He spent his whole career guarding the game. Then he robbed it blind.

For more than a decade, McDonald's Monopoly turned a paper sticker peeled off a fries box into the most reliable lottery in America. Cash, cars, grand prizes worth a fortune. There was just one problem. The winners were never random. They were chosen, recruited, and coached by a single man.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, we dig into the McMillions scam, the audacious con that drained an estimated $24 million from the world's most famous fast food chain. At the center of it sits Jerome "Uncle Jerry" Jacobson, a former police officer hired by Simon Marketing as the director of security for the very game he would go on to rig. His one job was to protect the integrity of the contest. Instead, he quietly pocketed the most valuable winning pieces and handed them out like party favors.

What began in 1989 as a single $25,000 piece slipped to a relative "just to see if he could" grew into something almost too strange to believe. Jacobson built a sprawling underground network of paid fake winners that, by reporters' accounts, included associates of the Colombo crime family, psychics, strip club owners, convicted felons, drug traffickers, and an entire family of Mormons. Ordinary-looking people stood in front of cameras, smiled for press photos, and accepted prizes they had been paid to pretend they won.

Then there is the case's strangest wrinkle. In 1995, a $1 million winning piece arrived anonymously in the mail at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, postmarked Dallas. Game rules said prizes could not be transferred, but McDonald's chose to honor it anyway, paying the hospital in annual installments for years. It became one of the largest anonymous gifts in St. Jude's history. The catch? Jacobson later admitted he was the one who sent it.

The empire finally cracked in 2000 over a single anonymous tip. The FBI launched Operation Final Answer and made a discovery that read like a punchline. A startling number of "winners" with out-of-state addresses turned out to live within a short drive of Jacobson's South Carolina lake house. To catch the ring red-handed, agents partnered with McDonald's and staged a fake television commercial, filming fraudulent winners as they described, on camera, exactly how they had "won."

In August 2001, Jacobson and seven others were arrested. The case expanded to 21 indictments and, in the end, more than 50 people were convicted of mail fraud and conspiracy. Jacobson was sentenced to over three years in prison and ordered to pay millions in restitution. McDonald's, the actual victim here, went on to pay out additional prize money to the honest customers who had spent years buying fries against odds that were never real.

A heist. A children's hospital. A cast of co-conspirators stranger than any screenwriter would dare invent. This one has everything.

New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

Stay curious. Stay kind.

SOURCES:

United States v. Jerome P. Jacobson et al., U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Jacksonville Division, indictment and sentencing records, 2001 to 2003; Federal Bureau of Investigation, "Operation Final Answer," Jacksonville Field Office investigative records; United States Department of Justice, remarks of Attorney General John Ashcroft announcing the McDonald's Monopoly fraud arrests, August 22, 2001; affidavit and testimony of FBI Special Agent Richard "Rick" Dent, as documented in court proceedings and investigative reporting; account of FBI Special Agent Doug Mathews and the undercover "fake commercial" operation greenlit by Special Agent in Charge Tom Kneir, as documented in HBO's McMillion$ and contemporaneous reporting; Maysh, J., "How an Ex-Cop Rigged McDonald's Monopoly Game and Stole Millions," The Daily Beast, July 28, 2018; McMillion, HBO documentary series, six parts, 2020, directed by James Lee Hernandez and Brian Lazarte, executive produced by Mark Wahlberg, Stephen Levinson, and Archie Gips; "How the 'McMillions' scammers rigged McDonald's Monopoly game and stole $24 million," CNBC, February 7, 2020; "McScam: Report details how McDonald's Monopoly game was fixed by ex-cop" and "McDonald's spent $25 million apologizing for man's Monopoly scam," Fox News, 2018; "What Happened To Jerome Jacobson, Mastermind Of The McDonald's Monopoly Fraud?" and "Where Is Doug Mathews, FBI Special Agent Who Helped Crack The McDonald's Monopoly Fraud, Now?," Oxygen, 2023; "How McDonald's Found Out Its Wildly Popular Monopoly Game Was a Fraud," CrimeReads, August 2024; "Donor Turns Fast Food Into Big Bucks for Hospital," contemporaneous wire-service coverage of the anonymous $1 million game piece donated to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, with remarks from McDonald's U.S.A. president Edward H. Rensi, December 1995; interviews with Robin Colombo, widow of Colombo-family associate Gennaro "Jerry" Colombo, as reported by The Daily Beast; reporting on recruiters and claimed "winners," including Andrew Glomb, Mark Schwartz, Gloria Brown, Michael Hoover, and William "Buddy" Fisher; statements of McDonald's spokesperson Amy Murray and Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Devereaux, as documented in McMillion and trial reporting; trade-press reporting on the announced feature-film adaptation, with Ben Affleck and Matt Damon attached, 2018; McDonald's Corporation public statements on the 2025 return of the Monopoly promotion and its revised security and audit procedures; "McDonald's Monopoly," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, general reference for timeline, dollar figures, and case summary.

DISCLAIMER:

This episode discusses financial crime, including mail fraud and conspiracy, corporate fraud, organized crime and associations with the Colombo crime family, drug trafficking among certain participants, and the federal investigation, prosecution, and sentencing that followed. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal, financial, or investigative advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by McDonald's Corporation, Simon Marketing, Cyrk, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, HBO, Home Box Office, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Department of Justice, or any company, agency, production, or individual referenced in this episode.

Our account is reconstructed from publicly available sources, including federal court records, government statements, FBI affidavits as reported in court proceedings, investigative journalism, and documentary reporting. While we make every effort to present this story accurately and responsibly, reporting on historical criminal cases can contain errors, conflicting accounts, and details that evolve over time. We do not claim our narration to be a complete or definitive record, and listeners are encouraged to consult primary sources for verification. Dollar amounts, prize values, participant counts, and the precise timeline of events vary across sources and remain subject to some historical dispute.

All individuals named in this episode in connection with the fraud were charged through the United States justice system, and the convictions, sentences, and restitution orders referenced are matters of public record. References to any person, living or deceased, are made strictly in the context of documented reporting and adjudicated outcomes, and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm. No living individual is accused of any crime not already adjudicated, and any individual not convicted of a crime is presumed innocent.

The views and commentary expressed by the hosts are their own interpretations and opinions and do not constitute statements of fact or legal conclusions. Any third-party names, trademarks, and brands mentioned remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode is legal, financial, medical, or psychological advice.

Send us your theories

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Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

A twenty-three-year-old woman has never walked in public. Has never eaten without a feeding tube. Has leukemia, muscular dystrophy, epilepsy, brain damage from a premature birth. Has been to more than a hundred doctors. Has had her teeth removed and her head shaved weekly to mimic chemotherapy. Has spent her entire life in a wheelchair in a little pink house in Springfield, Missouri, where the whole town calls her mother a saint.

