zodiac PART 2
PART II. Case closed?
If you enjoyed this episode, please support the podcast.
Part II of George Schiro’s story about his involvement in unraveling the identity of the notorious Zodiac Killer. What did he find in his examination of the alleged DNA profile of the Zodiac and Gary Stewart? Is Gary Stewart the biological son of the infamous Zodiac?
This is part II! Be sure to listen to Part I first to get the whole story!
To learn more about or to contact the guest, George Schiro, M.S., visit his website.
Links to materials mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript (Please note, transcript is auto-generated)
PART II Case Solved? Unraveling a DNA thread in the Zodiac killer enigma - featuring Forensic Scientist George Schiro. [00:00:23] Angela: greetings and welcome to another episode of Secrets from the Crime Lab. Today we are back with George Schiro. He's going to finish up telling us. About his experience with the Zodiac Killer case. Part two, if you will, for those of you who were not able to join us at the association of Forensic DNA, analysts and administrators meeting. I guess it's couple of weeks ago now in San Antonio. And if you enjoyed that episode or if you're enjoying listening to any of these episodes, if you could do me a favor and wherever you listen to your podcast, apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever, if you could leave us uh, a rating and maybe give us a review if you're feeling up to it, I would definitely appreciate it. Um, I prefer five star ratings but you know, you can also send me feedback at hello at Secrets from the crime lab dot com as well. So without further ado, George, you left us with a cliffhanger last time.
[00:01:30] George: That, that was my whole idea people should have attended that ADFAA meeting and then they got the full Monte at that point. It was a rollicking, good time and a lot of great information that was presented at the meeting as most after meetings. So yeah, I'll kind of pick up where I left off.
Just a brief recap of where we were. When we last left. Gary Stewart, he was hanging off... We Gary Stewart was a man who who found out through some research he was adopted. He met his birth mother. He started researching his father who turned out to be Earl Van Best, Jr. He determined that he was able to kind of put together different things within Earl Van Best Jr's life.
And as he was going through some things, he started coming to the realization that his father may have been the zodiac. So he conducted this research. He got together with True crime author Susan Mustafa. They put together a book called The Most Dangerous Animal of All based on his experience and his research and what he had found.
So Gary had basically four things, I believe in his book that he considered as evidence pointing to Earl Van Best, Jr. Being the Zodiac killer. Number one was, and what initially tipped him off was that he kind of looked like one of the the sketches that was done of the Zodiac Killer back from the 1960s, one of the photographs he had from his father, there was a resemblance to the sketch.
The other thing he had was there was these cryptograms that the Zodiac was sending out. Supposedly Gary, when he looked at the cryptogram, he could see that Earl Van Best Jr's name was uh, sauntered about in there. So that was the other thing he was looking at. Third thing was there was a fingerprint fingerprint card.
Earl Van Best Jr had a scar on one of his fingers. Also in some of the zodiac prints that were taken from one of the crime scenes, I believe it was the murder of Paul Stein there was also a scar on one of the fingers of the Zodiac. The other piece of the puzzle he had at the time was there was some handwriting samples.
Uh, the zodiac left a lot of notes. We discussed that in the previous the previous podcast. He had these this writing. Uh, Gary had actually some, some of his uh, father's uh, handwriting samples from a marriage certificate. He sent these to a question document examiner. The document examiner looked at them. He declared that the source of the writing of the Zodiac notes was the same as the writing on the marriage certificate. This guy even went on to write a book about how he solved the Zodiac case. Using these question document information. The final sort of piece of the puzzle.
Those four pieces of the puzzle were actually in the book, the most dangerous animal of all. Dr. Bo Scales, he had done some testing on Gary Stewart's DNA and his mother's DNA, and was able to determine what are called the obligate paternal alleles from his father and the obligate paternal allele alleles are those genetic markers that the father passes on to a child.
So we have this half of his, his DNA profile. I was uh, contacted by Susan after the book came out. Gary had seen a a primetime special that aired in 2002. I think we discussed that in the last podcast where there was some markers that were shown on the TV screen that were blurred out. But Gary was able to freeze this and he blew it up and he looked at it.
