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CNN Sunday Morning
Interview With Kelly Carroll
Aired October 27, 2002 - 11:39 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Some of the techniques that helped police track the sniper case may shed new light on another case that's more than 30 years old. New arrests -- no arrests have ever been made in San Francisco's zodiac killings that left five people dead. Inspector Kelly Carroll took on the case in 2000 and he joins us now from San Francisco.
Inspector, thanks for being here this morning.
KELLY CARROLL, INSPECTOR, SAN FRANCISCO POLICE: Thank you, good morning.
COLLINS: Let's go ahead and begin. These killings happened in '68 and '69. Can you remind us of what the Zodiac Killer is suspected of doing?
CARROLL: Certainly. Law enforcement generally acknowledges four separate attacks that Zodiac committed from late 1968 through October 1969. The first three were north of the San Francisco Bay Area, and they involved essentially male-female couples, young couples, in isolated Lover's Lane type situations. The final attack in San Francisco was of a cab driver, Mr. Paul Stein, who was murdered in October of 1969.
COLLINS: And we were just seeing some video there. Here it is again, of some correspondence. He was a writer, wasn't he?
CARROLL: Absolutely. Zodiac killed, in part, to garner attention. He needed and demanded it from and through the local media the attention of the populous. He claimed credit for these killings and, in fact, sent trophies that he had taken away from at least the scene of Paul Stein's murder in the form of a bloody shirt that he had cut away from Mr. Stein and then sent a swatch of that shirt along with his correspondence.
COLLINS: But of course, back then that sort of evidence was very hard to get anything from. What is the latest breakthrough in the Zodiac case?
CARROLL: Well, in the instance of this case, as I said, Zodiac mailed letters to the local newspapers. Now, he claimed to have disguised his appearance and to have disguised his fingerprints so that police couldn't find him. But one of the things that we did in examining the evidence is realize that in 1969 the idea of DNA was at best science fiction and so it was probable that Zodiac did not have any idea about disguising or hiding his DNA. And so we concluded that there was the possibility that we could recover biological material deposited by Zodiac when he licked the stamps and the envelopes that he used to send the letters.
COLLINS: Fascinating. But there had already been someone named in this case, Arthur Leigh Allen, named by the Vallejo police captain as the department's Zodiac suspect. His name is now cleared?
CARROLL: Well, what we can see about Arthur Leigh Allen is that his DNA profile does not match the partial DNA profile that we have recovered so far from one of the known Zodiac letters.
COLLINS: OK, he, of course, died quite some time ago.
CARROLL: Arthur Allen died in 1992.
COLLINS: Tell us about similarities that you see with the D.C. area sniper shootings and the Zodiac case?
CARROLL: Well, the similarities on the face of them are the fact that a geographical area was essentially terrorized by what appears to be random killings, and this effect on the populous, in terms of the terror inflicted, is obvious and notable. In the case of Zodiac, he threatened at one point in one of his letters to kill schoolchildren as they came off the bus and certainly in the East Coast sniper situation, there was that reference to children not being safe anywhere at any time.
In both instances, the fear that was inflicted is that -- goes right to our most primal instinct and our concern about being hunted and, in -- and excuse me -- in fact, in both instants that is what happened. Zodiac hunted in a geographical area around San Francisco and the East Coast sniper in that area around Maryland and Virginia.
COLLINS: All right. Inspector Kelly Carroll, we do appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired October 27, 2002 - 11:39 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
HEIDI COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: Some of the techniques that helped police track the sniper case may shed new light on another case that's more than 30 years old. New arrests -- no arrests have ever been made in San Francisco's zodiac killings that left five people dead. Inspector Kelly Carroll took on the case in 2000 and he joins us now from San Francisco.
Inspector, thanks for being here this morning.
KELLY CARROLL, INSPECTOR, SAN FRANCISCO POLICE: Thank you, good morning.
COLLINS: Let's go ahead and begin. These killings happened in '68 and '69. Can you remind us of what the Zodiac Killer is suspected of doing?
CARROLL: Certainly. Law enforcement generally acknowledges four separate attacks that Zodiac committed from late 1968 through October 1969. The first three were north of the San Francisco Bay Area, and they involved essentially male-female couples, young couples, in isolated Lover's Lane type situations. The final attack in San Francisco was of a cab driver, Mr. Paul Stein, who was murdered in October of 1969.
COLLINS: And we were just seeing some video there. Here it is again, of some correspondence. He was a writer, wasn't he?
CARROLL: Absolutely. Zodiac killed, in part, to garner attention. He needed and demanded it from and through the local media the attention of the populous. He claimed credit for these killings and, in fact, sent trophies that he had taken away from at least the scene of Paul Stein's murder in the form of a bloody shirt that he had cut away from Mr. Stein and then sent a swatch of that shirt along with his correspondence.
COLLINS: But of course, back then that sort of evidence was very hard to get anything from. What is the latest breakthrough in the Zodiac case?
CARROLL: Well, in the instance of this case, as I said, Zodiac mailed letters to the local newspapers. Now, he claimed to have disguised his appearance and to have disguised his fingerprints so that police couldn't find him. But one of the things that we did in examining the evidence is realize that in 1969 the idea of DNA was at best science fiction and so it was probable that Zodiac did not have any idea about disguising or hiding his DNA. And so we concluded that there was the possibility that we could recover biological material deposited by Zodiac when he licked the stamps and the envelopes that he used to send the letters.
COLLINS: Fascinating. But there had already been someone named in this case, Arthur Leigh Allen, named by the Vallejo police captain as the department's Zodiac suspect. His name is now cleared?
CARROLL: Well, what we can see about Arthur Leigh Allen is that his DNA profile does not match the partial DNA profile that we have recovered so far from one of the known Zodiac letters.
COLLINS: OK, he, of course, died quite some time ago.
CARROLL: Arthur Allen died in 1992.
COLLINS: Tell us about similarities that you see with the D.C. area sniper shootings and the Zodiac case?
CARROLL: Well, the similarities on the face of them are the fact that a geographical area was essentially terrorized by what appears to be random killings, and this effect on the populous, in terms of the terror inflicted, is obvious and notable. In the case of Zodiac, he threatened at one point in one of his letters to kill schoolchildren as they came off the bus and certainly in the East Coast sniper situation, there was that reference to children not being safe anywhere at any time.
In both instances, the fear that was inflicted is that -- goes right to our most primal instinct and our concern about being hunted and, in -- and excuse me -- in fact, in both instants that is what happened. Zodiac hunted in a geographical area around San Francisco and the East Coast sniper in that area around Maryland and Virginia.
COLLINS: All right. Inspector Kelly Carroll, we do appreciate it.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