None of it is true.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel unpack the case of Gypsy Rose Blanchard: twenty-three years of Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another, known more commonly as Munchausen syndrome by proxy, and the murder of Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard on June 10, 2015.

It begins with a Facebook post no one who knew Dee Dee believed she could have written, a pink house found locked and cold, and a beloved local mother stabbed to death in her own bed. What turned a homicide into a statewide emergency was the daughter missing from it. An Amber Alert went out for a fragile, wheelchair-bound young woman who supposedly could not survive a day alone. Then deputies traced an IP address to an apartment in Big Bend, Wisconsin, knocked on the door, and Gypsy Rose Blanchard answered it standing up.

From there we walk the whole structure. How a healthy child was medicated, operated on, and convinced she was dying. How Hurricane Katrina conveniently erased a paper trail. How more than a hundred doctors were paraded past the same impossible case, and how the one pediatric neurologist who suspected the truth, Dr. Bernardo Flasterstein, wrote it in his notes and never reported it. How a girl who taught herself she could walk by sneaking to the kitchen at night met Nicholas Godejohn online, and how the only exit she could imagine had a corpse in it.

We do not stop at the verdicts. We get into why. The clinical shape of the disorder, the unsettling fact that the reward is sympathy rather than money, and the generational thread running back to Dee Dee's own mother, Emma Pitre. We talk about trauma bonding, about why Gypsy still refuses to call her mother a monster, and about the question the case actually leaves open now that the girl raised inside a lie is raising a real daughter of her own.

A victim and a co-conspirator. Both true at once. This is the full story.

New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

State of Missouri v. Gypsy Rose Blanchard, Greene County Circuit Court, guilty plea to second-degree murder and sentencing, July 2016; State of Missouri v. Nicholas Godejohn, Greene County Circuit Court, conviction for first-degree murder and armed criminal action (November 2018) and sentencing to life without parole (2019); plea-agreement reporting involving Greene County Prosecutor Dan Patterson; Greene County Sheriff's Office incident and case records and public statements of Sheriff Jim Arnott, June 2015; Dean, M., "Dee Dee Wanted Her Daughter To Be Sick, Gypsy Wanted Her Mom Murdered," BuzzFeed News, 2016; Mommy Dead and Dearest, HBO documentary, 2017, directed by Erin Lee Carr; The Act, Hulu limited series, 2019; Gypsy's Revenge, Investigation Discovery, 2018; The Prison Confessions of Gypsy Rose Blanchard and Gypsy Rose: Life After Lock Up, Lifetime, 2024; Blanchard, G.R., with Moore, M. and Matrisciani, M., My Time to Stand: A Memoir, 2024; Gypsy Rose Blanchard, ABC News and ABC 20/20 interviews, including "Gypsy Blanchard on what happened the night her mother was stabbed to death," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ysUtZexaZTI; examination findings and the Munchausen-by-proxy suspicion of pediatric neurologist Dr. Bernardo Flasterstein (2007), as documented in court proceedings and investigative reporting; interviews with Rod Blanchard and Kristy Blanchard, Bobby Pitre family interviews, and reporting on Emma Pitre and Claude Pitre across multiple outlets; Meadow, R., "Munchausen syndrome by proxy: the hinterland of child abuse," The Lancet, 1977; Bass, C., and Glaser, D., "Early recognition and management of fabricated or induced illness in children," The Lancet, 2014; Mart, E.G., Munchausen's Syndrome (by Proxy) Reconsidered, 2002; American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC) practice guidelines on Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another; reporting on Gypsy Rose Blanchard's December 2023 parole from Chillicothe Correctional Center, her Ehlers-Danlos syndrome disclosure, and the December 2024 birth of her daughter, Aurora Raina Urker, across multiple outlets, 2023 to 2025.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode discusses prolonged child abuse, Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another (Munchausen syndrome by proxy), medically unnecessary procedures and induced illness inflicted on a child, physical restraint, coercive control, and homicide. It also references autism spectrum disorder and Ehlers-Danlos syndrome. Please take care while listening. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, legal, or psychological advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, family member, hospital, agency, network, or production referenced in this episode, including HBO, Hulu, Lifetime, Investigation Discovery, or any party connected to the productions named above.

Our account is reconstructed from publicly available sources, including court records, sworn testimony, law enforcement statements, peer-reviewed and clinical literature, investigative journalism, documentary reporting, and Gypsy Rose Blanchard's own public statements, interviews, and 2024 memoir. Characterizations of Clauddine "Dee Dee" Blanchard's psychological history reflect published clinical research on Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another together with family interviews, and do not constitute a formal posthumous diagnosis. The generational history of the Pitre family is drawn from family interviews as reported by multiple outlets. Patient counts, procedural records, and the precise timeline of events vary across sources and remain subject to some historical dispute.

Nicholas Godejohn was convicted of first-degree murder and is serving a life sentence, and that conviction is a matter of public record. Gypsy Rose Blanchard pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, served her sentence, and was released on parole. References to any person, living or deceased, are made strictly in the context of documented reporting and adjudicated outcomes, and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm. No living individual is accused of any crime not already adjudicated. The views and commentary expressed by the hosts are their own interpretations and opinions and do not constitute statements of fact or legal conclusions. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode is medical, legal, or psychological advice.

Send us your theories

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🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

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Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

A sheriff leaves two suspects alone in an interrogation room and steps out. The recorder is still running, and they have no idea. He is certain that the moment the door clicks shut, the act will drop. Instead the younger man is sobbing, and the older one, trying to hold them both together, says quietly to an empty room: when they come back, I want to be ready for them.

Not if. When.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel head to Pascagoula, Mississippi, on the night of October 11, 1973, for the case many serious researchers still call the most credible alien abduction ever documented.

The setup is almost aggressively ordinary. A 42-year-old shipyard worker and Vietnam veteran named Charles Hickson takes a 19-year-old coworker, Calvin Parker, fishing on the west bank of the Pascagoula River. Then comes a sound with no name, a blue flashing light, and an oval craft hovering silently above the water. What the two men describe next is the detail that makes investigators sit up. Not the sleek grey visitors of the movies, but roughly five-foot beings with wrinkled skin, no necks, slit mouths, and pincers for hands, gliding inches above the ground. Nobody workshopping a hoax in 1973 invents crab claws.

We trace the whole night and everything after it. The paralysis. The robotic eye. The twenty missing minutes. The drive to Keesler Air Force Base, which wanted no part of it, and on to Jackson County Sheriff Fred Diamond, who was sure he had a hoax until he played back a tape of two men falling apart in a room they thought was empty. We cover the polygraphs both men passed, and the two credentialed scientists who came to investigate and left as believers: Dr. J. Allen Hynek, the astronomer who had spent years as the Air Force's own debunker, and Dr. James Harder of APRO.

Then we widen the lens, because Hickson and Parker were not alone. 1973 was one of the largest UFO waves in American history, and just one week later four trained Army Reserve crewmen over Mansfield, Ohio, reported a craft, a green beam, and a helicopter that climbed on its own with the controls still pointed down. The Army's official conclusion: unknown.

