New documentary claims Zodiac Killer home run

The Zodiac Killer's story is a true  crime legend, yet his identity is still unknown. A new HBO MAX series claims  they may know who the Zodiac Killer was. Yes, another one! And as with many suspects over the years, a family member has made the  accusation! Where this accusation differs from other family accusations is that the new  suspect isn't only accused of being the Zodiac, but another infamous serial killer as well! Join Bad Things as we examine the new Zodiac Killer suspect, Jim Mordec

ai. Is there  substantial evidence to lump him in with the rest of the possible Zodiac suspects? What  counts against him being a strong suspect, and could he be the suspect in a rash  of decades-old serial killings that some investigators have attributed to the Zodiac? Max's docuseries The Truth About Jim builds a case for Jim Mordecai's possible connection  in the infamous Zodiac serial killer case, but the truth regarding the degree of his  involvement is predictably convoluted. The four-ep

isode series follows Sierra Barter  as she unearths years of family trauma to determine if her step-grandfather, Jim, was one  of the most renowned murderers of the twentieth century. However, although The Truth About Jim  presents some coincidental evidence, the argument is not as straightforward as many would want. Throughout the four episodes, Barter recounts the history of her step-grandfather and the  generational brutality her family suffered at his hands. Mordecai looked to be a regular

  high school teacher and parent at a glance, but as Barter dug deeper, she uncovered that her  step-grandfather was a violent, abusive monster who may just be an infamous serial killer! Mordecai was born to Evelyn and Harold Mordecai on August 27th, 1941, in San Rafael, California.  Mordecai attended Santa Rosa schools from kindergarten to high school, graduating from  Montgomery High School in 1960. He excelled in athletics, notably football. He earned a  bachelor's degree from Chico State U

niversity in 1965 and an agricultural teaching degree  from the University of California Davis in 1966. After a year of student teaching at  Healdsburg High School, Mordecai spent 25 years teaching at Half Moon Bay High School  in California. After retiring from teaching, Mordecai worked briefly as a landscape architect  and was in real estate at the time of his death. However, according to his family  members, Mordecai led a double life. The documentary features accounts from several  members o

f Barter's family, including her grandmother and Jim's third wife, Judy, her  mother, Shannon, and Mordecai's children and stepchildren from his first and second marriages.  The Truth About Jim, which begins as a discussion of domestic, mental, emotional, and sexual abuse,  quickly turns into an investigation of whether Mordecai was an infamous serial killer. During Barters' interview with her mother, Shannon, she acknowledged reporting Mordecai  to the police as a teenager. Instead of helping

or investigating, the authorities  discounted Shannon's allegations, concluding that she was merely feeling  "hormonal resentment" for her stepfather. Jaime, Mordecai and Jeanne Kirkpatrick's  biological daughter, related horrific accounts about the trauma she endured throughout  her childhood in Mordecai's home. One notable story included a time in which a 15-year-old  Jaime was suffering from a scoliosis flare-up, and when Mordecai came to her room upon hearing  her in pain, instead of helpin

g, raped her. Christi, Kirkpatrick's daughter, shared  an intriguing tale during the interviews. When Christi thought she was about to uncover  Mordecai's misconduct, the 13-year-old fought back against her stepfather's attacks, leaving  him with a cut on his face. When questioned, Mordecai lied, blaming the mark on  his razor and concealing the fact that he had tried to harm his stepdaughter. Shannon's allegations concerning Mordecai were not the only ones that were dismissed. In one  intervi

ew, Mordecai's wife from 1972 until 1983, Jeanne, discussed her ex-husband's violent  behavior. Kirkpatrick was first drawn to Mordecai's fatherly influence on her children, but  she quickly realized he was putting up a front. He became obsessed with Kirkpatrick, and she  began worrying about her and her children's lives. After her children were exposed to violence  and sexual assault in her home, Mordecai forced a loaded revolver into Kirkpatrick's  mouth after she demanded a divorce. Although

many criminals would, logistically,  want to avoid being identified with their crimes, Mordecai employed a different strategy! Mordecai's students said that he had sexually assaulted them in his secluded  cabin, while others believed that they had barely escaped being sexually assaulted by  him. However, it was unexpectedly discovered that Mordecai himself was responsible for  the fabrication of many of these stories. The boasting about his misdeeds varied, but they  all had one thing in common:

they had him having sexually explicit contact with female pupils. During the first half of the series, a grim picture is painted of the violent pedophile.  But what does this have to do with the Zodiac? In one episode, Shannon recounts the story  of a late-night car trip with Mordecai where she felt that he was going to murder her on a  secluded road. Barter doesn't specify why or how, but it reminded her of Kathleen Johns's  supposed encounter with the Zodiac. On March 22nd, 1970, 22-year-o

