Jim Morrison Is (Not) The Zodiac Killer

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Never let it be said that Jake Brennan, host of Disgraceland, doesn’t know how to have a good time. On April 1, 2019, he put out a special episode of the podcast “in response to the breaking news” that Jim Morrison - late lead vocalist of the beloved 1960s rock band The Doors - had been identified as the Zodiac Killer, one of the most notorious serial killers in American history. Of course, at the end of the gripping story of Jim’s demonic possession that drove him to kill, Jake revealed that it was all just a great April Fool’s joke. The episode didn’t stay up for long, but it was an attention-getter, as Jake said: “For those of you who did hear the episode, and wrote me to curse me out, or were eager to share a laugh at your own expense as you found yourself pulled over on the side of the road, on the subway, in a bus, or in your bed frantically Googling for breaking news on the identity of the Zodiac Killer, I'm sorry, not sorry.” The episode is available again, lightly edited, in case anyone missed the joke the first time around.

The Zodiac Killer is infamous for a spree of brutal murders in Northern California in the late 1960s, and for writing cryptic letters in code to the police confessing his crimes with chilling statements like “I like killing people because it’s so much fun.” In his letters, he claimed to have killed 37 people, though detectives have only tied him to seven attacks. His identity eludes investigators to this day.

Jim Morrison, on the other hand, was a wild, dramatic poet who lived fast, died young, and is still considered one of the most influential frontmen in rock history. He was no stranger to excess - in 1965, before The Doors, he lived on nothing but canned beans and, as Jake put it, “so much LSD it could reasonably qualify as a main source of his bodily fluids.” He abused alcohol too, and people thought he sometimes displayed a Jekyll and Hyde personality. His talent can’t be denied, though and his death of heart failure in a Paris bathtub in 1971 was a source of grief to the millions of fans his words had touched. However, the wild personality and dark temperament he could display made it perhaps slightly more believable that he could be the Zodiac Killer.

In Jake’s imagination, Jim sold his soul to the devil for his talent, and had to slake the demon inside with blood. "'Hail Satan.' With those words whispered, 'Hail Satan,' Jim's transformation was complete," Jake declared. "His soul had been sold, for what, it wasn't entirely clear...But he was certain of one thing, the power that raged through him at the moment was like an electric coil pulled tight from the tips of his toes to the crown of his skull...It made him feel as though he could do anything."

He laid out the entire timeline believably, tying Jim’s actual military family to the military-grade bootprints left by the Zodiac Killer, asserting that he had gotten too deep into Aleister Crowley’s writings on demonic possession and Satan worship, and keeping you on the edge of your seat until the very end. Listen to this episode of Disgraceland for a captivating glimpse into a parallel universe where Jim Morrison, tragic rock star, is the cold and calculating Zodiac Killer.

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