And we close where the episode really lives, with three uncomfortable frameworks for why this keeps happening. The psychology of a brain built to see predators that may not be there. The sociology of UFO waves that map almost perfectly onto eras of national crisis. And the theological problem nobody likes to sit with: if something out there is studying us, then we are not the apex, and not the center. We are the fish.

A river. A pier. A recorder running in an empty room. This is the Pascagoula Abduction.

New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

Jackson County, Mississippi Sheriff's Department records and the secretly recorded audio of Charles Hickson and Calvin Parker, October 11, 1973, and the account of Sheriff Fred Diamond; transcript of the Keesler Air Force Base field interrogation of Hickson and Parker, October 12, 1973; statements and field investigation of Dr. J. Allen Hynek, astronomer at Northwestern University, former scientific consultant to the U.S. Air Force's Project Blue Book and founder of the Center for UFO Studies (1973); Hynek, J.A., The UFO Experience: A Scientific Inquiry, 1972, for his close-encounter classification system; investigation and hypnotic-regression sessions conducted by Dr. James Harder of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO), University of California; Hickson, C., and Mendez, W., UFO Contact at Pascagoula, 1983; Parker, C., Pascagoula: The Closest Encounter, My Story, 2018, and Pascagoula: The Story Continues, New Evidence and New Witnesses, 2019, Flying Disk Press, with UFO researcher Philip Mantle; Clark, J., The UFO Encyclopedia, entry on the Pascagoula encounter; contemporaneous wire-service and local reporting, 1973, and Charles Hickson's 1973 appearance on The Dick Cavett Show; the Coyne Helicopter Incident, Mansfield, Ohio, October 18, 1973, as documented in U.S. Army Reserve reporting and the account of Captain Lawrence Coyne and crew; general documentation of the 1973 United States UFO flap; regional historical accounts of the Pascagoula River, the "Singing River" acoustic phenomenon, and the legend of the Pascagoula people; statement of Father José Gabriel Funes, director of the Vatican Observatory, in L'Osservatore Romano, 2008, regarding the compatibility of extraterrestrial life with Catholic doctrine; 50th-anniversary retrospective coverage of the Pascagoula case in Mississippi and national outlets, 2023.

DISCLAIMER:

Content note: This episode explores an alleged alien abduction and discusses claims of non-consensual physical examination, fear and trauma responses, alcohol consumption, and religious, theological, and philosophical questions about humanity's place in the universe. It also references an Indigenous historical account connected to the Pascagoula River.

This episode examines an unexplained event and a range of unverified claims. The accounts described, including witness testimony, polygraph results, and statements obtained under hypnosis, are presented as reported and do not constitute proof of any fact. Polygraph examination and hypnotic regression are not scientifically reliable methods of establishing truth, and material recalled under hypnosis can be shaped by suggestion. The cause of the Pascagoula event is officially unexplained, and the existence of extraterrestrial life remains scientifically unestablished. Nothing in this episode should be taken as a claim that any specific explanation has been confirmed.

Our account is reconstructed from publicly available sources, including law enforcement records, interrogation and recording transcripts, the published accounts of the witnesses, the statements of the scientific investigators involved, and contemporaneous press reporting. Details, measurements, and timelines vary across sources and across the witnesses' own retellings over the decades.

The psychological, sociological, theological, and philosophical commentary offered by the hosts reflects their own interpretations and opinions. It is not a statement of fact, a clinical or scientific conclusion, or an authoritative representation of any religious tradition, institution, or community, including any reference to Catholic, Christian, Islamic, or Buddhist belief. References to the Pascagoula people and the Singing River reflect regional folklore and historical accounts and may not represent a single authoritative version of that history. The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, agency, network, publisher, or institution referenced in this episode. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes scientific, medical, legal, or psychological advice.

Send us your theories

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🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

⭐ Loved this one? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — it's the fastest way to help us grow.

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Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

A 26-year-old mother of five walks into a respected Montreal hospital because she cannot sleep. She has postpartum depression. The most decorated psychiatrist alive puts her into a drug-induced coma for eighty-six days, delivers more than a hundred rounds of electroshock, and loops a recording of her own voice under her pillow for weeks. When she wakes, she does not know her name, her husband, or that she has five children. She never gets a single memory back.

This was not an interrogation. It was supposed to be treatment.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel close their three-part series on MKUltra with its darkest chapter: "The Sleep Room," the story of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron and the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal.

By the late 1950s, Cameron was the most decorated psychiatrist in the Western world, president of the American, Canadian, and World psychiatric associations all at once. He also believed he could cure mental illness by erasing a person's mind entirely and writing a new one on top, a two-stage process he called depatterning and psychic driving. In 1957 the CIA found out, and through a front foundation tied to MKUltra, it started writing him checks.

We walk through what happened inside that hospital. The coma ward patients called the Sleep Room. Electroshock at many times the standard voltage, two and three times a day. Tape loops played hundreds of thousands of times into the ears of people who could no longer remember their own names. Sensory deprivation lasting weeks. Curare used to paralyze patients so they could not pull the headphones off. And the people it was done to: Velma Orlikow, a politician's wife who came home unable to recognize her own daughter and later said she had been treated like just a fly; Robert Logie, an eighteen-year-old sent in for a sore leg; and others whose lives simply did not come back.

But the reason this is the finale, and the reason it should keep you up, is what came after. Cameron's research did not die with him on a hiking trail in 1967. It was cited by name in the CIA's 1963 KUBARK interrogation manual, exported to the dirty wars of Latin America, rewritten in 1983, and echoed almost line for line in the enhanced-interrogation program after September 11: the black sites, Abu Ghraib, and the techniques the 2014 Senate report documented in detail and concluded produced nothing. The files were burned in 1973. The recipe survived in the cabinet next door. As we record this, a class action over the Montreal experiments is moving through the Quebec courts.

This is the story of how a program that supposedly ended never really did. This is "The Sleep Room."

