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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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

Support the show

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

🔐 Join the Mugshot Family on Patreon to unlock the Original Case Files vault. 12 members-only episodes for $5/month. 

⭐ 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 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

Support the show

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

🔐 Join the Mugshot Family on Patreon to unlock the Original Case Files vault. 12 members-only episodes for $5/month. 

⭐ 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.

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.

🔐 Join the Mugshot Family on Patreon to unlock the Original Case Files vault. 12 members-only episodes for $5/month. 

⭐ 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.

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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

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📸 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.

Send us your theories

Support the show

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

🔐 Join the Mugshot Family on Patreon to unlock the Original Case Files vault. 12 members-only episodes for $5/month. 

⭐ 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.

September 27th, 1969. A man in a homemade black executioner hood walks out of the tree line at Lake Berryessa and approaches two college students picnicking on a small island. He ties them up. Then he stabs them. Then he drives 45 minutes to a payphone and calmly reports the crime to police. He was never identified. He was never caught. This was only attack number three.

In Part 1 of their four-part series, Kathryn and Gabriel build the world the Zodiac operated in: the assassinations and riots that cracked America open in 1968, the Vietnam body count nobody could justify, and the Bay Area counterculture that turned San Francisco into the decade's pressure cooker. Then every confirmed attack, beginning to end. Two teenagers on their first ever date on Lake Herman Road. A Fourth of July ambush at Blue Rock Springs Park. The homemade hood, the pre-cut clothesline, and the twelve-inch knife at Berryessa. A cab driver shot in Presidio Heights while a single dispatcher error let the killer walk past two officers on foot. And the moment six words changed everything: "This is the Zodiac speaking."

Part 2 drops next Monday.

SOURCES: Graysmith, Robert. Zodiac. Berkley Books, 1986. Graysmith, Robert. Zodiac Unmasked. Berkley Books, 2002. Turner, Fred. From Counterculture to Cyberculture. University of Chicago Press, 2006. Toschi, Dave, and Armstrong, William. Zodiac Homicide Investigation Files. San Francisco Police Department, 1969-1978. California Department of Justice. Zodiac Killer Case Files. State of California, 1969-2004. Farber, David. Chicago '68. University of Chicago Press, 1988. Bugliosi, Vincent, and Gentry, Curt. Helter Skelter. W.W. Norton, 1974. Zodiac Killer No-Show. KGO-TV News Broadcast, October 1973. youtube.com/watch?v=RpyKvbBdcbA. DaRonch, Carol. Victim Interview Footage. ABC News, 1974.

DISCLAIMER: This episode discusses murder, serial homicide, stabbing, shooting, graphic crime scene details, and unsolved violent crimes across multiple California jurisdictions. Historical context includes the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, civil unrest, and the Manson Family murders. Attack reconstructions are based on official police reports, survivor accounts, and established investigative record. No theory presented constitutes proven fact. Discussion of potential suspects is strictly educational and does not constitute accusation, legal conclusion, or forensic finding of any kind regarding any living or deceased individual. Psychological and cultural framing is for educational purposes only and does not constitute clinical diagnosis of any person. Listener discretion is strongly advised. Educational and entertainment purposes only.

Send us your theories

Support the show

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

🔐 Join the Mugshot Family on Patreon to unlock the Original Case Files vault. 12 members-only episodes for $5/month. 

⭐ 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.

Go look at a bottle of Tylenol. A glued box, a cap you push and twist, a foil seal on the rim, maybe a wad of cotton. Three layers of protection between you and a headache pill, and if any seal is broken, you put it back without thinking. None of that existed before September 1982. Before then, you could twist open a bottle in any store, do whatever you wanted to the capsules, and slide it back on the shelf. The seals you fight with today are not a convenience feature. They are a scar.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel cover the Chicago Tylenol Murders: seven random deaths over three days, a forty-year investigation that produced three suspects and zero convictions, and a crime that permanently rewired how America thinks about trust and safety.

We start with the victims, because the cruelty of this case lives in the details. Twelve-year-old Mary Kellerman, dead before seven in the morning from a single capsule taken for a sore throat. Adam Janus, dead that afternoon. Then his brother Stanley and Stanley's wife Theresa, who reached for the same bottle while grieving Adam and collapsed within minutes of each other. Mary Reiner, a new mother of four. Mary McFarland. Paula Prince, a flight attendant found in her apartment, a Walgreens receipt nearby. Seven strangers whose only connection was a brand name on a bottle, and a killer who chose them at random and wanted nothing in return.

We set it inside the world of 1982, the "Morning in America" optimism stretched over Cold War dread, and explain why the idea that the threat could be sitting inside a trusted product, rather than in some foreign enemy or dark alley, broke the national brain. We trace how a public health nurse, Helen Jensen, noticed the missing pills, how investigators caught the bitter-almond scent of cyanide, and how Johnson & Johnson's recall of millions of bottles became the textbook example of corporate crisis response. We cover the panic it unleashed, the cancelled Halloweens, the copycats including Stella Nickell, and the laws and packaging that followed.

