Unsolved '66: How to Spot Zodiac Killer Propaganda Part IV

During the summer of 2022, an online video appeared about the unsolved murder of former US senator Chuck Percy’s daughter Valerie, in 1966. 

Over the course of two books, I uncovered information that indicates Valerie was murdered by William Thoresen III, who hailed from a rich Chicago-area family. What’s more, he murdered at least forty six others in five states and there has been a cover-up of this since 1970, when Thoresen apparently died.  

The video I am referring to was produced by Crime Zone, which purports to investigate crimes. But I suspected their episode on the Percy case was propaganda. One reason is the episode started with a narrator who says “hey everybody, Nigel and Luke here.” 

It’s an investigation by two guys whose last names (and perhaps first names) viewers may never know. While the episode mentioned my book on the Percy case and William Thoresen, what it left out was that Valerie was murdered with a bayonet and other significant details. 

I was surprised to see that it contained a number of photographs that I own the rights to and that were used without my permission. So I tried to find out who how to contact Crime Zone. Not surprisingly, I couldn’t. Nor could I find anything on “Nigel” and “Luke”.  In the meantime, I requested that the video be taken down from YouTube and other sites. 

Then a funny thing happened. I received a couple of emails from “Nigel” at the email address nigel@shazzu.com. The first regarded my request to have the video taken down. I ignored it because I don’t know anyone named Nigel, and the only people I’ve corresponded with who’ve signed their letters in first name only are people I know. 

Further reason to believe that the Crime Zone episode on the Percy case was propaganda was that it appeared at the top of videos on the Percy case in YouTube searches. This suggests whoever produced it had funding, or otherwise could curry favor with Google, something that small time video producers can’t do. 

In a second email to me, “Nigel” explained that he had read my book on the Percy case. “I found a lot of what you were writing interesting,” the email reads, “and I was wondering if maybe you’d be open to some sort of collaboration. It would give us a chance to do an update to our original video, and it would give you the ability to introduce yourself and promote your work to our 220,000+ subscribers.”

I ignored that as well. Somehow participating in propaganda with an unknown character whose primary audience is on YouTube, where such videos appear to be underpinned by bogus-sounding comments, seemed less than tempting. 

In early May 2023, Crime Zone posted a re-edited version of the video, this time with my photos removed. Like apparently all of their videos, it starts with “hey everyone, Nigel and Luke here…” Nigel and Luke. Trust us, you don’t need to know who we are. 

After that, the narrator says “…technically today’s video is from last year.” He then explains that it was “…forcibly removed from YouTube when we first uploaded it. If you’re interested in learning more about that whole situation, we’ll tell you more at the end of the video. But we wanted to tell you more up front for the sake of transparency.” 

So it’s an investigation by two guys who only use first names, and who don’t appear on camera but talk about how they’re being transparent. It’s also not clear why anyone would care why Crime Zone’s first video on the Percy case, which never ventures visually beyond panning shots of old newspaper stories, photos and the most stock-looking video, was taken down.

But it’s true. At the end of the re-edited video the narrator explains “the whole situation” as to why the first version of the video was taken down. It received “a hard copyright strike” from YouTube. 

“After going back and forth with YouTube for a bit, we learned that the person who had made the claim on our video was actually Glenn Wall, the author who you might remember we spoke about earlier on. In particular, Glenn had an issue with three images we used in the video which he stated that he owns the rights to.” 

The narrator then states that they could have just removed the images and re-uploaded the video but they “…didn’t really want to do that.” Maybe it’s because if they had done that there would have been a minute-long gap in the video.  

From there he explains that do their best to comply with copyright rules “…arguably often to the point of paranoia.” But no examples are given of this, just like no sources are given for much of what they say about Valerie Percy’s murder.

He then explains that they (whoever they are) tried to contact me, which is true but only with letters signed “Nigel”. “So we tried to reach out to Glenn multiple times to apologize for the mix up and see if we could come to some kind of a resolution.”

This seems to suggest there was an ongoing problem between Crime Zone and me. There wasn’t. The video was taken down. He mentions that in one of their notes to me “… we even proposed the idea of a collaboration to see if he would like to potentially make a whole new video with us that he could be a part of. We figured that this way he could benefit from a new audience seeing his work… Unfortunately, Glenn not only ignored all of our messages, he continued to go after us, trying to get our content removed on other platforms as well.” 

This is how you know that whoever produces Crime Zone are propagandists, the ease with which they lie. I did not continue to do anything. I notified two sites, YouTube and Odysee, at the same time and about the same video for the same reason. YouTube removed the video in a few days. Odysee, which I believe is owned by a hedge fund and apparently has few employees, took months. Otherwise, why would I continue to allow anyone to use my photos on one site but not another?

The video goes on to imply that when I ignored their notes after they swiped my photos, I was the one who was somehow in the wrong and makes a point of repeating how they got a “hard strike” from YouTube. 

This implies that Crime Zone is strictly policed by Google (owner of YouTube) when YouTube (as of this writing) has placed the Crime Zone episode on the Percy case at the top of its searches on the case. Consider this in the wake of the Twitter Files, which reveals the FBI pays platforms to throttle content.

Oddly enough, three recent videos (including the one by Crime Zone) on the Percy case have popped to the top of YouTube searches, ahead of videos that tell you more about why it appears that Thoresen murdered Percy. All are purported to be from different producers but all of their artwork looks similar and uses the same photo of Valerie Percy. 

They all surfaced (and in the case of Crime Zone re-appeared) not long after I added a section to my book on the Percy case in which I state that William Thoresen committed upwards of fifty murders and this continues to be covered up.