GLYNN WASHINGTON, HOST:
Now then, we're going to start off today's SNAP JUDGMENT episode with a story where the search to solve one mystery turns into the search of something else altogether. Buckle yourself up, it's SNAP JUDGMENT.
GARY STEWART: My romantic notion was my father had to have been a sailor in a port of call - a very large, famous port of call; New Orleans - and my mother might have likely been a one-night stand and I was a result of that. And back then, in my little world - my conservative Bible Belt world I grew up in - that was a far-fetched notion, but knowing what I've discovered, boy, how conservative was my romantic notion now?
NANCY LOPEZ, BYLINE: For the longest time, Gary knew absolutely nothing about his birth parents. He let go of any hope of ever meeting them. But, he told himself, he had two adoptive parents at home who've given him everything. He became an electrical engineer. He married and had a son of his own. Then out of the blue, when Gary was 39, his parents had something to tell him.
STEWART: I prepared myself for the worst. I thought we were going to hear some bad news about someone in the family. But when they announced that my birth mother - or, a lady from San Francisco - had contacted them claiming to be my birth mother, boy, my insides were just jumping. I was so excited. I really - this was likely the most exciting news I had ever heard in my life.
LOPEZ: It was only a matter of months before Gary and his son Zach flew to San Francisco to meet his birth mom, Judy. What followed was a family reunion Gary had always dreamed of. He met his grandmother, his aunts and uncles and his half-brother. But the next day when he and Judy were driving east across the San Francisco Bay Bridge, something occurred to Gary - a question he had completely forgotten to ask.
STEWART: I was like, well, this is great. This is your half of the family. So Mom, what ever happened? Who was my father? And she was driving in her little red Grand Am and I was in the passenger seat. She adjusted her two-hand grip on the steering wheel then sat up straight in her seat and her whole demeanor changed because I really don't think she was expecting that question right at that time. But she said, well, honey it's been a long time and I was very young. And so I was forced to suppress my memories about my time with you and your father. But all I remember was his name was Van.
LOPEZ: What Judy tells him about Van is very far from Gary's romantic notion of his father. When Gary was just weeks old, his father would leave him unattended, lying in a trunk.
STEWART: When she would come home from work, he would intentionally have the lid closed and just mumble something about sick of hearing it cry. And she told me it wasn't just about the crying; he did not want her breast-feeding me. He did not want her holding me.
LOPEZ: One morning Van grabbed the crying baby from Judy's arms and ran out the front door. He took a train to Baton Rouge and abandoned the baby on the stairwell of a random apartment building.
STEWART: And then she said when he returned home without you, I left him immediately.
And that's a whole lot to digest in three minutes. We hadn't gotten to the end of the Bay Bridge yet and I mean, this is information overload; wasn't expecting any of that. I don't know what I was expecting. Having my own son, I just can't fathom the soullessness of a father to be able to do that. I told her, I said, you know Mom, I really don't think I want to meet this guy. The color returned to her face and she later admitted, I'm glad you decided you didn't want to find your father.
LOPEZ: Gary flies back to Baton Rouge. But no matter how hard he tries, he can't stop thinking about his biological father.
STEWART: That's when I said, you know what? I want to know. This relationship with my mother has turned out to be something out of a dream and certainly, if this reunion can be this fulfilling, I am positive that I can have a wonderful experience with the man who gave me life.
LOPEZ: Judy reluctantly agrees to help Gary and turns out, she has contacts at the San Francisco Police Department. Her late husband was a homicide inspector for years. His partner was now a sergeant on the force and seemingly happy to provide Judy with some information.
STEWART: She said, honey, your father's name is Earl Van Best, Jr. and he gave me his Social Security number, his date of birth, his place of birth and his mother's maiden name. At the end she said, honey, there's information in your father's file that he is not going to share with you. Just hearing my father's name for the first time was just so overwhelming to me, I was just thrilled to have his name and my mind just zoomed by that little caveat. I didn't care. As it turned out, that file and the information in that file would certainly become a very critical part of my story.
LOPEZ: Gary's distracted by one other thing - the sergeant has just sent him an email of an old DMV photo from 1962 of his father.
STEWART: And this picture starts downloading on my screen and from top to bottom the first thing I see is how much darker his hair is than mine - and my son's looking over my shoulder - and the next thing I noticed was his eyes. They just looked lifeless I mean, no emotion. And Zach says, Dad, he looks like a serial killer. And I'm like, no he doesn't - you know, wanting to be protective of this photo, this father that I'd never met, never seen and so here I am looking at a DMV photo of my biological father for the first time. But I go back to the eyes. It looks soulless, like there's no soul. You know, they say that the eyes are the key to the soul, the window to the soul? I think that's what they say, but it's true. Why the look? But it's OK, you know, that didn't deter me. I'm just thinking, this is a picture, it's my father. I'm going to go find him.
LOPEZ: But the first thing Gary finds is that his father died 20 years back.
STEWART: But I still had to know. I still wanted to find out, you know, more about his family and see what they knew - see how much they knew about me. See what they knew about him. So I didn't give up.
