Between December 1968 and October 1969, five people were killed and two survived a series of attacks across Northern California that authorities came to associate with an unidentified offender calling himself Zodiac. David Faraday, Betty Lou Jensen, Darlene Ferrin, Cecelia Shepard, and Paul Stine were killed. Michael Mageau and Bryan Hartnell survived and gave investigators rare firsthand accounts.

The case changed after the attacker began calling police and writing to Bay Area newspapers. His letters included crime details, threats, a cross-circle symbol, cryptograms, and, after the murder of San Francisco taxi driver Paul Stine, pieces of Stine's bloodstained shirt. That clothing provided powerful proof that the writer had direct access to evidence from a confirmed murder.

Two of Zodiac's major ciphers were eventually solved. The first, Z408, was deciphered in 1969 by Donald and Bettye Harden. The second, Z340, resisted solution for fifty-one years before David Oranchak, Sam Blake, and Jarl Van Eycke decoded it in 2020. Neither message identified the writer. Two shorter ciphers remain without accepted solutions.

This episode follows the confirmed timeline, the surviving witnesses, the multi-jurisdictional investigation, the evidence surrounding the best-known suspect Arthur Leigh Allen, and the limitations of handwriting, fingerprints, and DNA drawn from decades-old correspondence. The central question remains: how did a killer who left so much material behind avoid a publicly verified identification?

This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication.

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In 1888, a series of murders in London’s East End became one of history’s most famous unsolved cases. Five women—Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly—are traditionally grouped as the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper. But that label was created after the killings began, and the name itself came from an anonymous letter whose author was never identified.

This episode follows the documented chronology: Nichols’s final search for lodging money, the discovery of her body in Buck’s Row, Chapman’s murder in a crowded Spitalfields yard, and the letter signed “Jack the Ripper.” It reconstructs the night of the double murder, when Stride and Eddowes were found less than an hour apart, and examines the bloodstained apron fragment and disputed Goulston Street writing that led police away from Mitre Square.

It also investigates the human kidney sent to vigilance leader George Lusk, Mary Jane Kelly’s murder inside Miller’s Court, the later police claims pointing toward a suspect called Kosminski, and the modern DNA controversy surrounding an alleged Eddowes shawl.

The case remains unresolved because its most dramatic evidence repeatedly fails at the same point: it may suggest a suspect or a pattern, but it does not securely identify the person responsible.

This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication.

#TheUnsolvedFiles #HistoricalUnsolvedMurderInvestigation #JackTheRipper #WhitechapelMurders #RipperLetters

On February 2, 2009, Christine Ross and her dog, Ruca, found a human bone protruding from the ground on Albuquerque’s West Mesa. The discovery near 118th Street Southwest led investigators to an isolated burial area containing the remains of 11 women and the unborn child of Michelle Valdez.

The women had disappeared years earlier, many during the period from 2003 through 2005. Every victim was eventually identified, but no one has been charged with their murders.

This episode examines the discovery, the missing-women pattern noticed before the graves were found, the difficult forensic recovery, the geography of the mesa, and the suspects investigators have examined. It also confronts the case’s central conflict: whether the deaths were caused by one offender, multiple offenders, or a wider series that may include women who are still missing.

As of February 2026, the City of Albuquerque and Albuquerque Police Department continued to describe the investigation as active and unsolved.

This podcast uses artificial intelligence in its research, writing, production, and narration. Episodes are editorially reviewed before publication.

#TheUnsolvedFiles #UnsolvedSerialMurders #WestMesaMurders #WestMesaBoneCollector #AlbuquerqueSerialKiller