ld Kathleen Johns  drove from San Bernadino to Petaluma to see her mother. She was travelling with her newborn  daughter and was seven months pregnant. At around 11:15 p.m., while traveling on a deserted  road, a car pulled up next to her, and a man behind the wheel started pointing for her to pull  over. When she agreed, the driver approached her window and told her that her left rear wheel  was loose but that he could fix it for her. He took a tire iron and loosened  the nuts instead of tighte

ning them, so when he gave her the go-ahead and she  tried to drive away, the wheel came off. The stranger then offered her a ride to a  service station, which she accepted, but once Johns and her baby were in his vehicle, it  was evident that the driver had other intentions for her. The man started driving at high speeds,  disregarding stop signs, and refused to slow down. According to a 1998 interview, Johns said that  the driver started telling her, "You know you're gonna die, right? I'm gonn

a kill you." Knowing that the vehicle would not stop or even slow down, Johns pulled her infant to  her chest, grabbed the door handle, jumped, and rolled. Fortunately, a trucker saw  what had happened and stopped to help. The trucker took Johns to a nearby police station  to file a complaint, but as she was doing so, she saw a police sketch." I looked up on the wall,  and there was one of those composite drawings of the person who I'd just spent this time with,"  she said. "It turns out it was

the Zodiac, and I didn't know who that was at the time." Despite Johns's later protestations, none of the police reports actually  mention the man threatening her life. And, although a letter written by Zodiac  months later indicated enjoying a "rather interesting ride" with a woman and her child,  it featured none of the customary details that his stories were renowned for, raising  the possibility that he was trying to claim credit for something he read in the press. Barter would then go down

the Zodiac rabbit hole like many before her. Barter claims  that she went down the Zodiac "hole" out of curiosity and wanted to see if her  violent step-grandfather fitted the bill. Her suspicions were tweaked when Barter and her  mother compared pictures of Mordecai and the famous police composite photo of the Zodiac. They  also saw similarities in his physical attributes. "Jim had a stocky athletic build," Barter would  say, comparing Mordecai to the Zodiac. Barter has a photograph of Mordecai

wearing red-tinted  glasses, also attributed to the infamous killer. Barters' next clue was a shoe print. After the  Lake Berryessa attack, Detectives discovered a trail of discernible footprints heading to and  from the crime scene. After careful examination, it was revealed that the footwear that  had shaped them were Wing Walkers, a kind of low-cut military boot, a size 10 and a half  boot. Mordecai wore a size 10 and a half shoes. Barter's evidence trail ends with  a trip to Lake Berryessa

to match a photograph of Mordecai sitting on a boat  to the area where the Zodiac struck in 1969. Unfortunately, she was unsuccessful. Barter presented her "evidence" to Michael Butterfield, a writer who has researched the  Zodiac case extensively since the 1990s. As a renowned leading authority on unsolved cases,  he has worked as a media source and consultant for news stories, television documentaries,  a History Channel series, and director David Fincher's major motion film Zodiac. After lo

oking at the evidence, Butterfield bluntly told Barter that it was  doubtful that Mordecai was the Zodiac and how many people who had suspected one of their  family members had "ruined their lives with it." While striking out on the Zodiac angle,  Barter may be onto something linking her sadistic step-grandfather to another  unsolved series of serial killings! The Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders.... Serial murder was rampant in the United States throughout the early 1970s. In fact, by  the middle

of the decade, FBI profiler Robert Ressler came up with the phrase "serial killer"  during interviews with Herb Mullin, Edmund Kemper, and Monte Rissell. Ressler's in-depth  investigation into the mental processes of sexual sociopaths led him to become the  world's leading authority on serial murder. Between 1972 and 1973, one of Ressler's  monsters cruised the streets of Santa Rosa, California, searching for unsuspecting victims.  Within two years, at least seven young women suffered sexual abu

se, were tortured,  and killed by an unknown perpetrator. The Santa Rosa hitchhiker murders cold case now  has yet another suspect, according to Barter. The first known victims were Maureen Sterling, 12,  and Yvonne Weber, 13. At about 9 p.m. on Friday, February 4th, 1972, they told their friend at  the Redwood Empire Ice Arena in Santa Rosa that they were going to smoke marijuana with an older  man. This was the last time they were seen alive. Maureen and Yvonne's skeletal remains were  discove

