there, they got into the house in North Call, while he called before he went in. We had to wait a while, because after an explosion, there are significant gases in the house, there are a lot of things going on, you have to be really careful, of course.

I saw the fragments on the floor, some of the switches that fragments of switches from this bomb, all of this has unibomb written all over it.

Jim came into the office called and dispatch some of our, a couple of our agents and a postal inspector to New Jersey, they would work on the ground there and help coordinate the actual investigation. And then by Monday morning, that was on the weekend, by Monday morning, we were having conferences with FBI HQ, of course, this now really raised the temperature.

“And during one of those conferences, someone at FBI HQ said, well, Terchi, you need to be back in New Jersey.”

Jim Freeman basically put his finger on the mute part of the phone, he goes, I'll answer that question and said, no, you're not going back to New Jersey, told them I'm not coming back to New Jersey, and about this time. Max said, and another thing, you people don't even know this case, you don't even understand some of the leads were working in the case, so that started us down the road of what you mentioned at the break.

Before we knew it a few weeks later, director free was on his way to see us all at the FBI in San Francisco, and a particular concern and kind of to show you how things can work in the bureau.

He put out the word and he told the SEC, you don't need to be at this meeting, I want to talk to the unibom agents and the people working unibom in Terchi, so of course you can imagine how Jim is feeling about all this so Jim met him at the airport. They had a casual meeting and then we had a meeting of all the brass from the other agencies, and then I found myself, it was like all of a sudden, okay. Terri and I are going to go down and address the unibom task force, and I found myself alone in the hallway with the FBI director and walking down the hall and and I referred to him as director free and he immediately turns and says, call me Louis.

And so we walk into and I couldn't do that, I was just hard to say that, but anyway, we walk into the office and the UTF is there and you can imagine or probably maybe you can't imagine maybe many people that and how you feel when the case is now dramatically different. You've been working to identify and get this person off the street, but now on your watch someone else is murdered and this now is happening to us.

“It was our absolute most worse nightmare, and that's how everyone felt, I mean everyone was absolutely depressed, I mean, I think people look at FBI agents as well, they're the professionals, they're going to get this done one way or the other.”

We were absolutely devastated, and so this is the backdrop as director free walked in to address all of us. So during this conversation and he was very gracious and very nice and and we had a very good talk, but at some point.

I said, look, I have to tell you, there's a lot of things that are not getting done, I sent 62 questions off to the FBI lab about previous bombings, they've still never been answered.

Terry's been on the phone, but they're still not answering our questions. We are trying to do certain things with leads and with investigation, and many of the special agents in charge aren't prioritizing this. Because Max, I want to say a little bomb, but a little fire, as did your small group, and finally they listened, how they caught the unit bomber right after this break. So by the time Terry of that meeting with FBI director free and Max going off and you and Jim Freeman just trying to jump up and down and say, you know, we need resources come on like this is inexcusable and he listened and you got him.

And the unit bomber had already just killed another man, he would go on to kill yet another man, Gilbert Murray and Sacramento, and then he would threaten to bring down an aircraft in flight, which you took very seriously for the reasons we discussed earlier.

“So but the biggest and most important break in the case was about to come, when did you first get word of the quote manifesto.”

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. So a number of people were concerned that maybe the bombing in Oklahoma City is connected to the Univomber 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.

The person who wreak havoc in Oklahoma is a mass murder there are two separate kind of people and I worked with Kathy for a long time.

“So whenever she had an opinion like that to me, it was as close to gospel as you were going to get well the FBI agreed with that.”

So we were able to maneuver through that because you can get distracted very easily and something like this. 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 univomber, another terrible crime scene. Tom and all came out. He actually went to Oklahoma City together evidence and get things back to the lab. Then he came to San Francisco went up to Sacramento and helped us with that as well. And so all of this is going on and in the wake of this, the univomber starts firing off more letters and they went to the New York Times. Eventually, they would go to Bob Gucci only at penthouse magazine.

“They would go to a couple of Nobel Prize winning scientists to a University of California professor named Tom Tyler and they all had a little different theme, but by and large, the univomber wanted the world to know that the terrorist group FC.”

The terrorist group FC has a manifesto and we wanted published and if it's published, we will persist from committing acts of terror, but we will reserve the right to commit espionage and that that always was interesting Megan, but I have to tell you here very quickly that. A number of years ago, you did a interview of William Ares, a radical weather underground terrorist and he said something very similar. He reminded you that, look, we only went after people and after property. We didn't go after people.

Well, that is exactly what the univomber, the lone serial terrorist was telling us years later, and I found the mindset interesting. And of course, the question that is begging there is that look, you can't guarantee that you're only going to damage property, you're going to kill people and so you must not care.

“And so that was where we were out with the univomber and again, Kathy weighed in and she said something very, very interesting that would factor into our deliberations eventually on what to recommend about publication.”

And that is that the univomber will probably not be able to stop himself from sending other bombs even if he says he wanted to.

This is something that he does. This is who he is. So getting a promise her pledge from him is almost as useless as it can be. So this is the situation we found ourselves in as we were trying to determine what to do. And as we then received, you know, the call from the bureau, what is going to be your recommendation, what are you going to ask about his the demand from FC from the terror group FC to actually publish this manifesto. I mean, it's so much responsibility if you if you don't publish it and he bombs again there'll be second guessing if you do publish it and he bombs again there'll be second guessing it's like you've got people's lives in your hands here before I forget Terry just quickly what what did FC wind up standing for.

We're never really going to be sure we we never of course were able to talk to the work is in ski about it and there are some suggestions that it stood for freedom club something like that but nothing certainly did help us on the trail of trying to identify who the terror group FC was. Okay, so you ultimately decide. Publish it come to do it and you really thought at 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 there's no way he has an express them to others.

And you did it that the Washington Post right printed the manifesto you had FBI agents staked out at the various locations in the relevant location where you thought the unobommer could possibly be California watching note no luck.

But there was there was luck in one particular person who read that manifesto can we jump to that part of the story.

So in on September 20th or 1995 and the middle of February we received probably close to 55,000 phone calls and tips with people turning in you know why is turning in their husbands for the reward. But by this time we really knew a lot about the unobommer in fact the behavioral science unit said look you basically solve the case you just don't know the guy's name and we're all looking at each other like well that would be hopeful wouldn't.

No two people write alike and so we talked about that and so we said look we know so much about unobom.

“We need to recommend now that there's one piece for lacking this manifesto could now be be the thing that gives us that piece and so we need to recommend publication and so off we went.”

Jim Freeman and Kathy Pockett and myself to Louis free we had a meeting with all the bureau brass there. Brief the case and said we recommend publication of the unobom manifesto in the Washington Post we went across the street to the AG did the same thing they approved it and it was published on the 19th and by February. 14 we got the call we needed and it was essentially like all things unobom it came it didn't come easy it was a on the overhead speaker system there was a page anybody from the unobom task force can you pick up on such and such a line.

I think that's a good idea.

And he gets on the phone with another agent Molly Flynn and Washington metropolitan field office she has received a 23 page essay from an individual and attorney named Anthony Bassegley in Washington Anthony Bassegley had dealt with the FBI before he had a client approach him gave in this and they were worried that someone close to them could be the unobommer but they wanted to find out a little bit before they volunteered who they were.

“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 unobomers typewriter and that was it.”

Well she didn't stop there she's but wait a minute you know this is what we're all about so she called the San Francisco UTF she ends up getting a hold of Joel moms she starts explaining this Joel listens for while he's to get it to me right away you immediately understood the significance or potential significance of what some of the passage is she read. 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 I said I can I committed to going to lunch with Jim and Joel literally your boss and three of us had worked together a lot he grabs him about the arm we got a lunch and I cancel out on Jim when we end up sitting there when Jim Freeman comes into the same place for eating and so you stood me up for your friends here well we had the the talk about the 23 page essay.

I started reading at that night and our world had changed forever you could not read the 23 page essay.

Believe in the strategy we were following and not believe that this was the golden ticket. 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 Kazinski. It was chilling I took it home that night to home my copy and my wife was watching television and I was laying on the couch in the family room and I just jumped out of the couch and headed into the den to get my copy of the manifesto because in the 23 page essay there was a phrase the sphere of human freedom.

Well that exact phrase was in the end about manifesto and I went and I started looking at other things at that point at time I called Joel I call Kathy and I went back in and I just told my wife I'm going to go on in and work so I'm in.

“And I just said I think we might found the unit bomber and that's all I said and and the next morning of course.”

Our entire discussion now turns to the 23 page essay and the manifesto. As it turned out David Kazinski, Ted's brother, was married to a woman named Linda 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. You write in your book she was in Paris in August 1995 when she read an article about the unibommer in an international edition of a newspaper her anxiety grew as the unibommer was described as a loner probably from Chicago.

You go on to say that one of the things she realized was that she and David had been asked by Ted Kazinski, David's brother for money a couple of times and he'd been living like a hermit in the middle of Montana and some cabin so they were a little puzzled by why he would need money anyway but they were they deduced that he used their money to make bombs they were mortified. And especially the last two bombings in November of '94 he'd asked for $1,000 and in December of '94 he asked for $2,000 and so of course we had the December '94 event involving Mr. Moser and then the follow up Mr. Murray in '95 so it was just frightening to think that they were absolutely right and we felt really badly that could be the case but in fact that's what it turned out to be.

“Money from them to finance those last two bombings.”

There are another phrase 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 the saying is you can't have your cake and eat it too and he reversed it. And what like where did you see that how did that come together. Yeah eventually we would see that in several places but that showed up in the the the 22 pages and it showed up when we went to visit Wanda and his mom and she had information and all kinds of things and a steamer trunk that feed or owned and he had left it with her many years earlier and said I don't want it anymore do whatever you want.

Well she kept it all these years so it was essentially a band in property and we went into the steamer trunk and found written on a draft of the essay you can't eat your cake and have it too and so all of these things start coming together and they're just too many of these. Coincidences I guess you could call them but it was all about words it was all about language and and so earlier when we when you nice folk and we talked about those two early letters the Ralph Klopp and Berg letter and the history of science and then the in artificial letter that had prompted us to do a project and we had a number of investigating projects we worked on and one of those projects had to do with interviewing professors at universities.

“We had become in fact Joel had become our expert on the history of science 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 none of us had ever heard of it.

And we just wanted to mark this territory not to forget it so he actually went Joel actually went to a history of science convention one year in New Orleans and I guess that was a big splash they loved having the FBI there it was very exciting. He was there to learn about what history of science means so all of this is fresh on our mind when theater is in ski shows up. As a suspect and low 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.

Low and behold there's a course that theater took early on in Harvard or university of Michigan called history of science the introduction history of science so he had a creative side and he would pull on that when he was putting together these moms are putting together ideas.

“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.”

22 they just said that matched the manifesto all of this started falling together and these pieces became the foundation the building block of this search warrant the thing is this was not DNA this was not fingerprints this was not eyewitness stuff. This was words and so DOJ said not yourself out but this this is a probable cause and of course our response was wait a minute. This is as good as any of the things you just mentioned almost because first of all this is all we have that knowing all of this and seeing every day more stuff was coming together I mean there was no question more and more of these pieces were coming together.

We always would do a timeline and one of the things David was able to do eventually is he gave us well over a hundred envelopes with postmarks on them they represented the envelopes that the letters between he and Ted that he had received from Ted had had received over 30 years he kept all of that.

DOJ was not sold and eventually it took the FBI director Louie Frey and the attorney general to simply bypass all the advisers and committees set up to give us advice about this it took the two of them to say look we trust the UTF we trust the people on it we've been following this case we know this case like the back of our hand.

“We know we carry around her copy of fact fiction and theory and you have to be careful if you were talking to her because she listed an integral way to minute isn't this part of theory for her and so.”

She was that into this case and of course director free was was really into it from day one but so that was the kind of relationship we now I mean we're almost it may be that they're high level government officials. 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 and and you know the egos had been tossed to the floor.

The emotion you could you could show your emotion. I mean it was it was amazing I mean I look back on and now and as I'm talking to you I almost have chills because it wasn't like people might think.

“At some point that became the reason that we were successful in bringing all this together.”

Hence the piece of the title about breaking the rules the they got their search warrant this group not the arrest warrant 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. But tons of agents waiting for Ted Gazinsky 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 suspected but for very good reason.

And eventually they would have to affect that arrest under circumstances they never foresaw we pick it up there right after this.

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.

“And what I the question I had reading your book where you're talking about you know now you got to start interviewing the locals you get some important locals on your side you start interviewing bus drivers because Ted Gazinsky only has a bicycle.”

So how is he getting from the middle of nowhere down to Sacramento and to Utah wherever he's going there's got to be a way so you got to find bus drivers you got to figure out roots taken you got to see where did he stay what do we have any receipts that get the bank accounts let's build a case a case that max would love to show. And actually proof that this guy has been in the place as we suspect he's been during the relevant timeframes and what I kept thinking reading how you guys had to do this was hey just arrest the damn guy you know it's him right but like you can't do it that way and be.

Weren't you worried someone was going to leak either you know outside you know to random people who might spread it but or be to to Ted Gazinsky like how could you assure yourself that people weren't friends with him. I just blabbed to somebody some random person like the FBI contact me they asked me all these fun questions they think that there's some guy at the woods and then word would get out you know how do you control that. We're worried about so many things that that was the most stressful time of this entire investigation there could be leaks he could have something in the cabin that eventually is going to hurt somebody.

So we had to try to deal with each of these contingencies so what we did is that around I don't know was probably around the third week of February called max max was on leave at the time I said we're sending you to Montana I know you don't think much of.

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.

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.

And he directed a team of about three people which would start to grow almost every day after we first got started but in that time a lot of things happened and we needed all these things for our search warrant.

“Max was able to go pay a visit to butchgaryen. It was on the butchgaryen lumber mill property that theater Kazinsky and his brother David has actually purchased the house or the land for the the captain that Kazinsky built in 1971.”

So max went and had to talk with Gary to learn about the unibom or you know you learn about Kazinsky and Gary was where as we said we're in the team jersey after that he was willing and ready to help and provide whatever kind of information or help to us we needed so that was kind of. So then Max was able to develop Jerry Burns Jerry Burns became just vitally important. Everybody's heard of the US for a service very few people know that the US for service has their own special agents and and law enforcement and I work with so many of these people are there's and they're really really good.

Well Jerry Burns was absolutely amazing and so we befriended him and kind of put the team jersey on him his supervisor agreed that he didn't need to know what Jerry was doing on behalf of the FBI.

“Jerry was briefed on everything he was brought into the whole unibom picture of this and so he was able to be a goal might have information about Kazinsky because he was always running into him out into Kazinsky out in the forest.”

This R.A. the senior supervisor resident agent in hell in the Montana was an individual named Tom McDaniel he was amazing and was there any step of the way with us and then finally Bernie Heubley Bernie was the assistant US attorney in the district there and low and behold our luck again Bernie Heubley was a former FBI agent.

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 and not we're here because in your territory so crazy.

It's crazy to think about like these guys being like wait what the unibom are like the most notorious criminal in the country right now at large so okay eventually I got to skip ahead because I there's so much more important things to get to so you do get your search warrant and it wasn't easy but just long story short on that so much of that painstaking FBI work went into it and it wasn't a guarantee that you were going to get it but all those years and hours of of collective effort paid off you got the warrant.

“You go to execute the search warrant Jerry who you mentioned the local who Ted knew and he was important he was the front man and then the two other guys who went.”

To knock on the door with the rules about we need to check your property line and it was something he did because he had to see Jerry's face otherwise he wouldn't have opened that door he would have been suspicious so he was critical and low and behold he was home. Ted Kuzinski and you got him you grabbed him he said he was going to go back in he would show you the property lines just going to go back in and grab this coat and no he was not going to grab the coat the FBI grabbed him. Pulled out a six hour that was the end of his time to go back in the house and he was not placed under arrest but taken to another cabin where questioning began and I have to ask you you know after all this effort right he's in this cabin.

You've got him you and your team and like what are you thinking at this point 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 and 20 years like what are you thinking. Max couldn't wait to take a bath I mean he he already felt really dirty he wanted to get away from here take a shower as soon as he could but he wouldn't have been with Kuzinski just about the rest of the day and end of the night at about one o'clock.

