Gary Pinkerton plays us a Flash Back Friday episode where he interviews Gary Stewart, a man that set off to find his biological father. Stewart talks about how he discovered who his real father was and the feelings he had when he found out he was the Zodiac Killer. The Zodiac Killer was a gunman that killed 4-6 people in the 1960s. Gary discusses his process when writing his book The Most Dangerous Animal of All: Searching for My Father.
Announcer 0:00
Welcome to this week’s edition of flashback Friday, your opportunity to get some good review by listening to episodes from the past that Jason has hand picked to help you today in the present and propel you into the future. Enjoy.
Announcer 0:14
Welcome to the holistic survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The holistic survival show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. sudden change or worst case scenario. You’ll be ready. Welcome to ballistic survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host Jason Hartman
Jason Hartman 1:03
Welcome to the holistic survival show. This is your host, Jason Hartman, where we talk about protecting the people, places and profits you care about in these uncertain times. We have a great interview for you today. And we will be back with that in less than 60 seconds on the holistic survival show. And by the way, be sure to visit our website at holistic survival calm, you can subscribe to our blog, which is totally free has loads of great information and there’s just a lot of good content for you on the site. So make sure you take advantage of that at holistic survival calm We’ll be right back. It’s my pleasure to welcome Gary L. Stewart to the show. He’s got a very, very interesting story. He’s author of a, a top notch book that is getting a lot of attention lately, entitled The most dangerous animal of all, searching for my father and finding the Zodiac Killer. An amazing amazing story, Gary Welcome. How are you?
Gary L Stewart 2:01
Jason, thank you for inviting me. I’m fine.
Jason Hartman 2:03
Good, good. Well, so, Wow, what an amazing story. So you were looking for your biological father who I take it you obviously didn’t grow up with and didn’t know. Right? And then you you found that he was actually the Zodiac Killer.
Gary L Stewart 2:20
Right I it’s quite it’s quite a story and but before
Jason Hartman 2:26
Yeah, I want Yeah, just before you dive in, I want you to tell people, depending on how old they are, they may or may not have heard of the Zodiac Killer. So first I want you to tell us about who is that? What was the crime? Where was it? Was it San Francisco? I think that area? Yes. Yeah. Okay. And what did he do? How did he kill and how many victims?
Gary L Stewart 2:45
So yeah, the Zodiac Killer terrorized the residents of California, particularly Northern California, San Francisco Bay Area, and the mid to late 60s all the way through the middle said middle to late seven. He’s he he was a copycat actually, if you look closely of jack the Ripper and to this day jack the Ripper is the world’s most notorious still unsolved serial killer case. And second to that being the Zodiac Killer, America’s version of jack the Ripper.
Jason Hartman 3:19
Amazing and so how many victims five? Okay, five. But how did he I mean that five isn’t, you know, his serial killers go it’s not the most prolific necessarily Now, granted a lot of times with these guys they don’t know all the victims. They discover more victims years later and
Gary L Stewart 3:38
he certainly he certainly claim mud many more he claimed 37 but I believe it was all just a claim there never been any other ties to it. One unique thing about about him is the motive. And you’ll see that in very great detail in the book. Why he did what he did, why he selected lovers and lovers lanes. For the most part with one exception and that one exception was because he was an acquaintance of my father. So it’s very different. And then there’s actually a reason for why he stopped doing what he’s doing. And why, you know, everyone says, you know, the Zodiac hasn’t spoken and 40 years because part of his signature was after he committed his crimes, he would write taunting letter letters to the authorities and and as well as the newspapers, say, you know, kind of catch me if you can, I’m way more clever than you, you’ll never find out who I am. And he would send these cryptic messages these these coded letters to the newspapers and and and basically say, hey, if, if you crack this cipher, you will have my identity. And unfortunately, the first three ciphers that were sent to the San Francisco Bay Area newspapers, they were decoded and he had a hidden message there and the message was something like I love killing man because it’s more fun than killing wild game in the forest after all, man is the most dangerous animal of all.
Jason Hartman 5:11
Unless the title for the book. Wow. Yeah.