This is the final part of our three-part MKUltra series. New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), hearings and reports on the CIA's MKUltra program, 1975 to 1976; Rockefeller Commission Report, 1975; surviving MKUltra financial records recovered under the Freedom of Information Act, including documentation of Subproject 68 funding routed through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology; Marks, J., The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, 1979; Collins, A., In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada, 1988; the published research of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron on "depatterning" and "psychic driving," including papers in the American Journal of Psychiatry; Orlikow v. United States, U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, filed 1980 and settled 1988, brought by Velma Orlikow and other former Allan Memorial Institute patients; firsthand accounts of Velma Orlikow, Robert Logie, Linda MacDonald, and other patients as documented in litigation, journalism, and CBC's The Fifth Estate reporting beginning 1980; the Montreal Experiments class action authorized by the Quebec Superior Court (Justice Dominique Poulin, July 31, 2025) against the Government of Canada, the Royal Victoria Hospital, and McGill University, with lead plaintiffs Lana Ponting and Julie Tanny; the 1986 George Cooper report to the Canadian government on Cameron's depatterning work; the CIA KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, 1963, and the Human Resource Exploitation Training Manual, 1983, both declassified in 1997 following Baltimore Sun reporting; documentation of CIA-linked interrogation training in Latin America and the Honduran intelligence unit known as Battalion 3-16; U.S. Department of Defense memoranda authorizing "enhanced interrogation techniques," 2002; the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Study of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, executive summary released December 2014; reporting and litigation concerning contract psychologists James Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, including Salim v. Mitchell; obituary coverage of Donald Ewen Cameron, 1967.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode describes nonconsensual medical and psychiatric experimentation, including drug-induced comas, high-voltage electroconvulsive treatment, sensory deprivation, chemically induced paralysis, and the psychological destruction of vulnerable patients, among them new mothers, a teenager, and, by some accounts, children and a pregnant woman. It also discusses torture, enhanced interrogation, and a death associated with the MKUltra program. Please take care while listening. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, agency, hospital, university, government, or institution referenced in this episode, including the Central Intelligence Agency, McGill University, the Royal Victoria Hospital, the Allan Memorial Institute, the Government of Canada, or the U.S. Department of Defense.

Our account is drawn from publicly available sources, including declassified U.S. government records, Congressional and commission reports, court filings and settlements, surviving financial documentation, the published research of those involved, investigative journalism, and the firsthand accounts of patients and their families. Many key MKUltra records were destroyed in 1973, and as a result figures such as patient counts, treatment totals, dates, and funding amounts vary across sources and remain incomplete or disputed. Where exact numbers are uncertain, we have tried to say so.

The allegations at the center of the ongoing Montreal Experiments class action have not been decided on the merits, and the defendants have disputed liability. A 1986 Canadian government review reached its own conclusions regarding legal responsibility. References to any person, living or deceased, are made in the context of documented history, public records, and reporting, and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm.

The connections this episode draws between Cameron's research and later interrogation programs reflect the documented citation of that research in declassified manuals together with the hosts' own analysis and interpretation. Characterizations of past and present United States and Canadian government policy, and of specific administrations, are the hosts' opinions and commentary, are current as of the recording date, and are not statements of established fact or legal conclusions. Listeners are encouraged to consult the primary sources cited above and to draw their own conclusions. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

Send us your theories

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🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

⭐ Loved this one? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — it's the fastest way to help us grow.

📸 Follow us on TikTok and Instagram for mugshots, mysteries, paranormal, conspiracies, and everything Gabriel said that didn't make the final cut.

Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

A 42-year-old man checks himself into a New York psychiatric hospital for depression after his marriage ends. Five weeks later a doctor injects him with 450 milligrams of an Army chemical-warfare compound, a mescaline derivative no human had ever been given at that dose. Two hours and twenty-two minutes later he is dead. The death certificate blames his heart. It will keep blaming his heart for twenty-two years.

His name was Harold Blauer. He thought he had checked in for a broken heart.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel continue their three-part MKUltra series with Part 2, "The Names," the episode about the people the program actually happened to.

The CIA burned most of the MKUltra records in 1973, so what survives is mostly receipts. This episode is about the names that survived anyway, because the victims sued, or because their families refused to stay quiet. We start with Harold Blauer, dead in a hospital that was supposed to help him. Then Stanley Glickman, a 26-year-old American painter in Paris who accepted a drink from a stranger at a café in 1952, allegedly laced with LSD, and spent the next forty years a recluse who never painted again.

We go inside Operation Midnight Climax, the CIA safehouses in Greenwich Village and San Francisco where a gin-soaked federal agent named George Hunter White sat behind a one-way mirror and watched men, lured back by paid sex workers and dosed without their knowledge, come apart in real time. We cover Edgewood Arsenal, where the Army exposed more than 7,000 soldiers to LSD, sarin, VX, and a battlefield incapacitant called BZ under the cover of testing "equipment." And we run an inventory of the program's stranger corners: hypnosis experiments aimed at producing an assassin, attempts at remote brain control, a plan to weaponize dolphins, and a late-career detour into psychics and the occult.

Then we end in two places that resist easy answers. Pont-Saint-Esprit, the French village that descended into mass hallucination in 1951, officially blamed on contaminated bread but tied by one investigative journalist to a covert LSD field test. And a small house in Maryland, where the sister-in-law of a dead scientist woke at the exact moment he went out a tenth-floor window, and swore for the rest of her life that he had come to say goodbye.

Multiply every name we can give you by all the ones we cannot. That is the program. Part 3, "The Sleep Room," is next.

This is Part 2 of our three-part MKUltra series. New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), hearings and reports on the CIA's MKUltra program, 1975 to 1976; Rockefeller Commission Report, 1975; Joint Hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, "Project MKULTRA, The CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification," August 1977; surviving MKUltra financial records recovered under the Freedom of Information Act; Marks, J., The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, 1979; Kinzer, S., Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, 2019; Barrett v. United States, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, the litigation over the 1953 death of Harold Blauer following injection of the Army Chemical Corps compound EA-1298 at the New York State Psychiatric Institute; Kronisch v. United States, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, 1998, the litigation brought by Stanley Glickman and continued by his estate; documentation of Operation Midnight Climax and the CIA safehouses operated by federal narcotics agent George Hunter White, including White's own diaries; records and reporting on the U.S. Army's Edgewood Arsenal human experimentation program, circa 1955 to 1975, and the related veterans' class action Vietnam Veterans of America v. Central Intelligence Agency, filed 2009; MKUltra subproject documentation concerning hypnosis research associated with CIA officer Morse Allen, bioelectric and remote-influence research, and research by John Lilly into dolphin cognition; accounts of the program later described as "Operation Often" and CIA interest in parapsychology and the occult, as described in published histories; Albarelli, H.P., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments, 2009, and Kaplan, S., Le Pain Maudit, regarding the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit mass poisoning; BBC reporting on the Pont-Saint-Esprit case, 2010; the Olson family's account of the events surrounding Frank Olson's 1953 death.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode describes nonconsensual drugging and chemical experimentation, a death resulting from a government experiment, covert dosing of unwitting civilians and soldiers, the use of sex work as an operational tool, a mass-poisoning event, severe mental health crises, and references to suicide. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, agency, government, company, or institution referenced in this episode, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Army, the New York State Psychiatric Institute, the University of Hawaii, or Sandoz.

Our account is drawn from publicly available sources, including declassified U.S. government records, Congressional and commission reports, court filings and rulings, surviving MKUltra financial documentation, published histories, and investigative journalism. Because the CIA destroyed most MKUltra records in 1973, key figures such as the number of subjects, dates, dosages, and program details are incomplete, vary across sources, and in many cases cannot be confirmed. Where the record is uncertain, we have tried to say so.