I was thinking more of what we had to do next. I mean it was almost like okay that part of this is over and now we can breathe a little easier but not really because we've got a lot of work to do.

I mean everybody else all these evidence response teams and and then we call the bureau but now the bureau is saying what you you don't have anything but a search warrant what are you doing. We're taking about and putting him into another cabin to be on ice here for a while while we decide what to do and of course our plan was to take him up the mountain and over to hell and. And of course DOJ said you can't do that you can't arrest this man well we're not going to go back in the cabin and so by late that night after hours of debating that occurred back east.

A lot of information that I'll call it what it was it was fiction from DOJ people that that had no in no they had no clue of what they were talking about and so people were a little concern are you make it in the rest that you can't make.

“But by about midnight Howard Shapiro the FBI chief legal counsel got on the phone with me.”

Let me go through everything that's going on in the other room and low and behold he said I don't need to hear anything else I'll brief the director do what you're doing and get this person locked up and we'll we'll deal with the rest of this tomorrow and that's exactly what happened. Eventually after sort of the rigging the house and making sure it was safe to enter and then we're all sorts of things you got to retirees booked it to hear like the painstaking efforts to make sure that it was safe. But you get into his cabin and this to me is where it all comes together.

Twenty years of clue gathering would match up with what you found in that cabin forget enough to make an arrest now we're talking we need enough to put this man away for the rest of his life and it was all there you know I think about let me just give you one I think about.

“Terry the the right the eyewitness is a Tammy Tammy sorry Tammy the eyewitness that had given us the Aviator sunglasses and all that back at the one bombing years ago.”

Now nobody ever made an eyewitness nobody ever matched that picture up with Ted Kuzinski and said I know that guy so okay did she really make a difference.

A hundred percent because tell us about some of the things she described that you found in Ted Kuzinski's cabin. Well of course the infamous portrait of the Aviator sunglasses and the guy wearing the gray hooded sweatshirt in low and behold there in the cabin were Aviator sunglasses and gray hooded sweatshirt hanging up on a on a hook over in the corner to the left as you were facing from the outside.

We found a live bomb on the second day of the search wrapped in ready to mail ironically it had a return address of the Seattle FBI office and so he was getting ready to taunt us again.

“We saw across the cabin remember the cabin nine by twelve in size and then it had a loft so across from where we were looking through the only door of the cabin were all kinds of containers cartons and bottles somewhere labeled.”

We were labeled with explosive or gradients that you could use to make explosives and in fact, the universe early bombs had some of these combinations like potassium chlorate and sodium chlorate and things like that.

We found a oatmeal container quaker out so many of the container with pre-made switches that he had already made ahead of time.

Literally reach on to the shelf and pull off a switch that he might use in a bomb he wants to construct. We found thousands of pages of typed or handwritten notes and we found a autobiography of him he had literally laid out his entire life in all of these notes. We also found admissions and/or confessions to all 16 unabond devices. Now what in fact we did find with about 500 pages of those admissions is that he had taught himself Spanish and he wrote those admissions and confessions in Spanish. So now we had to get on the phone and start assembling every FBI Spanish speaker we had, so that we could get those translated and stop any bombs that might now still be in the mail stream.

So we have all these things still going on because of this guy's nature and personality. One question I wanted to ask you having read the book was you one of the queries one of the one of the oddities was the FBI agents analyzing the case before you knew who it was believed that the forensic experts. He said the unabommer is melting scrap aluminum for his more recent bombs. He would need an electric powered kiln to do that. And he Ted Kazinsky only had like a wood burning stove in there. He had no electricity.

And so did we ever solve the mystery of how he melted scrap aluminum, which is the wood burning stove which the forensic experts said he could not do. Well, they may have said he could not do it but we've all all learned about experts and the experts were simply wrong.

And that's how he was meticulously making these bombs.

And I know we knew this from the manifesto, but we haven't really gotten it to it in this interview, but from the manifesto and the materials he found in his cabin and the interviews with his brother David and so on. Because Ted was not talking. He claimed right up.

“What do we know about why about the reason for his terror campaign over 20 years?”

Yes, he actually goes into that and he says people are going to give a number of motives to what I'm doing. But I'm doing this because I'm getting personal revenge. I'm doing this because I'm angry. There was really no rationality to all of these things that looks organized like he might have had an anti-technology beef. Of course he kind of did, but it was all when you get down to it when you think of airlines. He was mad because the planes flying over the wilderness area where he lived made too much noise.

“So then he'd write, I'm embarking on a plan to get even. And this is kind of how he was thinking. And as Kathy had said early on, this is about anger.”

It's about what a person like this, a serial killer, a serial criminal, has welled up inside them. They are angry. So he wrote about his anger. He wrote about personal revenge as a motive. And he gave other motives, of course. But this is what it all came down to for him. The anger and revenge at what he thought were slides against him. Can you explain just, with the criminal trial, what happened? You didn't have to try him. And there was a reason why death was none of the table.

In the lead up to this, David had requested that we have some sort of deal where he will help us, but there will be no death penalty. Well, of course, we had to say no to that. We couldn't talk like that with anybody before any kind of trial.

So ultimately, there was death penalty attached to the indictments that were the trial process in both Sacramento and had we gone there, New Jersey on the main cases that we were in Diding him on.

But at some point in time, right before the trial jury was to come in and we were going to start the trial, he just kind of threw it in. You know, he didn't want to plead guilty at all to anything. They tried to have a conditional plea where we would, you know, kind of take his plea, but he could appeal things all his life. He said no. And finally, they said, well, look, if you take the death penalty off the table, you know, we'll plead guilty unconditionally to all of these crimes. And that's exactly what happened.

And that happened literally, I mean, the beginning of that happened literally minutes before the judge had kind of read his final words and and told the court room, okay, I'm going to bring in the jury.

And all of a sudden, you know, Kazinsky basically threw something or made some noise that they were done, the attorneys got up.

The whole thing was over that day and within an hour, we were told he's he wants to plead guilty. So terrified about the plot of having his own life taken from him. And of course, not a shred of concern or care for the lives he took and and the people he made and you know, I think about those poor children and that wife of poor Thomas Mosser, who had to run into that kitchen after they heard a bomb go off and see the remains of their loved ones. I mean, like and Ted Kazinsky's worried, of course, to the end about himself and what he might have to go through.

Has he ever spoken Terry has he ever given an interview or, you know, done anything other than the manifesto to help people understand.

“No, not really. He's he's turned down most interviews. I think he eventually might have spoken with someone briefly, but I'm not sure. I remember vaguely at some point you might have, but he certainly is not talking to us.”

He is developed or he had developed, I think, a relationship of some sort with Timothy McBay before he was executed. And of course, he's on, he's at the supermax and I think right down the role from him is Eric Robert Rudolph, another loner serial bomber from the Olympic bombing of 1996. So he's really never talked, he's really never said much.

Right. He would he cut off his brother and his mom and I think his dad was alive for some of that.

Unclear why that the brother married a college professor was a question about whether he was upset about that. He didn't like universities as we covered earlier. And yet the brother loved him. David, because since he loved his brother Ted and really seemed to wrestle with that phone call.

“He made after reading the manifesto and, you know, again, he tried to bargain for his brother's life, but knew he had to do the right thing. I mean, he's he's really kind of an unsung hero in the whole thing because”

Even though we have so many FBI agents working tirelessly around the clock for years to catch the guy, boy, oh boy, a lot of people would say I wouldn't I wouldn't do it wouldn't turn my own brother and I do something else. But he did the right thing and in large part, you know, he played a major role in apprehending the brother. Okay, the profile of Ted Kazinski is where I want to pick it up next because I read some crazy stuff about this guy.

And I would love to go through some of it with you, not it wasn't in your book, but I want to understand Ted Kazinski a bit better and lessens learned.

Now that now that you can look back on your investigation and know who it is, what would you have done differently? Okay, we're going to pick it up there with Terry Turkey. I'm unabomber investigation next. So an important piece of the story is, who was this guy? Like what turns, you know, some normal American who by all accounts didn't have an extraordinarily odd childhood into a serial killer.

“That's what Ted Kazinski is, a serial killer. So let's just start with what do we know about his, you know, one through 20 about that period of his life?”

Sure, well, his brother kind of sums that up the best I think, because he thought a lot about that, and he would constantly remind us, we came from the same family.

We were raised in the same way by the same people. I don't even understand how he can attach certain meaning and value to some of the things he was taught in the way he was raised, that he talks about that's what he would say about Ted. I don't understand how we could come from the same family because my recollections and memories of growing up are nothing at all like his.

“I have no idea how he got these notions, and they're, and I think lies to the problem for us in future cases and trying to identify or prevent some of these types of things.”

Very difficult to figure out how to see these people ahead of time, how to figure out how one person is going to be fine and how another person becomes a serial terrorist. I don't know if we're even close to that kind of assessment right now. I know we've tried to articulate things that were missed, and yet they're only on the surface, like someone acted a certain way in school or didn't get along with anybody or was constantly angry. Kathy says that, and she did a major study, one of the things we did to try to answer your question is when I went back to the bureau at the end of my career, we got the money and we brought Kathy back to do a study on loan serial bombers.

And she concluded that these are people who are trying to make a mark in society, they want to be known. They fail it being known, they fail it group identity, they cannot become part of a group, they simply cannot socialize to where they can become part of any kind of group. So what they start to do is create their own group. Thus, the unibommer created theater because it's created the terror group FC, and then they seek this major type of event like a bomb in a terrible tragedy to get traction and be known.

And so, that's about as close as we can get, but she base that on a number of serial killers and a number of people because we don't have many serial bombers of course. But there are certainly very similar patterns going on there. So we passed that study along to the to the bureau, I mean that it was girl property we passed it along to use in the future. And in fact, it was used initially when they were trying to deal with the anthrax case because if you recall, there was a real way of a very strong way of initially that the anthrax attacks on these coast had to be committed.

By an international terrorist, it just had to be. And Kathy and I at the time we're in the Lawrence Livermore Lab, we retired, we were working there. And the bureau actually called and they said, we have a meeting coming up and we're trying to be the voice in the wilderness, telling the entirety of the rest of the government that the FBI thinks the anthrax attacks are domestic terrorism.

Just a couple of items, he was brilliant. He read that he skipped two grades. He went off to Harvard at age 16. He graduated with a PhD in mathematics in 1967.

He would go on to teach mathematics at the University of California at Berkeley. Of course, we would see, you know, bombings in California and the universities there abruptly returned to Chicago to live with this parents. And then he wound up purchasing this land in Montana and living in this cabin. Now I also read online that he was at one point, he considered himself trans.

“And actually went to seek the operation or at least psychiatric affirmation of that. Is that true?”

I think there's some discussion in his journals of something like that. To be honest, I don't. I didn't pay a lot of attention to that at that time. But I think he wrote something very similar to that. Yes.

And there was never a woman in the picture from what I I never hear anything about this girlfriend, that girl, no ex wife, like no women.

No disappointed that he put an ad in a newspaper in the San Francisco Bay Area in the open Berkeley area. And the ad is probably the reason he never got what he wanted. He said he was an individual seeking a squaw. Someone who could live a wilderness life and essentially be told what to do. He said he was shocked. He was shocked in his journal because then he wrote it and I'm shocked. No one responded.

So I mean, maybe I'm so smart in some ways and not so smart in other ways. Now, what about there was some reporting that when he went to Harvard, they did this experiment.

It was voluntary to take part in it. But he was a young kid when he started me 16 is very young to be at university. He participated in it was some sort of an experiment to see how well you handled stress and criticism.

“Given to you like on a loop about you about your writings and and some theorized this may have been a turning point, you know, like somehow it drove them crazy. What do we know about that?”

Well, Megan, we know that's a theory. He never says much about it. There's a there's another kind of companion thing that he was involved in some unbeknownst to him some secret kind of experimental testing that the CIA was doing in some places using students. But he doesn't really look at any of that as the reason that these things happen. He himself says people are going to describe all kinds of motives and all of these things to me as the reason I'm doing this they're all wrong. I'm doing this because I'm angry and I'm revengeful and this is how I'm going to get even.

That's really the strongest thing we have to go by everything else pretty much falls back into the old fact fiction and theory, but there's so many people out there now because you know they have access to a lot of his library of journals and documents and things. Now, everybody is going to weigh in on what the adorcazance scheme must be thinking, but as you mentioned does he take questions and does he get involved in discussions and sadly in some ways the answer is no, we'll never know for sure what's what's he what he's thinking.

He hated technology. He hated advancement. He wanted rural caveman type living and really hated anybody or anything that pushed for I would say now 21st century type advancements and I can't imagine what the what the Ted Kazinsky of the bombing years you know 1998 minus 20 would have thought of Twitter and Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates and all of it. I mean, I'm sure I know, but so so final point looking back now at the investigation and then comparing it against the real killer. What do you think were the biggest lessons learned?

“I think the biggest lessons learned are kind of almost contrast with each other. First of all, you have to follow the basics.”

You can't overlook things that you would do in any case whether it's a bank robbery case or anything else. You have to follow the basics and get them recorded and then remember what is important as you're doing that and at the same time you can't be tied to a system which doesn't move fast enough to keep up with what you're trying to do. And in this case when you've got a bombing and then you could have another bombing and another bombing, you have got to be getting that information out and distributed and then assessing it for a long time in all all kinds of cases.

It's biggest weaknesses. It doesn't really know what it has and because it has so much.

And so that is what we tried to overcome and so you have to be doing that. But then the other significant thing that I think you see all through this and I think today it is true and it will always be true and it was true before I ever became an FBI agent.

“We are nothing without the public, without the help of the public, without the trust and support of the public.”

And if we lose that and we can debate how people may feel today if we lose that, we're in trouble. And that ought to be at the forefront of every mind who runs the FBI works in the FBI at any level that if you lose that trust with the public and you don't trust them to help support you and help you with these cases.

Then you've got some big problems. Law enforcement in a constitutional Republic in a free country is about the people and it's about teaming up with those people.

The FBI used to have an old pamphlet. It was called cooperation, the backbone of law enforcement. And by Golly, that was the basis of all of our media of everything we did. And if I had it to do over, I would have done it faster in greater quantity. And by Golly, I would be educating everybody who ever walked in the law enforcement that it's about you and the public.

“And they've got to trust you and you've got to depend upon them. And that's that's the kind of relationship we have with David.”

And that's where we are today. Boy, boy, I have things changed since you were solving this case and have things and how they need to change back the FBI is seen very differently now. And you know what, reading how the media worked with you guys on the leaks and trying to protect the public made me think about how the media has changed to and not for the better. So appreciate your hard work, your telling the story. It's an honor to know you Terry, but I hope you can come back to. Thank you Megan, you too. Thank you very much on behalf of every other work this case.

All the best to you.

“Thanks for joining us today. Download the Megan Kelly show on your podcast, youtube.com/megankelly to watch it. Thanks.”

Karen reads courtroom drama has sparked intense debate raised questions about police conduct and fueled fierce divisions online. And the legal saga is far from over. In fact, there's new development, there is a new development just this month, not just one, actually more. Peter Trego, so attorney and host of the lawyer you know on youtube. He's so good on this. He's covered every twist in turn of this case. You will love listening to this conversation and he joins me right now. So let's just start back at the beginning for people who may not be as up to speed on this case as you are.

Karen Reed was who she was she's living in her private life in Massachusetts who was she before all this happened to her. She was a single woman dating a law enforcement officer had a great job in finance and her family was a close net family. Love each other for all intents and purposes when she reconnected with this boyfriend who was an officer and they go out for a night on the town. They had a bit of a tumultuous relationship and then that night after some drinking at the bar hanging out with the bunch of friends everything changed forever.

So the prosecution, which would ultimately be charging her alleges that they left this bar. They drove over to a friend's house another cop and that her boyfriend got out of the car that he then walked up to the the front door of the friend's house and went. Sorry, this is what she alleges she alleges he went to the front door of the house and he went inside and something terrible happened to him the prosecution said no he got out of your car.

