Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright Page

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Introduction

Chapter 1 - zodiac

Chapter 2 - robert hal starr

Chapter 3 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 4 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 5 - robert domingos and linda edwards

Chapter 6 - avery and the dark al ey

Chapter 7 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 8 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 9 - policeman and sailor

Chapter 10 - the devil

Chapter 11 - atascadero

Chapter 12 - witches

Chapter 13 - the voice of zodiac

Chapter 14 - suspects

Chapter 15 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 16 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 17 - zodiac suspects

Chapter 18 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 19 - zodiac’s “dangerous game”

Chapter 20 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 21 - zodiac at treasure island

Chapter 22 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 23 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 24 - zodiac I

Chapter 25 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 26 - zodiac I returns

Chapter 27 - the big tip

Chapter 28 - the search

Chapter 29 - bel i

Chapter 30 - media starr

Chapter 31 - jack zodiac

Chapter 32 - the german hippie

Chapter 33 - zodiac

Chapter 34 - zodiac

Chapter 35 - the conference

Chapter 36 - zodiac I I

Chapter 37 - arthur leigh allen

Chapter 38 - the city at the bottom of the lake

Chapter 39 - unmasked

epilogue

appendices

sources

selected references

index

A Berkley Book

Published by The Berkley Publishing Group

A division of Penguin Putnam Inc.

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

This book is an original publication of The Berkley Publishing Group.

Copyright © 2002 by Robert Graysmith.

All rights reserved.

This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks belonging to Penguin Putnam Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Graysmith, Robert.

Zodiac unmasked : the identity of America’s most elusive serial killer revealed /

Robert Graysmith.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

eISBN : 978-1-440-67746-5

1. Starr, Robert Hall. 2. Serial murders—California—San Francisco Bay Area.

3. Serial murderers—California—San Francisco Bay Area. 4. Serial murder

investigation—California—San Francisco Bay Area. I. Title.

HV6534.S3 G73 2002

364.15’23’0979461—dc21

2001058968

Most Berkley Books are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, or educational use. Special books, or book excerpts, can also be created to fit specific needs.

For details, write: Special Markets, The Berkley Publishing Group, 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

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to JANE

acknowledgments

Al the material in this book is derived from official records or interviews I’ve conducted over a thirty year period in my search for Zodiac. My

heartfelt thanks to Inspector Dave Toschi, Detective George Bawart, and the editorial, legal, and production staff of this book: Gary Mailman, Liz

Perl, Hil ary Schupf, Heather Conner, Jil Boltin, Pauline Neuwirth, Esther Strauss, and especial y, Natalee Rosenstein, my editor.

Zodiac in Costume by Robert Graysmith.

Author’s line-cut il ustration of Zodiac in costume at Lake Berryessa.

introduction

Zodiac’s unmasked features first came into focus one blazing summer day upon the crystal face of a watch. The detectives inside the cramped

office studied the large, expensive timepiece on the wrist of their prime suspect with dread. Such a commonplace object should not arouse fear—

yet it did. It had taken them almost three years to winnow 2500 suspects down to a handful, among them a man named Starr. Now they saw Starr’s

broad, smiling face reflected in that watch and they knew. The watch had been a catalyst for murder. Its stark black and white markings had inspired

an unprecedented reign of terror. Its logo had given the killer his symbol, a crossed circle, like a gun sight, and his name—Zodiac.

After Jack the Ripper and before Son of Sam there is only one name their equal in terror: the deadly, elusive, and mysterious Zodiac. Since 1968

the hooded murderer had terrified San Francisco and the Bay Area with a string of cold-blooded killings. He hid his true features beneath a black

homemade executioner’s hood, emblazoned in white with his symbol. Zodiac, in taunting letters sent to newspapers, provided hidden clues to his

identity with cunning codes. “This is the Zodiac speaking,” he began as always. “By the way have you cracked the last cipher I sent you? My name

is—” His cryptograms defied the greatest code-breaking minds of the FBI, the CIA, and NSA.

To terrify the public, Zodiac employed arcane terminology and purposely misspelled words. Sometimes he forgot himself and spelled a word

correctly within the same letter. He used mispunctuation and un-grammatical language in his letters, yet understood subtle grammatical usages

such as “shall” and “will.” “I shall no longer announce to anyone when I comitt my murders,” Zodiac printed in blue felt-tip pen in November 1969.

“They shall look like routine robberies, killings of anger, & a few fake accidents, etc. The police shall never catch me, because I have been too

clever for them.” And Zodiac was clever, wearing glue on his fingertips to keep from leaving prints, and changing bizarre weapons with each attack.

Among his weapons were a gun that projected a beam of light so he could hunt people at night, electronic bombs in his basement (targeted for

school children), a homemade knife in a decorated scabbard, and guns of every caliber. We were al afraid. Single-winged planes trailed school

buses manned by armed guards, a reaction to Zodiac’s threat to “pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.” With each whispered phone cal

and cryptic message, each bloody scrap of victim’s clothing mailed to the San Francisco Chronicle, where I worked as a political cartoonist, a

resolve grew within me to uncover his true face.

What made Zodiac so irresistible to the human imagination was not only that he offered so many hints to his true identity, but that he was always

just out of reach. Who could forget the phone receiver, still damp with sweat and swinging from its cord, that Zodiac had used only moments

before? He had brazenly cal ed police from a booth four blocks from their headquarters. Directly after an attack, he was compel ed to gloat,

heartlessly calling his victims’ families, breathing silently into the phone—as if he were about to speak his name.

We knew Zodiac, whoever he was, as a man of many parts—cryptographer, criminologist, chemist, artist, engineer, bomb-builder, poet,

weapons master, and above all a practioneer of the rope, the gun, and the knife. The tension grew as Zodiac, unquenchable in his blood lust, hinted

at previously concealed murders. Had he made a past mistake that might reveal his true face? “They are only finding the easy ones,” he wrote.

“There are a hell of a lot more down there.” Zodiac may have been referring to the October 30, 1966 murder of a Riverside, California coed. Zodiac

was drawn to attack or write on holidays—the Fourth of July, Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, Christmas, Halloween, and Labor Day. In Southern

California a double murder on a beach on Whit Monday, a Virgin Island holiday, may have been his first, a rehearsal for a double stabbing at a lake

six years later. Zodiac had connections to the Virgin Islands, as did one of his victims.

Though highly intelligent, Zodiac was not an original man. He had stolen his image and method of murder from a watch, movies, comic strips,

and a short story. His M.O. had been laid out in advance on the pages of his favorite adventure tale. Obsessed with the idea of hunting men as

game, Zodiac stalked young couples “because man is the most dangerous animal of all to kill.” His rampages occurred on weekends at dusk or at

night under a new or full moon. He cloaked himself in astrology (though that may have been a sham) and apparently cast his own horoscope to

determine when he struck. Or was Zodiac only “moon mad,” affected by the moon as the tides are?

Almost all the homicides attributed to him involved students killed in or around their cars near bodies of water and places named after water.

Water always figured in his crimes somewhere. Possibly Zodiac was a swimmer, boatman, or sailor. Whatever he was, he knew Val ejo, a Navy

town where the Northern California murders began, intimately. I was convinced Zodiac was a longtime Val ejo resident who knew his victims and

had stalked two for a period of time, one in particular.

Zodiac still walked among us from the 1960s into the 1990s. He was not at work elsewhere. His massive ego and easily identifiable methods

would have made him known instantly. He intended to play his game of “outdoor chess” to the death and on home turf. Surviving victims and

horrified witnesses fled into hiding. Investigators themselves were fearful. In their hearts they knew there was no defense against the compulsive,

random killer. Some eyewitnesses were never interviewed by the police or recontacted to be shown photos of suspects. I only found them decades

afterward. One had seen Zodiac unmasked and could identify him. Others had seen him cloaked in darkness, or in his hood, or at a distance. Al of

the witnesses had untapped and important information to give. The prime suspect had unique body language and, unbidden, the eyewitnesses all

commented on Zodiac as “lumbering like a bear,” “clumsy,” “not very nimble.”

Included in this book is an in-depth analysis of the two films that inspired Zodiac’s costume and M.O. and the short story that obsessed him.

Popular culture and the face of a watch may have inspired him, but Zodiac himself inspired not one, but three copycat murderers—in New York,

Val ejo, and Japan. Beginning in 1986, I set out to tel the end of Zodiac’s chilling story—using the complete FBI file on Zodiac, confidential state

and police files and internal and intradepartmental law enforcement memos, psychological and parole officer files, psychiatrists’ sessions with the

chief suspect, lie-detector tests, never-published newspaper stories, unused reporter’s notes, and outtakes from television interviews. I have tried

to make this book as accurate an account as thirty years of research can provide.

Most importantly, in this book, for the first time, are all the Zodiac letters and envelopes previously unreproduced. Quoted are copycat letters and

possible Zodiac letters mailed anonymously to me. Automatic writing done under hypnosis by Starr’s sister-in-law indicates she saw Zodiac

ciphers in his hand before they appeared in the press. Starr had bragged to friends, long before there was such a person as Zodiac, that he would

hunt couples with a gun that projected a beam of light, taunt the police in letters, and cal himself Zodiac. As one detective said, “If this story is true,

then he almost has to be Zodiac.” Recorded interviews with detectives and witnesses I conducted almost thirty years ago took on new meaning as I

incorporated hundreds of facts never revealed in print before.

