cover of episode Zodiac Killer: Still Unsolved!

Zodiac Killer: Still Unsolved!

2023/10/31
logo of podcast True Crime with Kendall Rae

True Crime with Kendall Rae

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布莱恩·哈特内尔
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Kendall Ray: 本集讲述了发生在加利福尼亚州北部,从至少1960年代末到1970年代初的黄道十二宫杀手系列谋杀案。凶手身份至今不明,受害者包括大卫·法拉第、贝蒂·卢·詹森、达琳·法伦、迈克尔·麦格、塞西莉亚·谢泼德、布莱恩·哈特内尔和保罗·斯坦。凶手通过信件与警方进行联系,并留下密码和符号,增加了案件的复杂性。案件中有多位嫌疑人,包括亚瑟·李·艾伦,但最终都缺乏确凿的证据。 警方在调查过程中也出现了一些失误,例如错失逮捕机会等。尽管警方尝试使用新的DNA技术来侦破案件,但黄道十二宫杀手案至今仍未结案。 警方人员: 警方在调查过程中面临诸多挑战,包括证据不足、线索有限、嫌疑人众多等。尽管警方努力工作,但由于技术限制和证据不足,案件侦破进展缓慢。 在贝瑞萨湖袭击案中,警方人员描述了案发现场的惨状以及受害者的状态,并强调了案件的严重性。警方也提到,他们与其他部门合作,调查精神病院病人,试图找到线索。 布莱恩·哈特内尔: 作为贝瑞萨湖袭击案的幸存者,布莱恩提供了凶手的部分体貌特征,并描述了袭击过程中的心理状态。他提到,为了生存,他设定了一系列目标,并通过保持心理上的清醒来应对危机。 校车司机: 由于黄道十二宫杀手威胁要攻击校车上的儿童,校车司机改变了路线,并加强了安全措施,以确保学生的安全。

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Stay farm and DJ Dramos from Life as a Gringo. No making smarter financial moves today secures a financial freedom for a successful tomorrow. Tackle these situations in stride and of course be annoyed when an unplanned expense comes up, but not let it be something that slows me down. Right. As I did with repairing my credit, you know, hiring somebody to do credit repair for me. That was a gift that I gave myself that allowed me to then, you know, get my first apartment.

Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. State Farm, proud sponsor of My Cultura Podcast Network.

Hey everyone, it's Kendall Ray. I just wanted to jump in here with an editor's note. This is actually an older archive episode, so the production quality is going to sound a bit different from my newer episodes. And since this is an older recording, it's possible that certain updates may not be included. Now, on to the episode. ♪

Our story begins in Vallejo, California on December 20th of 1968, around 11 p.m. 17-year-old David Faraday and 16-year-old Betty Lou Jensen were shot and killed when they were sitting in a parked car off of Lake Herman Road. Betty Lou's body was found about 30 feet away from the car

and then David was actually still alive when the police found him. He was barely hanging on to life though, and he actually died on the way to the hospital. And you know, this is in the 60s, definitely not as common to have these random shootings. There was not nearly as much violence or as many guns.

So it was really, really odd. And police had no idea who killed them because it's literally just them two at the crime scene. One on the ground, one in the car. And these are clearly, neither of them are self-inflicted. So this is not like David did it to her or she did this to him. And then, you know, some type of suicide threat

thing. This is someone else, some third party that came and did this to them and then left the scene. So police were not able to figure out who it was. There was literally no evidence left. No one knew anyone that would want to hurt these two. So the case went cold and little did they know that that would be the start of these Zodiac killings. Then six months later in July 4th of 1969 and back in the sixties and seventies, eighties, probably even nineties, the big thing to do actually probably still today, the

The big thing to do was parking a car like going on a date going parking somewhere and you know what you do in the car so there's a lot of Teens just unexpectedly hanging on their cars at night And that's exactly what Darlene Farren and Michael McGough were doing Darlene was 22 Michael was 19 years old and they were just hanging out in a parked car near Blue Rock Springs Park Which is only a few minutes away from the first murder of Betty and James

David. It was around midnight. They were just sitting in the car when someone came up behind them and just shot them both in the car. Pretty scary, you know, to know that, especially that he's still out there, you know, it's something that never leaves your mind. You know, you look at her picture and she's not here. Now what's really different and interesting about the Zodiac killer that makes him a little more unique than other serial killers is that he doesn't seem to have

like a motive for doing it other than the pure joy of taking someone's life. He doesn't really torture victims. He doesn't capture them, take them home. He shoots them. He normally does it outside. It's normally quick. He doesn't normally do anything sexually with them. He just purely likes to catch people off guard and kill them. There's not some other weird fetish going on. Like if you know about serial killers, most of them have like some weird ritual or something that they're doing.

