Thirty years ago, someone began snatching men from a small Bay Area town and dumping their bodies in a quiet lovers’ lane just off Interstate 80.

But just as quickly as the killings began, they suddenly stopped. The killer simply vanished. No suspects. No arrests. No headlines. These men and their murderer were forgotten, overshadowed by other notorious serial killers prowling the same Bay Area roads.

In this season of Crime Adjacent, host and serial killer survivor Chase Patrick returns home to Ridgewood to answer the question once and for all: “How could the most prolific serial murderer in American history slip under the radar for so long?”

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New season debuts June 4, 2025, wherever you listen to podcasts, with new episodes every Wednesday.

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Tommy Coulet left home at 9 p.m. on Dec. 23, 1995 and would never return. His body was discovered the next morning in a known lovers’ lane spot on the western edge of Ridgewood just off Interstate 80.

Investigators wouldn’t know it at the time, but Tommy Coulet would be the first known victim of the most prolific serial killer in American history.

This is the story of how it all began.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group at our Patreon page -- http://www.patreon.com/crimeadjacent -- hope to see you there!

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With no leads, no clues, and no suspects, Tommy’s case went cold, almost instantly. But as more men were abducted in Ridgewood, investigators reached out to the FBI for a profile.

The profile has never been publicly released.

Until now.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group at our Patreon page -- http://www.patreon.com/crimeadjacent -- hope to see you there!

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Exactly two weeks after the discovery of Tommy Coulet, another man was found on the outskirts of Ridgewood.

Same valley. Same injuries. Same horrible manner of death.

This is the story of Bobby Calvin, who would soon become known as Bobby #1.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group at our Patreon page -- http://www.patreon.com/crimeadjacent -- hope to see you there!

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Bobby Calvin had everything going for him.

Smart, handsome, a former D1 star quarterback at Stanford, where he almost led the team to a national title in the 1980s. An actor with big dreams of Hollywood. An early adopter of the Internet.

So how did he cross paths with a killer on a lonely night just after the new year in 1996?

Detective Jones has spent her entire career trying to answer this question, bringing her into contact with a serial killer who has been blamed for everything from the murder of Elizabeth Short in the 1940s, the Zodiac murders in the 1960s, and even the kidnapping of Jon Benet Ramsey in the 1990s.

This is part 2 in the story of Bobby Calvin. The first Bobby.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group at our Patreon page -- http://www.patreon.com/crimeadjacent -- hope to see you there!

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Detective Ida Jones had seen this before. Gay men were being murdered while the police and the entire town looked the other way.

Like a nightmare she couldn’t escape, she couldn’t stop this from happening in Ridgewood.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group at our Patreon page -- http://www.patreon.com/crimeadjacent -- hope to see you there!

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

With the discovery of a third body in the valley just off Interstate 80 in Ridgewood, police realized the killer emerged every other Saturday night. Only this time, instead of abducting a man at Hunter Hill rest stop, he was in Ridgewood.

Anyone, it seemed, was fair game now.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group at our Patreon page -- http://www.patreon.com/crimeadjacent -- hope to see you there!

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

The similarities between the abduction of Bobby Briggs and one Zodiac survivor were so striking that Detective Jones had to check it out.

Briggs was kidnapped in the middle of Ridgewood, on a busy thoroughfare. And yet, there were no witnesses or signs of a struggle. It was as if he simply vanished.

When Detective Jones inspected his truck, she knew what happened. She had seen this before. With the Zodiac killer.

Crime Adjacent is the never-ending true crime story told weekly. New episodes every Wednesday.

Find behind the scenes details or join our true crime and criminal profiling reading group at our Patreon page -- http://www.patreon.com/crimeadjacent -- hope to see you there!

Crime Adjacent is produced & edited by Multitude.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.