Some events discussed here remain genuinely contested. In particular, the cause of the 1951 Pont-Saint-Esprit poisoning is disputed: most academic sources attribute it to foodborne contamination, while the theory that it resulted from a covert CIA LSD test comes principally from one journalist's work and has been widely characterized as unproven. Claims regarding parapsychology research, dolphin weaponization, and certain other subprojects are likewise drawn from incomplete records and reporting of varying reliability. We present these as claims and disputes, not as established fact, and allegations raised in litigation that was not resolved on the merits remain allegations.

The supernatural account near the end of the episode is related as a family member's personal recollection and is offered as such, not as a verifiable event. References to any person, living or deceased, are made in the context of documented history, public records, and reporting, and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm. The commentary and interpretations offered by the hosts are their own opinions and do not constitute statements of established fact or legal conclusions. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

Send us your theories

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🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

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Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

A biological warfare scientist goes out a tenth-floor hotel window at 2:30 in the morning. The man sharing his room, a CIA chemist, does not call an ambulance or the police. He calls his boss at the agency. The official verdict is suicide, and it holds for twenty-two years. What the family does not learn until a footnote in a government report is that nine days earlier, the CIA had secretly dosed him with LSD.

His name was Frank Olson. This is where MKUltra begins.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel open their three-part series on MKUltra, the CIA's two-decade program to figure out how to control the human mind. Part 1, "Nine Days," is named for how long Frank Olson lived after a spiked after-dinner drink.

We set the stage first: 1953, a young CIA with effectively no oversight, a Cold War panic that the Soviets and Chinese had cracked brainwashing, Operation Paperclip quietly importing scientists who had already experimented on humans, and a military that had already secretly sprayed bacteria over San Francisco in Operation Sea-Spray. Into that climate, the agency discovered LSD. On April 13, 1953, director Allen Dulles authorized MKUltra and handed it to a soft-spoken chemist named Sidney Gottlieb, a man who milked his own goats and folk-danced on weekends and spent his workdays designing poisons and mind-control experiments.

Then we get to Frank. A senior scientist at Fort Detrick's biological warfare division who had started, quietly, to want out. In November 1953, at a remote lakeside retreat, Gottlieb spiked the group's Cointreau with LSD and told them only afterward. Frank never recovered. Within days the agency had him in New York, ostensibly for treatment from a CIA-funded allergist, and on the night before Thanksgiving he was dead on the sidewalk outside the Statler Hotel. Hours earlier he had washed his socks and hung them to dry.

We follow the thread his son Eric has pulled for fifty years. The 1975 footnote that finally told the family the truth. The presidential apology and the settlement. The 1994 exhumation, where forensic scientist James Starrs found a head wound he called rankly and starkly suggestive of homicide. The 1996 Manhattan homicide investigation that remains technically open. And the CIA's own declassified manual describing how to stage a simple assassination by throwing a drugged man from a height.

Did Frank Olson jump, or was he helped out the window because he knew too much? That question opens the series. Parts 2 and 3 follow.

This is Part 1 of our three-part MKUltra series. New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

U.S. Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (the Church Committee), hearings and reports on the CIA's MKUltra program, 1975 to 1976; Rockefeller Commission Report (Commission on CIA Activities Within the United States), 1975; Joint Hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and the Subcommittee on Health and Scientific Research, "Project MKULTRA, The CIA's Program of Research in Behavioral Modification," August 1977; surviving MKUltra records recovered under the Freedom of Information Act, including documentation of Subproject 4, the John Mulholland deception manual declassified in 2007, and funding routed through the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology; Marks, J., The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, 1979; Kinzer, S., Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control, 2019; Albarelli, H.P., A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments, 2009; the account and advocacy of Eric Olson and the Olson family regarding the death of Frank Olson; the 1994 exhumation and forensic examination led by Professor James E. Starrs of George Washington University; the Manhattan District Attorney's homicide investigation opened in 1996 and the reclassification of the death from "suicide" to "undetermined"; documentation of the 1975 White House meeting and apology and the subsequent congressional settlement with the Olson family; records of Project Bluebird (1950) and Project Artichoke (1951); historical accounts of Operation Paperclip and the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency; documentation of the U.S. Army's 1950 Operation Sea-Spray over San Francisco involving the bacterium Serratia marcescens, and the related case Nevin v. United States; the CIA's declassified "A Study of Assassination" manual; reporting on Sidney Gottlieb's role in CIA assassination planning, including the 1960 Lumumba and Castro plots.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode discusses the suspicious death of a government scientist, suicide, possible homicide, nonconsensual drugging, secret human and civilian experimentation, biological warfare research, and assassination planning. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, agency, government, or institution referenced in this episode, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the U.S. Army, or Fort Detrick.

Our account is drawn from publicly available sources, including declassified U.S. government records, Congressional and commission reports, court filings, forensic findings, published histories, and the public statements of the Olson family. Because the CIA destroyed most MKUltra records in 1973, key details, dates, dosages, and figures are incomplete, vary across sources, and in some cases cannot be confirmed. Where the record is uncertain, we have tried to say so.

The cause of Frank Olson's death is officially undetermined. The original 1953 ruling was suicide; a 1994 forensic examination commissioned by his family concluded the evidence was suggestive of homicide; and a homicide investigation opened in 1996 has not resulted in any charge. The CIA's stated position is that Olson died by suicide following an adverse reaction to LSD. We present the competing accounts and the family's allegations as exactly that, allegations and disputed interpretations, and not as established fact. No living individual is accused of any crime, and references to any person, living or deceased, are made in the context of documented history, public records, and reporting, and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm.

The commentary and interpretations offered by the hosts are their own opinions and do not constitute statements of established fact or legal conclusions. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

Send us your theories

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🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

⭐ Loved this one? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — it's the fastest way to help us grow.

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Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

You are lying in a hospital bed on a hilltop above Louisville in 1932. Every window in the building is open, because your doctors believe freezing air is medicine, and there is actual snow on your blanket. You have tuberculosis. You have been here for months, maybe years, and you cannot leave. Every few days, someone on your floor stops coughing, and you have learned that the silence means they are dead. You never see the bodies go. Five hundred feet below you, a tunnel with a motorized cart carries them down the hill and out of sight. The staff calls it the supply tunnel. Everyone else calls it the body chute.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel walk Waverly Hills Sanatorium, the most investigated haunted building in America, and use it to ask a harder question: why do we believe the dead can linger, and what does the science actually say?

We start with the history, because the haunting is downstream of a catastrophe. At the turn of the twentieth century tuberculosis was the leading cause of death in the United States, and Louisville, sitting in the damp Ohio River Valley, had one of the worst rates in the country. We trace the sanatorium from its 1910 origins to the massive 1926 building, the open-air "fresh air" cure, the brutal escalation to artificial pneumothorax and rib-removing thoracoplasty, the self-contained quarantine city with its own zip code, and the roughly six thousand documented deaths, not the wildly inflated sixty thousand you will see online. We cover the body chute, the disputed legend of Room 502, the building's grim second life as the Woodhaven geriatric center, and its abandonment.