This guy just seemed to want to almost be out hunting people. So when the police arrived to the scene, they actually were both alive. However, only Michael ended up living. And Michael ended up claiming that he remembered what the person looked like. He said that he was a white male around 26 to 30 years old. He said he was around 5'8" and at least 200 pounds.

He also said he had curly light brown hair and he noticed that he had kind of a large face. Now what was really weird is within an hour of the attack, someone called the police and this person claimed to be the shooter, but not just the shooter of Darlene and Michael, but also David and Betty.

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August 1st of 1969, three San Francisco newspapers, including the San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald, all received identical handwritten letters from someone claiming to be the killer in both of these events. It was after Darlene Ferren's murder, authorities realized they had a...

All three of the letters had specific details about the murders, which proved that the writer of the letters was indeed the killer. And it's so creepy. The letters were all signed with the same marking of a circle with a cross through it. And this would be known as the famous mark of the Zodiac Killer.

Another thing that was included in these letters was three separate sets of codes. Zodiac Killer was all about playing a game with the police. So Zodiac wanted the codes to be printed in the newspaper or he said he was going to kill again. And, you know, the newspapers were like, we ain't going to take a chance on that. We're not going to get blamed for this. So they went ahead and printed it. The Zodiac Killer said that the three sets of codes would reveal his identity.

On August 4th, another letter was received and the letter started with, "This is the Zodiac speaking. In answer to your asking for more details about the good times I've had in Vallejo, I shall be happy to supply even more material. By the way, are the police having a good time with the code?

If not, tell them to cheer up. When they do crack it, they will have me." Then on August 8th, the code was actually cracked by some random couple in Salinas, California. They just basically sat down one day and dedicated their whole day to just figuring it out. And the final message said, "I like killing because it's so much fun. It is more fun than killing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill.

And then there was another murder. A little over a month had gone by and it was on September 27th in Napa, California.

22-year-old Cecilia Shepard and 20-year-old Brian Hartnell were having a picnic on the shore of Lake Berryessa when Cecilia spotted a man that was hiding behind a nearby tree and staring at her. After a while of the man being there behind the tree, he came out of hiding wearing an executioner-style hood over his head. He had a gun and a long knife and used pre-cut rope to tie up Cecilia and Brian. And then after tying them up, he started stabbing them repeatedly. It's terribly sad.

Cecilia ended up dying at the hospital, but Brian actually survived. The guy told him to take the money. He said, I don't want it. He says, all I want to do is kill you people. I have to kill you. The boy asked him, he said, you really mean that? He said, yes, I mean it. He says, well, he said, if you're going to kill me first, because I can't stand to see the girl be stabbed. He said, well, I'll do that. So he started stabbing the kid in the back. He told me 10, 12 times, but he had so much blood on him, I couldn't tell. I knew he was stabbed several times.

And then he stabbed the girl. So-- The boy was conscious enough to give you a description of the man? Oh, yes. They was-- they'd go out and come back. And it was taking some 35 minutes for the ambulance to get from Napa up here, which is 20 miles, 25 miles away from this place. And so they did a lot of talking. The boy thought he was going to-- wasn't going to make it. He wanted to tell-- give a description to the guy best he could. About the best he could give us that he had a hood over his face. And he was a big guy.

Six foot or better, over 200 pounds. What was your reaction when you saw them? Well, I've been patrolling this lake now 11 years and I've seen a lot of people that have been cut up by boats and this and that and for no reason at all, that's about the worst I ever seen, the kids just chopped up, real nice college kids just stabbed for no reason at all. I never witnessed anything like it before.