The long pursuit and lure of the case, its mystery, tragedy, and loss, ruined marriages, derailed careers, and demolished the health of a brilliant

reporter. Zodiac’s story began with obsession, but its ending was a study in frustration. Police were beaten back time and again. Would the most

elusive killer in history, a cerebral, modern-day Jack the Ripper, escape them? Or would the dedicated teams of detectives and amateur sleuths all

over the world uncover the final secret of Zodiac? It was a toss-up whether or not police could ever prove that Starr, their brilliant and physical y

powerful chief suspect, was their man. Zodiac’s murders had taken place in different counties and, due to interdepartmental jealousy (Zodiac was

the biggest case of all), each police agency withheld vital information from the others. Not only that, but sexual sadists like Zodiac (who achieve

pleasure through the pain they cause others) become amazingly proficient at concealing their identities.

We begin unmasking Zodiac on a sultry July Fourth, and conclude on another, more lethal, Fourth of July. In between we learn of murders

unsuspected, a lonely man in his basement home, and a shadowy figure who might be Zodiac’s accomplice. But it had all begun with a watch. In

that stifling room on that summer day the cops kept reminding themselves, “It’s only a watch.” But they were still afraid. That watch was the stuff of

nightmares.

—Robert Graysmith San Francisco July 2001

1

zodiac

Sunday, July 4, 1971

Starr’s face was everywhere. Across the illuminated showroom, his round face was reflected in the brass compass, duplicated in the shiny

varnished sides of the Chris Craft, reflected in the deep and highly polished floor, mirrored in the brass work around him, and copied in a hundred

polished shaft bearings. His stocky form was reproduced ful length in the floor-to-ceiling show window. Final y, the showroom closed, the holiday

sale ended, the lights were extinguished, and Robert Hal Starr departed. He lumbered toward the lot, an immense shape against the summer

night. As he went, he fished for keys to one of his many cars. Keys to cars he did not own jangled in his pocket.

At the end of the lot, Starr was a hazy blur—momentarily visible in the flash of the Volvo’s interior lights. He slid behind the wheel, gunned the

engine, and expertly merged into freeway traffic. Soon, he reached Val ejo, a town typical of many other small California towns baking in a sultry

summer night. Black skeletal derricks flashed by; battleships and three-tiered warehouses crouched in silhouette. Mare Island loomed as a

shadowy mass across the straits, and sailboats fleeted as oily smudges on San Pablo Bay. Skyrockets flared briefly above. The staccato pop-pop-

pop of firecrackers was like gunfire. The smell of gunpowder was in the air. San Francisco towered thirty miles away, Oakland less than twenty, and

to the north the fertile Wine Country stretched through sun-drenched Napa and Sonoma counties.

The town was ideal for a man with so many vehicles. Interstate 80, the main coast-to-coast route of the West, neatly bisected the suburb.

California 29 and 37 and Interstate 680 twisted veinlike to its heart. Val ejo occupied a strategic position between San Francisco and the capital—

right where the river snaked down from Sacramento to greet the Bay Area—right where salt water embraced fresh. Here, a deepwater channel for

seagoing traffic linked the Sacramento and San Joaquin River ports. Surrounded by water on three sides, Val ejo was a water town—home for

Zodiac, a water-obsessed killer—a sailor of the knife, a mariner of the gun and of the rope.

Starr braked at a chestnut-colored stucco two-story house slouching on the east side of Fresno Street. Spanish tiles traced the rooflines of the

low-pitched dwelling. At the rear, a modest chimney peeked over a field of weathered shingles. Left of the entrance stairs, a portico shrouded a

conventional stile-and-rail door. From a brilliantly lit picture window, a woman’s lean shadow stretched to grotesque lengths across the sunburned

lawn. Bernice glowered at her son. Frequently, he stood for hours at the same Venetian window, motionless as if at the length of a chain.

Years ago he had been a trim athlete, a potential Olympic swimmer, a former lifeguard at “The Plunge.” Now weight had swollen a face once lean

and sun-bronzed from innumerable days of sailing and swimming. His light-colored hair, reddish in the summer, had thinned perceptibly, and a

noticeable paunch disrupted the line of his athletic torso. Bernice considered his increasing girth a dreadful failing. Soon he would be nearly

unrecognizable. She was a tall woman, almost as tall as her son. Starr’s health, splendidly robust in his youth, had perceptibly faltered. His hunter’s

eyes had dimmed. His flat feet and injured leg made any activity but swimming and trampolining difficult. Aimless hours spent guzzling Coors beer

from quart jars had taken their toll. He frequently parked in secluded rural areas, legs curled against the dash, until he cramped and could sit and

drink and watch no more. His violent outbursts terrified Bernice. Squabbles between mother and son had always been fierce, but since his father’s

death last March their dinner table skirmishes had escalated. She often observed her son at the open trunk of his car, peering intently inside. Little

eyes looked back. “Damn chipmunks,” she thought.

In his spare time Starr, a crafty and silent Sagittarius, stalked chipmunks with a bow and arrow. Sometimes he used a .22, and at other times set

traps. The tiny squirrels he snared alive were popular with the neighborhood children. On weekends kids circled him gleeful y, flags flying behind

their two-wheelers. Disregarding their parents’ warnings, the offspring flocked to see the “Chipmunk Man.” They adored feeding peanuts to his

pets.

Now Starr slammed the trunk lid shut and strode to the northeast side of the house. He trudged down a driveway to where a white Mercedes

glowed luminously in the dusk. The darker silhouette of a detached two-door garage skulked further back. A black shroud of ivy cascaded over the

fence.

A creak at the side screen door alerted Bernice, and she hastened to fix supper. Wriggling chipmunks squealed, clinging to Starr’s broad

swimmer’s shoulders. Giving his mother’s back a disdainful look, and still wearing his living-fur wrap, Starr dropped down into his cellar room.

Bernice was most fearful of what her son stored in that basement. In that dreary tomb ticked something he had once cal ed his “death machine.”

It had been almost two years since Zodiac had murdered a taxi driver in San Francisco—longer than that since he shot and stabbed the others.

But in all that time Homicide Inspectors Bill Armstrong and Dave Toschi (pronounced Tahs-kee) had not forgotten the elusive Zodiac. Twenty-nine

minutes away from the turbulent household on Fresno Street, past the lonely Emeryville mudflats and just across the Bay Bridge, they continued to

labor at the Hal of Justice. On the street below, the red-neon “OK Bail Bonds” sign flashed twenty-four hours a day. “Zodiac actual y set out a

challenge,” Inspector Toschi recal ed. “‘I’m better than you,’ he taunted us. ‘Smarter than you,’ he said. ‘Catch me if you can.’ We intended to do just

that.”

As Zodiac terrorized the Bay Area, inundating local papers with his chilling letters with bizarre references to popular culture, he invariably belittled

the SFPD for failing to halt his string of murders. Zodiac had made it personal, tantalizing them with masterly cryptograms—some so unbreakable

that they baffled the brightest code-breakers the FBI, NSA, and CIA could field. Al but two homicides attributed to him involved couples—young

students killed in or around their cars on weekends. He hinted at unknown murders, past and present.

“Zodiac struck out in savage rage,” speculated one psychiatrist, “against those who flaunted an intimacy he craved with an intensity only the

deeply frustrated human can imagine.” Sex was never a factor in his motiveless attacks. Sadism was; the more pain he caused, the more pleasure

he felt. Directly after an attack, Zodiac was compel ed to gloat, pitilessly writing or phoning his victims’ families, breathing silently into their ears—a

sound like the rushing of wind. He used a different weapon each time, and when possible took something from each victim—car keys, a bloody

shirt, a wallet—trophies. He still had them somewhere. Now if only Toschi and Armstrong could find them.

Zodiac’s rampages occurred at dusk (when he sometimes wore a grisly executioner’s costume) or at night under a new or full moon. Bodies of

water and places named after water drew him as metal to a lode-stone. Perhaps Zodiac was a sailor, swimmer, or boatman. Whatever he was, he

knew Val ejo intimately—its back lanes and pebbled shortcuts, its black country roads and echoing quarries. Toschi was convinced he was a

longtime resident of Water Town.

And so Toschi and Armstrong developed new facts and shuffled yel ow sheets under the burning fluorescent lights of their fourth-floor office. They

watched the minute hand of the big clock jerking intermittently, like a barely beating heart. At times it hardly seemed to move. Toschi leaned back in

his swivel chair, its springs complaining loudly. “What we need now,” said Toschi, looking across at Bill Armstrong, “is a good snitch.” Between the

ticks of that clock something happened—the detectives were about to come up with their most important lead yet in Zodiac’s seemingly endless

reign of terror. It would arrive by letter, the killer’s chosen medium.

Thursday, July 15, 1971

Manhattan Beach is northernmost in a succession of all-American beach towns running south from LAX to the Palos Verde Peninsula. It roosts

some twenty miles southwest of downtown Los Angeles. Scores of wealthy white Angelenos inhabit the rows of pastel cottages hugging its shores.

The town’s main drag is Highland, and at 2:50 P.M. bronzed surfers were catching the best waves of the day as an unmarked cop car hurtled south

along the broad avenue. Detective Richard Amos and his partner, Art Langstaff, were fol owing up a tip that had originated in Pomona. Two

Torrance men had information about Zodiac.

The skies were smog-tinged, the air muggy, but traffic was light. Amos sped east on Artesia, then spun onto lengthy Hawthorne Boulevard. A red

light halted them. Impatiently, Amos drummed the wheel. The car idled, pumping exhaust onto the shimmering asphalt. He considered Zodiac—

uncaught and insubstantial as vapor. Years of effort, and yet no one seemed able to lay a hand on him.

