Have you ever wondered how deep family secrets and unsolved crimes intersect?

In this fascinating episode of Family Twist, we sit down with Gary L. Stewart, author of The Most Dangerous Animal of All and a key figure in the FX docu-series based on his book. As a child of adoption with a connection to one of America's most enigmatic criminal mysteries, Gary's story provides a unique blend of personal discovery and true crime intrigue.

My Dad is the Zodiac Killer

Listeners will gain:

• An understanding of the emotional impact of adoption and the lifelong quest for identity that it can trigger.
• Insight into the intersection of personal history with historical crime, through Gary’s deep dive into his own lineage and its unexpected ties to the Zodiac Killer.
• An appreciation for the complexities of dealing with Hollywood and the media when telling a deeply personal story.

Tune in to uncover how one man's journey to understand his past entwines with one of the most chilling unsolved cases in American history.

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Welcome to Family Twist, a podcast about relatively unusual stories of long lost families, adoption, and lots of drama. I'm Corey. And I'm Kendall, and we've been partners for over 16 years. Thanks for joining us on Family Twist. Today, we're very pleased to have Gary L. Stewart as our guest. Gary is the author of the bestselling book, The Most Dangerous Animal of All, which became a docu -series for FX. It's now streaming on Hulu.

Kendall and I just refreshed ourselves last night with the docu -series, but it details Gary's years of research searching for his birth father, who may be the Zodiac Killer. Welcome to the show, Gary.

who lives here on the East Coast. And we soon discovered that Kendall's father and sister on that side were still alive. And then soon after that, found out that his mother was still alive and has got siblings on that side too. So it was kind of a whirlwind. And after visiting his father's family here on the East Coast, just for a weekend, we decided on the way back that we just had to move here. And so we're here, up here in our lives.

from San Francisco and, and moved here. And we've been here ever since. So it's funny because for some reason, San Francisco just keeps popping up in people that we interviewed for this podcast. I don't know if it's just like the center of the universe or what, but you know, here we are going to be soon talking to you about Zodiac Killer and which goes right back to San Francisco. So, yeah, San Francisco is like the epicenter.

of all things curious and all things unknown. Yeah. And not just from serial killer's perspective, but any anything and everything. So yeah, what an interesting connection. And there's what's good for you. The Kindle that you you did your DNA test that you found to your two biological parents still alive. Got to be something because like me, I was born in 63 a little earlier. One of my parents had already is already deceased.

fortunate enough to have my mother, but of course, the thing that led my search was because I wanted to meet my father. Right. Right. And I never had the opportunity to do that. One of the things I wanted to talk about to start this episode is adoption and what children of adoption feel. So when we were watching the series last night, there were themes of like abandonment and nature and nurture. And those are things that we talked about on the show in the past, but I kind of

Gary, I would love to hear your perspective on discovering that you were adopted and what that did to you mentally. It's a very good, deep question. I came from a family where I was actually the third child that was adopted. So for us as infants and then the younger children, we didn't understand. It was another word that we didn't know the definition to. My parents, my adoptive parents say that all of us are books.

and read about adoption and the reasons why these things happened at a very early age. It had to be early because I don't remember these stories, but I know there are some adoption books, some baby books for adopted kids that mom and dad had for all three of us adopted kids. Then three years after I was born and adopted, they got pregnant and I had their own biological child.

So I guess that presented a challenge for them to raise all three kids. The older adopted sister was killed in the early part of the story and in a tragic car accident. So I was the third adopted child with the second surviving adopted child. And so raising three children, two are adopted and one biological must have had its challenges in the late fifties, mid sixties. I do know that.

the curiosities I found early were at things like at church. The church membership, the adults knew that two of the three Stewart kids were adopted. So they always kind of looked at you in a different light. I mean, I don't know if it's a stare or curious stare is a good adjective or description, but.