He believed he was able to discern. What these alleles were from the Zodiac killer alleles are just genetic markers that are found at different locations on the DNA molecule. So he provided those to, to me. Susan Mustafa asked if I could then do some paternity calculations and see what, if there's any type of association between Gary Stewart's DNA profile and these ones that were from this primetime special.
So I did a comparison, and based on what we had, we could not exclude the source of the uh, DNA from this, this primetime special as being potential father of Gary Stewart. So this was another piece of the puzzle. So the, the next thing that Susan kind of asked was well, can you run some calculations on this?
And whenever we do a I'm gonna kind of get into the sciencey part of it a little bit. Whenever we do a paternity calculation, what we're doing is we're looking at the child's profile and we are conditioning that profile on if person a is the, the father of the child, versus any random selected person.
And this is just strictly based on the DNA evidence. It doesn't count any of the non-genetic evidence. So what we're looking at is we're kinda looking at how strong this profile is, if let's say Gary Stewart's father is the source of the DNA on these stamps versus some random person.
And what we're able to determine is that based on the calculations we came up with what's called a paternity index, or likelihood ratio of how strong that profile on the stamp is if the father is Gary Stewart's
[00:06:35] Angela: okay. So let me, let me ask you a question there um, in that When we're talking about the, this genetic information, the DNA information that we have, and we're talking about paternity indexes and we're checking the child's DNA against this person that we're, that's in question on whether or not they are biological parent.
I would say on the low end, now when we're doing these kind of tests, we, we have. At least 15 markers, 15 specific locations that we're looking at. If you are using one of the older test kits that we have that in standard use, but a lot of the newer ones are Over 20 genetic locations. And I thought maybe if we're getting a little bit into the sciency part, maybe we could talk a little bit about the strength of our conclusions that we get based on how much DNA information we have.
Because you didn't have complete information for the, for the DNA that was Shown in that ABC special that was not, there wasn't 15 locations that you were given by Mr. Stewart.
[00:07:46] George: No, there were only four locations. Four locations on the DNA molecule that had.
[00:07:50] Angela: So we already know that it's gonna be, our numbers aren't gonna be great.
[00:07:54] George: Correct, yes. We're gonna have a lower paternity index as well as if we calculate out a probability of paternity based on genetic information, it's also gonna be relatively low. So the. Paternity index is the strength of the evidence conditioned on whether this person who potentially could be the zodiac is Gary's father versus some randomly selected person in the in the world.
And what we're able to determine was the paternity index in this case ranged from th a low of 34 to a high of 551. Which is relatively low, but it still puts it in if you calculate the probability of paternity, and this is assuming a 0.5, what we call prior probability, meaning all the non-genetic information is, equal.
I. It comes up to a range of 97% probability of paternity up to 99.8% probability of paternity. So we're kind of borderline on that range, where um, legally like for instance in 2014, California and also Mississippi required a minimum paternity index of a hundred or a minimum probability of paternity of 99%. In 2014, Louisiana was a minimum of paternity index of a thousand and also um, a probability of paternity of 99.9%. So it's putting the numbers that we're getting within the legal, sort of legal areas
[00:09:20] Angela: And in, in some jurisdictions, 'cause I think the AAB B guidelines that govern. Like if you were doing stuff for immigration purposes to prove relatedness they're more stringent than some of what some of the state guidelines would require. And they're closer to what you were saying where it has to be 100 and 9 Right. So you're kind of, it's borderline, but that could be because you don't have a lot of information.
[00:09:46] George: It's borderline, and at this point we, we cannot exclude the source of the DNA on the stamps as being Gary's father at this point. Now, so these are essentially the five pillars, I guess of, of Gary's assumption that his father is, is the zodiac. So after the book is published some movie people get interested in this story, and this, uh, director whose name is Keith Davidson he's a documentarian. He's, he was an, actually an Academy Award nominated documentarian. He's also won several awards for filmmaking and especially documentaries.
He he comes along and as, just as a side note, currently on. Netflix, he actually has a documentary that's out there called Three Mile Island, about the three mile island nuclear disaster. So Keith Davidson comes along and they decide they're gonna make a documentary about the book and about the findings.