Both informants were waiting in front of Science Dynamics, a computer bookkeeping business, as Amos pul ed to a stop. Santo Paul Panzarel a,

“Sandy” to his friends, was a Lawndale resident and owner of the company. His employee and col ege roommate, Donald Lee Cheney, was the

more anxious of the pair. The South Bay investigators had no sooner climbed out than Panzarel a and Cheney got to the point—they knew the

identity of Zodiac.

Out of the stifling heat, they named their man—Robert Hal Starr. They had known Starr almost ten years, since 1962, known him while attending

Cal Poly in Pomona with Starr’s brother, Ron. Cheney had last seen Starr on a day as cold as today was blistering. Though Panzarel a had made

the cal that had summoned them, it was Cheney who told them the story.

“It was New Year’s Day afternoon,” Cheney said. “I was living in the Bay Area then—I drove to Starr’s home on Fresno Street in Val ejo. I’m

positive my visit was not later than January 1, 1969, because I moved to Southern California on that day. I remember specifically it was the New

Year’s after Starr was fired from Valley Springs School up near the Mokelumne River. That had been in the early summer. As to Starr’s reason for

leaving Val ey Springs, he hemmed and hawed more than he said anything, and gave me some kind of lame excuse about it, but I never heard the

straight story. I helped him move back to Fresno Street. On New Year’s Day I came over to his house because my wife and I had been arguing and I

just had to get out of the house.

“We had gone to his apartment—at this time it was a one-car garage that had been converted into a room. You didn’t step down, the basement

lair came later. You just walked in at ground level. It had three exterior walls—a window in the front, a window in the side, a small window in the

back. There was a bathroom at the rear which had a window which let some light in there. The other part of the house was fairly well isolated from

that room. I don’t remember ever hearing activity unless the mother was cooking. It was early afternoon.”

Starr read a lot of science fiction. On the table that day lay the August 1967 Fact and Amazing Science Fiction open to Jack Vance’s 15,000-

word story, “The Man from Zodiac.” On their last hunting trip Starr had talked about science fiction with Cheney. On several previous occasions he

and Cheney had gone hiking and hunting in the woods northeast of San Francisco. In the twilight, rifles lowered, Starr had shared long, sometimes

unsettling, discourses with him—talks about death. He was a huge silhouette in the dark, and his eyes glittered in the firelight as he expounded

bizarre theories. “With Starr,” said Cheney, “you just get into conversations about ‘What if this?’ and ‘What if that?’ He had a way about him.”

On their final hunting trip Starr had abruptly changed the subject from science fiction to something total y unrelated. He first mentioned hunting,

then guided the conversation to an adventure story he had read in the eleventh grade—“The Most Dangerous Game.” Richard Connell’s taut,

classic tale concerned the hunting of men in a forest with bows and arrows and guns.

“Have you ever thought of hunting people?” said Starr.

“What?” said Cheney. Cheney recalled other weird conversations with his friend before, and took this one in stride. He was well acquainted with

Starr’s way of drawing people into his own interior fantasy world.

“It would be great sport to hunt people,” Starr elaborated in the night, using personalized expressions such as “If I did this” or “If I did that . . .” At

times he cast his remarks in the form of a novel he intended to write someday. He was a powerful man, gesticulating in the dark.

“Beneath that fat,” said Cheney, “was steel.”

That day Starr’s eyes strayed to the unique watch he had gotten on his birthday only days before. “He showed me the watch first,” Cheney told the

detectives. “I remember the unusual logo symbol just above the pinion in the dial. When he showed the watch to me, it was pretty much like he

wanted an opinion about the quality of the watch. ‘I don’t think this is a very good watch,’ he said. ‘Well, it’s a fine Swiss watch,’ I told him. ‘That’s a

quality watch.’”

Starr began talking about his career. “It’s time to look for a new job,” he said. “I’m thinking about becoming a private eye, a private investigator

like ‘Mike Hammer.’ That would be fun and interesting. I’m looking for something I can do on my own without having to be hired.”

Cheney thought this was because he was having problems getting hired. “You don’t real y have the training,” said Cheney. “And you real y don’t

have a base of people who know who you are that you can get business from.” Cheney was not so much amazed at Starr’s idea, but honestly

concerned that his friend was ill-equipped for such a job. Starr seemed to read his thoughts.

“Well, maybe I can create my own business by being a criminal,” said Starr, “And if I was, here’s what I’d do.”

Starr suggested he might go to a lovers’ lane area to seek out victims at night—attach a flashlight to a gun barrel and shoot them. “I would use the

light as an aiming device,” he said, “enabling me to walk up and gun down people in total darkness. As the shootings would be without motive,

imagine how difficult such murders would be for the police to solve. They would never catch you. You could then send confusing letters to the

police”—he might have said “authorities,” Cheney amended in an aside to Amos and Langstaff—“letters to harass and lead them astray.

“And I would sign them ‘Zodiac.’”

“‘Zodiac,’” said Cheney. “Why that? Why not something else? That’s stupid.” Cheney paused and said to the investigators, “I might have used the

phrase ‘childish.’ I don’t remember exactly. Whichever word I spoke, it had a remarkable effect on him. He became emotional, very emotional, and I

was sorry I had said anything at all.”

“I don’t care what you think,” Starr had snapped. “I’ve thought about it a long time. I like the name ‘Zodiac’ and that’s the name I’m going to use.

Yes, I would cal myself ‘Zodiac.’”

As Starr queried him about methods to disguise his handwriting and makeup to disguise himself, Cheney’s eyes roved over Starr’s room—to the

disheveled piles of papers and maps, and the rows of books on aviation and sailing lining the walls, the stacks of Mad magazine. In the shadowy

room, among the clutter, he observed Starr’s Ruger single-six and Harrington Richards long-barrel. “The Harrington Richards was kind of old and

battered and had the nine-shot cylinder,” he recalled. “That was his arsenal as far as I knew, though he did come up with a rifle for deer hunting from

somewhere, that and a pair of .22-caliber revolvers.”

On December 20, 1968, twelve days earlier, Zodiac had used a .22-caliber semiautomatic J. C. Higgins Model 80 to murder two teenagers out

on Val ejo’s lonely Lake Herman Road. These were his first known Northern California murders. The killer utilized .22-caliber Super X copper-

coated long-rifle Winchester Western ammo—the same brand used in double murders south of Lompoc in 1963. “Earlier in the day,” added

Cheney, “he took me out Lake Herman Road and pointed out a roadside turnout. He didn’t signify its importance, but I think that’s where the two

kids had recently been killed.”

Starr discussed shooting the tire off a school bus and picking off “the little darlings.” He would shoot them as “they came bounding out” of the bus.

Cheney doubted his friend would actual y be doing these things. “It was like we were talking about a plot for a book or something in that order,” he

told the detectives. “It was not quite as if we were talking about real events. He kind of slipped in and out of the present. We were having that kind of

conversation. It gave me the shivers a little bit. Even then. That was the last time I ever saw him. I knew it was in my mind that I wasn’t going to see

him again.”

When Cheney got home that night, he told his wife, Ann, his friend was “acting strange.” “I moved quite shortly after that,” Cheney concluded. “I

had the opportunity for a job in Los Angeles. It didn’t have to do with him. It had to do with me finding work.”

There was silence. His words seemed to the detectives to be reasonable enough, the kind of things an honest man might say. The afternoon had

waned. The detectives had spent over an hour with the men. Both Cheney and Panzarel a cautioned Amos and Langstaff as they left. “He is a very

intelligent man, but also a very impatient person. We think he carries a weapon at all times.”

Returning to their headquarters on 15th Street, the detectives asked Criminal Identification and Investigation (CI&I) in Sacramento to expedite

Starr’s “yellow sheet,” a record of previous arrests, to them by Teletype. While they waited they had time to think. When Starr had made the remarks

to Cheney was crucial. By Amos’s calculations those words were uttered only days after the first known Northern California Zodiac murders.

Additional y, al letters in which the murderer identified himself as Zodiac had been mailed after Starr and Cheney’s New Year’s Day discussion.

Not until August 4, 1969 (though Toschi and Armstrong’s files said August 7) had Zodiac baptized himself in a three-page letter to Bay Area

papers. Until then the phantom had no shape, no name, only a crossed circle scrawled at the bottom of three letters and ciphers delivered at the

end of July. There was no way around it. Panzarel a backed up Cheney’s story, and both seemed upstanding, astute, credible. Their words had the

ring of Gospel. If what they said was true, then Robert Hal Starr had to be the notorious Zodiac.

Amos and Langstaff assessed what motives the two local men might have to lie. The length of time it had taken them to come forward puzzled

the detectives. Zodiac had been a menace for years. A previous headline (“ZODIAC LINKED TO RIVERSIDE SLAYING”) spanning the Los

Angeles Times’s front page on November 16, 1970, had not flushed the friends out. For some reason a more recent letter had galvanized them.

Four months before (March 13, 1971), the “Cipher Slayer” had written the Times from Pleasanton, a small, sleepy town in Alameda County

across the Bay from San Francisco. As was his practice, Zodiac affixed excessive postage—two inverted six-cent Roosevelt stamps. As was his

rule, he exhorted in block printing: “Please Rush to Editor.” The words “AIR Mail” took up a third of the envelope. Zodiac was a highly impatient

maniac. His letter covered most of the Times front page—big black headlines, bold as a declaration of war.

“This is the Zodiac speaking,” he began as always. “Like I have always said I am crack proof. If the Blue Meannies are ever going to catch

me, they had best get off their fat asses & do something. Because the longer they fiddle & fart around, the more slaves I will collect for my after

life. I do have to give them credit for stumbling across my riverside activity, but they are only finding the easy ones, there are a hell of a lot more

down there. The reason that I am writing the Times is this, They don’t bury me on the back pages like some of the others.” He had signed the

letter with a box score: “SFPD-0” and “[Zodiac’s symbol: a crossed circle]-17+.”