I always felt special, treated a little better, maybe unfairly to everybody else. But at times it was uncomfortable too, because their curiosity fueled curiosity in me. And I wanted to know, so why do you look at me that way and not the two guys sitting next to me, right? Do you know something I don't know? Maybe they did because Baton Rouge is a small town and it's connected. And my abandonment was...

made headlines. So a lot of people knew about that time that there was an infant that was discarded in Baton Rouge. So as it turned out, my biological, my adoptive dad worked at the same company as the lady who found me abandoned in her stair. Wow. Did they ever know that? Did they ever talk about that? Probably not. Because Kendall knows closed adoptions, they get no information.

Neither side gets in on me. So trying to make a shorter story out of the long answer I just gave you, I guess the thing that affected me most my entire life because of that was an insecurity complex, always having to deal with being different. On top of that, as a young kid, I had red hair, freckles, and I certainly wasn't the epitome of tall, dark, and handsome. So you're dealing with all these scenes and

Yeah. The psychological fun house that goes with that is just something I guess I could write a book just about that. And what age did you start to get inquisitive about who your birth family could be? I was probably in high school before I voiced a desire to know anymore. And I got to where one of my coaches, when you do the physical to play sports at a public school,

You had to bring a copy of your birth certificate. And one of the first unexpected identity crisis I faced was when he read my birth certificate out loud in front of the other 20 guys standing in line to be examined by the doctor. He says, Stuart, you're here at Baton Rouge at a high school, but your birth certificate says you was born, you were born in New Orleans. I never thought of that.

I didn't even read the birth certificate early on. So I just responded and told him my mom and dad were on vacation when they had me. Like New Orleans is a whole 47 miles from Baton Rouge. So they couldn't get to the hospital. But I guess at that point I started becoming more curious. One thing that went along with having red hair, and I don't know if this is the adoption thing, you get picked on a lot. I know I did. My mom tells a story.

When we were, when I was five years old, we were about to move to a new neighborhood. And she said one afternoon I came inside just all down and, and with a worried look on my face and her and dad recognized something's wrong. I'd been playing out front with the boys in the neighborhood and out in the front yard. And she said, I asked her. I told her, Johnny and Jeff just told me that.

My real mother didn't love me. So she gave me away. She didn't love me enough. And my mom says we were sitting at the dinner table and my dad just started kicking her under the table. Like be careful with this answer because he's five. And she came back with something like, no, honey, the truth is your real mother gave you away because she loved you so much. She knew she couldn't care for you.

And that we would give you the best home where God wanted you. The story goes, I was happy. I ate all my food and got dessert. Everything was lovely. But the identity crisis, the fear of abandonment has certainly played a role in my life and in my character for most of my life. How much of that do you think was the fact that your adoptive parents ended up having a birth child?

So I was only three years old when my younger sister was born. So probably for the first six, seven, eight years of her life, I wasn't even aware that I was any different. In fact, she had red hair. So my older sister, who was a brunette, we picked on her saying, you're the adopted guy. We're the real deal here. I don't know if it had anything to do with it because we were absolutely treated.

Equal, all things in all things. So we talk about nature versus nurture on this podcast quite a bit. And Kendall's gone into detail about his upbringing with his adoptive parents and sort of the personality traits and the convictions and stuff that came from there. But then once we met his birth family, I mean, you instantly see some things that come from nature. So where do you land on that today? The nature versus nurture thing. Oh.

The more newspaper articles are read about the ice cream romance and my parents being an illicit affair. I'm like, I would tell my mom and dad, Lloyd and Leona Stewart, I'd say, you're not going to believe what I discovered in the San Francisco Chronicle. My dad's like, you have to start writing a book about this. Nobody's going to believe this stuff. You're a living cartoon character. And that's kind of what I felt. But if it hadn't been for the character and.

I guess, humility, personality, faith, manners, everything, values, everything that you get from the people who surround you as a child and all the way up until you graduate from wherever and go off and start your own life. The Stuart's preparation of me to be able to handle life's uncertainties, certainly the only reason I was able to get through this.