Inclusive enough to link the murderer of Celia Shepherd to other murders in the Vallejo area in the past year. Does it seem to you as if you're pretty much on the verge of finding this man? Well, I wouldn't want to say that. In speaking with one of the deputies who was investigating this thing, he said that the first thing you told a deputy out there was to give some idea of a description of the man. Do you understand now how your mind was able to work that well under those conditions? You really did an exceptional job in that.

Well, to the whole thing, like I mentioned before, at the beginning, I did think I was going to die. And so from that moment on, one has to have certain goals that you have to set. The first goal, of course, was to live. I suppose the second goal was to get untied. The next one was to get help from getting help, getting to the hospital. You know, you have to have a successive set of goals. And if you can keep this going and you can keep your mind active,

Whether you die or not, you're at least psychologically attuned, whether you're in shock or not. If you can keep arguing with yourself, praying, doing anything to keep your mind off of yourself, or at least just not lapsing back and just saying, well, it's no use. A little over an hour after attack, the police department got a call from someone saying that they were responsible for the murders, and they hung up once again.

Brian described the man as being around 5'8", heavy set, weighing somewhere between 225 and 250 pounds. And he said that he was able to see brown hair through the eye holes of the mask.

A message was also found on the side of Brian's car. It had the details of all three of the previous killings, as well as the Zodiac sign. But this time, under the most recent one, it said, by knife. The call was actually traced back to a payphone that was a few blocks away from the police department. So obviously they went down to check out this payphone, but when they got there, they weren't able to retrieve any reliable samples of

So the investigators are sitting here with no evidence, no idea who did this, not a single clue, not a single suspect, and nowhere to start. So then very shortly after that, the Zodiac Killer kind of switched up what he was doing a little bit. On October 11th, just before 10 p.m. in San Francisco at the intersection of Washington and Cherry, a taxi driver named Paul Stein

was randomly shot in the head by his passenger. A teenage girl actually just happened to look out the window at the right time and saw all of this happen. She said that she was able to get a good look at the passenger before he kind of looked over the body, wiped down part of the

car and then walked off. She called the police and reported a white male between five, eight and five, nine, around 200 pounds between about 25 to 30 years old stocky with reddish brown hair, a crew cut and glasses with sick rims.

So very shortly after the shooting two police officers went driving around the scene to see if they could find the suspect and that's when they came across a man who they said was around 5'10" around 170 pounds, reddish brown hair, a crew cut and wearing glasses right around the crime scene. So obviously it sounds very familiar to the suspect that was just called into the police. These police officers just pulled over

confronted the man, asked him if he had seen anyone running away. And that's when he said, "Yes, I just saw a man with that description run that way and pointed forward." And the police were like, "Thanks, man," and drove off. And to this day, people really think that they actually were talking to the Zodiac Killer.

And there's kind of, I mean, with any type of police stuff, it's always a little fuzzy, especially old stuff. So we're not exactly sure why this miscommunication happened or why they just didn't consider him to be a suspect. But a lot of people say there's a lot of rumors that it was actually because they, for some reason, thought that the suspect was black and this was a white man, so it couldn't have been him. But I don't know if that's ever been confirmed. It's kind of rumory. So I don't really know. I think it was just really shitty police work either way.

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And only three days after this event, the police got a letter from the Zodiac. And this time, instead of a return address, which he never put one anyway, but in that spot, there was the Zodiac symbol. And that's how they knew it was from him. The letter talked about details from the killing of the cab driver that

only he would have known. And it also talked about how two cops totally messed up when they were out looking for the suspect. It said, P.S. Two cops pulled a goof about three minutes after I left the cab. I was walking down the hill to the park when this cop car pulled up

So good work, San Francisco Police Department.

So in the taxi, there actually was a bloody fingerprint. However, in the letter, the Zodiac also said that he left fake clues around to confuse them. And so the police thought that it probably wasn't the Zodiac's, which is confusing to me because I think it'd be pretty hard to leave a fake bloody fingerprint

You'd have to find someone, like, stick their hand in blood and then, like, put it down. It just doesn't make any sense. I feel like he probably left a fingerprint, realized it after the fact, and then messaged them saying, oh, I'm leaving fake clues, you know? Then two days later, the San Francisco Chronicle received a letter.