And the name of the documentary is also called The Most Dangerous Animal of All. He comes along and they decide they're gonna film it. It ends up being a far four-part series that initially aired on fx. And now you can get it on Hulu. It airs on Hulu again, four-part series.
Keith Davidson, I went down to go film part of this documentary. I went to Baton Rouge one morning and went there. And while we're filming, we were discussing the findings and I was, I was very careful about how I presented the results. Very much couched that there, there were several caveats associated with this one of which assumes that Mr. Stewart could not be excluded as the biological child of the source of the DNA on these stamps. And again, I'm relying on what Gary Stewart has provided in terms of. Of what these alleles supposedly are. And it also assumes that all the obligate paternal alleles were found in the DNA profile from the stamp.
And again, I couched it very carefully in terms of in terms of what the probability of paternity is with a, a. And what the prior probability would be associated with that, as well as what the potential paternity indices were. And while we're filming Mr. Davidson said something very interesting, kind of struck me as odd.
He said he goes, this may not necessarily be about solving the zodiac. He goes, but maybe it's about the psychology of someone who thinks their father is the zodiac. And that's a, that was kind of an odd statement to make, but so it kind of made me pause a little bit. So anyway a few months go by and then.
The day before it airs, I get contacted by Susan Mustafa, and she tells me essentially, Hey, this turned out to be sort of a hit piece. There's uh, there, you know, it's like they, they've kind of pulled the rug out from under uh, Gary a little bit. And so I just, I didn't know exactly what she was talking about.
I said well, I guess I'll wait to see the documentary. So this documentary airs and like the first three parts kind of set up the Zodiac and talk about the Zodiac and talk about Earl Van Best Jr. And all these things that Gary has found. And then I. Keith Davidson actually did a deep dive on this ABC primetime special.
Again, this aired like 20 years ago he found a producer, a man by the name of Harry Phillips and Harry Phillips went through and explained how they did that graphic That showed the, the alleles, alleged alleles that were blurred out. And he says that they totally made up those numbers, that they did not put the actual numbers on there, that the the crime lab would not have allowed that.
So again, so immediately we know we're dealing with not accurate numbers. Therefore, the
[00:13:18] Angela: Somebody's, Somebody's pants are on fire.
[00:13:21] George: And so, and again, like I said, I was always very careful to say these are the numbers that were provided to me when I did the analysis. But it was something, and it was something odd.
So, So that part of the, I guess part of that evidence just kind of went away. But when I was watching the special, I was very, like I said, I was very conscious about what I was saying, how I was saying it. And then there was a statement that, it didn't show me talking, but it was my voiceover and it said the probability is 90 97 to 99.8% that the Zodiac is Gary Stewart's father, which anybody who knows anything about the way evidence is presented that I would never state make that statement.
[00:14:03] Angela: Nobody. No, nobody would say it that way. It would be incorrect.
[00:14:06] George: And you can't know that because that is what's called transposing the conditional. That means that they're saying, He's the father. If this happened, it kind of reverses the equation, which is inaccurate because there are things besides the genetic evidence that we don't know, that we don't know.
We don't, we can't take it to account, so therefore we cannot say that, give a percentage without having some actual mathematics behind it. So I knew I didn't say that, that sentence, and you know, I was watching my wife, I was like, I didn't say that. Where'd that come from? What I, what I. There's what's called frankenbites where they will take recordings of your voice. They will splice out certain things and splice in certain things and create sen, literally create sentences. And this has done a lot in reality television. They're someone may say, oh, I, I really like uh, so and so, and then they'll get it in the editing room and they won't have it where you can see the person talking and they'll say, wow, they'll edit in I really don't like so and so. so the producers can manipulate this this information as they see fit. And part of it I can understand is because of them not understanding the science and us trying to be so careful and they're trying to get a point across, I guess, as quickly as possible within within their time constraints and that sort of thing.
But my advice is if you're ever dealing with someone and in the media be careful uh, that again, once you give them the rights to use your voice you sign away those rights, they can do pretty much whatever they want. I hope. I hope you won't use any frankenbites on me, Angela.