Not without complication, not without, it's just a smooth sailing because I had, it was a difficult journey. But on the other hand, there are so many things that I've discovered about my biological mother and things I've heard and was told about my biological father that you can't deny those genetics. And you know, everyone else in my family and the Stewart family would probably not choose to.

search out their true identity. My older sister who's adopted, she literally fell out of her chair whenever my parents told me that a lady in San Francisco had contacted them claiming to be my birth mother. She so wanted our past to be our past and sealed forever, closed. And the good news is 16 years later, she's also

who her biological siblings, the parents are deceased, but, and it was one of the most liberating things that she ever did. And they too are from Arkansas. Very, very great story there. I'm so happy she did it, but she didn't like me for a while. She would, she would often say, Hey, who's this Earl guy? This guy named Earl, you know, thinks you're dad, whatever. But yeah, it's, you're, you're part of both, right? I guess DNA from a DNA standpoint, genetically, I'm half of my mother and half of my father.

But from a belief system, a value system, a behavior system, I hope that I am at least 90 % Lloyd and Leona Stewart, because that's what I would want to be. Right. Yeah. Were there things when you first met with your biological mom though that you noticed right away? Like, wow, there's wild similarities here. Her hands, her ears, her face.

Her hair, both her arms, her legs. She sent the stewards a picture of herself. And I knew right then that said, you know, you can't deny the genetics there as my mom, but even sometimes having been raised, not more than a few days with her before my father abandoned me when I was 28 days old. So I only got a few weeks with them. Thank God. But.

Uh, even our mannerisms is like we it's strange. We can finish, finish each other's sentences. You know, my mother, not I, I bet Kendall, I bet you you've gotten some of those same kind of, uh, quirks going on. Oh, it's bizarre. It, the brother that Corey first mentioned is my brother here in New England and watching him. I see my own mannerisms.

by watching him and his wife notices that too. She says, Oh my gosh. She said it's weird to her because the other sibling that's local is our sister and he and she don't, it's different, right? Cause it's a man or a woman with him and me. It's just a surprisingly similar. And Gary to see Swindle and his father together, his birth father, it's just, it's so surreal. We've had him over multiple times to stay the night with us and we'll barbecue and.

have some beer and sit around and sing songs, things like that. And it's just so wild to see these two together. It's like, I can't imagine them not knowing each other, even though it's been a few years. It's just been really wild. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I, I get it. I've got, I had, had a half brother. Uh, my mother remarried the former inspector in San Francisco police department who was black and, um,

They had a child and only child together. And in our first reunion, I met my half brother, Chance. And it was funny to me because at the reunion, grandma's there, right? Cousins are there, aunts are there. And I'm looking at this, you know, light skin African -American half brother of mine. And everybody in the family is like, oh my God, they look alike. And I'm thinking, what we really don't, I don't see it, but I haven't known you a while.

I maybe build a little differently, but my mother's sister has a daughter, my first cousin on my mother's side. We could be identical twins. That close, that close. So it's interesting all the things that you discover when you choose to take that journey.

I know that our listeners are going to go out and get the book and watch the docu -series after this, because it is absolutely fascinating. Well, let me preface this by saying that like our hearts were with you watching this whole series. Like it was, it's, I mean, it's emotional. It's an emotional journey. And it's just like, wow. It's great that we get to see your birth mother's 18 year journey of trying to find you through fruition. But as the episodes go on, there's obviously some friction there. You mentioned her second husband who.

was San Francisco police department when the whole zodiac thing was going on. And definitely we could sense a lot of friction there. Where are you at today with your relationship with your birth mom? I'll only touch on the documentary lightly because, um, you know, if you're a newcomer to Hollywood, uh, I could write a, a cautious tale about how to approach and.

how to trust, you know, unfortunately being raised in old South fat and rouge, uh, in part of the Bible belt, uh, you trust everybody. And I was, I was told the world wants to hear your story. Um, and I promised my mother that if we did this series together, that it would be our story. Uh, and, and Hollywood needed a more dramatic ending because the bottom line is.

My book has, it is one story in the docu -series, turns out to be something else. And even during the filming of the documentary, we discovered new evidence about my father that further seals in my mind that he was absolutely the only suspect in the Zodiac murders. Uh, at meeting his first girlfriend and talking to her about some of the things he did, uh, why he was in a mental institution.