He never made it inside because you ran him over you backed up into him at something like 24 miles an hour.

Herding him casting him into the snow bank where he then later died from blunt trauma and hypothermia is that the basics. Yeah, I mean that the it turns on what happened after they got to 34 fair few everybody's basically on the same page. They went to a couple bars. They were hanging out together. They were drinking together. Karen read is driving her Lexus nobody disputes that John O'Keef who's her boyfriend and the victim in this case sitting in the front seat. They drive to 34 fair few to hang out with the McCabe's and the Alberts.

She's a little bit more than a couple of people in Canton. She drops him off he gets out of the car. There also seems to be third party witness testimony that he gets out of the car after that. That's where the stories kind of turn. If you believe the prosecution and the witnesses inside 34 fair few. He never makes it inside the house. She backs up hits him with her Lexus because she's angry at him about you know, multitude of things and they're fighting and she wanted to end his life. I guess is is there a point of view.

And it wasn't until the wee hours of the next morning you know like five six in the morning that she and another then start searching for him like what happened to him where's John and oh wow he's dead in the snowbank. How that happened. Now there are two competing facts that I want to ask you about as I was just listening to the setting follow this case as closely as you did at all, but as I was listening to it the best fact. Well, there's two that I think the prosecution has.

“Are as follows. Number one that she allegedly said I hit him. I hit him. I hit him and that an emergency worker like a paramedic heard that.”

And now she denies that, but you've got a third party witness saying she said that. So that's a very good fact for the prosecution and they also have tailgate.

Plastic in his clothing like from where her tailgate of her Lexus hit him. So it doesn't look like he got beaten up inside. It looks like he got hit by her car. Not just any car, but her car. So those are very good facts for the prosecution. On the other side for Karen read the best fact I saw for her defense. Because her again, her defense is no, he walked into the house. I didn't run him over. He went into the house and then there was some cop on cop violence, some old score got settled.

“And they beat him. They beat him to death. And then through him in the in the snowbank and try to say that I ran him over.”

And the best evidence I saw for Karen reads theory was that someone inside that house allegedly googled something to the effect of how long can you be out in the snow before you die.

Before they found the body before they found the body, you know, before she even had allegedly hit him. And that would certainly suggest the people inside the house were up to no good. Now a trial they disputed that piece of testimony. So can you walk us through that evidence. Those those do I have like the best facts on both sides or have I miss something. Yeah, honestly, there's just so much. So what we'll go with what you're asking because it's really fascinating for somebody who's kind of followed it from a cursory point of view and maybe you've heard some of the highlights or seen some of the shows reporting on it because it was fascinating and it's really a case unlike any other.

I've tried personally myself or followed even, you know, since I've been following these cases in the media and you brought up some big points of contention and the prosecution absolutely pushed the I hit him comments as a confession. That's what they continued to call it a confession. She confessed to law enforcement to EMS right there on the scene. Karen reads team cross examined those witnesses and said, "If you had somebody that confessed why didn't she get arrested? Why wasn't that immediately the investigation and they knew exactly what happened? Why was there any unknown? Why wasn't the investigation and the crime scene taken as they knew exactly what happened that she hit him with her Lexus?"

And Karen reads team responds with, "It was did I hit him? Could I have hit him? Which there are some other people that said I could have been."

Stand by. Let me just play that because she spoke to Dateline. She didn't testify to her trials, but she did speak to Dateline. Here's Karen read. Try and clarify that point and stop 51. I said, "Could I have hit him? Did I hit him?" How could that have been? I mean you dragged him out to that. I don't know what else could have been. It was howling wind. I had YouTube lasting on the stereo and I thought did he somehow try to flag me down which was the reaction. I was hoping to garner as I slowly pulled away from the house. Did he come out and maybe trip or or bend over to pick up a cell phone and I ran over his foot and then he passed out drunk.

I mean I didn't think I hit him hit him but could I have clipped him? Could I tag him in the knee and incapacitated him? He didn't look mortally wounded as far as I could see.

“But could I have done something that knocked him out and is in drunkenness and in the coal didn't come to again?”

And just to be clear, Peter, this was after so that the night goes on, you know, she allegedly hit him around right just after midnight. But according to her testimony, she didn't hit him. She waited for him to come back out of the party. He didn't. She got mad. She went back over to his house. And then by the next morning, by like five or six AM, she and this other gal were like looking for him and lo and behold, there he was dead in the snowbank at the location of the party. So go ahead. And that is one of the big points of contention and as you know, one of the big things now that there's competing civil lawsuits that we may talk about later.

When we're talking about the criminal case and you're saying here's the best evidence for one side and here's the best evidence for the other. The prosecution in this case has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt what happened that night. And that was one of the big difficulties when you have maybe some EMS and some people said she said I hit him.

And then when you flip to his injuries, which you mentioned them as kind of good evidence for both sides that her taillight pieces were, you know, on him in his sweater.

“I'm kind of attached to him how would they get there unless she had him with her Lexus and then she says his injuries match a fight getting beat up by cops inside. You know, as he had raccoon eyes.”

He died from hitting the back of his head and you know, the evidence shows maybe it was on a ledge and not a flat ground. You know, that was a little who was actually going to prove what injury was the cause of death and how he got it.

So that was a big point of contention throughout. And if you look at a lot of the medical evidence and the accident reconstructionists to me, that's really work here.

That was a yes, that was a good fact for her, the fact that the Lexus like expert at trial that said there was nothing recorded on this car of hitting somebody of going 24 miles an hour or whatever it was and running over another person like that that that he would have expected something to register. And the car's brain and nothing did. And that's one of the problems with so many facts in this case is there was kind of competing theories on that where if you hit a man that's 200 pounds, maybe that's not going to be enough to register an event when you have, you know, a very heavy Lexus like that.

“And then there were some people that said, well, maybe it should have and there's nothing on here that actually did register it.”

But even more so Karen Reed had accident reconstructionists that were actually hired by the FBI while they were investigating this investigation, which will get into the shady stuff happening there as to why the FBI would even get involved.

But Karen Reed ends up hiring those guys as her experts and they do all sorts of different testing and they can never create the same action where something hitting that tail light would explode.

Out into the yard and on John O'Keefe the way that the prosecution said it happened in that case it just wouldn't happen especially with some of the videos and pictures where the tail lights are still working without busting those little actual light bulbs inside it was really fascinating. Which was the case here correct the lights were still working. So in other words, this was faked in other words, the point is those guys killed them inside they brought them out and then they were the ones who hit her car to make it look like it had bumped into him.

So partially they they somewhat point the finger at the guys inside the house for beating John O'Keefe the death and leaving him on the lawn, but they alleged that law enforcement actually cracked the tail light placed the pieces there mixed everything together. So it would look like that tail light hit John O'Keefe and they went so far as to Alan Jackson, one of the defenslers in this case had a chart of all the glass that was found at the scene and there was a cocktail glass that was found on Karen Reed's car that was found nowhere else at the scene.

So how really would it have gotten there but for somebody placing it on the bumper of Karen Reed's car which was driven away from the scene, driven around the next morning, put on a tow truck, driven back and we're supposed to believe that some of this cocktail glass stayed on there and there was one hair that stayed on there that they said was John O'Keefe's hair, things that just were really hard to believe that the commonwealth was trying to explain to a jury in this case. Okay, so what the theory of the prosecution is easy to understand that she and John hadn't really been getting along.

He had talked about possibly breaking up with her. She was very angry that night, she was drunk and in her drunken anger, she ran him over. And there was some debate about whether they overcharge the case, should they have just charged it as a manslaughter, they went from murder to which definitely raised the stakes for this jury, like it was intentional, she wanted to kill him as opposed to just like heat of passion, she did something crazy.

“But the defense had a totally different version of events and so for the clueless judge walking into this case, why would John O'Keefe's fellow cops want him dead?”

To great question, and if you look at the two criminal trials, because this was the trial twice, the first one was a hung jury, the second one was a not guilty verdict, on all of the charges dealing with ending John O'Keefe's life, she was convicted of OUI operating under the influence. But the big difference in the theme and theory of the defense case from trial one to trial two was, this was a big conspiracy and trial one, everybody was involved, the people inside the house and it is like the cops covered it up and there was a hung jury.

In the second trial it's, you can't prove anything, this investigation was so bad, these cops didn't do the interviews properly, they didn't record them, they didn't secure the scene properly, this evidence doesn't make sense, it looks like it could have been planted, these guys have been terminated, these text messages are disgusting how they talk about Karen read and other people and that was a not guilty verdict that they couldn't prove the case.

It was you know a little bit of a reach, but they were trying to say that they looked over across the bar and pointed at John O'Keefe and told John O'Keefe to come to 34th Avenue because basically they wanted to fight and that was kind of their theme and theory of why somebody, what the motivation for somebody being wanting to kill John O'Keefe inside that house. When the defense have positive if they did, that law enforcement broke her tail light to make it look like it was Karen read, because under this scenario he goes inside the house, he gets murdered, but we've already talked about how she took off, she was there for a short time then she left with that SUV.

“Did they posit that her tail light was broken later when she drove back in the morning and found the body?”

So this tail light, there was so much litigation about this tail light, first the defense says there was a video that shows she backed up very slowly into John O'Keefe's car at John O'Keefe's house and that's how she cracked her tail light and there was just a little cracking it. When she hit John O'Keefe, the prosecution says no, it was totally damaged, destroyed and they had in 46 different pieces, but we made the tail light so interesting is it was towed to the Sally port where law enforcement is and when they tried to show when the SUV was dropped off, they showed an inverted video, a flipped video and they were like, hey, nobody even went near this tail light, but then when you realize it's a flipped video which they did in the middle of trial, then you realize there are people that walk by that tail light.

And when you look closer at the entire time it was in the Sally port, there are blips and cuts in and out and huge chunks of time missing where you don't see what's going on with that Lexus.

And the defense said where are those chunks and the Commonwealth says, well, you know, it's motion activated so it might not be there. And then when they secured the crime scene the first day, they found a couple pieces of tail light in the yard right where John O'Keefe's body was found, but days and weeks and months went by and they continued to find tail light piece after tail light piece after tail light piece in this front yard that they didn't find the first time they went the second time they went the third time they went, they just happened to be driving by and they'd find another piece of tail light.

Very sketchy unlike just about every investigation you've probably ever seen. So what does that imply?

“So they're implying that they would go back to the yard, put the pieces in the yard after they busted it at the Sally port and they would find it every day more and more pieces of tail light that they didn't find the first day the first week.”

And they just kept planning pieces of tail light and going and getting it to make sure there are text messages that said we're going to pin it on the girl and we're going to make sure that nobody in the house catches any crap.

We're going to make sure he's a Boston cop, so we're not even going to look into him.

So there were all kinds of text messages that the defense made look like they were trying to protect the people in the house and make sure Karen read caught charges for this. Oh, well, that sounds really bad. I did actually hadn't realized that they were explicit text messages saying we're going to pin it on the girl. That's from cop. That from the people inside the house, from people inside the house, inside 34 fair view, some of them are cops or related to cops.

And they said they would make comments like, oh, she did such a good job explaining this or make sure they're getting all their testimony straight to say, make sure we all say the guy never came in the house.

You know, they were making sure they were all staying consistent there.

They weren't necessarily being forthcoming with who was actually in the house that night. It was just what happened. I don't think we'll ever know because the investigation was so bad and the lead investigator ended up getting terminated because he was found to have shown bias in this case. Sending some of the most disgusting text messages you would ever think about a defendant that you are doing an investigation on supposed to be protecting and serving and being an unbiased party. Just doing your investigation and going where the evidence leads you.

I mean, these text messages were so horrible. He had in supervisors, thumbs uping those text messages.

“It was just a good old boy's club that looked really, really horrible, I think.”

How bad were they the ones I heard about were he was saying like I'm looking for nudes now on her phone. That was about as racy as I heard, but I was listening to date line. They don't tend to go to the fully or rated place. Yeah, I mean, they were talking about there are certain things that, you know, we would probably both condemn, but that we're not necessarily as bad as some of the bias ones where is she hot. Yeah, she's kind of hot, but no ass.

She has, you know, this Boston accent or whatever, they're objectifying her, which is one thing. It doesn't necessarily mean they're going to pin some crime on her, but then they started to say that we're going to make sure the owner of the house doesn't catch any shit. He's a Boston cop. That's, that's a quote from the text messages and they would talk about how she had a balloon not because she had some, you know, surgery or issues, gastro, internal issues.

They would talk about how she, you know, some of the text messages with the person that she was having the affair.

“With we're back and forth and Racy and talking about John and how we need to hide this from John.”

And then that person went to the police station that night at 2 a.m. And said he was moving cars around, but was instead moving bags back and forth between different cars going inside the police station with his hood up and just sketchy thing on top of sketchy thing from all these law enforcement officers involved. Wow. So listening to you, Peter, I feel like you, you may believe that Karen Reed is actually innocent, factually innocent, not just found not guilty, which she was, but may in fact truly not have done this.

You know, it's really hard for me to say, like, beyond a reasonable doubt, I don't think either side would ever be able to prove this.

And because of that and because the investigation was so horrible and I just don't feel like I can trust anything the cops say or did in this case, you'd never get a conviction.

And this is a case I would never want to try. I prosecuted cases. I would never prosecute this case. This is just not one. You can, I would have felt ethically comfortable with putting in front of a jury on the civil side. Will they be able to get enough to prove to a jury by the greater rate of the evidence, 51%.

“I think it's possible, but it's just so hard to know what happened inside that house of 34 fair view.”

Well, if I had to choose is she factually innocent or is she factually guilty, I would choose that she's factually innocent. I'm just not overly confident of that. I don't think I would be able to say that beyond a reasonable doubt, because I really don't think anybody's ever going to be able to prove what happened that night. Okay, let's talk about the civilists. So she was found not guilty. First, there was a hung jury, then I guess we'll play it because there was an extraordinary moment on June 18th, 2025, which she's bound not guilty. And you could hear the crowd cheering outside. She had quite a groundswell of support that had begun in the beginning of the first trial. Here's that moment. It's not 53.

Zero zero three. What say is it defending at the bar leading the scene after actually resulting in death. Defend it not guilty or guilty. So say it was the criminal. So say you all. Jers, how can you verdict is the court records? You will pardon your oath. Say it defended on zero zero. One is not guilty. On zero zero two is guilty of operating in the influence of liquor and zero zero three not guilty. Thank you. All right, Jers, everybody please be seated. Jers, we thank you for your service.

And the crowd support for her Peter would be relevant because the prosecution witnesses and the family of the victim really objected and felt this colored their right to a fair trial. Yeah, it's brutal to think about the victims' families. The O'Keefs and all of this regardless of what happened and who did what inside 34 fair if you were law enforcement. They lost John O'Keef and that family has gone through. I don't know if you know any of the backstory of that family. They have gone through more loss than most people would in their entire lives.

And, you know, to continue to feel that way and not get justice, they clearly believe Karen Reed is guilty. Clearly believe the witnesses inside 34 fair if you. They've all gotten a lot closer as this litigation has continued. So I feel horribly for them. But I think that the fault lies with law enforcement. The fault lies with the prosecutors in how this case was prepared, how this case was investigated, how this case was litigated.

Some of the other text messages with the cops were basically guaranteeing that Karen Reed is guilty.

The next morning before an investigation had even taken place and then, you know, you have just that confirmation bias where you want, you want to be correct. And you're going to do everything you can to make sure you're correct.

“And that's what it felt like more to me than maybe a big conspiracy to cover it up and protect the people inside the house.”

But I mean, we've seen cases where law enforcement gets locked in on somebody and they're going to make sure that's the right person. And they start, you know, getting to know the victims and it's so sad and you want to bring justice and you think you're crossing a line for the right reason. And it just blew up in their face in this case. That item that I asked you about before. So when she went back and she was looking for John's body or John, and then stumbled upon his body, this is around 6 a.m.

And there, there was her friend, last name McKay. And that person googled hose meaning how she used an S instead of a W and typing how long to die in cold. And that to me seems like it should have been known very clearly what time she googled that because if she googled that before she knew,

like her, like basically they were saying, well, I only did that, her, her defense to Karen saying that the people inside the house have killed him.