Then we walk all three suspects. Ted Kaczynski, whose early bombings hit the same Chicago suburbs and whose DNA the FBI sought decades later. Roger Arnold, the warehouse worker whose life imploded under suspicion until he shot an innocent man, John Stanisha, mistaking him for the bartender who tipped off police. And James William Lewis, the prime suspect who wrote the extortion letter, carried a violent past, and died in 2023 without ever being charged, after giving a final interview for a Netflix series. We close on the question the case refuses to answer: what does it mean when evil acts with complete indifference, and walks away.

This is the Chicago Tylenol Murders.

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

SOURCES:

Investigative and case records from the Illinois Attorney General's office, the Arlington Heights Police Department, the Cook and DuPage County authorities, the Chicago Police Department, and the FBI concerning the September and October 1982 Tylenol poisonings; contemporaneous reporting on the seven victims: Mary Kellerman, Adam Janus, Stanley Janus, Theresa Janus, Mary Reiner, Mary McFarland, and Paula Prince; the account of public health nurse Helen Jensen, who identified the missing capsules in the Janus bottle; toxicology findings identifying potassium cyanide at multiples of the lethal dose; Johnson & Johnson and McNeil Consumer Products materials and the public statements of J&J chief executive James Burke, widely studied as a corporate crisis-management case; the Federal Anti-Tampering Act of 1983 and the FDA's tamper-resistant packaging regulations; reporting on the extortion letter sent to Johnson & Johnson and the conviction of James William Lewis on extortion charges, his earlier criminal history, the multi-decade FBI investigation including the 2009 search of his home and DNA collection, and his death on July 9, 2023; reporting on suspect Roger Arnold, the 1983 killing of John Stanisha, and the 2010 exhumation and DNA testing of Arnold's remains; the FBI's 2011 request for Ted Kaczynski's DNA; the copycat case of Stella Nickell and her 1988 conviction under the Federal Anti-Tampering Act; FBI profiler John Douglas's surveillance strategy and the Walgreens surveillance image associated with Paula Prince's purchase; Cold Case: The Tylenol Murders, a three-part Netflix docuseries directed by Yotam Guendelman and Ari Pines, 2025, featuring Lewis's final interview; Hannah Arendt's concept of "the banality of evil" and Ulrich Beck's "risk society," referenced as framing.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode describes multiple poisoning deaths, including the death of a child, the death of a new mother, a separate shooting, references to a dismemberment, an assault, and the lasting grief of victims' families. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. 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, agency, company, or institution referenced in this episode, including Johnson & Johnson, McNeil Consumer Products, any law enforcement agency, the FBI, or any film or streaming production named.

The Chicago Tylenol Murders are officially unsolved, and no person has ever been charged with or convicted of the poisonings. Every individual discussed in this episode in connection with the case, including James William Lewis, Roger Arnold, and Ted Kaczynski, is identified solely in the context of publicly reported investigations, suspicions, and theories, and not as a finding of guilt in the poisonings. James William Lewis was convicted of extortion, not murder, and maintained his innocence in the killings until his death. Roger Arnold was convicted of a separate, unrelated homicide. Available DNA comparisons did not match the named suspects, and the cause of any such non-match, including possible evidence degradation, is itself disputed. Nothing here should be read as an accusation that any specific person committed the poisonings.

Our account is drawn from publicly available sources, including law enforcement records, court records, contemporaneous journalism, documentary reporting, and the public statements of those involved. Because much of the physical evidence was discarded in the days after the crime, and because the case spans more than four decades, details, figures, and timelines vary across sources and remain incomplete. The psychological, sociological, and philosophical commentary offered by the hosts reflects their own interpretations and opinions and does not constitute statements of established fact or clinical conclusions. 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. 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, legal, or psychological advice.

Send us your theories

Support the show

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

🔐 Join the Mugshot Family on Patreon to unlock the Original Case Files vault. 12 members-only episodes for $5/month. 

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📸 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.

On a bright July morning in 1997, the most famous fashion designer in the world walks back to his Miami Beach mansion with the morning papers. As he puts his key in the gate, a young man steps up behind him and fires twice into the back of his head. The killer had spent his entire life trying to become everything Gianni Versace already was. Failing that, he settled for being the man who killed him.

This week on Mugshot Mysteries, Kathryn and Gabriel conclude their two-part series on Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace with Part 2, "The Killing of a Dream," the spree itself and what became the largest failed manhunt in American history.