Gary L Stewart 5:13
Right and and, and but the thing is, a couple weeks went by and in a couple of high school teachers in the Bay Area solved that hidden message and they published it and he wrote another letter saying, by the way, if you cracked my cipher, meaning there’s a you may have cracked the decoded message, but my identity is in that cipher. He said that over and over and and I’ve discovered my father’s complete name in all three ways he ever wrote his name in three of those ciphers. It’s like he wanted to get caught. He was just you know, he knew he had them then they were always going to from here four would be looking for a hidden message and not for his name.
Jason Hartman 5:56
Yeah. Wow. Amazing. Amazing. So tell About how you so At what age did you start looking for your father and what prompted you to do that, for example.
Gary L Stewart 6:06
So my I was raised in an adoptive home where my other sister was adopted as well and my parents weren’t my adoptive parents weren’t able to have children or so they thought until they had won three years after they adopted me as a natural child and but all my life I my parents were very honest with me about being adopted, but in they love me unconditionally, just as if I were their own. But I always wondered, I always wanted to know, you know, I want to know where I came from. Unfortunately, I didn’t I didn’t have to go searching online when I was 39 years old. Just 12 years ago, a lady from San Francisco call my bio my adoptive mother and said I am your son Gary’s birth mother. That begin the process. I immediately met her, flew out to San Francisco to meet her and asked her who my father was. Her answer was, you know, the question she’s been reading for years, while Honey, it’s been a long time, and I’ve been forced to forget these memories of my past with you and your father, but I think his name was van. I was very young, and he was twice my age. And we were on the run from the law from San Francisco.
Jason Hartman 7:19
So she knew he was the Zodiac Killer.
Gary L Stewart 7:22
No, she didn’t. She had no idea at the time. What did she
Jason Hartman 7:26
he was why were they on the run then for another reason?
Gary L Stewart 7:29
Well, he was wanted for statutory rape of my mother. And
Jason Hartman 7:34
when you say twice the age I don’t know what age she was, but yeah, that’s
Gary L Stewart 7:37
okay. So I should go back this. This was in 1962. A few years before the Zodiac killings. So she was she was 13 when they met 14 when they married 15 when they had me, they had made it all the way from San Francisco to New Orleans. I was born in New Orleans and my father Got my mother to go out and get a job as a barmaid at 15 years old because he was he was Wanted Fugitives from San Francisco. And so he couldn’t use his ID to get a job. He just let my mother go to work as a barmaid. She would come home from her shift and find that my father had me locked up in a footlocker and an old truck with lids shut because he said he couldn’t stand to hear it cry anymore. And that’s when she started getting scared. And so at four weeks old, my father took me by train from from New Orleans to Baton Rouge, and he got off the train and walked seven blocks up the main street in Baton Rouge and abandoned me in a stairway landing in an apartment building. Fortunately, that was 11 o’clock in the morning. Fortunately, the building was occupied. No one was home. But 430 That afternoon, young lady came home and heard this baby crying and call the authority. So for two months, I was for a month. I was Baton Rouge is baby john doe. So here I am making the headlines in Baton Rouge who are the parents of this abandoned infant? And then they’re making the headlines and all across the nation. You know, the ice cream romance? Where are they the ice cream romance because they actually met at an ice cream parlor. So I told my mother when she told me the story. I said, You know, I don’t think I want to find this character. I’ve got a great family, and a great father here at home in Baton Rouge. So I didn’t decide to search for about six months. When I did, it was like my mother had remarried 11 years after me and my father, she had remarried a homicide inspector in the San Francisco Police Department. All
Jason Hartman 9:41
right, what a strange turn of events, you know,
Gary L Stewart 9:44
it’s just getting good. It’s just getting good. Jason the whole book is like that. So he passed away in 98. My mother came looking for me in 2000 and found me in 2002. So when I asked my mother to help me find my father, she went To her husband, her former husband’s friends in the sfpd, who found his file and said Gary’s father’s name was Earl van best Jr. He was born in Wilmore, Kentucky. His social security number was this. But that’s all we’re going to share with you because there’s information in the file that we’re not going to share. Maybe Maybe I should have been warned. I don’t know. But no, my mom says, you know, honey, think about it. He was a Ford. I was a 14 year old kid and he was 27 years old. Are we to be concerned he was if he was that way, something was wrong. Anyway. That didn’t deter me. I set out on a search to find this man and to thank him for abandoning the Baton Rouge where I could be adopted by the Stewart family. My reunion with my mother was so fulfilling. I wanted to extend that same forgiveness and welcome him into my family. Over the course of the next year and a half, I found out that he was deceased and buried in an unmarked grave in Mexico City. He drowned in his own vomit. And I still continue to run into roadblocks, I found out that he had had three other children and an abandoned them in Vienna, Austria. And I reached out to contact them. But they insisted on me having some kind of proof that I was as his son, the older son. So I needed that information from the sfpd. And they wouldn’t they wouldn’t get off of it. And my mother went to him one last time and she said, Gary just needs to know. And they, they told my mother, what was in that file was so heinous that it would destroy me. And they also said what was in my father’s file would make what he did to me and my mother, rape and abuse seem inconsequential. Wow.