But her, her defense was, I didn't Google that when I was alone inside the house before you came back.

“I googled that with you once we realized that you'd hit him and he was in the snow and we were trying to figure out whether he was dead or alive.”

Right, is that basically how this McCabe defended that, but like why isn't that just totally knowable what time she googled that.

That the whole case should rise or fall around that Google. Yeah, the way you explained it is exactly how kind of the arguments went on both sides was it two o'clock in the morning or six o'clock in the morning because that makes all the difference in the world because nobody knew he was dead at two o'clock in the morning. So how are you possibly searching that unless you're the person that put him out in the cold and you're wondering how long it would take. And yeah, it was again unlike any other case I've seen.

Celebrate said one time and actually everybody agreed at one point that it showed that it was at two twenty seven or something in the morning.

“And then they got celebrated and evolved celebrates like well that's not actually correct.”

That's when the tab was open. Let's celebrate. Sorry. What's celebrated is like the program that they download the phone and it tells you here's all the Google searches. Here's the time each Google search was made and that report said two twenty seven a.m.

And then there's another different program called axiom that does basically the same thing. That said two twenty seven a.m. as well. But then celebrate had well maybe it was at six o'clock. Is it is two twenty seven the time she opened the tab and she was searching some sports team Hacomock sports. And when she was in bed at night going to bed at two o'clock in the morning and that tab was left open.

And then when she searched at six a.m. it was showing the time she originally opened the tab. So there were competing experts saying the search was at six o'clock the search was at two o'clock and once again like so many other facts in this case. It felt impossible to prove beyond a reasonable doubt which once again should be held against the prosecutor and not the defendant. And that's so frustrating as soon as I heard that piece of it that somebody was googling how long to to die in cold and it happened at two in the morning before they found the body.

I was like oh the people inside the house definitely did it Karen read did not do this. That's that's as good as evidence is you're ever going to get and then I read that thing you just said about how they were like well it might have been the time to two a.m.

The time she opened the internet for a search that came many hours later and as somebody who always has tons of tabs open on my phone.

I can understand that happening very easily that you just use a tab that's already opened to search something many hours later so unfortunately that's not as clear as we would like. Yeah absolutely and it's like you I've handled trials and have celebrate reports. I'm sure you've seen other trials with celebrate reports. I've never seen them attacked like this has just a report that they put out as a time that seems very simple is just absolutely completely wrong. And this is something I'm going to keep an eye out now is this are more defense attorneys going to attack this and how often does axiom and celebrate give completely different reports like they did in this case because axiom if you run a report right now on her phone still says the search was at two twenty seven a.m.

“Wow the other question about we spent some time in the tail light there was a question about whether this Lexus it was an SUV right it was like the I think it's okay whether this.”

Well anyway whether this Lexus at SUV even at whatever it was twenty four miles an hour let's say whether it would whether the tail light would break upon hitting a man and that that this was they couldn't replicate this 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 that makes some sense to me too I don't know like that a man made a flesh and bone might not. Be enough force to to take out the tail light on an SUV backing up into him what was what was the back and forth around that yeah and you know making it's impossible to really fully dig into each one of these individual aspects in just an hour or six hours.

If I showed you his body so I'm a personal injury lawyer now I handle a lot of truck accidents car accident case pedestrian accident case 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 twenty four miles an hour I have had clients die at twenty four miles an hour getting hit by a car. But you know what they look like they have broken bones they've got internal bleeding they've got serious head injuries and they've got injuries below the waste John O'Keefe had none of that no broken bones no bruising anywhere on his body the back of his head hitting the ground basically or hitting a ledge was the cause of his death and one of the fatal flaws of prosecutors case the second time around is their expert showed an example of another pedestrian getting hit by a car and they passed away.

And they're saying see look this can happen 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.

And gosh that's so tricky we did pull some sound from a couple of the jurors after the not guilty verdict it's always fascinating to listen to them if they'll talk and this when you're going to hear first it's the jury form in Charlie Deloach take a listen to stop fifty five. It was intense because before I got to the last not guilty. It was already chair and like it was a basketball stadium outside I didn't take one note I didn't have to have to in the first on witness. It was just like oh okay I see what it's going doing the trial I just was waiting and just looking for that all ha moment and there was none to to make a guilty at all.

It was just always like oh that wouldn't have sucked I was open minded I was willing to listen to both sides if she had them or if there is corruption.

And then the corruption I weighed the her getting hit her hitting on the car the case was it was leaning one way and it kept one leaning one way up into the very end. One more to play for you this is juror number four speaking up. Jason the jury found Karen Reed not guilty on murder and manslaughter was it because they had reasonable doubt or because they thought she was innocent.

“So I think for the jurors there's a mix of some people thinks that she was definitely innocent and and the other people there was a lot of reasonable doubt at least to where you can't we didn't want to convict her.”

I could only speak for myself I think that she was innocent.

It's hard to tell exactly what people think deep down there was a lot of things thrown at us do I think it was a corrupt police investigation. I don't know there's no way for me to know I can't I wasn't there there was just there was holes in the case that left for reasonable doubt I think they could have check some boxes or you know done some things differently but do I know that they were corrupt absolutely not. I don't know that there was any corruption going on but do I know that there wasn't enough proof for evidence secured by the police to convict Karen Reed absolutely not there's no there was not.

“Very interesting Peter that he's saying that we were between actual innocence and just not guilty but did not speak of any holdout saying no I think she did it.”

Yeah and I think that really goes to the investigation and the way that this case was presented there was holes everywhere no matter where you want to look if you want to compare the experts if you want to compare the medicine if you want to compare the card data if you want to compare the credibility of witnesses because that was a really big thing if you notice. Sure number one the four person said after the first witness I was like oh wow and he still kept an open mind but so much of these trials is the jury looking at each individual witness and judging their credibility are they telling the truth are they being honest do they have something to gain or lose by this testimony.

Does it make sense in the context of the rest of the testimony and I just think that their credibility was hurt throughout the trial by the cross examination and the other evidence presented by the defense. Do we know who the first witness was it would have been for the prosecutions and they go first and I my understanding is when they 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 news and referring to Karen read in those disgusting terms you mentioned he did not get called by the prosecution second time so they learned.

“So how to imagine they would is you know you always want to start with your best foot forward your best witness. Yeah, I think they started with an EMS person who I actually like I thought he was a good witness.”

I thought he was trying his best he made a mistake. I believe it's him that said.

John O'Keef had like a really big jacket on and he didn't he just had like a short sleeve or a long sleeve thin shirt that you probably wouldn't be wearing out in the snow, but I don't know Boston guys are probably tougher than me in the snow, but I think that's what the defense was trying. So you know so they were trying to say you know you didn't even remember those details so and they were trying to say that that shirt would be more likely something that he had on inside versus outside and they dragged him outside and through it so there were all these little details but I didn't think the first witness was that bad honestly and the way that the prosecution paired down the case from trial one to trial two was amazing they got a special prosecutor who's a big criminal defense lawyer there that they brought in specifically just to hire this case nobody from within their office.

They tried to pretend like he didn't exist and you can imagine the defense did not like that and they did not let that go quietly and they highlighted his name and said his name and besmirched his name as much as they possibly could and they didn't call him either so he was kind of like the boogie man.

“Why wouldn't they call the lead investigator you really want to side with them you can really trust this investigation even trust their own guy.”

It was not a good look.

That's not the way to do it. No one would think you'd call him you'd just front it all you'd have to do a full may a culpa I was a douchebag I've been fired so humiliated.

My wife you know she's forgiven me but I just was acting like an ass but it doesn't mean I was corrupt I certainly wouldn't corrupt murder investigation But like to not call him I mean hindsight's 2020 obviously I'm sitting here and come from my studio not like the prosecutor who actually had to get this done. Okay, so now let's talk about the civil suits because this is pretty extraordinary.

“It's not extraordinary to me that John O'Keeves family is now filing a wrongful death lawsuit against Karen Reed.”

That happens you know not infrequently it's like what Ron Goldman did to O'J after he was acquitted you do have to testify as the defendant in this posture once you've already been acquitted and you get sued in And so like he is going to have to she is going to have testifying this case but what's extraordinary is there's there's lawsuits going the other way against her by whom exactly. So there are lawsuits against her and the bars by the O'Keeve family for wrongful death like you said that's normal different burden civil court versus criminal you can be found.

Yeah, sorry I meant to say the opposite for lawsuit by her against us. Yes, so she has also filed a lawsuit against the aforementioned Michael Proctor who is the lead investigator on the case. Yuri Buchenik who is another trooper who was proctor supervisor and then everybody supervisor Brian Tully another law enforcement officer and then the five people in the house that she basically thinks are responsible for John O'Keeves death. Brian Albert Nicole Albert Jennifer McCabe Matthew McCabe and Brian Higgins Higgins is who she had the affair with the Albert's are who owned the house McCabe is who searched house long to die in the cold.

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.

That's crazy you never see that never because let's face it nine times at a ten more than that the defendant actually is guilty.

Maybe got off in a technicality like OJ or jury notification at no j's case and the last thing they want to do is go back into court with anybody you know it's like they know they kind of got away with it. It's like okay I'm a matter here, but she is not in that posture she's like let's go now she also appears to need money. I'll tell you we invited her come in this show and she wanted tens of thousands of dollars and we told her goodbye madam were news people we don't pay for news. Which does make me question how she wound up talking to date line and others because NBC is also not supposed to pay for news and any event she clearly is hard up for cash.

So maybe it's just a money grab I don't know what do you make of it. There's a lot there there was a lot there first I disagree with some of your percentages, but we don't need to get into that how many of them are actually not guilty, 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 also millions millions of dollars and attorneys fees and costs. So I'm sure she's lost everything she was unhierable for all of these years 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 it doesn't bother me one bit I don't know her personally I've never spoken to her.

So you know this is nothing like I know what kind of person she is or anything like that, but if this is true what she's alleging then she does deserve to be compensated for in my opinion.

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.

Four 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. They also sued her for intentional inflection 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.

“So truth is an ultimate defense to defamation and that's what she's standing on that she has the truth she can prove it.”

You know she's got some gumption she's not afraid her lawyers are not afraid they're sticking with her and pushing forward on this case. And sometimes it's a money grab either way right 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.

Fine it doesn't seem like that's what it is and if this ends in a settlement I'm going to assume it was a huge amount of money.

Hmm so have have those parties that she's now suing cross filed against her for defamation yet because so right because right now I thought the only lawsuit she was actively facing was John O'Keeves family suing her for wrongful death but have those other parties that she's now messing with cross filed against her for defamation yet. 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 filed their motions to dismiss first and then if they can't dismiss her lawsuit then they would file their answer and their counter claims so that's coming in due time I would expect that it is going to come though.

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 and now it's really on you know in a way we heard from the jurors it was kind of easy for them because they were like my god no they haven't come anywhere near this very high standard of beyond a reasonable doubt but the prosecution may have come near 51% more likely.

“40% less likely that she did it or the other way could go the other way I don't know like how do you see this going.”

What's really interesting is you know you mentioned what you would do if you were proctor you put him on the stand you just eat it right.

They did that the first trial they also had a much more boring prosecutor but just kind of a normal prosecutor who put everybody up there was like tell us what happened they repeated the same facts a million times. And while reports from that jury room where they were all not guilty on secondary murder there was a split in the majority thought that she was guilty of manslaughter or at least taking his life in some sort of way with the car.

“That first round of trial but it ended up being split in a hundred and everybody changed their way and I think the defense was much more successful around two I think they would have one regardless.”

That would be very difficult it can kind of burden shift and confuse the jury but just like you're saying there were some jurors that thought that she did hit him with her car throughout the first trial so there's obviously the possibility that that could be true proven in a civil court 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 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 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.

We mentioned a couple of these witnesses who were inside that house the Alberts and the McCaves they spoke out after the not guilty verdict in June let's take a listen to what they sounded like then soft 56. People turn this thing into a tailgate party and look like some days board games, cornhole, cookouts this is a guy that was murdered and it's it's a trotius for that family what they've done is they dehumanized us to the sense where we're not real people. We're almost like character chairs where just where ponds have each of you been called murderers like actual murders on a daily basis anybody who's touched this case has been called a murder at some point and anyone who's friends with us support cop killer.

The name turtle boy comes up a lot when you talk about what was happening outside the courthouse and the generation of a grounds well of opposition to the people you just saw on camera there the people who are inside the house including cops and their wives and so on who's turtle boy.

“So first of just a comment on what they're saying I think it's horrible that people's lives get ruined and people get accused of things like this with very little evidence and you know go after their kids and their livelihoods and things like that.”

I also think that there are some fair criticisms like the Albert who lived in the house never came outside the entire morning when there were all these EMS people and witnesses and everything outside and their friend is dead on their front lawn they never come outside to try to help. And with that emergency or I know he has emergency training was former law enforcement that stuff is really strange to me and hard for me to get over in the way they spoke about John O'Keefe somebody that was supposed to be their friend it is there's just so much strange stuff going on turtle boy is a journalist who looked into this case found witnesses nobody knew about like a tow truck or a plow driver that potentially had evidence that could help Karen read that held everybody's feet to the fire that was very loud with a megaphone about it that.

had his specific crass way of doing things and you know he's almost like a caricature where he says the most hyperbolic thing he possibly can he calls everybody every name in the book.

But he has uncovered so much evidence that people did not know about and people know about Karen reads case and exponentially more because of turtle boy so it's kind of like a loving or hate him he is who he is type of scenario for him.

What you're saying is got for good I ever get accused of a crime I want turtle boy on my side.

I would say he's a pretty good ally to have until he's not.

“Okay okay and he was at both trials yeah I think he's been at everything you know and his whole case people are now following as well his criminal charges that are going on.”

I've actually gotten to know his lawyer one of his lawyers a little bit. Mark Bedro's an amazing lawyer awesome guy talked about this Karen read case a lot with him so I know he's got great representation and they've already won a couple of the criminal cases have been dropped. The DA and the law enforcement they're just can't get out of their own way they have all these prosecutors that that are conflicted off cases nobody could end up prosecuting one of turtle boys cases so they just had to drop it so it's a whole other separate saga himself.

So if you're teaching this class in a law school Peter what what would you say this case is about.

How not to investigate and prosecute a case I think I could do a lot of sessions on the appropriate way what ethics look like.

“Even if you think somebody is guilty if you can't put the lead investigator on and you can't put after your evidence on because you don't trust it yourself maybe you shouldn't be prosecuting this case.”

And not taking your career and risking it all on one case and realizing mistakes will be made in life and we just have to let the chips fall where they may. The criminal defense attorney you learn to fight to dig even if the judge sometimes can be very difficult even when it seems like everything is stacked against you. It's also a lesson in PR like the way the defense attorneys have done their interviews and set up care and read to do interviews and ways that I disagree with I would never have had care and read to any interviews.

They have they said they welcomed them being played at trial so it could be some lessons on that some great lessons on cross examinations some great lessons on civil litigation how to try to get.

Federal documents where you request them from the federal government and then try to show them as unbiased third party bringing experts into the case investigating an investigation.

“So many interesting nuances to this case that law students could learn from but you don't always want to learn from the exception right.”

But you know what you said about the star witness reminded me of something when I was a young lawyer. I tried to civil case in upstate New York and we were so clearly in the right on this civil case was just so obvious that our guy was telling the truth and the other party wasn't. Because we knew we knew our star witness very very well and we knew all his entire employment history and all this stuff. And the judge the judge is always trying to push a settlement in a civil case and in a criminal case too they try to push you to take a plea if you're at all the minus so they don't have to try to verdict it's much better resolution where it's agreed to.

And he was looking at the other side pointing out like all the evidence that they were in the wrong and then I said what's he going to say when he looks at us because we're we're in the cappard see here and he said how do you like your lead witness. And the judge was exactly right because even though the facts were totally on our side our star witness was not likeable and the judge knew it. And we stuck by him of course we were like oh he's good he's fine. He wasn't the jury didn't like him and they found against us.