Something about the recent communication, possibly a telling phrase, may have rung a bell with Cheney and Panzarella. Zodiac had used the

term “Blue Meannies,” meaning, Amos surmised, the cops. Music-hating “Blue Meanies” had terrorized the Beatles in a 1968 animated film, The

Yellow Submarine. Starr had once wanted to be a submarine sailor, so that made a little sense. “Fiddle & fart around,” an odd, crude expression,

was spoken regional y in Missouri, Pennsylvania, and Lubbock, Texas. Marines and sailors said it. Maybe Starr, an ex-Navy man, used it too.

Cheney said no, but recalled his friend often used the phrase “Do my thing,” a popular phrase Zodiac had used in a letter. Initial y, Zodiac had

concealed his murderous connection with Southern California (belatedly capitalizing on it). Until now he had been predictable—governed by a daily

horoscope he wanted police to believe he cast himself, and drawn to water-related sites to murder. Afterward, he unfailingly wrote the San

Francisco Chronicle to boast of his atrocities and taunt the police. But by writing an L.A. paper Zodiac had broken his pattern. For what reason?

Possibly he had made a mistake down south. Perhaps he intended his Times letter as a warning to people who still remembered him there. If he

did, the letter had had the opposite effect.

It alerted Cheney instead, attracting him for the first time to a composite drawing and written physical depiction of Zodiac. Of course, all of this

was speculation. Something had delayed Cheney in coming forward with his fears. Was it possible that Cheney had a motive in fingering Starr and

that there was ill will between the two? This was not the case with Panzarella, who knew what had alerted him. “Al of a sudden,” Panzarella said,

“Zodiac was writing letters to the Times near where we were living. It didn’t bother me, though I suspected Starr was the author, but it bothered

Cheney a lot. Starr fits everything I ever thought about Zodiac. He is incredibly intelligent and has a great deal of problems with any type of authority

figure.” Panzarella had told the detectives that Starr was “a very intelligent man, but also emotional-type person.” As far as Panzarella could tel ,

Starr matched the descriptions in every respect. Ten days after the Times letter, Zodiac had resumed his old ways. He dispatched a four-cent

postcard to the Chronicle, affixed with a stamp of Lincoln, his head lowered in mourning. On the opposite side was a drawing of a man digging in a

snowy, wooded encampment. The phrase “Don’t bury me” implied someone in Zodiac’s life had died. By May, the maniac was cynical y pleading

for help by phone—begging to be stopped before he killed more.

The staccato clatter of keys and the insistent ringing of the Teletype bell interrupted the detectives’ theorizing. Amos laid the CI&I report next to

the old black phone that had unleashed them on the scent scant hours ago. The printout provided basic facts: File #131151/Social Security #576-

44-8882; date of birth, December 18, 1933—unmarried—living with his mother in Northern California. Langstaff noted job application entries

running from 1958 through 1964, among them “NON/CERT Personnel, Watsonville Public Schools.” They found one arrest: “6-15-58 Val ejo P.D.

60278, D.P. [disturbing the peace], dismissed on 7-8-58.” There were no wants. Gradual y, Amos added to the data by phone. The suspect’s

family, he learned, had some money and his father, a Navy flier of some note, had passed away in March—just when Zodiac had broken a five-

month-long letter-writing dry spell.

And Starr might be placed down south for the murder of a coed in Riverside, just east of Pomona, where he visited his brother, Ronald, and

Cheney and Panzarella at college. Robert Hal Starr had attended Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the late 1950s and early 1960s while studying to

become an elementary school teacher, had even taught at Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminal y Insane just to the north of the university.

Langstaff assembled some new information, drafted a letter, and sent it flying up to the San Francisco Bay Area—where Starr lived, worked, and

hunted.

Monday, July 19, 1971

Langstaff’s letter containing Panzarella and Cheney’s suspicions arrived at Armstrong and Toschi’s Bryant Street Headquarters. In contrast to

the summer sun, the Hal of Justice was a chilly structure, and massive—750,000 square feet, 885 rooms. The morning light glinted on gold lettering

carved into the facade—“EXACT JUSTICE TO ALL . . .” The messenger carried the letter past the metal detector and armed guard and into an

elevator to the fourth floor—Homicide and Sex Crimes Detail. He paused at black hand-painted lettering on frosted glass, which read, “Room 454.”

A handmade sign above the door read, “City Zoo.” He saw that the room beyond was huge, with polished floors, gray file cabinets, and wooden

desks. Final y, the letter landed on San Francisco Homicide Inspector John McKenna’s desk.

McKenna, an intelligent man, well read, a former banker, had already been alerted by an earlier phone conversation with Detective Amos. He

scanned the letter avidly, then rang up Cheney. “We want you to attempt to obtain samples of Starr’s handprinting,” he said. “Any specimens

acquired and any new disclosures should be sent directly to Inspector Toschi.” The fol owing day, Toschi’s partner, Bill Armstrong, opened a

second letter from the Manhattan Beach police. It provided more details—fascinating details. Pulses began to race. The old black clock on the wall

ticked faster.

World-famous attorney Melvin Bel i returned late from the theater and unlocked his opulent Montgomery Street office. His broad face, lit by the

warm glow of a Tiffany lamp, was pensive. He sat at a magnificent desk, gazed out his sidewalk picture window, and for long moments rubbed his

brow. “The King of Torts” was thinking of Zodiac and his friend Inspector Dave Toschi. Toschi had never forgotten his first meeting with the lawyer.

“The elevator door opens and a dozen or so TV people and reporters are there,” Toschi recalled. “And here Belli comes with a black hat slanted

very low over his right ear and this long, black cashmere coat draped over his shoulders. I never saw a scarf so long. It must have gone down to his

knees because it was wrapped around his neck half a dozen times. You could barely see his face. His wife, dressed in a beautiful tan fur, towered

over him. I told the assistant D.A., ‘The Great One has arrived.’ It was Belli’s show and after he entered the packed courtroom, it must have taken

him a couple of minutes to unwind that amazing scarf.”

Zodiac had written the silver-maned solicitor just before Christmas, 1969. “School children make nice targets,” he threatened. “I think I shall wipe

out a school bus some morning.” “In 1969,” Belli recalled, “the San Francisco papers were full of a one-man crime wave cal ed the Zodiac killer, a

real loony who’d attacked three couples in lovers’ lanes in the Bay Area and a cabdriver, killing five of them, and leaving his mark [a crossed circle

like a gun sight] at the scene. On October 13, 1969 [twenty-two months after Starr’s discussion with Cheney], the Zodiac had threatened to shoot

the tires out on a school bus and ‘pick off the kiddies as they come bouncing out.’ The police were guarding the school buses and some parents

were driving their kids to school in their own cars. The public was frantic, and the police were under a good deal of pressure to find the Zodiac.”

For some reason Zodiac not only mentioned Belli in his letters, but phoned him more than once. In some twisted way he either admired Belli’s

flamboyant courtroom bravado (a bravado second only to his own) or presumed that Belli might offer a lifeline to him. The attorney had defended

both Mickey Cohen and Jack Ruby. Now Belli climbed a hard rope ladder to the unique bed he kept fifteen feet up in his living room. He slept fitful y,

unable to escape the thought that he actual y possessed a clue that might solve the case.

Thursday, July 22, 1971

The San Francisco detectives failed in their attempt to get Cheney to obtain samples of Starr’s handprinting. “I didn’t have any source for that,”

Cheney told me much later. “Armstrong kind of hinted around: Would I write a letter to him to try and get some response out of him? If I had been a

single man at the time I would have done anything they wanted, but I had a wife and two little kids and I didn’t want to open any doors. He could have

found me by just looking in the phone directory.”

Next, the Department of Justice requested samples of Starr’s handprinting from Dr. Frank English, District Superintendent of Val ey Springs

Elementary School, where Starr had once taught. Dr. English complied immediately, and exemplars of Starr’s handprinting were rushed to the

SFPD. By car Toschi hand-delivered the blockprinted applications to CI&I’s Mel Nicolai in Sacramento. Nicolai quickly submitted the samples to

Sherwood Morrill, the state agency’s crack documents examiner. The scholarly analyst compared them to Zodiac’s letters and reported to Nicolai

the fol owing Thursday. A. L. Coffey, Chief of the Bureau and Nicolai’s boss, wrote the SFPD the same day.

“Enclosed are the exemplars for Robert Hal Starr,” Coffey stated. “Mr. Sherwood Morrill . . . has compared the printing on the submitted

documents with the printing contained in the Zodiac letters and advised they were not prepared by the same person.” Agents returned Starr’s

original applications, and they were replaced in his employment file with no one the wiser. In spite of this setback, the San Francisco detectives

were not deterred. Zodiac was the most intelligent criminal in their experience. He would know a way around Morrill and how to fake handprinting.

That had to be the answer. They rushed on, heedless in their excitement.

Saturday, July 24, 1971

In 1970 Detective William Baker joined the Major Crimes Unit of the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department and was assigned to several

unsolved cases. One was the tragic double murder on a remote beach of two Lompoc High School seniors, Robert George Domingos and Linda

Faye Edwards. “I picked up the case seven years after it occurred,” Baker told me. “Several of the investigators on the case were still active, so I

took every available opportunity to bug them about it.” One morning Baker came across a Halloween card Zodiac had written to the Chronicle on

October 27, 1970. The killer had drawn an arcane “Sartor Cross,” accomplishing this by crossing two words—“Slaves” and “Paradise.” However,

Zodiac had printed other words on both sides. These riveted Baker’s attention. The killer had neatly painted, “By ROPE, By GUN, By KNiFE, By

FiRE.” Rope, gun, knife, and fire had been part of Baker’s unsolved case.