Jason Hartman 11:47
Amazing, just just amazing. So I’ve got to ask you, before we get to some practical tips that we’re actually going to share with the audience here. I am very impressed that you would come out with this story. I mean, Of course, mature people understand that every individual is completely different. The parents of Jeff dahmer, for example, are not Jeff dahmer. Okay, but, I mean, do you get hate mail? Do people threaten you? Do they? I mean, of course this stuff happened a long time ago. But it seems like most people in your position would want to just kind of hide out.
Gary L Stewart 12:21
You’re right. And there’s a reason I came forward right now because it’s been just two weeks a little over two weeks since the book came out. And we had a lot of national international publicity still going on. The books been released in the UK Now, what I’m getting the most of our negative comments from people who have been working the amateur sleuths, the young guys who sit at home on message boards, and have their own person of interest and want to name that person and if anybody comes up with a relevant suspect, and it’s not theirs, that they’re going to attack them as far as personal Personal hate mail or whatever, not getting any of that. And I’ll tell you why. Because my story is a story of nature versus nurture. I had to share my story because of who I became I you know, of course, I think when I first found this out, I think God, I’ve got a serial killers DNA running through my blood.
Jason Hartman 13:22
How am I did those that DNA? I mean, I don’t think that’s hereditary, fortunately,
Gary L Stewart 13:27
yet, right. Exactly, exactly. But you know, everyone wants to know, everyone I’ve talked to for the past two weeks wants to know, do I ever get these crazy thoughts and what I can say for a fact is my father. I don’t know. Okay, and I’m not a forensic psychiatrist. But my father was, I don’t believe he was born a natural born killer. I believe. He lost his father and mother in his father in a divorce to his mother, when he was a very young child and his father was his hero. And his mother was had some terrible morals she she had more men suitors in and out of her. My father would describe it to his cousins as a turnstile in a movie theater. He learned his respect or hate or rage for women from his mother. So my father is a victim of his nurture. And me, on the other hand, exactly the same case. Don’t care what kind of evil we’ve all come from, if any, I can speak for myself. I was raised in a home where love forgiveness, honesty, acceptance, or tenants, the way to live your life and I have no concerns whatsoever.
Jason Hartman 14:42
Amazing. Just an amazing story. Well, tell us what we can learn from this. I mean, it always amazes me whenever they catch a serial killer. I’ll use Jeff Chalmers an example again, because I remember seeing the interviews and all the neighbors saying, oh, he was such a nice neighbor, he was quiet and polite. And you know, everybody says, you know, they had no idea they were all it’s always that way with all these stories, you know, your viewers are in shock, you know, all the people around them. This person, you know, was just amazed they could can’t believe it.
Gary L Stewart 15:16
Exactly. So you know, even even Jason even today, when we have some of these shootings, at schools and in public places, there’s always somebody that comes in after the fact and says, I could have suspected that I knew there was something wrong. The problem is, I really believe it. Some of these people want to be stopped. That’s why they’re sharing. That’s why they’re communicating. Well, it’s
Jason Hartman 15:41
an ego thing. You know, they want to brag about this. These are their accomplishments, right?