Uh, when he was 17 years old, turned 18 and a mental institution, what, what he did to, to make that happen. Uh, you know, they say serial killers can start off by killing animals. Well, an animal was, wasn't his original target that day. It just happened. His girlfriend wasn't there. Um, we found out so much stuff, but at the end of the day, the DNA evidence.

is not presented itself or the technology is not high tech enough to be able to positively confirm who the identity of the guy who looked those stamps are. Maybe it will one day. So knowing after several months of filming and you're right, episode one, two and three are great. They start out great. But then I think Hollywood needed a

Uh, I am happy to say that we are as close as we've ever been now. She is a friend and, and never will be a parent for me, but she's my mother, right? She's my mother. I love her and respect her that way. My, my son went through a terrible vehicle accident a year ago. And, you know, I don't know if it's the DNA nature versus nurture, but she was one of the first people I reached out to.

I felt if I could get everybody I knew across the globe praying that my son would be okay. And by the way, he is. So we're close now. I haven't seen her in a long time. I would love to get together again soon. I'm getting close to the end of my career. So we're wrapping up some things and hopefully we'll be able to travel a little more and focus on the other important things in life other than career.

Uh, and spend a little time together because, um, you know, I'm soon to be 60. She's 15 years. She had me when she was 15 years old. So she's, uh, she'll be 75 in October. We're good. Thanks for asking, but we're good. Good. Good. I'm glad to hear that. And I can relate to your situation. I've heard from several people over the years. I was an entertainment journalist for a long time. So I've heard from several people who ended up working in the.

entertainment industry and the Hollywood system and stuff. And there's definitely cautionary tales. And it's like, my ears have always been up a little bit when I've been working on projects because it's like, I mean, that's not to necessarily trust everybody or sometimes you learn the hard way. I had one big entertainment project that I worked on for five years. And I insisted on maintaining control of it completely because I didn't want it to go south. And then.

didn't want it to go in somebody else's narrative because I spent so long on it. It's like, I'm not going to, I'm not about to give this up. It probably could have been more successful had I let some professionals or higher ups kind of take it over, but then I would have lost it and I would have probably lost that narrative. The narrative. Absolutely. You're exactly right. I, I learned the hard way, but before the book was actually published, we had a deal with CBS. They wanted to do a four hour two part.

Many series, cryptid. We even went to casting. They hired this fantastic writer, director, producer, uh, from, from Malibu. He's, he's well known, uh, Todd Robinson. And, and I, I participated every step of the way. And he was going to tell this, this story. I've still got the manual. I've still got the scripts for the screenplays for it. And, um, that's about the time that, um,

Uh, our, our champion inside of CBS, um, chose to exit because there were issues going on with Les Moonves at the time. Uh, the guy who took her place when she was not announced as his successor, um, did not believe in the, the, uh, non -fiction two -part format and.

We lost the two primary casting roles because they were committed to other projects. One was Bull, the series Bull based on Lucilino, Dr. Phil's life and the other was Designated Survivor. They had both just committed. If you look back at the timelines when those programs got green lighted, it was a time we were shopping for a cast. We got

Orphaned, uh, fortunately, you know, just pick back up a couple of times. We go to, we go the distance with FX and, and after my buddy, Todd saw what they did to me, uh, in episode four, he called me, said, Gary, don't let it affect you. You're bigger than this. Uh, let it go. And I did, and you know, those guys had been around the block a time or two, not me. This is my first and only, and last time.

They wrote out my executive producer credits so that I couldn't object.

Rewatch the credits. I am not an EP on there. I can only what like the amount of people that have reached out to you after the book was published and after the docu -series aired because it's obviously a case that still fascinates a lot of people. It's one of the most, you know, that's one of those popular unsolved faces of all time. What was that like? How did that impact you? The, when the book came out, when the docu -series came out and people started coming out of the woodwork wanting to talk to you.

So one of my greatest hopes in sharing the story, if you've read the book, you know, so many things happened leading up to me being available to be adopted by the stewards, right? I don't believe in coincidences. I don't believe in luck. I believe that there's a plan and I was part of that plan to be part of that family. And a lot of things, a lot of the gears had to click together to make this motion start rolling to get where we were.