But he wasn't wrong like having a bad chief witness can make or break your case and in this case the prosecution had it sounds like a terrible chief witness whether it was just juvenile talk on those texts or not. The reason he got fired is because he cost them this investigation. Yeah and it wasn't just the text message there's just so much more than that but you know the number one thing is probably the the roles of each job of a lawyer. Because you just described the civil situation and as a criminal defense lawyer the way you want to look at it and what your duty is and how you try a case how you handle a case.

All of those roles are incredibly different than a prosecutor who is only there to find truth and justice and sometimes that's making hard decisions and letting people you think might be guilty go and not prosecuting those cases because you have all the leverage. All the power to ruin people's lives. There's very little repercussion when you lose and that's a very big responsibility and power that you have as a prosecutor that makes that job very different than a criminal defense lawyer or any type of civil lawyer.

And that to me was where this case could have been handled more appropriately. It's crazy to me that there was no ring camera and anybody's door you know like everything's on cam these days.

Or even on your car doesn't your car have one of those things like there's a camera on my car now that shows me what's happening behind you.

Yeah, absolutely there's there's cameras all over the place, but somehow during that period of time there was no camera on any house in that neighborhood that could have caught it or even back at John O'Keef's house. There was some ring right camera, but not that could show anything that we needed to show to prove the accident. This case is a mystery I'd love to know the truth, you know, it's like usually I hear these stories and I'm like I have a pretty good idea what happened. This one I remain uncertain really don't know and I mean I don't think.

I haven't been persuaded by anything I've heard that she intentionally killed him. I am open minded to the theory that in her anger she backed up to quickly and ran him over and either didn't realize it or didn't didn't care. But yeah I haven't heard anything that would leave me to believe she she's an intentional murderer who just take out her her anger by killing some. That was just a mistake for for them to even go for that was such a mistake. They were never going to be able to prove anything like that. And I'll tell you the number one thing and again, it's probably based on my experience what I do so much up seeing injuries in these pedestrian accidents.

“It is just so far from anything I think is remotely scientifically or physically possible for that Lexus to just break on the tail light not have any other dense and damages on it and then the injuries that corresponded John O'Keefe.”

And we didn't even get into the bite marks versus scratch marks or any of that but the injuries just an animal may have attacked it.

They just they just don't line up to me the injuries for it to be a car accident the way the prosecution described and that's so hard for me to get over. Wow. All right. Thank you so much Peter Tray. So good to see you again. This has been the most clear easy to understand excellent explanation of a very complex case. I think I've ever heard it makes me miss you all the more things from being back with us. Thanks for having me. The zodiac was a serial killer who terrorized the Bay Area in California in the late 1960s.

“He committed a series of murders across California and acts of pure violence and evil. He taunted the press and the authorities calling by pay phone on more than one occasion to take responsibility for the murders.”

He sent letters to major newspapers detailing the killings and mocking the police. Some of those letters included ciphers which he demanded be printed on the front pages of the papers. In a chilling 1969 letter to the San Francisco Chronicle the killer stated school children make nice targets. Think about that sick sick causing increased safety concerns across the region. This went on for years as he claimed more and more victims. Now there are five confirmed zodiac killings, but the real number is believed to be much higher.

And after years of investigating, our case here remains technically unsolved. But our guest today, Tom Colbert, is an investigative journalist and author and founder of a group called the case breakers that deals in cold cases. And his team of highly trained experts has spent years investigating the zodiac. They think they know who it is. Before we get to Tom, I want to tell you that you're going to hear during this show who Tom and his team believe the zodiac killer was. We're going to discuss his theory at length and he is convincing. But I also want to point out to you that we do not know who the zodiac killer was and there are so many theories on this. I could have put on a different expert with a different theory today.

In fact, on my NBC show back in February 2018, I had to guess on who were convinced they knew who the zodiac killer was.

“One of that. So there's a question about how extensive his murder spree was the zodiac killings. The truth is it may be up to 20 plus 30 plus people who were killed by the zodiac killer.”

He claimed 34 in the letter in 1974. He the zodiac killer? Yes. Whoever that may be. Right. From the time he started killing in 1945 until the time he got caught in 2009, it was unbelievable how many killed just in the eight month period. He was with Wayne's grandma. He killed eight and two of them in my hometown on a lover's lane. And so that was your your your conflating edwards plus the zodiac killer. And I know you believe edwards was the zodiac killer.

Yes. Yes. What is your best evidence that edwards was the zodiac killer? There were two cryptograms sent in by the zodiac killer. One in 60.

What is that? One in 70. They were like puzzles. And he basically said, if you saw these puzzles, you'll have my name.

And in 2010, when we confronted edwards about being the zodiac killer, after we solved the 13 character cipher, edward edwards name is 13 characters. And what he had done is taken the letters in his name and reversed image the letters as hyroglyphics.

And once we did, we confronted him. He sent us a letter saying, it's me. You don't know the whole story.

I have a lot to tell you and that he framed people his whole life. Later in the interview with Tom, I asked him about this guy edwards. And that theory, you'll hear what he has to say. And then at the end of today's show, we're going to bring you a sound bite from a long time cold case investigator who we really know and trust. And he too has looked into the zodiac case and has a word of caution for everyone. So you will make up your own minds.

“But I think you're going to enjoy the exchange. Now, my interview with Tom Colbert.”

Welcome to the show, Tom.

Thanks so much for the invitation, Megan. Of course. All right. So let's go back. As near as I can tell from what I've read, the the murders that we know the zodiac was responsible for. Took place began in the late 1960s and then went on to like the early 1970s. It's five that how do we know that those are his? It was defined by the San Francisco and the Lejo police departments who were in charge of all these murder cases.

Strictly around the San Francisco Bay area. But I will tell you and maybe jump in the gun. But our team is really believes it's now closer to 10 victims around the country from San Diego to Lake Tahoe. During what time frame time frame starts from 62 a couple killed on the beach and all the way up to 1970 Lake Tahoe and that victim is still missing. We have a very good idea where she is. What do you mean? She is the only one never found and through as you mentioned the letters and the codes we have an incredible source that brought this case to us a couple years ago and he deciphered the codes according to our team and that led us to a burial spot.

And that's TBA. Okay, you're working on something that you want to keep confidential. Well, we we not only are planning to go there. We have several other places to go. We know also where we believe he buried his murder weapons at 60 500 feet in the high Sierra. That will be another trip.

“So you think you know who it is and are you prepared to say that?”

Gary Francis post and we have mountains of evidence now after two years. And again, it's because of this, you know, 1500 years of skill sets with our 40 member team. These are all volunteers. We've gathered them from around the country in every part of forensics you need from ballistics to DNA. We have six universities and labs working with us pro bono to solve this. Not for our egos, not for fame and fortune for the 20 siblings of the dead.

All right, let's get to Gary in a minute. We'll postpone that for for one second because we want to set up the crimes.

So people can have a feeling for what what we're talking about.

“So you say the earliest one, I think you said 62. I thought that the earliest confirmed one according to police was 68.”

This was the attack on David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Is that not correct? Well, in according to our team and they've not been wrong in 10 years on this quest on cases. They feel they're matching M.O.s and profiles of murders in other parts of the states. Other parts in the other part of the states have other bullets that match the caliber of the zodiac and San Francisco bank. Okay, and so the one in 1962 was of whom that that murder that you're talking about earlier.

That was a Navy couple on the beach of San Diego walking on the beach, a sniper shot them both and then he up close. Yes, okay, that was actually very disturbing. It's like they people seem to have been mining their own business. This is Johnny Swindle and Joyce Swindle. killed by a sniper. They walked along the San Diego beach. Okay, and that that murder was committed with the 22. She died on us instantly and he died later that night. The police believe the two were victims of a quote thrill killer.

But that's as much as I guess they would say. So that was 19 there was February 7th, 1664 and what other than the fact that the bullets were the same.

Same caliber, same MO and similar to a Santa Barbara murder in 63.

“There was also a cabby killed in 62 in ocean side, police department. All of these are the MO of what happened in San Francisco.”

Again, we have ballistic experts that are about to compare the ballistics we have from our alleged zodiac. We collected over a thousand bullets with 24 calibers from neighbors in his high Sierra town. And we have them. There is a new technology that allows us to literally dunk a bullet into a liquid and off falls the DNA.

And that is something we're going to be doing with these various calibers.

And again, particularly 9 millimeter and 22's.

“All sorts of guns after World War II collected. Polish guns, French guns and so forth. But we've department, the departments we are working with are saying 9 millimeter and 22's are the key calibers they're looking for.”

And we're planning to meet with one of the departments with those calibers. I mean, it's very common. So it's not like a rare caliber gun. And of course, just because a similar gun was used doesn't mean it's the same person. But let's just go back. So the first confirmed killings are David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen December 20, 1968 that we know from authorities were the zodiac. And the thing that grabs anybody when they're looking at the zodiac killings is how heartless they are. I mean, there's no murder that is kind and loving.

But just there's no reason. There's no robbery. There's no beef. There's no. But you know, you look for some sort of sense, even though you can't make sense of murder, because I think it makes us feel better. It makes us feel like it won't happen to us. But these felt so random and merciless, absolutely merciless. So tell us what happened with David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen. Where the city is on that one. That was, let's see. And he approached their their Park Station wagon at Lake Herman Road in Benicia, Benicia, California.

Yeah, yeah, that that is that was an ambush in a lover's lane spot. He went after lovers lanes couples twice. And nine millimeter and 22's were involved in those cases. And were they ever able to say, why? Because this case, like the others, no indication of a robbery, no indication of a sexual assault. It appears that they were that shots were fired into the vehicle to force them out.

And Betty Lou exited the front passenger door first followed by David Faraday. He was 17. She was 16. He shot David once in the head at point blank range.

Betty Lou shot five times in the back as she fled. And she was killed instantly. It was Betty Lou Jensen's first date age 16. No one understood why. Like what would you do? And then six. Why would you do it? And then six to seven months later. There was another attack on another couple, Darlene Farin and Mike Mago. He lived. This is in Vallejo. He lived to tell about it. And that was important. And there are two men that lived, young men that lived, all the rest died. And multi shots into cars into people, stabbing. The common thread of this is the why.

Megan, it's, it's the why. And being the son of a shrink, I've heard these cases over the years through my father from DB Cooper all the way up to Zodiac and Hoffa. And Atlanta, it's something my dad and I talked about when he was alive. And he talked about, you know, the, the cycle path, the cycle path that that would come into a community and make no sense to anyone. No robbery, no jealousy, no love triangle.

“That is what we believe our suspect fits the profile. And that's why we're so strongly in the belief that we're on the right.”

So if you look as an investigator, you've got to see what the similarities are like, what is his ammo? How do we know it's Zodiac? And this will become relevant when you try to extrapolate to these other cases that you and your team are trying to figure out whether they were Zodiac cases or not.

It's as far as you know, the only the second like publicized murder, you know, of this type. So they didn't necessarily know that somebody's running around killing young people who park, you know, and talk or make out or whatever they were doing.

“And with a flashlight exited the vehicle, approached the couple, no other cars in the parking lot. They thought it was a cop had their ID ready and just as in the other murder, we just discussed the man began firing at them five shots at the man.”

After five shots, the man walks slowly back to his car. Mike screamed out in pain and the guy returned firing two more shots at each victim. Mike was able to see the Zodiac.

And as far as I know, he's the only one who ever gave like a detailed description of him. He said he was white five eight to five nine in his late 20s to 30s. Again, this would have been 1969. So you know, subtract 30 years from 1969 he's born around around around 1940. Yeah, um, stocky build round face brown hair, no conversation. Again, it's so disturbing. There was no ask. There was no attempt to negotiate. There was no it was just murder for the sake of murder, which really is a true psychopath. Somebody wants to describe the difference between a sociopath and a psychopath is neither one has any empathy or feeling for the killing at all, but the psychopath actually enjoys it.

That's what we're doing. Not only the psychological aspect of this is interesting to us, but obviously the evidence and the the greatest spot for evidence was Riverside police department. Riverside police department found military style boots size 10.

“That matches three of the Zodiac other locations size 10 military boots all sorts of other things in Riverside.”

The the most intriguing one is a piece of evidence that the FBI, which did the lab work and Riverside technically owns it for a potential case.

Four hairs found in the hand of a college co-ed in Riverside and literally took it off his head. This was 1966 way before DNA, but God bless the lab work and the corners in Riverside County. They kept those in a fridge until DNA came around. That DNA, the hairs has cleared several local boys in that town. But for some strange reason, the department will not consider people that are not locals.

The only person in law enforcement. There have been nine police chiefs in Riverside. The first one at the murder scene in with the co-ed.

What happened there was that. And I just can I just reset because I'm getting a little loss. Riverside is not one that we've talked about yet, but you're saying that they had a boot print size 10 that matched boot prints found at ones we know the Zodiac did. That's correct. Same size. Okay, so it hasn't if Riverside didn't actually get pinned on the Zodiac, but you're looking at it and you think we should test these hairs because given the boot print and the way it was committed, it's worth seeing what the connection isn't if we can get a DNA matched so much the better.

“But what happened in Riverside? What was the crime?”

You should also know that the FBI in 1975 declared the Riverside case as a Zodiac case for some reason they pulled it off of that many years ago in about 2000, but he that was a Zodiac case on an FBI memo and I sent that to you. So that would interest your audience. So what happened in Riverside? This is a very junior college. A victim was at a library. She came out. Her VW bug starter was unconnected. It just happened to be somebody watching her in the library came out to help her.

Said I'll drive you home and what preceded was one of the most horrific knife attacks attacks in the case. I was close to 40 stab wounds as the police chief at the time said she was almost a capitated.

She was also at March Air Force Base 15 minutes away for regular medical checkups. So we have about a half dozen pieces of information that absolutely can convince our team that she definitely needs to be on the list.

And when you say he was at an airport. He talked about Gary Post. He was at an Air Force Base nearby. Okay. He was at several bases. He left in 63, but he continued with veteran care.

He could be placed where the spot of this murder. This woman's name was Sherry Joe Bates October 3, 1966. She was 18. She visited the River City College library. And we know that her voice wagon beetle was disabled because somebody, whoever the killer was, we feel, wrote a letter explaining exactly what they did to her. I'm not going to read it because it's too disturbing. But he said that he disabled her car, that she, he came upon her and that they found this timex watch and a military style heel print on site about size 8 to 10 again 10.

And then the watch was traced to a military post and the shoes could have been sold at near by March Air Force Base. Now, the letter that was sent after this woman's murder was not signed.

“So Zodiac did wind up, he started to send letters. And that's why we know to call him Zodiac, that's what he called himself. This woman wasn't signed Zodiac, but it definitely claims ownership of this murder and says.”

He's talking about how there was only one thing on his mind when he killed her, making her pay for all the brush offs that she had given me during the years prior. Now, that's interesting to me because that seems like there's a motive behind this one versus the others. You're absolutely correct and that is the line I was about to talk to you about that seems like a red herring line. And the police departments after the current the police departments, especially the chief of the murder date said, this is intriguing, but it doesn't mean it's a local guy, but all the other detectives disagreed.

And there have been eight police chiefs since that say we're only going to go after local guys, do you want to believe that in this day and age traveling serial killers they won't even look at.

“That is the line that you just read that convinced us that this was a red herring and could possibly be from the Zodiac, here is something else you should know.”

There is one word that's there are three words that are repeated, I shall twitch and squirm those are found in Zodiac letters in San Francisco, but here's what's key twitch is spelled TWICH in Riverside and the letters in San Francisco, very intriguing. Wait, oh, in all you're saying that's misspelled in all three of those. Correct. Ah, that's fascinating because your belief is that the Zodiac liked he wanted credit sort of, but he also would throw out misdirections. It's like that's right.

It feels like he wanted to get caught, but he didn't want to get caught. The letter was mailed from the town too to make it in our view extra clear that he was a local boy, so you have them describing. She blew me off paraphrasing and mailing it from town. What a great way to get them off the trail, and as I said, the chief at that time in 1968 when the murders were identified as Zodiac in the Lejo and in San Francisco and so forth.

“He contacted the whole task force and said, I have the same MMO, I have the same details, I have a size 10, I have this and that, so do you, I think it's the right guy.”

