This is ZEITCRIMES. Today we are going to talk about the Zodiac Killer — what actually happened, what it revealed about the society in which it happened, and what it changed, or failed to change, about how America responds to violent crime.

The name would come from the killer himself. And the decision to give a serial murderer a brand, to run his letters on the front page and broadcast his demands on television, would shape the next half century of true crime in America in ways we have barely begun to reckon with.