I always said, if I am not supposed to share my story, you know, God, please shut that door. I don't want to publish something and trash my biological father. Because what if I'm wrong? I don't want to publish something that has any errors in it. But if I do publish something that ends like my story did, basically saying, OK, now I know all I need to know about my biological beginning.

And I can walk away from that and I can go back to being Gary Stewart again. If I can give any other adopted child person struggling with their identity and their self -worth, I can't give you the numbers, but adult suicide by adopted folks is significantly higher than people who never experienced adoption. There's a whole course study on that.

It's a feeling of worth. It's a feeling of I was not good enough. Why didn't they want me that? Why didn't they love me? So I felt like if I gave a message of hope to anybody, wherever they are, is somebody may reach out one day and say, thank you for being courageous enough to share your story of hope. I've gotten emails from, from all over the globe, France, Australia, just that same sentiment. I get a hundred times more of, you know, you're a nutball.

Yo, yours is this just a money grab, whatever. Fortunately, my story is kind of, you know, old news and then that's over. But I did, I do have a guy in, uh, in New Zealand who emails me monthly. He's a believer and he's still trying to get the Vallejo, not San Francisco police bar, but the Vallejo police department to do the right thing and not let this go the way of Jack the Ripper. I'll tell you guys, I have only done one other show, one other podcast.

And I did speak down here in South Louisiana at AHOMA, Cherubon Parish Public Library. They wanted me to discuss how you take a book to film, to document the series. I was happy to do that. So you're the only, the third conversation I've had since that documentary came out. I'm not looking to do more. I'm doing it when I saw what yours was about and finding family. I'll do that anytime, any day, but I'm not, I'm not out there trying to.

I'm like, I mean, I'm an old school journalist. Sometimes you just got to do a little research and dig in and be legitimate. I feel really strongly about journalism and the truth behind the investigative reporting. And so it's, it's always been a passion of mine. I mean, I've tended to go towards the entertainment side of things, but.

We'll have that conviction that every anything that I'm putting out there to my knowledge is absolutely a hundred percent. I'll tell you one other thing. The lady who helped my mother find me, Linda was lives in New Orleans and my story was so unique. She asked me to participate in the Louisiana adoption advocacy board to help push the legislators in the state of Louisiana to release original birth certificates for consenting birth parents and.

adults 24 and older. And I've gone to the legislature so many times with our little group and our signs just begging and giving testimony to why it's important and how they could help. And don't you know, just two months ago, we got that bill passed. You know, Louisiana is still the only state and nation under Napoleonic code, right? We don't change with the tide. We kind of stick our ground, stuck in our ways. I actually...

Send in a $15 check just a couple of weeks ago to get a copy of my original birth certificate. So I'm really proud that happened. I always said I'd never see it in my lifetime, but we did that. Yeah. That's awesome. It's just a fundamental human right to be able to have that record. And I've always thought that and I will always feel the same way too. So I'm proud of you for doing that for all the people who can now get parts of the truth.

Yeah. Again, we encountered these like small world things with this podcast. So a good chunk of Kendall's birth family is in Louisiana. That's where they live. Yeah. That's where my birth mother lives with two of her other three children. They live down in Southern Louisiana. So it's interesting. Never knew I had that connection. Never knew I had Cape Cod East coast connections. It's just interesting. Right. It's just, yeah.

The whole thing is bizarre that we, it does seem like every conversation we've got, there is some tie to some place we've lived or someone you've known. It's just, yeah. I look forward to going back and hearing your whole story. That sounds fascinating to me. Thank you. Thank you. So Gary, you touched on, after the docu -series aired, there's been some more information or some more discoveries come to light about your birth father. I don't even think we've mentioned his name yet. Earl Van Best Jr. Who?

may in fact be the Zodiac Killer. Yes, I guess we knew this as part of the discovery for filming. So the information we learned was available to the producers to share. I know the lady who was his first girlfriend, their mothers were close. They were part of the Methodist Church, the Noli Valley in San Francisco. She's the little girl who grew up grade school, high school with my father and

I went to meet her to see if I could get her to participate in the documentary. And, you know, everyone that my father knew, like his high school best friend, William Lomas, I think his only friend other than his former girlfriend, were very reluctant to even meet me. That should tell you something right there. And I don't think it has anything to do with, you know, my father not mentioning that he had a kid.