[00:15:36] Angela: No, but I can tell you that I have the ability to have an AI generate people's voices.
[00:15:43] George: that's.
[00:15:43] Angela: I can, I can, I can do that. I choose not to. It doesn't work on everyone's voice though. Like, it doesn't, like I can use it for mine if I may, if I misspoke or something and I wanna correct it. And, but it doesn't quite sound right to me.
Like I can tell the difference. Some people it's like really accurate. There's one, there was one, somebody took a fake clip of Joe Rogan talking to someone and it was, sounded like exactly like him. So AI capabilities are pretty scary. And then you combine that with people who are TV producers and editors and stuff that really know how to do all the programs on top of all this new technology.
I think you're telling people to be cautious is appropriate.
[00:16:31] George: I don't even know how, how cautious you can be, because like I said, your words can be, especially like you said, nowadays with AI can be twisted.
[00:16:38] Angela: If you ever do one of these again, you need to get an entertainment lawyer to make sure they say you cannot change how you say anything.
[00:16:46] George: I remember I was involved with one show that it never came to fruition, but one of the, my conditions was that I get the raw footage. Of whatever it was they filmed. And that might be one way to protect yourself. That way you have that, that and you can say, Hey, wait, look, I didn't really say this.
This is what was actually said. But getting that information, you're right. It would probably take an entertainment lawyer to get all that
[00:17:09] Angela: Yeah I don't change what people say. I don't, I leave it in there. We, I take out pregnant pauses and ums and you knows, and, but that's it. That's it. um, Okay, but you actually, once you found out that there was some funny business going on and that they had edited your voice into this Franken clip to change the words that had come out of your mouth to something that you would never say as a scientist, what happened then?
Like, I mean that's, that's they're besmirching your good reputation by doing that.
[00:17:43] George: It hasn't come back to haunt me. I dunno how many people have seen the special and my clip within with the, within the entire four hour thing maybe was like three minutes. And so it was really a throwaway sentence that I don't think many people would pick up
[00:17:59] Angela: Yeah well, all this, all, if DNA experts are listening to it, we'd all be like, George, you could, can't say that.
[00:18:05] George: Yeah, so you know, like I said, I know there's a certain friend we have in common who I got caught transposing the conditional I'd be in big trouble.
[00:18:14] Angela: Yep. Yes, you would.
[00:18:15] George: So anyway, so like I said, that, that part, and like I said, I was, I wa I wasn't really taken aback. Cause like I said, I was always kind of under an impression how accurate are these numbers that were being provided? And I based, everything I said, basing on if those numbers were correct.
So that was kind of the first thing that, that popped up. the next thing Was that the fingerprint that supposedly had the scar I believe was on I think it might have been on his right index on Earl Van Best's, right index finger. The Zodiac scar was actually on the other hand, so it couldn't have been the same scar.
So that kind of eliminated that piece of the puzzle. The fact that Gary Stewart saw Earl Van Best Jr's name in the in the Cryptograms also kind of uh, kind of went by the wayside because there was an expert who showed you could manipulate those, and you can find all kinds of different people, random people's names within that cryptogram.
The other piece of the puzzle was the handwriting. And in the special, they got a another document examiner to examine what the original document examiner had done. And she had determined that, first of all uh, this person who did the original investigation did not follow the ASTM, which is the American Society for Testing Materials, I believe, uh, did not follow their standards for question document examination. He used only one item uh, one exemplar of Earl Van Best Jr's handwriting. The standard calls for multiple exemplars. And also requires the unknowns in this case, which would've been the Zodiac handwriting to be looked at first and the determinations made prior to looking at the the actual exemplars.
And also this second questioned document examiner believed that the original one kind of pick and chose, which letters to use. And when they looked at the other letters that there, there wasn't a consistency with Earl Van Best jr's handwriting. Another thing that came out through some of this investigation was that this marriage certificate may not have even been filled out by Earl Van Best Jr. They said that the uh, clergyman who, did the marriage certificates usually fill those out himself. So it might not have even been Earl Van Best jr's handwriting on this marriage certificate.