“I immediately sent out a statewide Teletype asking for similars,” he said. “I was soon cal ed, in succession, by Bill Armstrong and Mel Nicolai. To

make a long story short, both told me that just on the basis of the description I offered them, there was a good possibility Zodiac was responsible

and our cases might be linked. However, inconsistent with the other cases attributable to Zodiac, our victims were killed on a Monday. It is unknown

if the murders occurred at dusk or later, but it’s unlikely, judging by how the victims were dressed—in swimsuits.” At every possible opportunity

Baker worked the Domingos and Edwards case. A long road lay ahead. He began traveling to speak with most of the detectives in most of the

precincts where the crimes were attributable to Zodiac.

Monday, July 26, 1971

Inspector Armstrong was traveling too. The handsome, silver-haired investigator, sharp-featured and strong-jawed, arrived in Torrance and

reached Cheney and Panzarella at Science Dynamics. “Down comes this guy,” Panzarella recalled, “a poster guy for the FBI, but very sensitive for

a cop.” Armstrong heard essential y the same story that Amos and Langstaff had. Cheney unerringly re-created the conversation he’d had with his

friend. But Armstrong, not satisfied, began to probe. “Mr. Cheney,” he asked, “could you have read some news accounts about the Zodiac killings

and associated those articles with your conversation with Starr?”

“That’s not the case,” he replied. “I can recall the conversation and the date. I can recall my responses to what he said. I could testify to the same

under oath in court.” Armstrong could not shake him on the date of the conversation. A background investigation revealed Cheney, born in

Bakersfield on April 25, 1934, had attended Cal Poly Pomona from fal 1959 until winter 1964 while studying to become a mechanical engineer.

Currently he lived in Pomona with his wife and children. He had no criminal record.

Armstrong spoke next to Sandy Panzarella, Cheney’s boss and longtime friend. He too had studied at Cal Poly Pomona—from fall 1961 until his

graduation in spring 1964 with a degree in electronic engineering. Panzarella characterized Cheney as a “very solid person not given to

exaggeration or the telling of falsehoods. He’s a very methodical, logical thinker.” Later on Starr’s sister-in-law and brother confirmed Cheney’s

reliability. “If Don Cheney said that to you,” Starr’s brother, Ron, said, “I would believe the same to be true.” Armstrong promptly returned to San

Francisco to bring Toschi up to speed.

He and Toschi painstakingly searched for an ulterior motive on Cheney’s part. “Why would he make such a statement to the police if it were not

true?” asked Toschi. For Starr to cal himself Zodiac, to lay down the method of procedure, the M.O. of the murders, long before Zodiac named

himself, was highly incriminating. Unlike Jack the Ripper, who had, in al likelihood, gotten his name through the ingenuity of a London reporter,

Zodiac had chosen the sobriquet by which he was now known. The homicide detectives felt that if that conversation were true, then Starr had to be

Zodiac. And what had accounted for the long delay in Cheney coming forward to the police? Sometime later Cheney explained how he had come

to recall the conversation he had with Starr that fateful New Year’s Day 1969.

“When I left college,” Cheney told me, “I got a job at G. J. Yamas in San Francisco. I was there a couple of years. Then, when I lived in Concord, I

had an unsuccessful period trying to sell life insurance, and moved back to Pomona to start working at the Fluor Company. Fluor was an

engineering company, but primarily they were in refineries and chemical plants. At one time Bechtel and Fluor and Parsons were all partners—they

built the Bay Bridge together.

“One evening Ron and Karen, Starr’s brother and sister-in-law, were at my house in Southern California for dinner. We were sitting around the

kitchen table chatting, and Karen told us about Starr going to a painting party in his suit. Ron was on the guest list. Ron and his brother were at the

party and Starr was the guy in the suit. She was using that as an example of him being unadjusted to social things. She was ragging him on that.

She was a little afraid of her brother-in-law because she recognized he was not squared away with the world at all. With her education in social

work she had been exposed to such things.

“One morning I was having breakfast in the new cafeteria at Fluor in what they cal ed the Task Force Center. I had been at the company about

three months or four months then. My brother-in-law, Ron Ebersole, had a newspaper and he was pointing to a composite drawing. ‘That looks like

your buddy,’ he said. And I looked, and that composite was a picture of Starr—except for the hair and absence of glasses. Ron was the only guy at

Fluor who could have recognized him from a prior time. I said, ‘Yes, that looks like him,’ but I didn’t think much of it.”

What was unique about the sketch was that it was not the round-faced composites from Zodiac’s attacks at Lake Berryessa or in San Francisco,

but a profile that Toschi and Armstrong had never seen. “My brother-in-law passed me the paper and I read the article,” Cheney continued. “Up to

this moment I had forgotten the crucial details of my conversation with Starr—that he was going to cal himself Zodiac. I hadn’t remembered even

when I had seen the occasional stories about Zodiac. That sketch was a coincidence, I thought, but a few months later [November 16, 1970] I saw

Zodiac’s threat in the Times about shooting out the tires of a school bus and shooting kids as they came bouncing out, something Starr had said to

me. I knew it couldn’t be a coincidence. I couldn’t ever get over that. That’s when it absolutely clicked. Then I remembered everything he had said.

“It was another year before I cal ed the police. I was at Fluor in 1969 and 1970. We finished a big contract and they had had major layoffs, so I

had about a year where I was working at a big paper mil in Laverne, which was just a few miles up from my house. I didn’t talk to the San Francisco

police about it right away, I sat on it a while and just thought about it. I just couldn’t get around the fact that it couldn’t be chance. That was too

specific a quote. The 1971 killings in the Grass Valley area had also brought my suspicions to a focus.

“I went to the Pomona police station since I was living in Pomona at the time, and had an interview with an officer. I spent an hour there and I

thought that might execute my responsibility on the business, but nothing ever happened. Apparently what I told him was never reported because

they were getting hundreds of tips. Then Sandy Panzarella asked me to come down and work for him in 1971 at Science Dynamics. We were

always good friends. After college, Sandy had become an electronic engineer and worked at that for a few years. Then he went into this computer

bookkeeping business on his own and did very well. He had the magic touch. He got his foot in the door and soon was doing billing for medical

practices and hospitals—that sort of thing.

“I was the operations manager at Science Dynamics—hiring and firing, managing the keypunch department and twelve girls, two couriers that

made all our pickups and deliveries in Los Angeles County, and three or four boys in the mail room to handle the logistics of the paper. I was

responsible for all the material logistics. We had another team that ran the computer part of the business. Of course I’ve used computers in

structural analysis and pipe stress, but was never a computer guy. Then one day the subject of Starr came up again and I final y told Sandy of my

suspicions.

“Later, Ron came down to Torrance and we all talked over our apprehensions. Once we got on that discussion, we decided to do something

about it. ‘I can see that the police have basically ignored you,’ said Sandy. He was a real ‘take-charge guy.’ I had never spoken to Manhattan Beach

police, but for some reason that’s who responded to Science Dynamics in Torrance that afternoon.”

“Don kept telling me the story,” Panzarella told me later. And he said, “No policeman will answer my cal .” I said, “Bullshit! Let’s get on the phone

here.” And that’s how it got started. Don was trying and no one took him seriously. He was not an aggressive guy. There was a Torrance policeman

named Amos, and I knew if I cal ed him that would get things going. “I know you guys get a lot of crank cal s about who the Zodiac killer may be,” I

told him. Amos then cal ed up to San Francisco, asked who was on the case, and they referred him to Inspector Bill Armstrong. Armstrong advised,

“Get the local P.D. to send us a report.” And then Amos cal ed me back. “Come on over and talk to us,” I said.

Meanwhile in Val ejo, another investigator was fast becoming an expert on Zodiac—Detective George Bawart (Bow-art), a stocky, powerful man,

relentless as a bloodhound. “Cheney had already talked to Panzarella about his suspicions,” Bawart told me later, “and at that time Cheney still was

friends with Starr. Then he became non-friends. There was an inference that Starr may have become too friendly with his daughter, and Cheney

broke off the relationship because of that. And I was concerned that was the reason he might be making up a story.

“I don’t real y trust polygraphs to any great degree, but that was one of the reasons we afterward ran Cheney on a polygraph up in the state of

Washington. The Washington state police ran Cheney on a poly and he came out clean. He was telling the truth. I tend to agree with the results of

that because Panzarella claims and Cheney claims that before the falling-out occurred, he had alluded to this incident to Panzarella.”

In mid-1967 Starr and Cheney and his wife and daughter, who was two or three at the time, went camping and fly-rod fishing up near Valley

Springs in the Mokelumne. The daughter came up and said, ‘Daddy, Uncle Bob touched my bottom.’ Cheney, noting his daughter wasn’t upset or

hurt, had no reason to believe that his friend had real y done something like that. However, from that point on when Cheney was around his friend,

he didn’t have his family. “He stayed friends with Starr for a year and a half after that,” said a source. “Of course the daughter couldn’t communicate

very well. If Cheney was upset he wouldn’t have stayed friends afterward for so long, right? They were pals long after that.”