LOPEZ: He urges Judy to contact her friends at the San Francisco Police Department again and this time, ask about the contents of his father's file. Maybe what's in there will shed some light.
STEWART: My mom went and met the now former chief of the San Francisco Police Department. And he told her Judy, what Gary's father went on to do would make what he did to you and Gary seem inconsequential. The information in Gary's father's file is so heinous that it would destroy you. So you tell Gary to drop it.
I am so beat - beaten down. I've got no energy left. And when she called I told her, you know what, Mom? I'm done. I'm done. And I did. I dropped it. That day - that was April 6, 2004.
And on July 31, 2004 having completely forced every memory of my father, every hope of ever finding out what the real story was, I turn on the television and see this wanted poster from the San Francisco Police Department from a cold case and the hair stands up on the back of my neck, like it's doing right now. And I just - maybe I let out an audible something because my son comes running from his room and his Xbox box or PlayStation and he says - he sees I'm looking at the TV, I guess he sees the color drain from my face - he says, Dad, it's you.
(SOUNDBITE OF TV NEWS SPECIAL)
UNIDENTIFIED WOMAN: The 40-year search for the Zodiac Killer remains a mystifying cold case.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #1: Zodiac, a symbol that now stands for terror in San Francisco.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #2: To this day, police have never arrested a suspect. The Zodiac went on to claim he was responsible for more than three dozen killings.
UNIDENTIFIED MAN #3: This guy is a pathological psycho killer. There's no doubt about it.
LOPEZ: Gary's watching a news special on the Zodiac Killer, who terrorized California in the late '60s. His victims - mainly women. But what really made the Zodiac infamous is the way he'd openly taunt the police. He'd send cryptic messages or ciphers to the press, claiming that they contained his identity. No one ever cracked that code, but the mystery surrounding the Zodiac was so enticing, it inspired a huge cult following, with hundreds of conspiracy theorists claiming they know who the real killer is. And although the authorities never caught him, they do have a sketch of the Zodiac's face, which is now on display on Gary's TV screen.
STEWART: I got up from my chair and I walked to my office and I picked up the framed photo now - remember, this was still a driver's license photo as far as I've been told - I bring it into the living room and I showed Zach. I was like, Oh, my God. This surely has to be the most unfortunate coincidence possible. My father looks like the Zodiac Killer.
LOPEZ: Now, if you look at the sketch of the Zodiac and the DMV photo of Gary's father side by side, the physical similarities are hard to deny. The large forehead, the dead eyes looking through black-rimmed glasses, the narrow nose, thin lips, even the unfazed expression.
Right away, Gary thinks back to the statement from the last police officer his mom spoke to.
STEWART: What your father did was so heinous it would destroy you. So I started thinking about the definition of heinous as it pertains to a homicide unit or a police department. What could it be? You know, what could it be more heinous than child abuse, child abandonment? It had to be something. So all I had was that hunch.
WASHINGTON: Now then. That story is not over. It is far from over. The amazing conclusion when we return. You're listening to SNAP JUDGMENT, the "Mystery Man" episode. Don't go anywhere.
(MUSIC)
WASHINGTON: Welcome back to SNAP JUDGMENT, the "Mystery Man" episode.
Right before the break, SNAP JUDGMENT's Nancy Lopez spoke to Gary Stewart. And Gary was concerned that he may have some very dark blood running through his veins.
STEWART: Here I am looking at a photo of my biological father for the first time and my son says, Dad, he looks like a serial killer.
WASHINGTON: And now the stunning conclusion to our story.
LOPEZ: Gary begins to do some research, this time, determined to get to the bottom of his father's story.
STEWART: Knowing that I will find something in an old family document or from his friend in high school or in the police reports or something - someone's going to come out of the woodwork and say you know what? Your father wasn't even here in the country when this occurred, so it couldn't be him.
LOPEZ: The first thing he finds is that the police department's main Zodiac suspect was a man by the name of Arthur Leigh Allen. He was a pedophile who actually claimed to know who the Zodiac killer was. He said he met him at a mental hospital in central California for the sexually deviant. Turns out Gary's father was kept in the same hospital for statutory rape. Gary also learns his father spent the first six years of his life in Japan, where his own father taught him a certain coding system that's eerily similar to that of the Zodiac ciphers. So then one day, Gary decides to sit down and closely study those ciphers. And basically they look like a child's word search puzzle, but instead of the pure alphabet, they contain some letters interspersed with numbers, math symbols and geometric shapes.
STEWART: I just grabbed my pen and wrote out E-A-R-L-V-A-N-B-E-S-T-J-R. The way he spelled his name there and the way he spelled his name as he did on the booking sheet with the SFPD, E.V. Best Jr.
LOPEZ: And like word search puzzle, Gary looks for each letter of his father's name vertically, diagonally and across. And there it is.
STEWART: The Zodiac says in this cipher you will find my identity. And had my father's name in the two different ways he wrote his name, with no letter substitution, with no - no missing letters, a complete layout of his name in two different ciphers. That - that's when I knew.