[00:20:36] Angela: They matched it to the clergymen.
I'm like, that's.
[00:20:39] George: And like I said, the whole book written about this so like I said, Gary's things just kind of start, sort of fell apart in terms of uh, his father being the Zodiac.
And then there were a couple of other things of interest. One Keith Davidson was interviewing Susan Mustafa and. They, there was a document that Gary presented to Susan that said that Earl Van Best Jr. had been on a 90 day hold at Tescadero State Hospital, which was a mental health facility in California back in the sixties.
And so, she had this document wherein she believed he had actually been committed to this mental hospital. Keith Davidson and them had gotten the original document from, I guess the original source the Department of Records, whatever it may be, and at Tescadero State Hospital appears nowhere on the form.
It said that he was detained for 90 days, but it does not mention this hospital at all. So that was something a little, a little strange in terms of uh, he presented her with this document that was obviously altered in some form or fashion. Don't know who altered it or where he got the information from, but it was an altered document from the original as kind of a final blow to everything there was a private investigator who was hired to look at everything and this private investigator he was based in San Francisco, he kind of created a parallel timeline of the Zodiac. The Zodiac episodes or instances where people were killed or letters were sent, that sort of thing.
And compared it to a timeline that they could establish of Earl Van Best Jr. And it was a pretty tight timeline up until you get around 1969 to 1974, and he sort of falls off the face of the earth. Now there's strong circumstantial evidence that during this period of time, Earl Van Best Jr. was actually in Europe. His I believe there's record of his wife being there, and I believe there was some letters or something from a daughter or something who may have been there at the time as well. But this private investigator could not get the the immigration records because they did not have the immigration records that far back.
So more than likely Earl Van Best Jr. when a bulk, the bulk of the Zodiac activity was occurred was in Europe. So that kinda pretty much put the nail in the coffin as far as Earl Van Best, Jr being the Zodiac. And it's like every, every so often these different suspects come.
Arthur Lee Allen was one who was a potential Zodiac suspect. Dr. George Hodel, who his son is actually, was actually a retired detective with L A P D, believes that his father was both the killer of the Black Dahlia and the Zodiac. The latest. Yeah, the latest there was also a couple other guys, Richard Kakowski Rick Marshall, Lawrence Kane, Ross Sullivan.
And the current latest one that they're trying to say is the Zodiacs Investigative Group has come up with a guy by the name of Gary Francis Post, who is now deceased. And, but they have yet to produce any real evidence, and I don't think they've ever shown anybody their evidence as far as. Why they think he's the Zodiac.
And some of it ties back to, we talked about the murder of Cherry Joe Bates back in 1966, which probably was not a zodiac killing, but a lot of it of what they have on him hinges on that. That information. This case is just like the Jack the Ripper case. Every few months, every year or so, a new suspect comes up and it's, it's a few years back when I gave the talk at AFDAA on Jack the Ripper case closed I talked about how there was this book I bought called a case book of Jack the Ripper. And it was all these essays about, about these different suspects. And I read the first one. I said, man, whoa, he sounds like a good suspect. Then I'd read the next one. Oh, he sounds like a good suspect too. Next one. Oh, this one's good. Like I said, there, there's always gonna be these suspects that come to play and until we get something rock solid either some kind of way through forensic genetic genealogy or some other means that we can somehow get it. We'll never know who the Zodiac is probably until there's some hard physical evidence that we can show.
[00:24:55] Angela: So do you think that, and this is just I dunno, speculation. Do you think that Gary Stewart really believed his father was the Zodiac and then just didn't understand that he was making the evidence fit his theory?
[00:25:14] George: I, I have a feeling. That That is part of it. It's confirmation bias. You look favorably upon the things that agree with what you wanna believe in, and you tend to discard and not put any faith into things that you, that don't support your theory. And I think that it was heavily I'm sure there was some emotional emotionally he was very invested in this.
I mean, he was finding out who was you know, the story of his birth parents and how he came to be and how he ended up uh, in that stairwell, in that apartment complex in Baton Rouge. And raised by these loving adoptive parents. And I'm sure there was a lot of emotional things that were associated with it.