No one agreed with him after that, it was always a local boy.

Hmm, how far away is Riverside from the Lejo and the first location that we discussed, I can't remember what town it was. In those days probably about three and a half or hours. Okay, so it's doable, I mean, why would they, that's an easy connection to drive, it's not like they were, they were all in California so far.

And he was there for several days for treatment. Again, you're talking about your suspect Gary Post, but we don't know that this is the actual killer. Now, actually I should ask you that separately. Whether he was Zodiac or not, do we know that Gary Post killed anybody? Gary Post was in the Air Force radar systems part of the early warning system in Indiana.

We know that he is not connected to any murders he was in meticulous and careful.

“And that's how he wound up in the middle of this because we found all the evidence that connected him.”

Okay, we'll go there again in a second, just wanted to see if we knew we were dealing with an identified killer in under the heading of Gary Post or not.

And the answer is no, but we'll get to why he's your favorite suspect.

I'll lie down believe in his team, believe he did it. So we talked about the first two confirmed Zodiac and they look very similar to one another with the with the couples in the cars. And then there was another one. About two, three months after that second one of Darlene and Mike Mego. There was, there was an attack on Cecilia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell, September 27, 1969.

And similar to the fact that Mike Mego survived that earlier attack and gave that detailed description. Brian Hartnell, the man survived this one. So what happened was, they were relaxing on a blanket at a remote location by a lake in Napa.

The Cecilia Shepherd noticed a man approaching them wearing a costume, a black hooded costume with a white cross circle stitched onto the front.

That's interesting because it's kind of like the Zodiac sign. And holding a gun described as a heavy build, no more than six feet tall that would match up loosely with what Mike Mego described. The man claimed he was a prison escapee from either Montana or Colorado and needed money and a car to flee to Mexico. The man, Brian Hartnell, offered him his wallet and car keys, which, of course, they realized they were in trouble here. And the man did not take the wallet or the car keys.

After several minutes of conversation, the man tied up the couple with plastic clothes line, a plastic clothes line, and began stabbing them, then casually walked away. And again, amazingly, Brian Hartnell survived.

So here again, you tell me you tell me it's the investigator, they're not in a car.

They're in Napa. If there's conversation this time, all different things from the previous two. Of course, very different in that they were tied up, and this is a stabbing, not a shooting, is that unusual, is that, you know, for a serial killer to change up his ammo that much. Well, again, because of all the calibers he had, he was extremely brilliant. He would know to switch calibers, switch knives, switch locations.

The hammer hits on bullets, he would switch out the actual hammers, so that they couldn't be tracked from another investigation. This man, you mentioned, too, he is the same height, weight of the zodiac described in other locations. It is the only daytime attack of the zodiac suspected. Now, this murder, and the one that preceded it, have something else in common.

“And that's that he appears to have called authorities on a pay phone after he did it, right?”

Jumping back to the murder of Darlene Farron and the attack on Mike Mego. At 1240 AM, there was a call to the police, and it was to the Vallejo Police Department. The man said, "I would like to report a double murder." He didn't know that Mike Mego had survived. If you will go one mile east on Columbus Parkway to the public park, you will find the kids in a brown car.

They were shot with a nine millimeter loaker. I also killed those kids last year. Good bye, an apparent reference to David Farronay and Betty Lugensen. Then after the Cecilia Shepherd and Brian Hartnell attack, in Napa, similar. And call to Napa County Sheriff's Office at 740 PM. I want to report a murder.

No, a double murder. They are two miles north of Park headquarters. They were in a white Volkswagen Carmengea. I'm the one who did it.

“What's that? What do we glean from these confessions?”

Which everyone seems to agree was Zodiac.

First, Dr. Cab driver killed.

“And before he killed him, he called the police department said,”

"I'm going to, this is paraphrasing.

I'm going to commit a crime that you're never going to be able to figure out."

And sure enough, after shooting him in the back of the head, just like the San Francisco cab shot back in the head. He calls a few days later from that area and said, "I told you you'd never figure it out." He was stationed at a Air Force Base along the coast in Santa Barbara area.

And there is a railroad track that empties right at his base and is five minutes from the murder scene of that cab driver in Oceanside. Now, I want to keep my crime straight. Because the next crime we know is committed by Zodiac was of a cab driver. It seems like you're talking about a separate one.

But the one, let me just set this one up before we get to year one.

“This is the Ubisoftiac number four confirmed.”

Again, he's claimed to have killed 37 people.

So it's from May of 34 or 37. But the list is very long. We're just going with the ones that law enforcement has said, "Yeah, this is him." So Paul Stein, October 11th, 1969, his cab was hailed. The cab wound up a block away from the destination that was asked for.

Paul Stein, 29, was shot once in the head a point-blank range. Weapon was a nine millimeter. Three witnesses watched the suspect from approximately 60 feet away as he wiped down the cab with a cloth. After killing Stein, that's interesting. So maybe different weapon, not a 22, not a knife.

Now we're on to a nine millimeter. And someone sees him clean up, which is a new detail. They described the man as a white male. 25 to 30 years old. Again, that's all consistent with Mike Mego. Stocky build, consistent, reddish brown hair, consistent, Mike, it's at brown hair.

With heavy rimmed glasses, that's a new detail. And they initially thought this was a robbery gone bad, but then they realized it wasn't. And once again, Zodiac wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle this time. And he said, "I did it." And tell us why we had every reason to believe that was not a hoax letter. The person writing it really did kill Paul Stein.

Well, he also sent letters afterwards. And one of them, he bragged. The reason they were not finding any prince of him was because he put glue on his fingertips. And that left no prince. And he bragged about it in that letter right after that, too.

So it matches the ocean side back of the head. That is a one shell that was recovered on the floor of the cap. It is with right now San Francisco PD. And our plans are to compare our nine millimeters to there. This is the one, if I'm not mistaken, where with the letter, he sent to the San Francisco Chronicle.

He included a portion of the bloody shirt of Paul Stein, which is just so chilling. And his letter, this is what I mentioned in the intro, where he talked about. He said, "I'm the murderer of the taxi driver." To prove it, here's a bloodstained piece of his shirt. I am the same man who did the people in the North Bay area.

And he goes on to mock the San Francisco police. And then he makes the comment about school children making nice targets.

“I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning.”

And goes on to in detail what he wants to do to the children. This is signed with the zodiac symbol. So he's getting more aggressive. And he's getting media, right? Like, media.

This to me seems like somebody who really wants them to know who he is. Well, put. And that's exactly what happens with a lot of the psychopaths. They're narcissistic sociopaths, psychopaths, that are hoping someday they can share with people who they are. And they sometimes leak it out.

And that is just a perfect profile in that particular case. Now, that murder was October 11, 1969. On your suspected killings list, there's another cab driver. Is this the one you were referring to? It happened seven years prior to Paul Stein.

It was a murder of a guy named Ray Davis of the checker cab company.

We believe that was the first killing by zodiac because he was out of the military in 63.

But we believe he took a train down from the Air Force Base in Santa Barbara and conducted a similar cab killing back at the head and then vanished.

But he said, you're not going to be able to figure this one out.

And then he called him back and bragged about it. Okay. That's the one you were talking about. Now it's all coming together. Right.

He called the cops in advance said, I'm going to commit a baffling crime. And soon after this guy Ray Davis was killed. Again, no robbery police couldn't find a motive that is sketchy. And it does follow a pattern of no motive shooting the back of the head and telling cops either before or after. I'm the one who did it on the one.

Like just haunting them. I mean, I have to say as I've listened to all the crimes with all due respect. I feel like we're the cops bumbling because I feel like in today's day and age.

You could never get away with this.

Very well put. That's exactly true.

“Remember in that era from the 60s to 70s and early 80s, cops had fingerprints in a hunch.”

There was no DNA. There was no other incredible databases you could search things in. It was a very simple time. And they did the best they could. Remember though before our times in the 60s when this was going on.

There was a lot of drug experimentation, a lot of violence and murders that people were high. I mean, there's when we went through the California murders. We found at least a half dozen that could fit the initial profile of this man. But it all came down to that they were high. The six that we looked at were extremely out of their heads.

The reason he's known as zodiac, as I said, is he started signing these letters that he would send to the press with a little zodiac symbol. And then some of them, he signed it zodiac. Like the word zodiac. And his need to bring the press into it kind of reminded me of the unibommer. We did a special on him.

Right. He couldn't. He was totally getting away with it. Ted Kazinski was getting away with being the unibommer. And his own letters would wind up sinking him because his brother.

They published them in the paper and the brother saw one and read one and said, oh my god, this is very familiar to stuff. He's my own brother sent me one thing led to another. This guy kept writing to the press. But no one ever had that revelation.

“But he used the L.A. Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and others for what?”

Like how would you describe his correspondence with the press? You know, this is before social media. This is before the internet. This is before, frankly, a lot of color TV's weren't in play. Yeah.

This was his way to to be a celebrity in his own work to mind. And that is, in essence, what was happening. He was up. And by the way, he talked about the shirt. He took slivers of that shirt and sent it to a very famous lawyer.

He sent it to the papers. He cut that shirt up. So he could be definitively identified as the mystery man. He wanted them to know and he didn't. He in some of the letters.

He was like, that one wasn't me.

“He wanted credit for his crimes and he didn't want to be saddled with ones.”

He didn't commit. Letter to the L.A. Times dated March 13, 1971. So this is right in the relevant timeframe of the murders we know. We know the zodiac did. And this is what he writes.

This is the zodiac speaking. Like I have, and there are lots of misbellings in here, FYI.

Like I have always said, always has two else.

I am crackproof. If the blue meanies are ever going to catch me, they had best get off their fat asses and do something. Because the longer they fiddle and fart around, the more slaves I will collect from my afterlife.

I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones. They're a hell of a lot more down there. The reason I'm writing to the Times is this, they don't bury me on the back pages, like some of the others.

So it's, he's mad, he's not on the front page. He's shopping for media. And when San Francisco finally realized that, "Hello, you're part of the problem when you're putting it on the cover, you're integrating yourself into a hostage situation,

a murder by exploiting his language." And so they made a decision to bury him. It's not so just something that you'll see now. Somebody was just positing on a show. I listened to our podcast, I can't remember what they were talking about.

You know, I was born in 1970, I grew up hearing these stories

and being afraid and son of Sam and New York and all of that. And they were saying it's not really a thing anymore. And the answer was, it's kind of moved on to mass shootings. You know, the murderous craze lunatic has chosen a different thing now. But both groups tend to want infamy.

And it's one of the reasons why a lot of security experts say, and I've been doing it for a long time, don't name the shooters in these mass shootings. Exactly. Exactly. But I would also tell you that technology after 1970 exploded.

I mean, they had databases to track license plates. What? In the last year or four or five years, they have special banks for tattoos. I mean, they're tracking people left and right now.

“And that's why serial killers can't stay out long.”

The cameras are everywhere. Megan, there were no cameras back then. None. That's true. So that's totally changed law enforcement. And that's why serial killers have vanished.

This was one of the last ones. And again, he retired, quote unquote, we'll talk about our man later. He retired in 1970, moved up to a high Sierra town and spent the rest of his life up there.

So, you know, he knew that they were getting closer and closer.

And he finally made the decision.

I really, he still wrote letters into the late 80s. But how many letters in all? How many letters do we think we have from the zodiac? We have, right now, just thinking, they just eliminated two that turned out to be a teenager

in Riverside, believe or not, who said she deserved to die. It was a terrible thing. The FBI confirmed through a genealogy unit that he was, he confessed and he's now an older man. But all the others, there are approximately,

I want to say 20, 26 or so. I'd have to double check, but it's 26. Let's just say it's close to a couple dozen. Because as I was reading up on this,

one thought I had was, if I'm a murderer back in the 1970s,

I'm definitely writing a fake zodiac letter and pinning this on him. Like, just to try to get the police off my trail. So, how did they figure out this one's the real zodiac

“and this one's a phony trying to pin his murder on this serial killer?”

Well, again, it was primitive back then. The handwriting, there were handwriting experts. He wrote left and right, by the way. So, it is our suspect, right, left and right. Same age, same shoes, don't get me started.

I'm going to an event of 10 minutes. But bottom line is, is that he wrote both ways. He was very clever. And there was some extremely brilliant people that were able to not only identify the correct writing,

but they started to get into the coding. Okay, so now we haven't talked about that. What do you mean coding? This is a military coding that goes back to a book. It's been around since World War I.

The Navajo's used it in World War II to protect our radio communications between islands in Vietnam.

“That's when the coding ended in Vietnam.”

Because now with computers, of course, you don't be coding. But it's the same code book. It's a 1950 code book. I have a Lieutenant Colonel from Vietnam on the Cooper case who brought us that code book.

When we found out these were codes, I linked up the codebuster from Cooper who is a three-time NSA man. Wait, to work with the Zop. Nobody knows Cooper yet and nobody understands code yet. It's okay, so that's who I'm here for.

The codes were talking about because in his letters would offer a safer, like a little riddle for people to decode and made promises. If you can decode this, you'll know who I am. So, of course, everybody was trying their hardest to decode this.

And you're saying there's a military book that talks about how to make these codes and who's Cooper. Why are you mentioning somebody named Cooper? DB Cooper is a Vietnam vet who took over a plane and asked for $200,000.

And then he said, "Fly me to Mexico and he jumped by parachute." That is one of our other cases that we believe we have solved. How does that factor into this story?

that was used by our Air Force man, our man,

Gary Francis Post. It was used at all Air Force bases. These codes were used to scramble signals as they spoke and protected our country back in the 60s and 70s. So why couldn't an Air Force man back then take one look at that and say,

"I know what this is." Well, there is the code, but then there are words that are clues. He would embed these clues so that the public couldn't just quickly get a code book.

Very clever, very clever.

Anagrams is how they broke it.

And as I said with the Cooper project, we brought that NSA man, a codebuster. Three tours in Vietnam to work with our team on the Zodiac and that's how we feel. We cracked it.

It's the same code book. It's an interesting point because you can't come up with these ciphers. And a dude police this well. By being a complete lunatic who isn't smart. But he's got all the misspellings.

So do we think the misspellings are, as you said earlier,

“are red herring and attempt to downplay his own intelligence?”

What do we think about his level of smarts? We had some people on the team talk about describing him as an ADHD kid who would only pay attention if he was interested. And he, our suspect, was that type of person. He was sloppy, he misspelled.

But he also planted words on purpose so that he could point to them. And he would give clues with certain words. And that is how that code became so important on both cases. Now, as we discussed, he starts writing to the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, the Vallejo Times Herald,

as early as July 31st, 1969. And he includes these ciphers or cryptograms, which he claims contained his identity. And he demands that they be printed on the papers from a page, or he would quote, "crues around all week,

killing lone people in the night and then move on to kill again until I end up with a dozen people over the weekend."

Interestingly, the San Francisco Chronicle published it on its third or fourth page.

The threatened murders did not happen. And they eventually published all three parts of what he had sent them. That's so interesting because it boy, as a member of the press, that does put you in an impossible situation. So they really did wrestle with the moral burden that he was trying to place on them.

“Do you remember Megan in the buses in that story in San Francisco?”

The buses, they threatened to blow up buses with children on them? That is what our suspect in Oceanside did. After killing the cap driver there in '62, he calls in and said, "I'm going to blow up some buses." Well, you know what would happen in that town.

Everybody, all the police, the military were put on every bunch. They were, they, they blanketed this small town. And he meantime, we believe, our suspect got on the train and went back to the Air Force base. And then he called in and said, "Totja." He didn't think, "God, follow through with his threat when the San Francisco paper did not do us."

He requested, "I know, thank God." But they must have been in such a moral quandary there because my God, what if he had? You know, you need to feel like you had some responsibility. And even though, of course, you don't as the newspaper. Yeah, so he keeps writing, keeps writing.

Now, who's working on it? Is it the FBI's case? Well, I imagine there are a bunch of amateur sleuths trying to decipher everything. When it broke, the FBI and we have the memo. They, all the agents in charge on the West Coast, were told stand down.

“The only thing we're going to do, we're not going to get involved in these murders all over the state.”