LOPEZ: And I have to ask at some level, did you want to believe your father was the Zodiac?
STEWART: You know, I didn't set out to prove my father was a serial killer. So at some level did I ever hope that he was? - Absolutely not. I certainly did not want this to be true.
LOPEZ: By this point, Gary has clicked on an article from the San Francisco Chronicle that says the Zodiac killer case was recently made inactive.
STEWART: At the bottom of that article, I saw a note that said however, if anyone has any credible leads or tips, they should contact a certain lieutenant in the homicide bureau and gave his phone number. And there it was, there was my opportunity.
LOPEZ: Some people might say all of this sounds pretty outlandish and even unbelievable, right? So I have to ask Gary, is he just another guy with his own pet theory?
STEWART: Believe me, being a professional engineer, business person, family man, father; I absolutely had reservations about coming forward. But I wasn't going to join the cult following. I have a case. I am more ready now than ever to find out one way or another. I believe I'm right. And I hope I'm wrong. And there's one piece of information that I could have that could disprove it completely for me. And that is my father's file. So I called the number. Surprisingly, he answered the phone. And I said, Lieutenant, my name is Gary Stewart and I have a question - has the zodiac case been solved and closed? And he laughed. He laughed. He said, no, it's not solved, I wish it were. I said, well, I have some information and maybe you can help me.
LOPEZ: The next chance he gets, Gary flies to San Francisco to meet with the Lieutenant in person.
STEWART: I sat in his office and he took out a little notepad and he says, OK, let's go over this one more time. And I believe by the time I got finished sharing the overwhelming compelling evidence that I had, he said, you know what Gary? - There's only one way to get down to the bottom of this, will you voluntarily submit a sample of your DNA for analysis for comparison to the alleged Zodiac profile we have? And I said sure. And he swabbed me that day. Part of me was very sad trying to figure out how I was going to come to terms with this. Part of it was elation and relief knowing there was nothing else I could do, and hope and pray to God that it comes back negative.
LOPEZ: But to this day, the truth still escapes Gary. He says his case was mysteriously shut down and the lieutenant he spoke to ultimately transferred out of homicide. He still has a copy of the crime lab request to have his DNA compared to the Zodiac's. I reached out to the San Francisco Police Department. They didn't respond in time to my questions about Gary, but say the Zodiac killer case is open and active. For Gary, this has all come at a cost. He didn't tell his birth mom, Judy, he was still digging into his father's past. He didn't want to upset her. But when he finally shared with her what he was up to...
STEWART: She made the statement, honey, I wish I would never have searched for you now. And I'm thinking, really? And that hurt. I mean, how do you think that makes me feel? And she said, oh, honey, I didn't mean that, but if just - if I had known that there were going to be so many unanswered questions and that I would never be able to give you all the answers you needed nor the father you deserved, I would've never looked for you.
LOPEZ: Gary's relationship with Judy has been on the rocks ever since. In a way, Gary's kind of back where he started, no closer to the mother or the father who gave him up.
STEWART: Understand, Nancy, that the only reason I ever started this journey was so that I could have a chance to have a cup of coffee with this man and tell him, you know, look at me, look at my life, look at who I've become.
LOPEZ: And so, Gary, after learning what you know about your father, knowing what you know now, is he still someone you'd want to have a cup of coffee with?
STEWART: That's a tough question. And now completely believing that he was the Zodiac killer, I would just want to know why. I have my theory. I have my justification about the way he was raised and losing his father and his mother's philandering. But I would like to have a conversation with him. And I don't know, Nancy, if you or your listeners will be able to understand that. I think everybody wants to hear their parent's voice at one time. I know that'll never happen.
LOPEZ: It wasn't until a few years ago that Gary realized there was one other thing he could do. He found out where his father was buried and decided to pay him a visit.
STEWART: He was interred, 1 of 16 buried that day in this poor paupers cemetery. I didn't have flowers. I came with a heavy heart. I prayed really hard that God would forgive me for the anger that I had for my father for what he had done to me. Like I said, it was personal for me because even though him abandoning me was the best thing that ever happened to me, it's still hard to swallow - sorry - that your biological father didn't love you enough to keep you. And I guess it was 4, 5, 6 minutes I sat there. Well, I realized tears were streaming down my face, and I'm like, you know what? This is it. He used to keep me in a box because he hated to hear me cry, and now he was in a box. And I had a captive audience, and I was crying, a son to meet his father for the very first and last time.
WASHINGTON: Big thanks to Gary Stewart for sharing your story. To learn more about Gary and his father's back story - because there is a lot more - check out his book, "The Most Dangerous Animal Of All." We'll have a link at snapjudgment.org. That story was produced by Nancy Lopez with sound design by Leon Morimoto and Pat Mesiti-Miller.
When SNAP JUDGMENT returns, we determine whether a young man is a super genius or not. Don't go anywhere. SNAP JUDGMENT. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.