And again, I don't know if it was just confirmation bias on his part or. Or if there was some sort of nefarious reason. I'm, I can't say but I tend to think it was more confirmational bias. And I, I've seen, there was another show that was out a few years back called, I think it was called American Ripper, where I. This guy was the grandson of HH Holmes, who was this serial killer back in the early 19 hundreds late 18, 1890s. And he was trying to make the connection between his grandfather And his great-grandfather and um, and Jack the Ripper. And when I was watching, I was, it was very tenuous and there was a lot of these same type of confirmation bias things.
And there was actually objective evidence out there that showed that his grandfather, great-grandfather couldn't have been Jack the Ripper. But again, all that was ignored in special
[00:26:43] Angela: Yeah. So in hindsight, what do you think you learned from this whole experience?
[00:26:51] George: Um, I, I don't know. I it's, it's a good question. Um, I learned that they can take your words and twist them around when they do TV shows. That's lesson
I said I was fortunate in that I was sort of skeptical, kind of all the way along. I, I didn't reject what we had until I saw the special and knew that at that point that that the DNA evidence wasn't anything.
And I think that's good to have a healthy dose of skepticism when going into these things. And like I said, I was very careful about when I wrote the letter to Susan Mustafa about what the potential uh, paternity indices were and the probability of Paternities and that sort of thing.
I was very cautious. And again, there were a lot of caveats in there. I said the, and as scientists we do have to rely on certain assumptions. And but like I said, I was very careful and that the other things I learned was, and you'd have to watch the documentary to kind of understand what I'm talking about, but the um, maintaining your documentation is one thing because we were able to show when certain people said certain things on the the special, we actually had the paperwork to show that it was actually something else.
So again, it always goes back to retaining your records. Maintain a healthy dose of skepticism, be careful of that confirmation bias that can create, and this Speaks to our day-to-day work as, as scientists as forensic scientists, is to try and keep that confirmation bias out. And it's not an easy thing to do, and it works on an unconscious level sometimes.
And there, there are tools and tricks that we can do to minimize that bias. And that's some of the things that we should be working for towards is doing
[00:28:26] Angela: And you mentioned when you were talking for example about the question documents examiner. The second one pointed out we have these A S T M standards that require, you have to look at the evidence first before you go and look at the reference material. In that case, the handwriting exemplars.
And we do the same thing in DNA. You look at the evidence first and then you go and look at the reference. 'cause all these things help to remove any kind of bias in in our work. But You know, it's something we've become more cognizant of in recent years, espec, especially with all the work that Dr. Itiel Dror and some of his colleagues and collaborators ha have done. But it's probably, it's not really something that people in the public are that aware of. We have confirmation bias in our daily life.
[00:29:12] George: I think it was a few, a few years back. Didn't you bring Dr. Dror to an AFDAA meeting? Was it you that who that brought
[00:29:18] Angela: Yeah. Yeah. When I was, back, when I was the chairperson, I think he came and did a workshop for us,
[00:29:24] George: Yes. I attended the workshop and that was one of the, be you know, one of the most valuable things he said. And he says it's simple, he said, Do your evidence and your interpretation First, make your calls. Stick with those calls, and then look at the references and does it fit or not? That's essentially it,
[00:29:41] Angela: Yeah, he's yeah, we've had, I've had him on the podcast as well 'cause he's recently done some studies into forensic pathology. And that's a much harder field than when we're talking about what we do in DNA. We've got hard numbers, we've got hard data that we're looking at.
Yes, there's some interpretational things in there, but pathologists have a very hard job. Because it's, their work isn't as analytical in all of the aspects that they have. They're, they have a much more difficult set of information that they have to pick and choose from what's relevant, what's irrelevant, and try to, it's very difficult to prevent themselves from being exposed to information that could inadvertently bias their conclusions later on. Like they, they wouldn't even realize that it happened. So it's definitely harder in, in the, more of the scene inspection side of things, medical side of things than it is for us in the lab with all of our analytical equipment.