The writer of the letter claimed to be the murderer of the taxi cab driver and also included part of Paul's shirt. And the letter said, the San Francisco police could have caught me last night if they had searched the park properly instead of holding road races with their motorcycles, seeing who could make the most noise. The car drivers should have parked their cars and sat there quietly waiting for me to come out of cover. School children make nice targets.

I think I shall wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire and then pick off the kitties as they come bouncing out. And also included in the letter was a bunch of diagrams that showed bombs that could be used on a bus. So as you can imagine, as soon as the public found out that the Zodiac was threatening kids, people got really serious about it and took action.

We're trying to keep our routes. We change them practically every day. We won't have the same pattern. The police has been riding either ahead or behind and watching, keeping a close eye on everything.

A lot of people were literally just volunteering their time to be armed guards. They had small planes flying over the schools and police officers like guarding the doors and public interest in this case and public fear became so big that they decided to create a Zodiac task force. So an entire group that is their only job to track the Zodiac killer and try to find this guy. We have, of course, and have had in our department, uh,

Their reports sense their incidents and being so close to their area and feeling it might come over in our area. We, of course, have been working very closely with Vallejo in checking state hospital patients and former patients because this guy is a pathological,

And multiple police departments were part of this so that they could all work together and share information. Then on April 20th of 1970, the Zodiac sent another letter to the police, and this time it said, My name is Blaine.

and it had a code. They never figured it out though and letters kept coming occasionally until 1971. It then stopped for a few years and then picked up suddenly in 1974 and that is when he wrote his last known letter where he claimed that he actually killed a total of 37 people and he said that he made some of them look

like accidents. Now we have no idea if he's telling the truth or anything, but we do know that he killed a lot of people and could have made them all look like accidents or, you know, just random attacks. And there are people that are shot or killed all the time that goes unsolved. So it's possible that he committed a lot of those and he really could have killed 37 because I think 37 is kind of an interesting number to pick.

It's pretty close to the highest recorded number, which I believe is John Wayne Gacy for LAC United States. And I think his was 34, I want to say. So it sounds like reasonable. And I also think he probably would have exaggerated it if he was going to lie. It would have been like over 50. But the world may never know because there has been no activity from the Zodiac and no sign of him since. Chances are he's not even alive anymore.

But let's talk about some of the theories that people have about him, who he is, and what happened. Now, one thing that a lot of you probably have connected the Zodiac Killer to is memes regarding Ted Cruz. There are a ton of rumors on the internet that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. ♪

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at luckylandslots.com. No purchase necessary. VGW group. Void or prohibited by law. 18 plus. Terms and conditions apply. Now, I just wanted to get this one out of the way. Just wanted to talk about it real fast because I find it so fucking funny. Back in 2015, 2016-ish when he was running for president, a theory or rumor started floating around the internet that Ted Cruz is the Zodiac Killer. And

And the only evidence they had was that he looks like him, which he kind of does, but not really. And the Zodiac Killer had like light brown hair. Not only that, but it's just impossible because Ted Cruz wasn't even born until 1970. So unless he was killing people as an infant, then Ted Cruz can be ruled out. The next theory is that it was a man named Earl Van Best Jr. There's a man out there named Gary who believes his father, Earl Van Best Jr. was the Zodiac Killer.

And he actually published a book called "The Most Dangerous Animal of All" where he talks about the reasoning for believing that his father was a Zodiac Killer. And one of his biggest reasons is that he looked very similar to the composite sketch, which is...

Very weak. His name also matched one of the lengths of the codes for names. He even hired a handwriting specialist to look at the handwriting of the Zodiac Killer and compare it to his father Earl's marriage certificate and see if they were at all the same. And he claims that this expert said that they were. However, there are also a lot of reasons to believe that he is not the Zodiac Killer. First of all, the church that he got married in

the woman who worked there said that the signature on it was actually of the priest, not Earl. So unless the Zodiac Killer is this random priest, that whole theory makes no sense. You can't base it just off handwriting. Gary actually wanted to compare the DNA of his father to DNA that was on the stamp 'cause the Zodiac Killer was licking stamps.