We will provide lab help, finger printing help, and occasionally to a small department if they need some technology, but we are not going to get involved in these murders. And frankly, it, with the Lake Tahoe killing, that's a cross-state line.

That's one of your suspected cases.

So the FBI is basically saying this is an intrus state problem.

Hasn't crossed state lines. We don't need to touch it. Good luck, California. And so, what was it? What, like so, is local authorities,

town by town in California? Was there any mass coordination? You know, somebody running point? There was a task force put together four or five departments, mostly in the San Francisco Bay Area after the cases you spoke of.

Again, the cases we're talking about from San Diego to Lake Tahoe were not in the task force,

but there are some similarities and our former law enforcement people have pointed that out.

“So how, how, what, in what year did he stop writing his letters?”

I want to say late mid to late 80s. Also, it went on for 10 plus years. And again, that's not official. The last official letters you mentioned were 69. But we have letters from from 1970 again to the late.

Let me correct myself from the early 1970s, all the way to the end of 85 or 84. He was writing to newspapers. And, but were it was he still committing murders? Like, do we, did he change his M.O.

Did he continue to say things like he said in the early letters that would show you?

This is definitely the murderer and not just some lunatic trying to send us on a wild goose chase. He was no longer talking about murders. He was commenting. He was talking about particular movies involving murders. I mean, he almost became a commentator and sent these letters to newspapers, as I said.

And, and, but the murder is his discussion of murders stopped in 1970. And that was his last claim. And after that, that's the other part of the story.

“So what, so flash forward to, you know, when did DNA become the everyday thing it is now?”

I mean, 2000, sometime in the 21st century, it really got hot and started to get used in all the criminal cases and so on. I remember, I remember covering the Duke Lacrosse case. You know, the fake ring case down there in 2005. And they still were really struggling to explain what DNA is in that case.

And my, obviously, wanted to be a part. But I remember it was just as late as 2005. This was still sort of a mystery to lawyers who had to try criminal cases. So eventually, we got there. Now, there's all this evidence.

There's shell caseings and, you know, there's got to be, I don't know if there's any fingerprints. If there's, what, what is there that they, with the benefit of now new technology, they can go back on these crime scenes and see, okay, we got something. Well, I'll be honest with you. We have thoroughly looked into all the cases.

Not are not only our cases, but the original cases. And sadly, we brought the evidence to compare that they wouldn't compare with our suspect. But what was intriguing is that they a few years ago on our, one of our members on our team approached the departments and said, check DNA on such and such a letter of flat or behind the stamp.

Well, unfortunately, Meghan back in the 60s and 70s and even into the early 80s, nobody was keeping evidence in sealed paper bags, in refrigerators. They were just stacked and files. Sometimes with the sun on them. So heat and passage of time, they were not able to get any DNA off of shell casings and so forth.

“We think we can update that technology because the only thing that we believe in the FBI agreed”

in 75, those hairs have been used to clear people, but they have not shared the hairs with anyone else. Now, when you say we bring these things to them, are you talking about the FBI? Who do you mean to whom do you bring the clues that you want to evaluate it? We went to the police police departments that had bullet shells. We've gone to others that have DNA evidence.

We have gone for ballistics up to San Francisco. We're in discussions with them. And we've been everywhere. And the only evidence left from the killings are those four hairs. And by the way.

I should reiterate that you're a group, the casebreakers.org. It's 40 member task course volunteers, retired bureau agents. You have combined 1500 years of skill sets. You guys solve cases. You try to find more teams and you promote careers in all branches of public service.

So you've been at this for a while and you've got trained professionals with impressive histories trying to figure out these unsolved crimes. So it's not like you're just some nut case who walks into the police station saying go back and test that hair. You know, they know who you are. And some are more cooperative than others from the sound of it.

I was a CBS Newsman for 10 years in LA and I was recruited by the state of California to go to an incredible school,

where I met my first team and that was California specialized training institute at Camp San Luis. This is where they teach everyone on every imaginable horror they have to face. And I was flown up for 18 years every other month to teach crisis management, hostage situations. You name it terrorism. All with a media angle in other words, how do you get your case out without jeopardizing it?

“That's how we created our first team and then it expanded from 10 to 40 because the word got out.”

And my wife and I have dedicated the rest of our lives to making this work. So to speak, because frankly, Megan, there's not enough tax dollars in the world for more cops. We have to go after the people in their 50s and 60s and that, okay, they have a little arthritis or they can't climb defenses. But you know what? As my dad, the shrink used to say when we were in trouble.

They have an incredible being at brains, incredible brains.

And can I give you one quick example?

Yeah. We were up in the woods of Oregon. We were tipped to the actual parachute side of DB Cooper, where he jumped and buried it. And we went 10 miles from the nearest home to a particular spot. A believe it or not, a former cop was tipped to this and called us.

We went all the way to that spot in the middle of the woods. We dug. We found something that looked like a parachute. But we couldn't tell. We wondered if it was a potato sack piece.

So the way our team works is we can call them in their robots. Their lazy boys with a grand kid. On the golf course, and they'll give us the technology. And we called and said, we have a piece of material that we don't know if it's a potato sack or a parachute. And he said, take a strip of it, light it.

And we said, light it and he said, light it. Try to light it, it dripped and smoked. And he said, that was dumped in non-flammable material. It's a parachute. This is how the team works.

And so we get their expertise wherever and whenever you want it.

“You should know as far as my wife and I.”

We've never been sued in 42 years.

And those are the type of people we're bringing to our team. They're phenomenal. But don't jinx it. Don't say things like that. A lot of them.

I said, don't jinx it by saying something like that. You know what a litigious society we have now. Well, yeah. But we're very comfortable. And the the zooms that we have with these people.

We've got Republicans, Democrats, every type of person. But you know what they have. They have souls. And they are absolutely committed to these families to get them answers. Well, and the other thing is the cops are so under man right now.

And just in general, they're not going to devote resources to something that happened. 50, 60 years ago. You know, they don't have the time or the man power for that. Jumping back something you said reminded me of something I want to ask you about the hairs, the four hairs that they have from what they believe is the suspect.

You know, they have that technology now where you can. You can take DNA and create a picture of the person. They can find out enough about the person's ethnic heritage and so on. They can engineer a picture that they will say. This person was Nordic.

This person probably had blue eyes. This person probably had a nose that looked like this. It's crazy. But you know, they do it on date line all the time.

“So has anybody ever tried to do that with those hairs?”

Ben, they're doing that. Oh, oh. We are not being given the hairs. But let me tell you, I have three attorneys all pro bono. They're going to convince Riverside and the other departments.

And that's our approach. And that's about to happen.

“Okay, so because you think you know who did it.”

And that leads us back to Gary Francis post, who, after looking at tons of suspects, you believe is the guy.

The first thing I said to my team was his Gary post dead or live,

because if he's alive, we're going to have to run a lot by him. He's dead, which is good. Maybe on a couple of fronts if he really was the guy. And also you can't defame a dead man.

So let's talk about Gary post. There's no longer here to defend himself. And tell us what's your elevator pitch for why he did it. Gary, we got tipped to this case by a wonderful man. And this man was a TV anchor in Salinas,

who had one of these members of Gary Francis post. Let me start this way. Gary Francis post, left San Francisco area. He became a union painter. We have his certificate.

“He moved up to a small town in the high Sierra.”

We have the background on his move.

And he befriended everyone as a painter. But when you're finding paint spots on a watch in Riverside, and when you find out that he has the same shoe size, and has the same military smarts on coding, we could go down a list of about 15 different things

that have convinced us we have it. And among those 15 are nine witnesses, who when one of Gary Francis posts posse members, as he called it, a criminal gang, ran for it in 2014.

It freaked out the town. They had no idea the painter could be the zodiac. And that's changed. And to this day, we believe the best evidence is in that town. Let me start talking.

Let's talk about the posse. Because people are like, what do you mean posse? We do know enough about Gary post to know. He didn't exactly spend his youth gathering friends the way the average person does.

Right. When Gary moved up to this small town, he found a single mom married, a very simple to move a woman. It was still alive and loved by a lot of people.

He met this woman with a child and moved them up to a very one-street town in the high Sierra, just like the old west. And he became a father figure to about a half dozen kids who barely got through high school.

And they became his so-called posse. Well, they became a criminal posse. He not only trained them how to avoid cops. He taught them how to take a pipe bomb and make it a bomb that could blow up a house.

When cops moved into that town, he would throw rocks through the bedrooms to get them out. He had this posse up there from about 85.

And they pretty much broke it up in about 2005. And there are about 10 people he was involved in with this posse.

He'd never take more than two or three up in the mountains at a time

with mules, horses, and so forth. And what, and so the one guy escaped ran from the posse. And what's his story? Will was one of the last ones. He appeared in 87 in town and Gary befriended him.

He got in trouble with the law. And Gary was the unofficial lawyer in town. He had law books covering his a frame. And convinced him that he could get him out of his charge. It was a minor charge.

And he introduced him to the gang. And the gang would meet in the woods and have bonfires. And he would provide marijuana and liquor. And he in essence became like a faggot. He trained them.

He trained them to kill every type of animal they ever saw. Like faggot from all our twists. Is that what you mean? Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. And so.

“And that's how everybody loved this man.”

But then he taught them how to kill everything on site. And they watched him one story that has been told to us by Will. That's the man who ran away.

He had about 2000 he started reading books.

And he loved books.

“And he started getting into true stories.”

And then one day he's given a book of serial killers. And he opens it up. And he looks at the sketch and San Francisco. And he has holy cow. That's our guy.

Now, all these kids were brainwashed. Took him 10 years to break away. He collected photos. He collected examples of his writing. And he in essence was chased out of town.

When the other posse members heard he was gathering these things. And post literally tried to kill him with a hammer. He was seven years old in his shed when he heard this. And everybody came when the fight was going on. And the kid ran for it.

Took him of.

He he high through the mountain.

There were all in tremendous shape. He high through the mountains. He stayed off of roads. He hiked all the way this year. All the way to Sacramento.

And walked into a newsroom.

“And he said the worst thing Megan that a new person wants to hear.”

I have a long story to tell you. And I was the guy who had to answer that at CBS. And I know what it in paraphrases. What I would say. And that is.

Can't you cut it down? No one would version. No one would listen to him. So what did he do? He walks to San Francisco.

Off of the freeway. Through the desert. Through the land. It gets to San Francisco. Talks to newsrooms.

Same problem. Then he talks to the FBI later. Nobody would confirm it. What's he saying? What's he saying?

He's he saying? I found the zodiac killer. Or what's he saying? I know who the zodiac is. And I have a long story I need to tell you.

So no one would listen to him. Well, he goes down to Salinas because that's where he grew up with his parents. And he said, you know, there's that newsman that I grew up with. I wonder if he's still there. And that is Dale Julian.

Dale is a retired newsman now. And Dale, he comes to his door at the station and said, I have a long story to tell you. Well, Dale takes him to lunch. Now you might ask, what is an anchor? At a TV station spending several hours as he called it a whacko.

You know, I took a chance with a whacko. Well, here's the interesting story.

“Remember we mentioned the buses and the threats to blow them up?”

Dale was a boy scout on one of those buses. And he remembered the fear.

And he looked at and he never forgot it.

And when he looked into the eyes of this 50 year old kid. And this homeless guy, the smell has been out of the street. He took the chance. And that's how we have the case. So this all started from him seeing a sketch.

In a book of what somebody. I assume this is based on the eyewitness ideas that we've been discussing. Said the zodiac look like. And that sketch was so close to your your your suspect that he said. I it's him.

Like that was enough. That plus all the weird way ways that they were living together. Yes. And and what's very important to know when he was at the Air Force base in Indiana. Uh, he was in a horrible G-baccident.

The driver died hit a bridge. And our guy had Gary Post. Gary Post had chest injuries brain injury. They had to go in to take your fixed the brain. He lost all his teeth.

They pulled them all out to save his life. And when he got out of that. Months later, he's back at that base. And what's sitting in the front. Don't drink and drive the Jeep all torn up.

And he demands, but I got to get out of here. I can't see that every day. I can't see it every day. Well, what do they do? They send them to the worst place for a radar guy on the ice of Greenland.

One guy in there with the screen. And we believe that's where in the combination of the brain damage and other things he faced. We believe that's where he lost his mind. He came back. He wound up in Vanderburg Air Force Base, which is Santa Barbara. And he was there until I'm trying to think for a minute.

He was there for three years. And then he got out and moved to San Francisco to be a painter. So the city's line up. Oh, yeah.

There's a murder in Santa Barbara less than 15 minutes away from that Air Force Base.

And that was a couple on ditch day of high school. He'll just like the Navy couple in San Diego, sniper. They found bullets all over the sand. He stuffed their bodies into a homeless shelter there on the cliffs. And they have the sheriff in that town found the boxes that he discarded there with the bullets.

And those shells with the code numbers on the shell box matched the gun shop on base at Vanderburg for hunters. It was the only gun shop in the only place you could buy bullets at the time for 100 miles. Why wouldn't the customer? In a suspect of whether that's Zodiac, a Zodiac murder or Gary Post.

“Why wouldn't the cops have been all over that base at the time?”

Even with the technology they had then saying, we want to interview everybody. We want to know who's been in here, who on base, like figure out where everybody's been.

Like everybody who's on the base should have been a suspect.

Well, it was about 15 to 25 minutes drive. The Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Department held a big news conference several years later and say, We have looked at the forensics now. We have looked at these things. This was five eight years later after that murder of the couple.

And they looked at it and they felt there was some connection. But San Francisco did not accept them as a official Zodiac case. That happened in Oceanside, happened in San Diego. It's happened in Lake Tahoe. Those are the other outliers that we strongly believe are the same man.

Why? Why?

Why won't they accept it as an official?

“Like, what does it have to have to be deemed an official Zodiac case by authorities?”

Well, if you're talking about today, or are you talking about back then? Well, I guess both because it should be updated if they decided no back then. And now today I've taken another look, but like, what did they need? A letter from Zodiac with his little cipher saying, I did that one. Well, again, these departments at that time were very small.

No technology. They had their favorite detected. They had their favorite chief. They had their favorite driver. They had their favorite sniper.

And those are the ones they lied on. There was no methodical. Who's the best person for this? We know a forensic guy who's in another county. Let's bring him in.

That was minimal back then. Now, even today, you know, if you looked at it today, they're all so busy. I mean, Riverside got blessed. Look, they have over 200 unsolved murders in their own town. Do they really want to pick up the case?

As you pointed out earlier, 50 years ago? Yeah. So that's the dilemma.

“But that's why we have this incredible team.”

So we put pictures on the board while you were talking. Our YouTube audience can check this out. And you should, if you're listening to this, we have podcasts. Just go to YouTube and check this out. But it's a drawing.

1969 of what I understand is the Zodiac. That's the sketch artist's rendering of the Zodiac killer. Based on the people who survived his attacks. And then you have a picture next to it. And that's of your suspect that that right there with, like, on the right with the actual photo is Gary post.

They do look, they do look similar. I mean, I'm going to say, and you're, we've got the red circle around what you think are scars. We, but we know those are Gary Francis post scars on the photo in 1963. And that was his last year of military service on the left at 68. So it's five years apart.

The scars, according to my FBI members and there's about 10 of them of the 40 members said, This can't be, can't be put ignored. This can't be, this can't be ignored is what they said to us. Look at the jawline. It is a match.

And he's Nordic. From Europe, he has two brothers that are still alive. And we plan to talk to them too. And what is the other picture of a man wearing those Zodiac sign with a, like a grocery bag over his head. That sketch.

What is that? Because I know you've got a split screen of Gary walking in the snow. And then 24 up against what is labeled Zodiac 69 Lake Attack, but what is that Zodiac? Where are we getting that sketch from?

The police had original sketches of the Zodiac there.

And that was defined or refined, I should say, by some artists. And it has been used in several documentaries. And it does appear to, that there is even a police sketch that has this so-called bag or the head cover. And again, this was the one we talked about the only daytime. So he worked very hard to be covered up for that.

And this is, like the reason, obviously, you have a pose of, of the actual, you know, Gary post right next to that.