[00:30:44] George: And I'm not saying this as a broad statement with. Forensic pathologists or ' cause I've seen it happen to other individuals within the forensic science field of people going beyond their expertise and stating certain things and or getting out of their lane and making statements like their facts when in fact they're not facts.
And that's another thing that has to be. Dealt with as a forensic scientist or forensic pathologist you have to, again, when you go into that courtroom and you take that stand, you have to know what your limitations are as well as what the limitations of the science are, what you can and cannot say.
Even though you may have certain feelings, but feelings aren't data. You, if you're gonna make a statement, you should have the data to back it up. I mean I myself may have made statements in the past that when I've testified that It may have been more on a feeling than a data type thing.
But it can happen to any of us. Like I said, we always have to be cognizant of that and cautious of that, and especially how we use our words when we testify.
[00:31:47] Angela: Yeah. And then you also have the same thing, what you experienced with the Franken edit. And the thing is like, so even when we're. Working in our capacity as an expert in the courtroom, we're providing our scientific data. We're being very careful about how we state our results and expressing those limitations.
But then we leave the courtroom. We don't have any control about what happens after that.
[00:32:11] George: Right.
[00:32:12] Angela: You're dealing with non-scientists are then doing closing, closing statements to make their adversarial arguments. So we have no control over what happens to the information when we're no longer present,
[00:32:26] George: Right. I guarantee there's a lot of frankenbiting going on after we.
[00:32:29] Angela: Definitely. Okay. That was quite the twist in the, in your story there, thinking, oh, you're gonna be helping to unmask the zodiac, eh not quite. Some things that I think it might be cool to share with our listeners in the show notes I can get the name of that documentary that's available, so if people want to watch it on, I think, was it on Netflix
[00:32:54] George: No it was, it was Hulu. It airs on Hulu and uh, it's called the most Dangerous Animal of all.
[00:32:59] Angela: Okay. So it's the same title as their book.
[00:33:01] George: Yes.
[00:33:02] Angela: Yeah. Okay. And then
[00:33:04] George: And oh, by the way, that a, that ABC primetime special is actually on YouTube. It can
be, yes. It's A B C primetime Thursday. Lemme see if I can, the date was, I think like October 17th. 2002, something along those lines. But if you search 2002 primetime, a, B, C, primetime, Zodiac on YouTube, you should be able to find it.
[00:33:29] Angela: Okay. So I'll try to find that and have both of those linked in the show notes.
[00:33:34] George: It's interesting also in in that, that show, that particular show, there is another guy in that show that thinks his father was a zodiac. So they were doing testing back in 2002 to see if this guy's, and he was excluded.
[00:33:48] Angela: Oh this is gonna be somebody else coming outta the word work. No, it was my daddy.
Okay, so I'm gonna link those in the show notes once I dig them up. And then was there anything you wanted to share about the work that you did in the lab? I know you had some, like you said you had some documentation.
To support all of the work that you did. Is that something that you, like your lab reports or anything like that?
[00:34:12] George: I never issued, never issued a formal lab report on, on this. Um, It was just in a letter, A letter to Susan, just stating what what the potential paternity indices and probability of paternities could be.
[00:34:24] Angela: Yeah. Okay. All right. That was fun.
[00:34:27] George: It is always fun doing a podcast with you. I cat, where's your cat
[00:34:31] Angela: oh, she is currently lounging over on a pile of my sewing fabric. She likes to make her beds on whatever my current
project is, so she can't be bothered to come over. It's probably 'cause I don't have the air conditioning
on, and she's like, I'm just gonna lounge here. Thank you again for coming on and so you've done Jack the Ripper, you've done the Zodiac Killer.
What are we looking forward to next time
[00:34:55] George: I don't know. It's whatever comes out, whatever the latest hot topic in true crime or forensic science is if there's a forensic element to it, I'll take a look at it and see if there's something something worthwhile there to present.
[00:35:09] Angela: I've enjoyed having you on the podcast as a guest anytime you come up with another fun story or topic that you'd like to share, I'd love to have you back on again /
[00:35:18] George: Love to do
[00:35:19] Angela: Thanks again.