Unmasking the Zodiac Killer

What if the Zodiac Killer never existed? In this episode of Fascinating Nouns, host Daniel J. Glenn sits down with former Port Authority NY/NJ officer, 9/11 first responder, and author Eddie McNamara to dig into his book Zodiac Actually: The True Story of a Fake Serial Killer — and the case he makes is more convincing than you might expect.

Eddie McNamara spent years tracking down court records, interviewing criminals, and piecing together what the actual evidence says about the Zodiac killings — and what he found is that the five canonical Zodiac murders, when examined individually rather than as a connected series, look a lot less like the work of a criminal genius and a lot more like a series of unrelated crimes that got stitched together by bad police work, credulous media, and the human desire for a better story.

They dig into the Lake Herman Road murders — where a likely suspect named Dave Magris confessed to being present, drove the right car, owned the right gun, and was already on death row for another murder — and how the police essentially looked away because a drug dealer wasn’t as exciting as a supervillain. They also explore the Lake Berryessa stabbing, where a 250-pound man in a hand-sewn executioner’s hood with sunglasses clipped to the outside decided to stab two people in broad daylight instead of using the loaded gun in his hand — and then drove 27 miles to call the wrong police department.

Plus: the Kitty Genovese myth, the Vietnam spitting story, Woodstock liars, a vegetarian cookbook with the greatest title ever, and whether Eddie won a film festival award over Tommy Wiseau’s “The Room”.

*BONUS* The Zodiac Letters

In this bonus episode, Eddie and I discuss the Zodiac ciphers, his possible identity, and the existence of the REAL Zodiac killer, a guy who killed by using astrology.