And it could be anybody, you know, that we have no idea. The build is definitely consistent and Gary posts build was consistent with what was described by those witnesses. Same way, same hair color as found in the hand in Riverside, same height, same shoe size. And no fingerprints at any of these crime scenes that we know are Zodiac or the ones you suspect? No, there were, there were fingerprints found, but not of the victim or the suspect in Riverside and all the others.

They found a bunch of, look, this was a VW days back in the 60s.

“You remember the old stories where you, how many kids can you put in a VW?”

Yeah, I was one of those kids. Oh, no comment. Well, anyways, so that, in essence, that's how it was treated. They went and looked at every print and couldn't match anything to any particular suspects in Riverside and elsewhere. Again, I think he gave a pretty good explanation, and that was putting the glue on his fingertips, so you couldn't find his fingerprints anywhere. But if you didn't find, if you didn't find prints of the victims either, then it's a different explanation, right?

Then he would have had a wipe it down. Yeah, yeah, and, and because he only did two or three nice stabbing, everything else involved bullets and those bullets have been recovered. He did not pick them up.

“And again, I think it's because he had the idea that the fingerprints would not show up.”

But as I said, we have a incredible lab up in Salt Lake.

Francine is the name of the owner, and she has developed where they can literally dunk a shell or a rock involved in a murder into this liquid and off walls the DNA. How did you get the bullets? Wouldn't the police departments be holding onto those and not giving them to you? Well, we don't have the bullets, but the shells. We don't have the bullets that were found on the ground, what we have are the bullets that he gifted to several people in his small town. And they held onto them and then they contact, this was only two years after he died. He died in 19, I'm sorry, in 2018.

He died in 2018 and he gave them all the shells and the hammer hits, pieces of the guns. He found artists, he found people that are collectors, well, they stayed in the boxes in the attic or in the closets for two years. And then we got a call from the group and said, we heard about your Riverside situation. We think we have the zodiac here and we have nine witnesses up there that grew up with the zodiac and phenomenal stories.

“If they're giving you boxes of bullets that they believe Gary Post handled, and you run a test on them, you should be able to figure out whether those are ideally, whether those are Gary Post's fingerprints, whether he handled those boxes.”

But that doesn't answer the big question because we don't have fingerprints at a crime scene that we know the zodiac was at. We know the crime scene but we do have hairs and we believe the DNA of those hairs are going to match the DNA on the bullets. I see, you're going to get, okay, so you're looking for DNA in the whole world on the whole page and they're not, but here's the other thing, you know about codis does that need an explanation. These codis is the FBI's database for DNA and by law in California when somebody commits a felony, they have to have their DNA put up on codis to see if he has other victims, whether it be murder or rape or whatever.

But we brought DNA, Dale, Dale, Julian, brought DNA to San Francisco and the Lejo and said hold on to this, we may have a suspect in the future. This is before we were involved two years ago and so Dale left it with them and they thanked them, they passed it around to the cities, nothing would match.

They weren't even envisioning DNA.

“We have it in the hairs and we have it from the shells, we also have you love this, we even have his backpackers sleeping mat, he slept on for 30 years with his boss and we found DNA on that too and that's going to be compared.”

Hmm, all right, here's a, here's a different question I have for you.

Back when I was on NBC, we didn't interview, I interviewed the grandson of a man named Edwards.

The grandson's name was Wayne Wolfe and he was coming out with a documentary at the time called, it was him. The many murders of Edwards and the grandson's story was just absolutely compelling, it was like he'd done some DNA searching, it turned out his dad had a different, whatever, there was some biological link that was, that was missing that he'd been told was legit. And long story short, Edwards was a murderer, that seems clear, whether he committed any of the zodiac murders less clear, but this documentary done by the grandson and featuring someone named former sergeant detective John Cameron says Edwards was the zodiac killer.

They said he pleaded guilty to five murders, including couples on lovers lanes, they said, if you solve two of the cryptograms that the zodiac put out, because he said, if you, zodiac said if you solve these, you'll have my name. They said they solved it, and they determined that if you take Edward Edwards, that name Edward Edwards and spell it backwards, it's 13 characters, you reverse the letters, it reveals, it matches up with a cipher, but you'd have to know the name Edward Edwards in order to do that.

They only went there because they knew Edwards had murdered others and they decided to cross-frame it. Now, I will say this. In my interview, this former sergeant detective John Cameron basically said that this Edwards killed everybody ever.

“It was like Jimmy Hoffa, John May, Ramsey Scott, Lacey Peterson, yes, Lacey Peterson, so which we all disclosed, you know, we were having an interesting interview, but have you ever heard of Edwards and what do you think?”

There I have dozen, we like to call, you know, in Cooper land and DB Cooper, we call him Cooper Rice, they're called zodiacors, people that have theories, have some interesting links and homothedites is the other group, they know where he's buried and surprise surprise, we believe we know where he's buried, that's our next one.

Harry Post didn't kill Jimmy Hoffa in your story, did he? Bigfoot did. Okay, say no, it goes full circle, I appreciate it.

Yeah, no, look, everybody has their own theories, I appreciate that, there are some things they have that we integrate into our investigations, for example on accurate locations and and ages and you know how the information changes, so you have to be really meticulous.

“And look, we feel we're the only ones, all these people have theories, but you know what, we're the only ones with a 40 member cold case team and the only ones with evidence and that's why we're very drawn to this.”

The story of him of Gary Post losing his mind and you know, sort of going crazy is interesting, one of his letters said I'm had he put it says something, he said I am insane, he owned his mental illness and he clearly is if you read the body of the zodiac letters, it's not like a Ted Bundy who seems very logical and brilliant and methodical though evil, right? This guy sounds like a lunatic that I'm massing slaves for the afterlife and now I think I've got enough and the rest of you are all going to be screwed because you don't have any, like he doesn't sound will.

No, he's not and and there was one example from will and I sent you some footage of will what's interesting about. I'm sorry, he's the guy who escaped exactly when will ran for it one thing that we learned from will was there was a time when they went up in the mountains three or four of the passing members with him and he hung some.

And what it happened is there were three bears leading to death on those salmon hooks trying to get to the meat and what is supposed to he sits down and taunts and laughs at the animals till they die for hours. Oh God, this is why we say this is the zodiac he would immerse his arms with photos of him immersing his arms into the innards the insides of dead animals pulling up pieces laughing about them throwing them this man was in his 60s and 50s and 70s doing this with the posse.

“Well, that was one of the most kids having lots of nightmares after this. That was one of my questions for you how did he live out the rest of his life right because you know he died in 2018 was anyone on to him prior to that had anybody.”

I mean it will have been running around saying I think I know who it is, but had anybody looked into him had police ever visited him and was he married as he had a family was there anybody that you could talk to about his mental state how he was, et cetera. We have phenomenal witnesses and it starts with neighbors you want to believe this the zodiac and his wife became babysitters for one of the neighbors and that went on for seven to eight years and the young girl. He would take them into the woods his stepson and this young girl he take them into the woods give them guns that show them how to shoot and and this was children in the ages of five to 15 and the girl told us that she was going out he would take her out sometimes five days a week to shoot in the woods.

That was the babysitting maybe that's not unusual. I mean like I'm a city girl. I don't like in the more rural parts of America of the rest of it's not so normal, but like wouldn't he if he was this crazy wouldn't everybody who knew him say oh my god Gary not case and he you got in trouble with the law here and have a long history of interactions with the authorities. And we'll went to the authorities in the FBI they said we don't believe you but guess what we have learned from the town that the FBI actually went up there now the thing about this town it's on the top of the mountain.

You're going up there they usually call ahead because the roads wash out the local sheriffs and our zodiac suspect was friends with a couple of deputies that we believe they tip them because the minute they showed up he somehow had dementia.

“We couldn't remember things and he would crash cars he'd put sugar in gas tanks and act crazy even told some of the kids kids now in their 50s that I knew this is how I'll never be put in jail.”

And it almost worked he did abuse his wife and have the last two years in jail, but that was just for abuse and he died in jail.

And he never did he I feel like the zodiac like would have left a note you know he's a real prolific writer and loved writing notes about himself wouldn't the zodiac have owned it upon his death.

Now he chose to he did tell a half dozen people we have three half the David's two of them from prisoners one from will where he admits who he is.

“And we brought those to a courtroom in a very remote county and again we have them but no one has looked at them.”

That'll be part of the documentary that we're pursuing is revealing that he did tell three or four people very close to him that he was the zodiac.

By the way, when he did die that girl that was baby sat by him and his wife. When he died the widow was called got a call from a 30 something woman and that was the little girl and the minute she got on the phone with the widow.

The widow said I'm sorry and I'm paraphrasing I'm sorry I never told you about Gary I'm sorry for what's happened.

It's it was a stunning and they were stunned that woman was stunned to get that call then another neighbor called and said. And she confirmed the same story with the other neighbor that they could just be I'm sorry Gary was such a bastard and that you got stuck with the worst babysitter ever.

Well we do have her quoted talking about the zodiac on the murders.

But you know how it is like in the same way these guys said Edward did it maybe this guy Gary was like and I'm the zodiac too. Well I will tell you when the FBI went up there in 2014 after will ran for it. What happened then is that the town split half the lead he could be the other half said no is the painter we love him is a great guy. This is a town of 300 people very small and when several we have nine witnesses six of them very strong when they heard he could have been the zodiac. These folks slept on their couches in their closets for months they were freaked out freaked out.

“And that's what happened to the town when will ran for it split the town into.”

This is all you say was on the top of the mountain this is northern California.

This is in the high Sierra yes northern California. Okay and it was anybody ever able to find people who knew Gary in his youth you know talk about what he was like back then before he had these injuries. Have you have any idea of his childhood background. We have some of his veterans who talked about and remembers when he lost his mind. And remembers how it affected him that accident and the surgery that's one of his veterans we tracked him down.

We have neighbors that knew him that worked with him in his paint company and they all think he's a great guy well he he divided his world.

“You should know he never went to funerals he never went to weddings when he went to the market he'd make his wife go in and he sit in the car.”

He was off the grid Megan there was you know no cell phones nothing and so he stayed off the grid in this little town. Until he passed and then I came to volts from neighbors. Wow so what do you think I mean like I know that not everybody's cooperative and you're still working on it and you're going to do your test. But do you think we'll know do you think you'll get this to a place where it is beyond doubt that it was this guy. I think it's going to happen because of our three attorneys I hate to go that route but we've taken this evidence from Riverside to the task force.

Forces on DNA and these hairs we've been all the way up to the attorney general with California who turned us back to San Francisco. Nobody wants to deal with this 50 year old headache but look all we need is the hairs to compare they're sitting in that fridge we have DNA to compare it to. It's just a matter of time and the FBI which did the lab work on the hairs.

“I think it's going to be awfully hard we hope awfully hard for the FBI to not cooperate.”

We went to them a couple years ago not only with our office story but Zodiac we met with the attorney the agent and charge and Los Angeles who happened to be another you know. A Tom I know a guy who knows a guy one of our team members was buddies with him on the JTTF the terrorism task force in Chicago. So he arranged for me and our member Jim Zimmerman to meet with this agent and he looked at the evidence and he literally said I think you got him and I think this is off I'm going to take it to the crime division.

I think this agent took it to the crime division three times and they turned it down. Well who did kill Jimmy Hoffa. Now they were down that lane. I don't know there but I will tell you he's buried in the Great Lakes area. Not giant stadium.

No you know I can't give you where but but I will tell you that we sent a van up there and a couple of my guys with vests. And hard hats and big foot long sandwiches and sat where the exact spot he was buried. We were brought to on a deathbed cop a corrupt cop who worked for a mobster who cased Hoffa. That cop on his deathbed gave us the exact location in a map. He gave it to his knees who was another cop.

And that needs brought it to a her boyfriend of 10 years and he's a cop. And he said and she said I've got six brothers and sisters I don't want to break this. They'll go after my family and the boyfriend said that's fine. You know you do what you think is best 25 years later that boyfriend's on my team.

We went there with Jim and some other cops with a van set up like workworkers cops waving at us rent a cops.

“And suddenly out rolls a brown penetration rate mark machine from the van.”

We go to the exact spot in the middle of nowhere and there it goes down five feet to clay you can't see through clay. And the geophysicists that looked at it said you know I usually wear use words like anomaly and disturbance but this is a backo job.

In the middle of nowhere.

And so we are now coordinating with universities and the state involved in the attorney general probably to tent it so that there's no interruption because if we're wrong we're wrong. And if you're going to ask you if you're wrong and if you do get a test on these hairs and they don't match Gary will you accept that. There's a lot of things that match Gary I'm not worried about that one at all. I really am not there's so much I haven't told you you know there is so many pieces of evidence so many clues so many quotes.

And after David's shoe size I mean everything is all in the right spot now I think and again I think it's in it is I have quotes from friends at DOJ friends at police departments that I've known because of my teaching.

“And they've told me Tom don't go there you're going to just be you're going to be embarrassing us literally that's what they said.”

But I can't after say get very excited they go to the head of their department and they said no no no no I can't do it nobody wants to be embarrassed. So that's what we're facing and that's where we hope these attorneys can help. Well we will certainly continue to follow it and have you back once you get those results if you want to talk about it fascinating discussion thank you so much for walking us through such a complex case and letting us understand how this how this thing went down.

Megan I really appreciate your invitation if I may I want to mention to the audience that there are three stats they need to understand one is quarter million.

“Quarter million another one is six thousand the other one is five percent there are a quarter million unsolved murders now in this country and it grows by six thousand a year and only five percent of departments now can afford cold case teams.”

This is all about and my wife and I are expanding we are now at dot org nonprofit we've funded it for ten years on this team to we want to spread these teams out in every state because there's no more cops coming we're getting retired cops to help solve these problems. Tom thank you thank you so much. Thank you god bless Colbert and his team do some truly important work but what about his theory on the zodiac killers identity it is just a theory later this week we're going to bring you a fascinating interview with Paul holes Paul is the real deal is a former cold case investigator who really was the guy.

I mean he was part of a team but he really was the guy who helped solve the golden state killer case okay this is a guy life lifelong law enforcement. He's got a book to on the cold cases that he's looked into and so on and one of them is the zodiac so I asked him about this interview with Tom Colbert and what he thinks and here is what he said can I ask you about zodiac because we had a guy come on the program. The guy's name is Tom Colbert and he made the strongest case he could that the zodiac killer was a man named Gary Post and I asked him about a show I did on NBC in which the.

It's the filmmakers because they had done a documentary we're saying the man that the zodiac killer was Ed Edwards and he said no it wasn't Ed I'm very certain it was it was Gary Post and presented the case for Gary Post as somebody who's looked into the zodiac killer. Who do you think it was what do you make of these pronouncements that it was definitively Ed Edwards or was definitively Gary Post. I put no wait on them whatsoever you know I got involved in the zodiac case in the late 90s and to the early 2000s I was dealing with the early.

Online slewster in that timeframe you know they all have what they call their POIs or persons of interest and they build these circumstances and oftentimes are they're way off the mark even with the certain standard cases. But they miss you know what we look at is we have to find a next to the crime we can't just say well this person lived in an area where these crimes were committed or this or that.

I have built tremendous circumstantial cases against numerous individuals some of these individuals I think to this day circumstances actually match up better than the actual and only it looked I eliminated them with DNA. This is not working these cases with this type of notoriety because such a wide net of suspects you know 10,000 people being looked at you are going to find individuals that have circumstantial aspects to them to where you go out this this can't be coincident must be him and I will tell you it's coincidence.

Personally the only way I am going to believe that the zodiac has been identified is if they do get that objective identifying evidence that shows this is the guy do they do they match DNA if they get DNA from let's say envelope so stamps at the zodiac sent in. Can they get DNA off of the the bindings at the zodiac brought with them let's relate their residency or to somebody's find a shoe box you know and there maybe their dad's house after he dies that has you know Paul Stein's bloody shirt in it you know something like that and I'm interested but I've seen it too many times.

“They throw these these names out there and this is this is a zodiac I'm not convinced and I don't think the zodiac has been identified yet.”

For now the mystery continues but we're going to stay on it we will bring you updates.

Thanks for listening to the Megan Kelly show no BS no agenda and no fear.