In the spring of 1997, Andrew Cunanan, a charming and brilliant young man whose entire identity had been built on borrowed money and invented biographies, ran out of both. Over roughly three months he killed five people, and we walk each one and what it reveals about his unraveling. Jeffrey Trail, a former Navy officer and estranged friend, beaten to death with a hammer in a Minneapolis apartment. David Madson, the architect Cunanan was said to have loved, shot at a lakeside days later. Lee Miglin, a seventy-two-year-old Chicago real estate magnate, killed with a level of violence that still fuels debate about whether the two men had any prior connection, which Miglin's family has always denied. William Reese, a New Jersey cemetery caretaker murdered for nothing more than his truck. And finally Gianni Versace, shot on the steps of his own home on July 15, 1997.

We spend real time on the manhunt, because it is maddening. Cunanan made the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list and his face was on national television, yet he spent two months in Miami Beach hiding in plain sight, paying cash under his own name at a cheap hotel, pawning a stolen coin on a form he signed, and getting recognized at a Subway before agents could get there. Nearly a thousand federal agents, and he was very nearly caught by a sandwich-shop employee.

We cover the killing of Versace and the question that still has no clean answer: did the two men ever actually meet, and why him? We follow the eight-day standoff that ended on a houseboat with Cunanan's suicide, no note, no confession, the motive gone with him, and the autopsy detail that he was HIV negative, meaning the fear that may have lit the fuse was never even true. And we close on the aftermath: Donatella Versace rebuilding the house, the death of Princess Diana just six weeks later, and what the whole story says about a culture that taught a hollow young man that the surface was all that mattered.

This is the conclusion of our two-part series on the price of beauty.

This is Part 2 of our two-part series on Andrew Cunanan and Gianni Versace. New episodes drop every Mugshot Monday. Search Mugshot Mysteries wherever you listen.

SOURCES:

Orth, M., Vulgar Favors: Andrew Cunanan, Gianni Versace, and the Largest Failed Manhunt in U.S. History, 1999; FBI records, including the placement of Andrew Cunanan on the Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list in 1997, and contemporaneous America's Most Wanted coverage; contemporaneous reporting on the murders of Jeffrey Trail in Minneapolis, Minnesota (April 27, 1997), David Madson near Rush Lake, Minnesota (early May 1997), Lee Miglin in Chicago, Illinois (May 4, 1997), William Reese in Pennsville Township, New Jersey (May 9, 1997), and Gianni Versace in Miami Beach, Florida (July 15, 1997); reporting on the Miami Beach manhunt, the Normandy Plaza Hotel, the pawnshop transaction, and the Subway sighting; the eight-day standoff and Cunanan's death by suicide aboard a houseboat on July 23, 1997, and the medical examiner's findings, including the determination that he was HIV negative; commentary by former FBI agent Gregg McCrary on the Miglin murder; Ball, D., House of Versace: The Untold Story of Genius, Murder, and Survival, 2010; The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story, FX, 2018; reporting on Donatella Versace assuming creative direction and the Versace dress worn by Jennifer Lopez at the 2000 Grammy Awards; coverage of Princess Diana's attendance at Versace's funeral in Milan and her death on August 31, 1997, and Elton John's public recollections of that summer; Baudrillard, J., Simulacra and Simulation, 1981 (English translation 1994), and Cushman, P., "Why the Self Is Empty," American Psychologist, 1990, referenced as framing; the account by Cunanan's siblings, Andrew Cunanan: An American Tragedy.

DISCLAIMER:

Content warning: This episode describes multiple murders, including a beating, shootings, and torture, graphic violence, suicide, and references to HIV and the cultural climate facing LGBTQ people in the 1990s. Please take care while listening, and consider stepping away if any of this is difficult. 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, company, agency, or production referenced in this episode, including the Versace company, any law enforcement agency, the FBI, or any film or streaming production named.

The events described are drawn from publicly available sources, including the definitive reporting on this case, law enforcement records, contemporaneous journalism, and published histories. Andrew Cunanan was identified by law enforcement as the person responsible for these killings and died before any trial, so the legal process was never completed, and the full motive was never established. Several elements of this story remain disputed or unproven. In particular, claims that Lee Miglin had any prior connection to Andrew Cunanan, and claims that Cunanan and Gianni Versace had previously met, are unconfirmed and have been denied by the families involved. We present these as rumor and open questions, not as established fact.

The psychological and philosophical commentary offered by the hosts, including discussion of narcissism, narcissistic rage, and the "empty self," reflects their own interpretation of publicly reported behavior and is not a clinical diagnosis of any person, living or deceased. The motives of a deceased individual who was never tried cannot be known with certainty. References to victims and their families are made with respect for people who suffered a terrible loss, and 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. 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, legal, or psychological advice.

Send us your theories

Support the show

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

🔐 Join the Mugshot Family on Patreon to unlock the Original Case Files vault. 12 members-only episodes for $5/month. 

⭐ 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.