Tuesday, July 27, 1971

Lieutenant Ellis of SFPD Homicide relayed Armstrong and Toschi’s findings to Val ejo Police Sergeant Jack Mulanax, alerting him the two

inspectors would soon pay a visit. At the time Mulanax inherited the Blue Rock Springs murder case (and with it the Zodiac investigation), his chief,

Jack E. Stiltz, had made a comment. “Zodiac keeps putting out clues for us,” Stiltz lamented, “taunts us and doesn’t indicate in any way that he

suffers from the slightest feeling of remorse. He is a thrill killer and the most dangerous person I’ve ever encountered in all my years of law

enforcement.” Mulanax agreed. Mulanax was also a man known to get white hot about a suspect, and once he scanned what the SFPD had learned

so far, his temperature rose. His first order of business was to learn as much as possible about Zodiac’s true physical appearance and compare it

to the new suspect’s.

“Now where was that description of Zodiac?” he thought. The two-year-old circular, No. 90-69, case No. 696134, buried under more recent

wants, was still pinned to the bulletin board. The wanted poster showed not one, but two composite drawings of Zodiac. That in itself was unusual,

thought Mulanax. Some new information had caused the police to alter the description. The three teenagers who had witnessed the murder of

Yellow Cab driver and student Paul Lee Stine near San Francisco’s Presidio had at first estimated Zodiac to be “a white male with reddish or

blond crew-cut hair, around twenty-five or thirty years of age and wearing glasses.”

“Supplementing our Bulletin 87-69 of October 13, 1969,” read the second flier. “Additional information has developed the above amended

drawing of the murder suspect known as ‘Zodiac.’” An adjusted written description now placed Zodiac’s age at thirty-five to forty-five years old. He

was of “heavy build, approximately five-foot, eight-inches tall. Short brown hair, possibly with a red tint.” Mulanax checked Starr’s physical statistics.

He was a White Male Adult, with light brown hair and clear brown eyes, thirty-seven years old, and weighing between 230 and 240 pounds. Mulanax

noted Starr was five-eleven and three-quarter inches tall—almost six feet—and four inches taller than the circular’s estimate. Mulanax took into

account that the kids were peering down from a second-floor window. The children had observed Zodiac waste precious time ripping off a portion

of the cabbie’s shirt and squander more time walking around the cab, cool y rubbing the vehicle down and apparently drenching the fabric in blood.

Zodiac must have been covered in blood himself. “In a head wound,” Toschi explained, “the person may or may not bleed profusely. When a

person does not, it’s because the swelling brain has plugged the bullet hole. In the case of Paul Stine, the path of the bullet tore the vessels badly

and destroyed one main blood vessel along the top of his head. He was killed with a contact wound [barrel against the skin] in front of his right ear.

This type of wound usual y destroys many blood vessels in the head and brain, causing extensive bleeding. From witnesses’ observations, Stine’s

head was laying on Zodiac’s lap as he searched him, so when Zodiac made his escape he had to have extensive blood on his person.”

Two Richmond District patrolmen, Donald A. Fouke and Eric Zelms of Richmond Station, got a better look that wild night, Columbus Day,

October 11, 1969. Zodiac always earmarked holidays for his most vicious actions.

Fouke and Zelms chanced upon Zodiac in the shadows as he “lumbered” north toward the heavily wooded Presidio. He later claimed he glibly

sent the officers roaring off in the wrong direction, then sprinted through Julius Kahn Playground, vanishing near Letterman Hospital. Zodiac’s

narrow escape permanently enraged him toward the SFPD—a fury approaching that of a rebuffed suitor. Days later the two officers realized they

had passed Zodiac. “I felt so bad for Officer Fouke,” Toschi said. “He was afraid he was going to be reprimanded and that’s why he waited so long.

‘Why would they reprimand you?’ I reassured him. ‘No, you did the right thing in reporting it.’ This would have come out eventual y because we

heard the transmission tape and we were trying to find out which Richmond Station unit was circling the area. We wanted to talk to them and find

out if they had touched the cab. We had to know who was in the area. And final y, they came forward quite some time after. It was kind of frustrating.

“Transmission to radio cars that night was halting. Lots of pauses. Units circling the area kept saying, ‘How many suspects? How many

suspects?’ Communications wasn’t responding. They were tel ing officers, ‘Stand by—we’re dealing with youngsters—stand by!’ These kids were

scared stiff and they were all trying to talk on the phone at once, and Communications were trying to get a true picture of a suspect or how many

suspects. They were relaying the location . . . ‘Victim appears to be DOA . . . ambulance responding . . . we’re trying to get a description of suspect

. . . ’ And they said that several times. ‘We’re dealing with youngsters.’ And the officers in the radio car, trying to make an arrest, asked, ‘What’s the

description . . . we’re responding . . . we’re close . . . we’re on Arguello [Avenue] . . . what’s the description?’

“And final y, the misidentification of an African American by someone over the airwaves threw Fouke and his partner off. There was so much

chatter going on because everyone figured it was a sloppy cab stickup gone wrong. The killer was supposedly seen on foot, and unfortunately a

couple of words came over unintelligible and BMA blurted out when it should have been WMA. They are now assuming it’s a black suspect. Then

—‘Correction . . . we now have further information . . . a Caucasian . . . short hair, glasses, husky, potbelly, black or blue windbreaker jacket . . .

baggy pants . . . armed with a handgun . . . use caution, very dangerous, use caution if approaching.’ But in the meantime we were losing seconds

and minutes. It was very exciting. I remember it as if it were last weekend.

“Afterward, I decided to go talk to the fellow who took the cal . He says, ‘Damn it, Dave. I got two or three kids who sound like teenagers and

they’re screaming in the background. First I thought they were being hurt. I was trying to talk quietly. They kept saying, ‘Our parents are coming

home . . . the driver looks like he’s dead in the cab and there’s a light on in the cab and they were fighting. Oh, please come, please come!’ I kept

telling them, ‘Stay in the house.’ Which they did. You know how fast those black and whites need the radio information. We do our best, but when

you’re dealing with children . . . I’ve got my own and I know . . . they’re scared to death and they know something’s wrong and they can see this body

of the cabbie laying over on the side with the door open.’

“There were Richmond units and Park Station units all responding. They all knew that Julius Kahn Playground is there and that’s part of the

Presidio. If he goes in there, we’re probably going to lose him. From Arguello, Fouke and Zelms would have to make a right going north, then onto

Washington. They were probably the only unit there and I’m convinced that they actual y saw the Zodiac. Fouke was more of a veteran officer than

Zelms. As senior officer, he was driving and got the better view of the stranger. Apparently Zelms didn’t think it was anything. And Fouke would

have had the radio conversation. Things happened so quickly. And then you have no idea that three days later you realize you’re dealing with the

most dangerous serial killer in the country.

“That cab was out of there long before the Fire Department arrived. Al we wanted from them was a special smoke-eater unit for searchlight only.

Coming up the hill from Arguello was an Army unit with large searchlight trucks. We had gone over everything and I told [Bill] Kirkindal and [Bob]

Dagitz, ‘Get the cab out of here. The body’s gone.’ Neighbors were kind of leaning in. I had to ask two or three uniform guys, ‘Don’t let anybody near

the taxi, guys, please.’ I had Dagitz fol ow the tow to the Hal of Justice. They put the cab in the impound room and started work on it in the morning.”

The officers’ modified second sketch made Zodiac fuller-faced, older. But an amended written description, including details in an important

interdepartmental memorandum submitted by Fouke a month after the shooting, November 12, 1969, was never added to the wanted circular.

Fouke’s more accurate depiction languished within SFPD’s eight drawers of files on Zodiac. It is crucial enough to quote in full:

“Sir: I respectful y wish to report the fol owing, that while responding to the area of Cherry and Washington Streets a suspect fitting the description of the Zodiac killer was observed by officer Fouke,” he wrote, “walking in an easterly direction on Jackson street and then turn north

on Maple street. This subject was not stopped as the description received from communications was that of a Negro male. When the right

description was broadcast reporting officer informed communications that a possible suspect had been seen going north on Maple Street into

the Presidio, the area of Julius Kahn playground and a search was started which had negative results. The suspect that was observed by

officer Fouke was a WMA 35-45 Yrs about five-foot, ten inches, 180-200 pounds. Medium heavy build—Barrel chested—Medium complexion

—Light-colored hair possibly greying in rear (May have been lighting that caused this effect.) Crew cut—wearing glasses—Dressed in dark

blue waist length zipper type jacket (Navy or royal blue) Elastic cuffs and waist band zipped part way up. Brown wool pants pleeted [sic] type

baggy in rear (Rust brown) May have been wearing low cut shoes. Subject at no time appeared to be in a hurry walking with a shuffling lope,

Slightly bent forward. The subjects general appearance—Welsh ancestry. My partner that night was officer E. Zelms #1348 of Richmond

station. I do not know if he observed this subject or not. Respectful y submitted. Donald A. Fouke, Patrolman, Star 847.”

“I remember Officer Fouke telling us the composite drawing was not nearly as accurate as we original y thought with the children,” Toschi told me.

Within the homicide division the wanted poster was changed to read “five feet eleven inches” tall. “That Zodiac was rounder-faced, bigger. When

you think back to Fouke’s verbal description the word ‘lumbering’ sounds like a gorilla, for God’s sake.” As years passed, Fouke altered his

estimate of Zodiac’s weight upward to 230-240 pounds and calculated his height at six feet or six feet one. He eventual y recalled the low-cut shoes

as engineering boots and the jacket as “dirty.” “Zodiac,” he said to a television producer, was “walking toward us at an average pace, turned when

he saw us, and walked into a private residence [on Jackson Street].”