Then we do the part most ghost shows skip. We lay out the skeptic's toolkit in full: pareidolia, confirmation bias, Terror Management Theory, carbon monoxide, and infrasound, the Vic Tandy discovery that sound below human hearing can vibrate the eyeball and manufacture dread and shadow figures. And then we lay out the believer's evidence with equal seriousness: Dr. Sam Parnia's AWARE studies on awareness during cardiac arrest, and the University of Virginia's decades of research into young children who report verifiable memories of past lives. We sit in the uncomfortable middle, and we introduce ostension, the idea that walking into a legend with a camera makes you a participant in it.

Finally, we walk the floors. The baking bread no oven is making. The blonde woman strangers describe identically. Timmy and the rolling ball on the third floor. The Creeper on the fourth. The running nurse and the singing children on the roof who were brought up there to be healed and were not.

Six thousand people died here in agony. If any building on earth has earned the right to be haunted, it is this one. This is Waverly Hills.

New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

Records of the Board of Tuberculosis Hospital of Louisville and Jefferson County and the history of the Waverly Hills property, including its naming after Sir Walter Scott's Waverley novels and the schoolteacher Lizzie Lee Harris; architectural history of the 1926 main building designed by D.X. Murphy; filed death-certificate records dating to 1911 and the death-toll estimate of approximately six thousand attributed to former assistant medical director Dr. J. Frank Stewart, including the single-year peak of 152 deaths; medical-historical sources on tuberculosis, the "White Plague," and period treatments including heliotherapy, artificial pneumothorax, and thoracoplasty; Schatz, A., and Waksman, S., the 1943 discovery of streptomycin and the 1946 to 1948 trials establishing it as an effective tuberculosis antibiotic; the sanatorium's 1961 closure, its 1962 to 1982 operation as the Woodhaven Geriatric Center, and the building's purchase and restoration by Charlie and Tina Mattingly in 2001; Tandy, V., and Lawrence, T., "The Ghost in the Machine," Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 1998, and Tandy's subsequent infrasound research at Coventry and Edinburgh's Mary King's Close; the 2003 "Infrasonic" concert study by the National Physical Laboratory and Sarah Angliss; Solomon, S., Greenberg, J., and Pyszczynski, T., research on Terror Management Theory; a 1921 carbon monoxide hallucination case reported in the American Journal of Ophthalmology; Parnia, S., et al., the AWARE and AWARE II studies on awareness during resuscitation, NYU Langone Health; the University of Virginia School of Medicine Division of Perceptual Studies and its case archive of children reporting past-life memories; paranormal-investigation accounts and televised features including Ghost Hunters, Ghost Adventures, and Kindred Spirits; the folklore concept of ostension as used in contemporary legend studies.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode discusses fatal disease, invasive and experimental medical procedures, child illness and death, institutional neglect and abuse, and references to suicide. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, institution, owner, university, or production referenced in this episode, including the current owners of Waverly Hills Sanatorium or any of the television programs named.

This episode examines paranormal claims alongside documented history and peer-reviewed science. The reported hauntings, apparitions, recordings, and personal experiences are presented as accounts and claims, not as proof of life after death. The scientific research discussed, including studies of infrasound, near-death awareness, and reported past-life memories, is presented as ongoing and, in some cases, contested inquiry; it does not establish the existence of ghosts, an afterlife, or reincarnation, and the hosts' own conclusions are their personal beliefs rather than scientific fact.

Our historical account is drawn from publicly available sources, including hospital and public-health records, death-certificate-based estimates, medical history, and journalism. Figures and dates vary across sources, and we have tried to flag where they do; in particular, popular death-toll claims far above the documented record are not supported. Several of the building's most famous stories, including the legend of the nurse said to have died in Room 502, are undocumented folklore that we present as legend rather than established fact.

References to any person, living or deceased, are made in the context of documented history, public records, and reporting, and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes medical, psychological, or legal advice.

Send us your theories

Support the show

🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

⭐ Loved this one? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — it's the fastest way to help us grow.

📸 Follow us on TikTok and Instagram for mugshots, mysteries, paranormal, conspiracies, and everything Gabriel said that didn't make the final cut.

Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

The Zodiac is long gone, or quietly elderly, and his case is still open. More than two thousand five hundred suspects have been formally investigated. Not one has ever been charged. And then, in December 2025, a self-taught codebreaker stands up and claims the one cipher nobody ever solved has finally given up a name, and that the name ties the Zodiac to a murder committed more than twenty years before he ever killed anyone.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel close their four-part Zodiac series with the finale: the suspects, the newest twist, and the question of whether the most famous uncaught killer in American history actually won.

We start with the names. Arthur Leigh Allen, the prime suspect the entire investigation organized itself around for decades, who fit the profile almost perfectly and whose DNA and fingerprints never matched. Lawrence Kane, named by the one officer who saw the Zodiac face to face as the closest match he ever saw, and left in Allen's shadow. Earl Van Best Jr., accused by his own son in a bestselling book that later came apart. Gary Francis Poste, put forward by a team of former investigators in 2021. And Richard Gaikowski, the counterculture journalist who fit and was never cleared. Five men who drew years of serious attention, and not one who produced a charge.

Then we get to what dropped in December 2025. A self-taught codebreaker named Alex Baber claims he solved the Z13, the thirteen-character cipher prefaced with "My name is" that had resisted everyone for half a century. The name he found: Marvin Merrill, a decades-long alias of a man named Marvin Margolis, a Navy corpsman and premed student who was an early suspect in the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, the Black Dahlia, a woman he had briefly lived with. A former NSA chief codebreaker says the solution holds up. A dying man's sketch titled "Elizabeth," with the word Zodiac hidden in the shading, sits at the center of it. Some retired detectives call the cases solved. Skeptics say he reached the conclusion first and built the evidence to fit. The FBI has confirmed nothing.

And then the wrinkle that makes the whole thing dizzying. Baber is not the only person to independently conclude the Zodiac and the Black Dahlia killer were the same man. Former LAPD detective Steve Hodel reached that same conclusion years earlier and named an entirely different person: his own father, Dr. George Hodel. Same theory. Two completely different suspects. We sit with what that convergence does, and does not, prove.

We close on the argument that this case was never really about the body count. Five people. What made the Zodiac immortal was the writing, the letters and ciphers that turned murder into a media strategy every later killer would borrow. So we end by naming the five who actually matter: David Faraday, seventeen. Betty Lou Jensen, sixteen. Darlene Ferrin, twenty-two. Cecelia Shepard, twenty-two. Paul Stine, twenty-nine. Plus a bonus breakdown of what David Fincher's 2007 film got right and wrong.

This is the end of the game. For now. This is the Zodiac.

