The Zodiac Killer Wasn't Real

From nineteen seventy seventy one, the authorities have known that the first two murders had nothing to do with Zodiac whatsoever. Zodiac takes credit for his letters, but they know the guy who did it. Your thesis is is that we're all assuming all these things like these anagram stuff that you know, and and the the symbols and all the uniform all that stuff. We're assuming one guy did all this. Your thesis is that that's too much of a leap. It could be several people. I think not only it could be, it's likely several people. It's uh and then the FBI also says from October sixty nine, they don't comment that it's the same person who wrote those letters. So I'm led to believe it's multiple letter writers, including Inspector Dave Towski. But in nineteen sixty four, Kitty Genevieve was a bartender, she was coming home. Home from work late at night. She was attacked in front of her building in Queens. She was stabbed and She bled out. The New York Times reported the story as thirty-seven neighbors watched from their windows and did nothing. So it became the bystander effect where you diffuse responsibility because you think someone else is gonna do it is gonna jump in and help. So the story that the Times reported is just like New Yorkers are very uncaring people because thirty-seven people watched this woman die and let her bleed. But the reality is multiple neighbors chased the attacker away. Multiple neighbors comforted Kitty. They sat with her for an hour. It took the ambulance an hour to get there and she bled out because there was no nine one one system at the time and the dispatch was all messed up.

Hey everybody, it's Michael Shermer. It's time for another episode of the Michael Shermer Show. Hey, we're gonna do some new episodes on true crime. Turns out this is a huge industry. I had no idea most of our podcast episodes are about science and technology and history and philosophy and political science and economics. How about true crime? Because we wanna know Who actually did it? Okay, so we're gonna start off today with the biggest unsolved true crime mystery in American history. The Zodiacal or the Zodiac Killer. Not the Zodiacal, that's astronomical. The Zodiac Killer. My guest today is Eddie McNamara. He's the author of the true crime novel, Brooklyn Hardcore. He also wrote a vegetarian cookbook, Toss Your Own Salad, just for fun. And the short story collection Two Fair Zone. In a former life this gets us to what we're gonna talk about today. He was a nine eleven first responder, a police officer, and a columnist for Penthouse Magazine, and he loves true crime and has written a revealing nonfiction book called

Zodiactually, am I pronouncing that right? Zodiacally, the real story of a fake serial killer. There it is. You all know that image, right? That's the gunshot, uh gunshot image. What is that, Eddie? It's either a site or you know, it's like a gunshot site or a Celtic cross or a you know a Norse cross. It's the The zodiac symbol. It's been come to known as And this is the outfit that uh the guy at the Barrietta Lake was wearing when he murdered the couple. Yeah. He had the hood and uh the clipped on sunglasses over the hood. Uh ridiculous stuff. Okay, but before we get into all that,'cause you there's so many topics I want to cover with you here. Uh what's your story? How did you get how what were you doing as a cop and how come you're not a cop anymore? And what did you do after nine eleven? And tell us the whole story.

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