But the police did not even want to let him have access to that and that was because there wasn't enough evidence of Earl possibly being guilty. Gary still thinks that his father is a Zodiac Killer. He thinks that the police are acting some kind of cover-up for it, which doesn't make any sense because why would the police care? Like they want to catch him too. Why would they want to cover it up? And that is not even a good way of doing it. The next possible suspect is Lawrence Kane

In 1962, a man named Kane was in a car accident. As a result of the accident, he actually got permanent brain damage. And a lot of the times when you have a serious brain injury, you can have personality changes. He was having, you know, just all types of mental issues. He felt very unstable. His friends and family said his behavior was just becoming more and

And a counselor even said that he was losing the ability for self-gratification. Also, his name, Kane, is four letters, so it would fit the Zodiac's code. Also, Darlene, who was a victim from the second murder, had a sister who claimed that Kane had followed and harassed Darlene in the weeks leading up to her death.

Additionally, in 1970, Kane moved to South Lake Tahoe and started working at a hotel. And that same year, a woman named Donna last disappeared from South Lake Tahoe area. And she also worked at the same hotel that Kane did. However,

there is something that makes people believe that it could not have been Kane, but this gets a little complicated here. So stay with me. On March 22nd, 1970, a woman named Kathleen Jones and her baby were driving on a San Francisco highway when another car pulled up beside her and motioned for her to pull over.

When she pulled over, the guy told her that something was wrong with her tire and he wouldn't mind helping her fix it. So she got out trusting him and he went to her tire and messed with it. You know, she thought he was fixing it. So he's like, all right, you're all set. So she gets back in the car, starts driving, goes a couple of feet and the tire just pops right off. So he had loosened the

wing nuts or lung lug nuts. I don't remember. So he loosened up some shit and the tire fell off. So then he was like, Oh, Oh my gosh, you know, let me just take you somewhere and we can get this put on by a professional. So he gets in the car with her. And as soon as he's in the car with her, he starts threatening her and she has a baby with her. Keep in mind. And he starts saying how I'm going to kill you. You're going to be next. I'm going to kill you. You should be scared. Your life's going to end all this creepy, creepy stuff.

However, the Zodiac killer somehow made an error on one of the highways and had to stop for a second to like turn around. And when he did this, Kathleen jumped out of the car with her baby and ran into this field nearby. And she just dropped to the ground like a pancake, flattened herself out and just laid there still, which is actually a good thing to do if it's at night in the dark.

Like if you lay, if you're wearing dark enough clothing, if you lay on the grass, you can sometimes just kind of stay hidden. Like you won't stand out in a big area. And he went out there looking for her with a flashlight, looked around and didn't see her. So he eventually gave up because there were other trucks and cars and he didn't want anyone to catch him. So Kathleen got away and she's one of the only women to have been with the Zodiac Killer. Shortly after this, a letter arrived to the police station saying, so I have a little list.

starting with the woman plus her baby that I gave a rather interesting ride. So this obviously matched up with Kathleen's story. So now they're thinking she was with Zodiac Kill.

And she was with him long enough to kind of memorize his face. When she was looking at a bunch of photos on a lineup, she picked out a picture of Lawrence Kane. So the police thought they finally had a legitimate suspect. They started investigating the idea of Lawrence being the Zodiac, but after investigating for a while, the police decided that he was not a suspect and ruled him out. Then there's Arthur Lee Allen, who is probably the most likely to be the Zodiac killer.

On the day of the third attack at Lake Berryessa in 1969, a man named Arthur told his family that he was going to go scuba diving at Lake Berryessa. And later that day when he came home, he was completely covered in blood. He also had a bloody knife in his car. So this would match up with Cecilia and Brian who were stabbed in

at the same place at the same time. Also, two years after those stabbings, some of Arthur's friends came to the police and told them that he actually used to call himself the Zodiac before the Zodiac started publicly calling himself that. It was like always a nickname he had for himself.

going way back. One of Arthur's friends said that he told him he was even planning on hunting people with a gun and a flashlight. So with all this new information, the police thought they had enough to at least bring Arthur in for questioning. And what's super strange is in the interview, one of the first things that Arthur said was how much he loves this one book. And the book is called The Most Dangerous Game. This book is about a man named Count Zaroff, who is all dressed in black and hunted couples.

Zaroff also often carried a gun and a knife similar to Zodiac. And the words "most dangerous game" happened to appear in one of the letters that the Zodiac wrote. During the interview, Arthur was also wearing a Zodiac watch which had the same symbol that the Zodiac killer used.