This is the finale of our four-part Zodiac series. New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

Case records and reporting on the Zodiac investigation across the San Francisco Police Department, the Vallejo Police Department, the Napa County Sheriff's Office, the Solano County Sheriff's Office, and the FBI; Graysmith, R., Zodiac, 1986, and Zodiac Unmasked, 2002; reporting on the 1969 solution of the 408-character cipher by Donald and Bettye Harden; the December 2020 solution of the 340-character cipher by David Oranchak, Sam Blake, and Jarl Van Eycke, confirmed by the FBI; the case for and against Arthur Leigh Allen, including the Don Cheney account, the negative DNA and fingerprint comparisons, and the investigative work of Detective Dave Toschi; suspect material on Lawrence Kane, including the identification by Officer Don Fouke; Stewart, G., The Most Dangerous Animal of All, 2014, and the subsequent investigative debunking of its central handwriting claim; the 2021 Case Breakers announcement naming Gary Francis Poste; suspect reporting on Richard Gaikowski; the December 2025 Los Angeles Times reporting on Alex Baber of Cold Case Consultants of America and his claimed Z13 solution "Marvin Merrill," identifying Marvin Skipton Margolis, including the review by former NSA chief codebreaker Ed Giorgio, the assessments of retired detectives Rick Jackson and Mitzi Roberts, the skepticism of researcher Larry Harnisch and others, the related "Killer in the Code" podcast, and the response of Margolis's family; Hodel, S., Black Dahlia Avenger, 2003, and Most Evil, regarding Dr. George Hill Hodel and the 1950 LAPD wiretap transcripts; historical reporting on the 1947 murder of Elizabeth Short, the "Black Dahlia"; Fincher, D., Zodiac, 2007, and the director's public comments on the film's "emotional truth"; related portrayals and coverage including the 1971 film Dirty Harry, the 2024 Netflix series, and a 2025 SXSW documentary.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode discusses multiple homicides, the murder and mutilation of a young woman, child sexual abuse, and graphic crime-scene detail. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, agency, author, publisher, production, or organization referenced in this episode, including any law enforcement agency, the FBI, the Los Angeles Times, Cold Case Consultants of America, or any film or streaming production named.

The Zodiac case is officially unsolved, and no person has ever been charged or convicted. Every individual named in this episode as a possible suspect, including Arthur Leigh Allen, Lawrence Kane, Earl Van Best Jr., Gary Francis Poste, Richard Gaikowski, Marvin Margolis, and Dr. George Hodel, is identified solely in the context of publicly reported allegations, investigations, books, and theories, and not as a finding of guilt. Several were investigated and never charged, and physical evidence has affirmatively failed to match at least one of them. All of the named individuals are deceased. Nothing here should be read as an accusation that any living person committed any crime.

The December 2025 theory connecting the Zodiac and Black Dahlia cases to Marvin Margolis is a recent and unconfirmed claim advanced by a private investigator. It has been endorsed by some reviewers and sharply criticized by others, including the argument that its conclusion was reached first and supported afterward. Law enforcement has not confirmed the cipher solution or the identification, and both cases remain officially open. The competing theory naming Dr. George Hodel is likewise an unproven claim advanced in published books. We present these theories, and the evidence and disputes surrounding them, as claims and interpretations rather than established fact, and details may change as the matter is reviewed.

References to any person, living or deceased, are made in the context of documented reporting and public records and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm. Statements attributed to family members and others reflect their reported positions. The commentary and interpretations offered by the hosts are their own opinions and do not constitute statements of established fact or legal conclusions. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.

Send us your theories

Support the show

🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

⭐ Loved this one? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — it's the fastest way to help us grow.

📸 Follow us on TikTok and Instagram for mugshots, mysteries, paranormal, conspiracies, and everything Gabriel said that didn't make the final cut.

Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

December 11, 2020. The world is nine months into a pandemic. A software developer in Virginia gets on a video call with a mathematician in Melbourne and a programmer in Belgium. Three people, three countries, three time zones, and on the screen between them sits a 340-character cipher that the FBI, the codebreaking community, and fifty-one years of obsessives had all failed to crack. By the end of the call, for the first time since 1969, it begins to speak.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel continue their four-part Zodiac series with Part 3, "The Code Breakers," the episode about the writing, the ciphers, and the people the case quietly destroyed.

We start by laying out the complete authenticated record, every confirmed Zodiac communication in order, because the letters are the case. The three coordinated newspaper letters of July 1969 and the first cipher. The bloody swatch of Paul Stine's shirt mailed to the Chronicle. The school-bus threat that put armed officers on Bay Area buses for weeks. The plea to attorney Melvin Belli. The demand that the public wear his crossed-circle buttons, and the violence he claimed when they would not. The Halloween card to reporter Paul Avery. And the final confirmed letter in 1974, praising The Exorcist, after which he simply went silent.

Then we go deep on the Z340. We explain why it defeated everyone for half a century: it was not just a substitution cipher but a transposition too, the characters read diagonally across a grid, a complexity researchers believe the Zodiac may have created partly by accident. We walk through how David Oranchak, Sam Blake, and Jarl Van Eycke finally broke it, what it actually said, which was more taunting and not a name, and how the FBI confirmed the most famous cipher solve in American history by email. Then the two that remain open: the thirteen-character Z13, prefaced "My name is," too short to ever prove a solution, and the Z32 with its Mount Diablo map.

And we close on the human cost. The jurisdictional disaster across four agencies with no shared database. Detective Dave Toschi, the bow-tie-wearing, animal-cracker-carrying inspiration for both Bullitt and Dirty Harry, who filled eight filing cabinets on one case and was pulled from it after he was caught writing anonymous fan mail about himself. And cartoonist Robert Graysmith, whose obsession produced the book that shaped public understanding of the case and cost him his marriage. The Zodiac did not have to do anything to these men. He just had to stay unsolved.

Part 4, the finale and the names, is next.

This is Part 3 of our four-part Zodiac series. New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

Case records and reporting on the Zodiac investigation across the San Francisco Police Department, the Vallejo Police Department, the Napa County Sheriff's Office, the Solano County Sheriff's Office, and the FBI; the authenticated archive of Zodiac letters, cards, and ciphers held by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald, 1969 to 1974; the 1969 solution of the 408-character cipher by Donald and Bettye Harden of Salinas; the December 2020 solution of the 340-character cipher (Z340) by David Oranchak, Sam Blake, and Jarl Van Eycke using the AZdecrypt tool, confirmed by the FBI, and Oranchak's documentation of the solution and its diagonal transposition structure; the 2024 proposed Z13 and Z32 solutions published by Fayçal Ziraoui, unconfirmed by law enforcement; Graysmith, R., Zodiac, 1986, and Zodiac Unmasked, 2002; reporting on Detective Dave Toschi, including his role as the inspiration for the films Bullitt (1968) and Dirty Harry (1971) and his 1978 removal from the investigation after the discovery of self-authored letters; reporting on Chronicle reporter Paul Avery and the 1970 Halloween card; suspect background on Arthur Leigh Allen and Lawrence Kane; reporting on the partial DNA profile developed from the Zodiac correspondence and the limits of CODIS and genetic genealogy in this case, including comparison to the 2018 genetic-genealogy identification of the Golden State Killer; Fincher, D., Zodiac, 2007; and the 2025 SXSW documentary The Zodiac Killer Project.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode discusses multiple homicides, threats of mass violence against children, and graphic crime detail. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, agency, author, publisher, or production referenced in this episode, including any law enforcement agency, the FBI, the San Francisco Chronicle, or any film or documentary named.

