Murder, Mystery & Makeup · Audioboom Studios

The Chilling Code That Was Never Cracked... Or Was It? - The Zodiac Killer

·59 min·3 clips

A letter claimed Sherry Bates was lured from her car after the ignition had been disabled.

Bailey Sarian opens by saying she has been avoiding the Zodiac story for a long time. She calls it a behemoth of a story, and the episode leans into that scale by treating the killer as someone who seemed to surface out of nowhere in different places. He shows up on isolated lover's lanes and busy city streets. Young women and couples seem to be his preferred targets, but then he guns down a cab driver. The pattern keeps slipping. The story also includes the targeting of a busload of school children, which only makes the violence feel even more containable in the worst way. The killer wanted attention. Bailey repeats the taunting letters, the unsolvable ciphers, and the creepy phone calls that helped turn the case into a decades-long obsession. She keeps asking the same blunt questions. Who was he, why did he do it, and is he still out there. Her delivery is reactive. She pauses for pronunciation worries, side comments, and little bursts of disbelief, then jumps right back into the timeline. The tone stays conversational. That makes the case feel like a story being actively pieced together rather than a script being recited from a podium. The episode also moves through an attack on Brian and Cecilia. A man in a large black cloth hood, with clip-on sunglasses over the eye holes and a white symbol on his chest, approaches them, says he escaped from Montana, demands car keys and money, and orders Cecilia to bind Brian with a pre-cut clothesline before tightening the restraints himself. Bailey reacts hard to the outfit. The scene becomes another example of how the Zodiac story mixes bizarre details with genuine terror, which is part of why it sticks. The episode closes on the modern side of the mystery. Bailey points to DNA, forensic progress, and the idea that mysteries like this should not stay unsolved forever.

As heard by us

A vivid Zodiac retelling that keeps the mystery sharp and the narration personal.

Bailey Sarian's take on the Zodiac Killer is lively and immediate, moving through the hooded sightings, the taunting letters, the unsolved ciphers, and the eerie phone calls without losing momentum.

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Why you'd press play

You want a Zodiac breakdown that feels like a friend narrating the panic in real time.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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