Toschi disagreed. “Zodiac disappeared,” he said. “‘Into the brush, somewhere in the park,’ is what Fouke said, not into a residence, not

whatsoever. Fouke clocked the encounter at no more than five to ten seconds. We felt that Zelms and Fouke had stopped Zodiac, and did

everything we could to keep it quiet so they wouldn’t be hurt by the police commission or embarrassed. I remember I talked to Don [Fouke] on the

side. He was all teary-eyed. ‘Jesus Christ, Dave, my God, it was the guy,’ he said. I said, ‘Yeah, it was, Don, but he could’ve killed you so easy. If

you had gotten out of your vehicle, unassuming, he could have blown you and Eric [Zelms] away. You gotta consider that.’ We had them do a sketch,

sent our sketch artist out there, and got the composite.”

“I interviewed the one surviving member of that duo there in the 1990s,” George Bawart told me later. “One guy was dead and the other was still

working for SFPD. He was working Juvenile or something and he wasn’t real happy about being interviewed. It was not the high point of his career

and he didn’t want to talk about it. Who could blame him.”

Val ejo Detective Sergeant John Lynch too was obsessed with how close Zodiac had come to being captured. “The way I heard the thing,” he

told me, “is that when they were talking to him a cal came on the radio that they were looking for a black man, and [they] let this guy go and he

disappeared into the Presidio. I don’t believe he was covered with blood. You know, in the murder of a cabdriver you can almost bet your boots the

cops came out of that squad car with their guns in their hands. You’d have to. They waited so long to tel their chief because they were probably

shook up over that.”

Twelve days before, there may have been a dry run for the Stine shooting. At 11:00 P.M., September 30, 1969, Yellow Cab driver Paul Hom

snagged a fare at the Mark Hopkin’s Hotel. The passenger asked to be driven to Washington and Locust Streets, three blocks before Washington

and Cherry Streets. At the destination, he asked Hom to continue along Washington to Arguello Boulevard, then proceed north into the Presidio for

several hundred yards. Abruptly, he pulled a long-barreled revolver and robbed Hom of $35 in cash. The cabbie, forced into the trunk, pleaded with

the robber to spare his life. Later he was released, unharmed, by M.P’s. After Stine’s murder, Captain Marty Lee, basing his conclusion on an

“amazing similarity of M.O. between criminals in two cabby cases,” said he believed the robber to have been Zodiac. The Chronicle thought so too.

“One of the luckiest men alive,” it reported, “taken for a ride by Zodiac, but lived to tel about it.” One discrepancy could not be explained. Hom’s

robber was only twenty-four, “135 pounds with black hair and eyes,” and dressed in “blue denim jacket and dark slacks.” But Zodiac was undeniably

a stocky, older man. Did he have a young accomplice who had scouted out the scene for him, rehearsing the Stine killing? Was that where the

answer lay?

Mulanax would never see Fouke’s internal SFPD communication and upward estimate of Zodiac’s height and weight. Virtual y no one did. He

replaced the wanted poster with a mistaken conception of the killer’s appearance and an uncomfortable sense it did not entirely fit their new

suspect. The Val ejo detective also never knew that Starr had an odd way of striding. “When walking he was terribly lumbering,” Starr’s friend told

me later. “He had a funny hip [his leg was lacerated so badly in August of 1965 that plastic surgery had been required].” One common link was the

description of Zodiac as an unusual y round-faced man. “Could Zodiac’s round, bloated face be indicative of fluid retention from a developing health

problem?” I asked a nurse. “Such as failing kidneys?” she answered. “Yes, very definitely.”

Mulanax next learned that the suspect had been arrested June 15, 1958, for a violation of 415 P.C., disturbing the peace. It was a minor blip in

his record, but one that had disastrous ramifications later on. As Mulanax put away the file folder, he saw that Starr had been a victim or a witness

to several other incidents. Additional y, suspicions existed about his improper relationships with children.

“Not a nice boy,” Mulanax thought.

The detective wanted to be prepared before the arrival of the “Zodiac Twins”—as the papers had dubbed Armstrong and Toschi. He phoned

CI&I for a more detailed rap sheet, then buzzed the Department of Motor Vehicles for a photo. “Susan, that’s California Driver’s License

#B672352,” he repeated for Susan Raspino. While she processed his request, Mulanax left the office to check out the residence Starr shared with

his widowed mother. It was cooler that day. Prevailing winds through the Golden Gate kept the town’s climate a little warmer in winter and a little

cooler in summer than other Bay Area cities. Mulanax turned off Tennessee Street and swung by Fresno Street.

Starr’s home, hunched on the east side of the street, was sun-bleached brown and shone pinkish-gray where diagonal slashes of light cut across

it. The numerals “32,” affixed in a metal frame on the facade, stood out stark black against white. A 1957 blue and white Ford sedan, parked in front

and hooked to a boat trailer, caught Mulanax’s eye. He slowed and jotted down the license number—LDH 974. DMV verified it was registered to

Starr, who also owned a two-seat Austin Healey, a VW, and a white Buick. A driveway led back to a detached two-door garage where a white

1965 Mercedes 220SB was parked. Mulanax had already learned that the suspect had formerly been employed as an attendant at Harry Wogan’s

Service Station. An auto repair job such as that would have made many cars left overnight for repair available to Starr.

The sergeant reached the end of the block, made a U-turn at Illinois Street, and cruised back by the house. He took one last critical look, then

spoke with Wogan. The service station owner told Mulanax that Starr had left his employment in 1970. “He said he was thinking of returning to

school at Sonoma State College in Cotati,” replied Wogan. This was true. Starr had begun working toward a degree in biology in the fall of 1970.

Though Starr, according to his former boss, had been an efficient worker, he had shown too much interest in small children. Wogan had three small

children himself and they sometimes came around the station. “That worried me,” he said. “I wasn’t sorry to see him go.” That seemed to be the way

with Starr’s many employers. “They had him working at a school as some sort of custodian,” Mulanax told me later. “I was infuriated because I felt

he should have been arrested.”

At the start of summer, Starr had dropped by Wogan’s home and picked up his thirteen-year-old daughter. “How would you like to go for a ride

with me on my boat?” he had asked. The youngster had accepted without her parents’ consent. The girl returned to relate that Starr had made

“improper advances” toward her. After this, Wogan had not seen his employee again or wanted to.

Sergeant Mulanax believed much of the interest pedophiles had in small children came from having absolute power over another individual,

reducing them to objects—a trait Zodiac and almost every serial kill er shared. “When Zodiac had hog-tied his victims at Lake Berryessa,” he told

me, “he had had complete power, had reduced them in his mind to mere objects, and especial y wore his homemade executioner’s costume for the

occasion.” Perhaps Zodiac had hoped someone might glimpse his frightening outfit and incite more terror in an already terrified community. But he

could hardly have hoped his victims would survive to tel the tale. Had he shown himself to someone else, as yet unknown?

Zodiac’s threats to blow up school buses and shoot children inspired as much fear as his costume. Mulanax recalled armed sentinels—off-duty

teachers, drivers, and firemen, riding shotgun on school buses. Napa P.D., the jurisdiction of the Berryessa stabbings, assigned more than seventy

police units to fol ow the buses, and fixed-wing guard planes trailed hawklike behind them. People peeked behind their doors and gave second,

even third glances to cars gliding along the freeways and back roads at night. Zodiac was the twentieth-century version of the Bogeyman.

To obtain more samples of Starr’s handprinting, Mulanax drove to 1660 Tennessee Street, where Starr maintained a checking account at

Crocker-Citizens Bank. He arranged to get photostats of recent canceled checks connected to account #546-1685-48. He had considered

borrowing the originals (since Starr had ordered the bank not to return them), but decided against it. He saw one draft was to a man named Phil

Tucker. Another, dated July 20, 1971, was a $9.00 check to R. G. Black-wood for a 44-gal on cooler. A third showed a June 4 payment made out to

Tall Trees Trailer Court. The notation said: “Storage Rental.” Mulanax dispatched all three samples to Morril for analysis without giving much

consideration to what Starr might be storing in a trailer court. He had many trailers.

At 1:30 P.M., Inspectors Armstrong and Toschi, like travelers into a foreign land, crossed into Solano County for their appointment with Mulanax.

Since 1969 they had examined hundreds of suspects, were, in fact, weary. However, Starr was beginning to look serious, beginning to look very

good. Toschi, with his mass of tight, curly black hair, was wearing his trademark bow tie. A smile broadened his remarkably expressive face. They

had brought along Mel Nicolai, and Toschi was beaming at being among such good company. He had a high opinion of Nicolai. “Very

professional,” he told me later. “Mel enjoyed a good laugh and was a very, very good law enforcement officer. With his crew cut and glasses, he

looked like a professor. Nicolai, as a State Department of Justice CI&I agent, put cases together when multiple counties were involved. He was a

middle guy. We could contact him and he could get us information out of Sacramento.”

As for Mulanax, he was a man’s man, a rugged outdoorsman, a hunter like Zodiac. “After I see Starr in person, I’ll contact you guys to come

back,” he assured them as the meeting concluded. Mulanax was the kind of man you could count on. Toschi knew he would come back with the

goods.

Monday, August 2, 1971

Mulanax continued his circumspect investigation into Starr’s past, gathering as much background information as he could before making

personal contact with the suspect. He noted, as others had, that Starr’s birth date was December 18—two days shy of the December 20 date of the

Lake Herman Road double murders. Mulanax knew some serial killers struck on dates that held significance for them. So far, Zodiac had shot or

stabbed couples on the Fourth of July, near Halloween, Columbus Day, and a few days before Christmas. However, a few VPD investigators

believed Zodiac had only taken responsibility for the Lake Herman tragedy to enhance his rep and further confuse the police. “Mulanax told me,”

said Toschi, “that one day when Starr wasn’t home, he went to Starr’s house and his mother was there. He kinda just walked around and searched

a little bit.”