red roughly around 30 minutes' drive away from the Ice Arena and two hours away  from Mordecai's home in Half Moon Bay. Barker reiterated throughout the documentary  that he would take long drives without explaining where he was going, insinuating that maybe he  committed these murders on one of his drives. Another coincidence is that the  family cabin is also situated in Santa Rosa close to the girls dump site! Binding materials recovered at the site indicated that they were restrained. Their c

lothes  were never found, although detectives discovered a 14-carat gold necklace with a crucifix belonging  to Maureen and a single earring and orange beads. After his death, Barter's mother,  Shannon, remembers discovering a box of weird one-piece trinket jewelry, including  orange beads, among Mordecai's possessions. Unfortunately, the box was thrown away. In the documentary, Barter interviewed the girls' friend, who saw the man they left  with and, when showed a picture of Mordecai, she ac

knowledged that he may be the same person. On March 4th, 1972, Kim Allen, 19, hitched a 15-minute ride from Larkspur, California, to  the 101's northbound ramp in San Rafael. The men who gave her a ride were absolved  of wrongdoing and said they last saw her at 5:20 p.m. when they dropped her off. Her corpse was discovered the next day, March 5th, near the bottom of an embankment in Santa Rosa.  She had been tied, raped, and strangled with a wire. Her killer's sperm was extracted from  her

body as evidence. Mordecai's DNA was handed to police in the documentary's last episode,  but the findings have yet to be made public. Lori Kursa, a 13-year-old habitual runaway,  went missing somewhere between November 20th and November 30th, 1972. Her mother last saw  her on November 11th, before she left to visit friends in Santa Rosa, who last saw her on the  20th or 21st. Later, two witnesses came forward, claiming to have seen her with a white man with  an "afro-style" hairdo driving a van

. Carolyn's naked corpse was discovered on December  14th, off Calistoga Rd in Santa Rosa. Six years later, an unnamed Jane Doe was  discovered about 100 yards from where Lori Kursa was found. Her arm was broken. She had  been hogtied and thrown into a duffel bag. Police thought she died between 1972 and 1974. Mordecai served as the high school group's counselor at Future Farmers of America meetings in  Santa Rosa in August and November 1972. The latter event took place on November 30th, 1972!

Carolyn Davis, a 15-year-old runaway who went missing from the 101 in Gerberville, California,  on July 15th, 1973. Carolyn's elder sister, Judy, said that Carolyn informed her she had  run away after witnessing a double murder. Carolyn's corpse was discovered on July 31st,  1973, only three feet away from Maureen and Yvonne's remains. A pathologist confirmed that  she died from strychnine poisoning around July 20th. Investigators were unable to ascertain  if the poison that killed her was

administered or consumed or whether she had been raped. Another victim found seems to exactly fit the circumstantial evidence offered in The Truth About  Jim, which alleges Mordecai's participation in the Santa Rosa Hitchhiker murders. Theresa Diane  Smith Walsh, 23, went missing on December 22nd, 1973, while hitchhiking from Zuma Beach in Malibu  to Gerberville to see her mother for Christmas. Kayakers found her corpse six days later,  precisely one year after Maureen and Yvonne were recovered

in Mark West Creek, west of Santa Rosa. The specifics of Theresa's death are very disturbing. Police assumed she had been deposited  up the stream and her corpse had been carried to its final position during severe rains. Like the  other victims, she was naked. She'd been hogtied, with her thumbs securely wrapped together. Her  left eye was injured, and there was an injury to the back of her skull. A nylon rope wrapped  from her ankles to a noose around her neck, forcing her to keep her body unc

omfortably bent  to breathe, creating an impossible scenario that progressively suffocated her. Mordecai's family  have all agreed on one thing: he often mentioned hogtying women and slashing their throats. Did Jim Mordecai kill Theresa? No. Somehow, the documentary crew and Mordecai family overlooked what seems to  be a critical element, a date and event that was shown in archival footage in the documentary. On the same day that Theresa Diane Smith Walsh vanished in Malibu, Jim Mordecai was get

ting  married to Jeanne Probst in Half Moon Bay! Zuma Beach in Malibu is nearly 6 hours away  from where Jim Mordecai was joined by friends and family the whole day, as seen on  video footage in The Truth About Jim. Does this completely exonerate him? No, not  yet. However, it provides reliable evidence that contradicts the documentary's circumstantial  evidence. Simply put, he couldn't have been in two places simultaneously. Jim Mordecai  could not have murdered Theresa Walsh. But as we've said

before, California was  infested with serial killers in the 1970s. Did another serial killer coincidentally dump  their victim in the Santa Rosa Killers graveyard? There is no argument that Jim  Mordecai was a monster that escaped justice. But was he the Zodiac?  Highly unlikely! Was he The Santa Rosa hitchhiker murderer? We'll have to wait  and see...