Former Police Chief Discusses New True Crime Book

True crime stories have fascinated people for years, but what goes into working those cases as they happen?

Brian Brady is a former police chief who worked hundreds of cases, including the Zodiac Killer.

Many people love crime shows, crime documentaries, and now, crime podcasts. How different is it in real life?

Brady: There are a lot of differences, but the first one is, we can't solve a triple homicide in 45 minutes with three commercial breaks, it takes sometimes weeks and months, even longer on some of the cold cases. And secondly, the CSI shows, have the public convinced that if we get a DNA sample at five o'clock, then we've got the results at 502 and it doesn't work that way either. It takes time to get lab results. It takes time to get toxicology results. So it doesn't happen as fast as it's portrayed on television.

What was it like to be involved in the Zodiac Killer case?

Brady: I was lucky enough to have friends on the San Francisco Police Department's homicide team who allowed me access to a number of their investigations, and allowed me to sit in and watch them at work. So I was kind of a fly on a wall during some of those investigations and got to see that the actual participants, Jack Cleary, Frank Falzon and Dave Toschi, the investigators that were so diligent on that case.

Tell us about your new book coming out, 'Hiding In Plain Sight'

Brady: It's the second book. The first book was called, 'Oh, What a Tangled Web', and it came out a few years ago. The new book is about the kidnapping and murder of a young girl in San Francisco and the ultimate steps that the two homicide teams that are assigned to the case go through to capture the suspect without giving a story away. There's a piece of evidence that is sitting in a property room on the East Coast that they have to find.