I think it was about who he was and some of the bizarre things that they retold for me. But this lady, her name's Irene. She actually showed me a little gold cross that he gave her when they were like 12 years old. But she told me after he went, you know, he was all over the news and the word around town was that she would see him on a bus, getting off a bus every now and then after he got released from prison or wherever. And so, you know, the joke around town was that...

was that Van married his therapist. And he really did. Edith was a therapist, Van's counselor, and that was, as far as we know, his last wife, his third and last wife. Irene told me that my father came around again. She couldn't tell me when, late 70s, but she had kept all of the letters that he had written her from the time they were in grade school until the very end.

and they agreed to meet for dinner and then walked the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral. And she told me my father told her something that made her blood run cold. She went home, locked the doors, told her daughter never to answer the phone again, and burned all the letters that my father had sent her.

And, you know, we can only assume because I don't have any more than that. That's the honest truth. I didn't ask for any more. You know, I'd rather respect her honesty with me and what she's willing to offer rather than dig and ruin a relationship. I can only imagine what that was. You know, he was a very arrogant person. He bragged about the things he did in life. So I can imagine him.

you know, sharing with her, I did this, I'll never be caught. You need to come with me. We were always meant to be. But she also said that look in his eye was just a blank stare. Like he was a hundred percent pupil and no Iris just looking in the death's door. And then she told me, you know, I was at a dentist appointment. We were in high school. Van came looking for me. He was mad at something and I wasn't home. So he let himself in.

destroyed the house and threw my cat out the window. In fact, the reason he ended up institutionalized that day was because his mother knew that the one person he would talk to was Irene. So when she got back from the dentist, she got on the phone and basically talked my father down off the list. The option was you go with the police or you go with the doctors.

and he was 17 at the time, so I can't get access to his juvenile record. My mother, who tried to help me search because she was 13 when she first ran off with my father, she can't get access to her juvenile record either. There's information in those files that are probably long redacted, maybe destroyed. I think it just further validates my assumptions that all these things happen together and point to one guy and one guy alone.

The producers had the opportunity to put that in the documentary, but instead they say, you know, hire a detective to say, well, it's possible Gary's father wasn't in the country yet during that murder. Well, it is, it's very likely he was. So if you make an accusation, back it up with a piece of paper, a fact, like I did, everything I presented in my book has paper behind it or otherwise I wouldn't have, I wouldn't have produced it. Right. So.

So that's all we know. Would that have changed anything or everything if it was made public? I think what it would have been, it would have been more of a cliffhanger. It may have forced the new authorities with the law enforcement in Napa, Vallejo, Riverside and San Francisco police to the young blood to be enthusiastic about some new hints, some new clues, take it and run with it, try to solve it. But you know, that's not the way it went. So I can't do anything about that at this point.

As far as you're concerned, have you closed the door on your own investigation? I am dumb. Yeah. I am done. Funny when I visit with people and I do love sharing my story because it is such a big story. Sure. I get asked, particularly the libraries or book functions, you know, when is a sequel coming out? And I've given an answer over the years, but the last one I did in South Louisiana, I said, okay, the most dangerous animal of all is my life story.

You only get one. How do you write a sequel to it? Right. But some wonderful things continue to happen. Some amazing things continue to happen in my life. And my son's recovery from that accident, I started another story because the Stuart story that is titled the most dangerous animal of all began with a, with an automobile accident, a fatal hangman's fracture of the first adopted.

13 year old child in the Stuart household. She didn't survive. My son experienced the same fracture and he's a lot. I think my son's got a story worth telling. I wrote a prologue and gave it to him about a month ago and said, this is your choice. You know, he's always said, I'll never write a book. I'm not after what is to happen to you. I remember sharing.

the four episodes with him before it came out on FX. And all he could say was, dad, that was hard to watch. And I feel so bad what they did to you. So he didn't want any part of any of that, but he was there with me the day my book was released in Baton Rouge. And he did a lot, a lot of PR with me when the book first came out. And I believe everybody's got a story. Mine was, was one, but.