So because of all this, police decided to go ahead and search his trailer home. And this is disgusting. In his trailer, they found a bunch of animals, dead animals cut up into like little pieces, all separated in little bags in his freezer, like dissected animals. But the police were not able to hold him accountable because there was no solid evidence linking him to the Zodiac killings.

However, a little while later, Arthur was actually convicted of child molestation and he was sentenced to prison. He was sentenced to three years in jail and surprisingly, the letters from the Zodiac stopped while he was in jail. He spent three years in custody until he was released in August of 1977. And about six months after that, another Zodiac letter came that said, "I'm back." They did new DNA tests on this letter, but ultimately they weren't able to get any good leads or clues off of it. So the case just went cold once again.

So then 13 years went by. And finally, in August of 1991, in a San Jose jail, an inmate named Ralph Spinelli was trying to make a deal with police that he could get out of jail. He claimed that when Arthur was in jail, he told him that he actually was the one who killed Paul Stein, the cab driver.

driver. He decided to interview Michael McGough, the man who survived the second Zodiac attack because Michael was only one out of two people who happened to see the Zodiac without his mask on. I'm assuming that they couldn't get ahold of Kathleen or she didn't want any part of this. But when Michael was shown a lineup of pictures, he actually picked out Arthur. With this, the police were actually able to get another search investigation on his house and this time they found formulas for unconstructed

bombs, as well as tapes about the Zodiac Killer. But when they asked him and questioned him about it, he claimed to know nothing about Zodiac Killer killings. But they were able to get him to participate in a public interview. Regardless, police said they didn't have enough info or good evidence to prove that he had involvement, so he was never taken into custody. It's just kind of crazy to think about because

I mean, he really does seem like the most likely person here. The fact that he was picked up out of a lineup, that he was making bombs and he was sending in, you know, diagrams of bombs. So he clearly was working with bombs. It just kind of all lined up him being at that lake the same day. He fits the description. So you'd think that, you know, they would really have something here.

But the police said that they had reasons to believe it was not him. They actually compared his DNA to the DNA on the stamp that the Zodiac had sent in his letters, and it was not a match. Another thing that they were able to do was get a palm print off of one of the letters. And back in the, you know, back 60s, 70s, people weren't as aware of...

They knew about fingerprint technology and that your fingerprint could identify you, but not many people knew that there was a print right here. So when they were writing, it was touching the paper. So they were able to get one palm print of the Zodiac Killer. And when they matched it to Arthur's, it did not match. Arthur's fingerprint also didn't match the bloody fingerprint in the car.

They even had his handwriting analyzed and it was determined that his handwriting was not a match for the Zodiac Killer's. Also, he didn't really look too much like the composite sketch, definitely not enough. However, it is still widely believed by most people that he was the Zodiac Killer.

Arthur died in August of 1992 from a heart attack in his home. So decades go by and there is nothing on the Zodiac. But then in October of 2002, the San Francisco Police Department was able to extract partial DNA from one of the letters and salivas on the stamp. The latest update on this case was in May of 2018. It was announced that police are going to be trying to use new technology of DNA to somehow track the Zodiac Killer. We've talked about this a bunch on this channel.

The DNA world is just blowing up right now. Genetic testing is incredible what they're doing in the crime world with that kind of stuff. They brought the Golden State Killer into justice. They brought April Tinsley's killer into justice. Tons of cases have been broken with DNA and I think it's possible that this could happen with the Zodiac. But I have to say,

I don't even know if it was one person. It sounds to me like it could have even been like one person and then a copycat for part of it, but I have really no idea who it could have been. For some reason, there's a part of me that just thinks that he is just someone that has never been caught, that is completely off the radar. But I mean, it could be one of those suspects. So I don't know you guys, what do you think? Do you think this case will ever be solved? Do you think he's still alive? Who do you think he is if you have a good theory? Definitely let me know.

That is going to be it for me today, guys. Thank you for joining me for another episode and make sure you follow the show on Spotify and Apple podcasts. It really does help me out. If you want to watch the video version of this show, you can find it on my YouTube channel, which will be linked, or you can just search Kendall Ray. I will be back with another episode soon, but until then stay safe out there.

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