The Zodiac case is officially unsolved, and no person has ever been charged or convicted. Individuals named in this episode in connection with the investigation, including Arthur Leigh Allen and Lawrence Kane, are identified solely in the context of publicly reported investigations and theories, not as a finding of guilt, and both are deceased. Nothing here should be read as an accusation that any living person committed any crime.

The 2020 solution of the Z340 cipher was confirmed by the FBI. The proposed solutions of the shorter Z13 and Z32 ciphers, including those advanced by Fayçal Ziraoui and others, have not been confirmed by law enforcement and remain disputed; because the Z13 is only thirteen characters long, multiple conflicting solutions can be produced and none can be definitively proven. We present these as claims and interpretations, not as established fact. Our account is drawn from publicly available sources including law enforcement records, the authenticated letter archive, the published work of the cipher researchers, books, and journalism, and details vary across sources.

Characterizations of Detective Dave Toschi, Robert Graysmith, Paul Avery, and others reflect documented reporting and the hosts' interpretation, and are not statements of established fact about any person's private life or state of mind. References to any person, living or deceased, are made in the context of documented history and public records and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm. The commentary and interpretations offered by the hosts are their own opinions and do not constitute statements of established fact or legal conclusions. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.

Send us your theories

Support the show

🎧 Subscribe on Apple Podcasts or Spotify so you never miss an episode.

⭐ Loved this one? Leave us a review on Apple Podcasts — it's the fastest way to help us grow.

📸 Follow us on TikTok and Instagram for mugshots, mysteries, paranormal, conspiracies, and everything Gabriel said that didn't make the final cut.

Stay curious. Stay suspicious.

It is a clear Saturday afternoon at Lake Berryessa in September 1969. Two college students are picnicking on a small spit of land when a man steps out of the tree line. He is wearing a homemade black executioner's hood with clip-on sunglasses over the eyeholes and a white crossed-circle symbol drawn on the chest. He says he is an escaped convict who needs their car. He has them tie each other up. Then he pulls a twelve-inch knife. Afterward, he walks to their car, writes the dates of his crimes on the door in felt-tip, drives to a payphone, and calmly calls the police to report what he has done. He is never identified. This is only his third attack.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel begin their four-part series on the most famous unsolved case in American history: the Zodiac Killer. Part 1, "The Crosshairs," builds the world this killer operated in and walks every confirmed attack.

We start with the backdrop, because you cannot understand the Zodiac without 1968 and 1969. A country breaking open: Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Kennedy, the chaos of the Chicago convention, Nixon's law-and-order presidency, and a Bay Area that was simultaneously the capital of the counterculture and a pressure cooker of radical politics. Into a year that held both the moon landing and the Manson murders, both Woodstock and Altamont, a killer arrived who understood something distinctly modern: that the spectacle was the point.

Then we walk the four confirmed attacks in order. Lake Herman Road in December 1968, where seventeen-year-old David Faraday and sixteen-year-old Betty Lou Jensen were killed on their first date. Blue Rock Springs on the Fourth of July 1969, where Darlene Ferrin was murdered and Michael Mageau survived, after which the killer phoned police and claimed both crimes himself. Lake Berryessa and the hooded attack on Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard. And Presidio Heights in October 1969, the murder of cab driver Paul Stine, where two officers may have stood face to face with the Zodiac and let him walk because a dispatcher's error sent them looking for the wrong man.

We close on the moment everything changes. Less than a month after Blue Rock Springs, three newspapers receive a third of a coded message each, and soon after, six words that name him: "This is the Zodiac speaking." A killer who chose his own name, designed his own symbol, and turned his crimes into a production. What he does with that audience is Part 2.

This is Part 1 of our four-part Zodiac series. New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

Case records and reporting from the Solano County Sheriff's Office, the Vallejo Police Department, the Napa County Sheriff's Office, and the San Francisco Police Department concerning the Lake Herman Road (December 20, 1968), Blue Rock Springs (July 4, 1969), Lake Berryessa (September 27, 1969), and Presidio Heights (October 11, 1969) attacks; the surviving accounts of Michael Mageau and Bryan Hartnell; contemporaneous reporting on victims David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Darlene Ferrin, Cecelia Shepard, and Paul Stine; the eyewitness account and dispatch error involving SFPD officers Donald Fouke and Eric Zelms; the July 31, 1969 three-newspaper mailing of the 408-character cipher and the August 1969 letter containing the phrase "This is the Zodiac speaking," held by the San Francisco Chronicle, the San Francisco Examiner, and the Vallejo Times-Herald; the authenticated Zodiac letters and crossed-circle symbol; Graysmith, R., Zodiac, 1986; Fincher, D., Zodiac, 2007; and standard historical sources on 1968 and 1969 in the United States, including the Tet Offensive, the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the 1968 Democratic National Convention, the 1969 Apollo 11 landing, the Manson Family murders, the Woodstock festival, and the Altamont Free Concert.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode describes multiple homicides, including the killings of teenagers, knife and firearm violence, and graphic crime detail, and references other violent events of the era. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.

The Mugshot Mysteries podcast is independently produced and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any individual, agency, author, publisher, or production referenced in this episode, including any law enforcement agency, the FBI, the named newspapers, or any film named.

The Zodiac case is officially unsolved, and no person has ever been charged or convicted. Our account is reconstructed from publicly available sources, including law enforcement records, survivor accounts, the authenticated letters, contemporaneous journalism, and published histories. Details, including timelines, weapon identifications, and victim-count claims, vary across sources and across witness recollections recorded over many years, and we have tried to flag uncertainty where it exists. The killer's own claimed victim totals are widely regarded as inflated and are not established fact.

The broader historical and cultural events described, including the political assassinations, protests, and other crimes of 1968 and 1969, are provided as context for the era and are not asserted to be connected to the Zodiac. References to any person, living or deceased, including victims, survivors, officers, and others named, are made in the context of documented history and public records and are not intended to defame, harass, or cause harm. The commentary and interpretations offered by the hosts are their own opinions and do not constitute statements of established fact or legal conclusions. Any third-party names and trademarks remain the property of their respective owners and are referenced under fair use for purposes of commentary, criticism, and reporting. Nothing in this episode constitutes legal advice.

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