The fact that he survived an injury that what would be his eldest aunt didn't, that made room for Gary Stewart in the household, you see, they were only going to adopt two. So after the adoption of the second child, has Cheryl not passed away in the accident? I wouldn't be in the Stewart household. Everything happens for a reason. In my opinion, Zach was given another chance. He can share a story that I think.

could give spinal cord injury victims all over the world. Hope my stories touch people, reach people, whatever his story could change the world for victims of spinal cord injury. And I'm hoping that's what he chooses to do. That's awesome that you've given him that prologue and that like encouragement and then tell his story. And I will say like watching the docu -series and I know like those last couple episodes, they try to turn it into something else, but I think.

anybody who's really paying attention can see through that and see your conviction and see your heart through this whole thing. It's, it's a story about family and then finding family and ultimately there's some wild and crazy turns to it. But I mean, watching it again, it's like, I can see the legitimacy of you. One of the themes that we, we talk about on this podcast is DNA magic is what we like to call it. Cause I, it's still the whole.

thing is still very magical to me, like how we found Kendall's family and our adventure over the last five years. So there's technology is improving daily and it's who knows what we're going to find out about the Zodiac Killer in the days, months, weeks, years to come. Who knows there may be an expanded edition, maybe not a sequel, maybe an expanded edition to your book someday. Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying that. And as you might suspect.

Anyone that knows me, anyone that has had any dealing with me in my nearly 60 years will say that that is not the Gary Stewart that we know. In fact, I don't know how long it was because I haven't watched the documentary since it came out. I watched it one time and I walk away from it. But I don't know if the segment towards the end was with me. When I was ambushed, I say,

was something that was totally inaccurate. Was it five minutes of me saying, what are you talking about? You know, tell me what's your cues in the out. I don't know if that was five minutes or whether it was the whole 45 minute episode. But what I do know is that whole filming took three hours. You may have seen four minutes of it. That was three hours. And the...

The secular me wants to say, you know what, pull the microphone off, walk away, I'm done. But I didn't. I said, you know, I committed to this. I'm going to tell my story until the very end. And when, when they couldn't get me to answer and admit to doing something that I didn't do, we got to the end and it kind of just went block. It just kind of fizzled out the firework that just doesn't go off. And, and I said, are we through now? He said, yes, you can go.

ran the first ever DNA off of one of the letter stamps or envelope. I was told way back then, even by my mother, that the Zodiac was such a thing back then that the police officers who had access to the Zodiac letters and the unlock files in homicide would literally take

those, some of those letters home and let their children take them to school for show and tell. Yeah. And, and, you know, what I've always laughed that if my mother handled one of those letters, brought one of those letters, Rotea brings her husband brings a couple of letters home and say, Hey, chance has got a show and tell day tomorrow. Let him take a Zodiac letter because his dad is a homicide inspector that's working on the Zodiac taste. And.

You know, I think if my mother touched that letter, then in addition to the, all the 20 other kiddies and chances class, my DNA could be on there. If my mother touched the letter. So there's gotta be something that will supersede chain of custody. There's gotta be a point to where maybe technology supersedes chain of custody and gets us final answer. Right. Right. And that could be centered like we think.

Yeah, we so appreciate you taking some time to revisit your story. And we love getting into the whole nature versus nurture adoption thing. You've been very generous with your answers and your time and we thank you so much. I always am fascinated to meet someone else in the adoption reunion.

triad and love to hear those stories. Everybody says, yeah, I've got a story. There's nothing like yours. Not true. You know, it doesn't have to have all that to be an incredible, like my sister, my sister's story is huge. And, and I, we sit around and talk about it and we do all the time. So I'm looking forward, uh, Kendall to, to find out more about yours. And, uh, you know, uh, I'm honored to have been asked to participate in this show. So thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. And yeah, share the podcast with your sister too, because we'd love to have her on. I definitely will. I definitely will. Yeah. All right, Gary, will you take care and enjoy your time down in Gulf Shores? Thank you, guys. Take care. This is the Family Twist podcast hosted by Kendall and Corey Stulz with original music by Cosmic Afterthoughts and produced by Outpost Productions and presented by Savoir Fair Marketing Communications.

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