"Then, six or seven months after that interview, Connelly heard from former LAPD homicide detective Rick Jackson, his model for Bosch, and former LAPD cold-case chief Mitzi Roberts, his inspiration for Ballard, with news that felt impossible to believe. The Black Dahlia case was solved, and, oh yeah, the killer was also the Zodiac Killer, responsible for at least five murders in Northern California in 1968 and 1969."
"Simply put, Baber's team cracked one of the Zodiac Killer's never-before-solved ciphers - which he'd said in the letter that delivered it concealed his true identity name - and revealed the name Marvin Merrill. Further investigative work discovered that this was an alias used by a man born Marvin Margolis."
After nearly 80 years, hope for answers to the 1947 Black Dahlia murder had faded. Michael Connelly described the case in 2024 as "an unsolvable case" and imagined an alternative resolution in his novel to keep interest alive. Months later, former LAPD detectives reported that the Black Dahlia case had been solved and that the killer also matched the Zodiac Killer, tied to at least five Northern California murders in 1968–1969. A citizen sleuth named Alex Baber used advanced techniques, including AI and traditional investigative work, to crack a Zodiac cipher that revealed the name Marvin Merrill, an alias for Marvin Margolis, who appeared as a suspect in contemporaneous LAPD and grand jury records.
Read at The Mercury News
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