Gary L Stewart 15:46
Absolutely. And even even in my own case, my father, my his first cousin, who was my second cousin has been wonderful to me and hear story after story. But what she can what she tells me is We sometimes blamed ourselves as kids that he ended up the way he ended up because we picked on him so much. He he, you know, we went swimming and weather swash down and Myrtle Beach, and he didn’t want to go he wanted to sit in in the beach house and read all this English literature. He was just that way. And we feel bad because we picked on him so much. People knew everybody knew and it can be stopped my my advices you know, a friend of a friend of my wife’s Read, read the story and one night, and she told me today that that she has not slept with her porch light off sense that has scared her to death. And I guess I don’t read it that way because I’m more into the story of hope in the nature versus nurture. But I think there are signs I think, and I would encourage people if you see something if it just doesn’t add up, speak up. We see it every day. Now on Fortunately,
Jason Hartman 17:00
that’s, that’s it. We do see that, but we just don’t know, you know, how do you know?
Gary L Stewart 17:06
Yeah, that’s a great question. And you know, looking back, I know, my friends of my father and my family, all kids, including my mother, including my biological mother. She says, Now, granted, she was 1415 that there were signs, you know. And so, I think I think it behooves all of us just to be aware, I mean, I don’t think a perfectly normal, perfectly mentally healthy, normal person is going to appear as a perfect sheep, or that that’s a wolf that’s got sheep’s clothing, I believe a sheep so sheep and you’re going to know a wolf in sheep’s clothing if you just pay attention.
Jason Hartman 17:55
So what what else can we learn from these people? I mean, Lot of people don’t realize they don’t realize there were signs until after the fact. You know, maybe a lot of us are living next door to a serial killer. You know, we just really don’t know any other telltale signs we can learn or, you know, just any anything we can do to protect ourselves.
Gary L Stewart 18:18
I think so i think that you know, the BTK killer in Wichita, Kansas was operating about the same time that I discovered who my father was. And you know, I know the one thing he had and he also was a Zodiac Killer copycat The one thing that he had in common with my father is is there he was like the the guy given a little bit of authority as a as a neighborhood patrol guy, making sure the the grass height in your lawn wasn’t too high with all those super important things for power hungry people. Right right. power hungry people. And people who wanted attention and brag braggadocious, I guess arrogant, just wanting to stand out and be set apart for some reason. And I guess, maybe when they figure that that being the neighborhood cop isn’t all that then then there are other ways I’ll get attention.
Jason Hartman 19:19
I Oh, I always found it that these people on homeowners association boards, presidents of homeowners association boards, that they’re like, just some of them are just power hungry. nutjobs I mean,
Gary L Stewart 19:34
we got we had elections on our homeowners association committee just a couple of years ago, and I’m like, I told my wife, I am staying away from that. But we had somebody volunteer, they wanted to have it right the power thing.
Jason Hartman 19:47
Well, who knows what they got in their basement.
Gary L Stewart 19:51
Exactly. That’s right. But there’s so many things we can learn every time one on one of these cases is solved. Every time unfortunately we see this play out in the in the morning news that there are lessons to be learned and and it all in and all comes down to mental health issues.
Jason Hartman 20:10
Wow. Something else well tell people where they can get the book. I mean, of course it’s on Amazon with four star reviews. You got 87 reviews already. And that’s
Gary L Stewart 20:18
pretty quick. That’s not really bad, you know, and it is available on Amazon. You can it’s available at Barnes and Noble books a million all your local bookstores and even even Walmart a friend asked me where to get one of the day and my wife and I ran the Walmart and got one. But the book website is called www dot the most dangerous animal of all.com.
Jason Hartman 20:44
That’s the most dangerous animal of all.com and Gary l Stewart, what an incredible story and thank you for sharing it with us.
Gary L Stewart 20:53
Thank you so much, Jason for having me on the show. It was a pleasure.
Announcer 21:00
Thank you for joining us today for the holistic survival show, protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Be sure to listen to our creating wealth show, which focuses on exploiting the financial and wealth creation opportunities in today’s economy. Learn more at www dot Jason hartman.com or search Jason Hartman on iTunes. This show is produced by the Hartman media company offering very general guidelines and information. opinions of guests are their own and none of the content should be considered individual advice. If you require personalized advice, please consult an appropriate professional information deemed reliable but not guaranteed.