If Mulanax spoke conversational y with Starr himself that day (not a questioning in any respect), no record has survived. Mulanax saw the open

door to Starr’s basement room yawning before him, and observed it was painted the same “near-neutral green” as the kitchen, though a shade

lighter. Was Starr down there now, peering up at him? Bernice, catching his eye, said, “It was a bedroom for both my boys for many years.” The

mailbox was a slot in the corner of the basement room. “Al letters must drop into that hideaway,” thought Mulanax, thinking of the mail-obsessed

killer. And Zodiac had said in a letter he had a basement and bombs there. Starr had moved from an upstairs room back to the basement for more

privacy. Mulanax was tempted, but caution prevented him from advancing a step further. He retreated, but was still thinking over the substance of

his visit and a few of Bernice’s vague remarks as the weekend ended and he prepared to confer again with the San Francisco detectives.

Tuesday, August 3, 1971

Many along Fresno Street had known Starr since he was a boy, knew how devoted he was to his mother. But that mutual affection existed only as

smoke and mirrors—neighbors often overheard shouting matches between the two. “His mother was a little on the stern side,” said Cheney. “Yeah,

she was tough. She was a tall woman, almost as tall as Starr. Both parents were tall and slender like Ron. Unlike his brother, Ron got along with

everybody.” The main bone of contention was that Bernice held Starr’s younger brother, Ron, in higher regard than him.

“There was a big rivalry between Ron and his older brother,” Panzarella told me later. “Ron got more girls. He could be more charming and the

mother used to favor him, much to Starr’s disdain. She adored Ron who was a nice-looking kid. And Starr at this time had already gotten fat. I spent

the weekend in the home with the dad and the mom. Starr came over. He was living in his trailer at the time and I saw how unassuming the father

was. He had been wounded in an airplane wreck over Oklahoma in the late fifties or early sixties and he was never the same after that. He was a

draftsman now and we drove him to work, dropped him off and picked him up later. Nice man, but very meek. He wasn’t always that way. Ron told

me it was the accident that made him that way. After the accident Ethan could no longer keep his son in line. He became—how should I say this—

quiet. The mother was total y the dominant personality. They were always arguing and bantering. He’d real y cuss her up and down, screaming at

her. I know if I had spoken to my parents that way, they would have kil ed me. Starr cal ed her a ‘c—’ and stuff like that. It was awful and this was at

the dinner table.”

Cheney elaborated on this. “Starr’s father was a decorated jet pilot,” he told me. “I don’t know if he got shot down or he had a wreck, but he had

an accident and was injured pretty badly and was medical y discharged. I didn’t know him from the days when he was still in the Navy. He was still

active, but apparently had lost some of his fire. He wasn’t the hot jet pilot he had once been. He still went to work and still was a draftsman on Mare

Island. He wasn’t bummed up. He could walk all right and all of his functions were normal. He was a nice guy. The family had commissary privileges

and had I.D. cards so they could shop on military bases. The Wing Walker shoes he wore probably came from Mare Island. They were made for

pilots and crewmen.”

From the street Mulanax idled his car and observed the smudged, practical y ground-level window to Starr’s disordered basement apartment,

and tried to imagine what it must be like. He still yearned to have a peek. Starr’s mother had described her son’s inner sanctum as stacked with

books. Starr was quite the student, “a professional student,” his brother said. “After summer vacation,” Bernice had explained, “he intends to return

to college at Cotati for the fall semester.” Mulanax thought back to 1969 and to another summer vacation—tumultuous times, violent times for

Val ejo.

Starr had been a student then too and Zodiac had been at his boldest, grasping Water Town in a grip of fear. With the intimate knowledge of a

Val ejo resident, he capitalized on a citywide police and firemen’s strike. Throughout the walkout there were only two dozen California Highway

Patrolmen to cruise about and enforce traffic laws for a city of 72,000. On July 21, negotiators almost had the strike licked, but Apollo 11 delayed a

settlement meeting when Governor Reagan declared a moon-flight holiday.

So far summer vacation 1971 had been less turbulent, thought Mulanax. Val ejo had a highly efficient law enforcement team in place and Starr

had a job with Union Oil of California to keep him occupied. Returning to headquarters just before lunch, Mulanax rang the Union Oil refinery at

Pinole and spoke with McNamara in Personnel. He confirmed Starr was employed as a junior chemist in their lab, had been since September 8,

1970. But Starr could not have been very happy at Pinole. Last April 20, the overqualified man had applied for employment at a Union 76 garage in

nearby Rodeo. “His summer hours at the refinery are from 8:00 A.M. until 4:00 P.M.-4:30 P.M.,” continued McNamara, “and that’s each weekday.”

“I’d like to interview him during working hours,” Mulanax explained.

“That’s a bit out of the ordinary,” said the personnel chief, “and bound to cause some disruption.” Disruption was exactly what Mulanax had in

mind. “Well, we can provide my private office for your purposes,” McNamara agreed.

“Good,” said the detective. “Just don’t let on that we intend to interview him prior to his being brought to the office.” Most definitely Mulanax

wanted to surprise Starr and put him off balance. He hung up, noted the appointment on his pad, then dialed Toschi and Armstrong and informed

them of the meeting. Famished after a busy morning, he went to lunch.

Armstrong and Toschi had been busy too. Toschi studied two pages of scribbled notes, munching animal crackers and dunking them in a cup of

Instant Folgers. He had just learned that Starr, though born left-handed, had been compel ed as a child to write with his right hand—a possible

cause of serious psychological problems.

After lunch, Morril got back to Mulanax in Val ejo about Starr’s canceled checks. “I’ve compared them to Zodiac lettering,” Morril said, “and they

come up negative.” What were they missing? wondered Mulanax. If Starr was Zodiac, had he devised a way to disguise his printing? Or had a

confederate written them? Right to the end that shadowy second man would be a worrisome element in the hunt for Zodiac.

Wednesday, August 4, 1971

Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax sped south from Val ejo along Interstate 80 and rattled across the Carquinez Bridge into Contra Costa County.

Tracing the shore of San Pablo Bay, they swept past Selby, Tormey, Rodeo, and Hercules. To the west Hamilton AFB shimmered across clouded

green water. The previous January two Standard Oil Company tankers had collided just outside the Golden Gate, spilling almost two mil ion gallons

of black gummy crude into the Bay. Shortly before 10:25 A.M. the detectives halted at the chain-link gate of a vast oil refinery. The Pinole installation

was impressive. By night, when it was twinkling with a mil ion diamond lights, great clouds of roiling steam made it otherworldly; by day fingerlike

black towers shot hundreds of feet upward like the barrels of guns.

The gate slid back and, three or four blocks later, the detectives climbed out. Toschi craned his neck upward, where processing towers boiled

crude oil to 750 degrees. The heating procedure separated molecules, converting them into propane, gasoline, butane, kerosene, diesel fuel,

lubricating oil, even road tar and wax. Starr was a chemist and the refinery itself no more than a giant chemical lab. Complex conduits twisted into

overlapping tunnels, funneling raw petroleum into mammoth storage tanks, catalytic units, and vacuum distillation units.

Sudden shrill whistles alerted Toschi. High above, men scrambled on gantries and towers. An unctuous mist like soot showered down on them

and made Toschi queasy. His breakfast this morning and for many mornings prior had been a few aspirins washed down with cold coffee. They

entered McNamara’s office and watched as he phoned a lab to summon the unsuspecting assistant chemist. “It’ll be a minute,” he said. Starr’s

records were spread out like a fan on McNamara’s desk. Bill Armstrong took the time to thumb through them since he would be in charge of the

questioning.

The investigators did not hear the suspect in the hallway—only the elevator doors opening with a “whoosh.” Starr walked softly for a big man and

was wearing padded shoes of some sort. At last they would see him face to face. Toschi sat rigid in his seat. He half rose. After so many suspects,

after so many years and disappointments, was Zodiac final y here—within their grasp? Toschi held his breath. The door opened. Starr’s physical

presence was all Toschi thought it would be and all that he knew Zodiac’s was.

2

robert hall starr

Wednesday, August 4, 1971

Starr filled the doorway. His bold, almost hairless head swiveled from face to face as the trio of detectives identified themselves. Starr seemed

surprised and a little nervous that they were policemen. “I realized that he was afraid he was going to get fired,” Toschi told me later, “and that alone

might have accounted for his apprehension.” Twenty-five hundred Zodiac suspects had surfaced over the years and been painstakingly checked

out. Since so many counties, jurisdictions, and unincorporated areas were involved, cops did not always compare notes or even names. Starr was

not their first good suspect. He was not their last. Conveniently, alarm bells should have resounded in the investigators’ minds. They didn’t. Only

after the conference, when their heads were cool and time allowed them to consider what Starr had said, so much of it unbidden, did their pulses

begin to race. Back at Homicide that stark black clock seemed to tick faster.

As Mulanax had done, Toschi took in the suspect’s physical presence—Starr had blue-brown eyes and short light brown hair that was graying in

the back. Hadn’t Officer Fouke mentioned something about Zodiac having “light-colored hair possibly graying in the rear,” recollected Toschi, “and

the curve of Zodiac’s skull had shone through his sparse hair the night he shot the cabdriver.” The late sixties were a period of protest when people

rebel ed against the shorter hair of the the fifties and wore their hair long. In 1969, Zodiac had worn his short—like a military man. However, during a

previous attack at Lake Berryessa, Zodiac presumably sported a healthy head of straight brown hair beneath his hood.

“I remember a kind of greasy forehead . . .” the surviving Berryessa victim told me later. He thought the perpetrator had dark brown hair—a lock

had shown through dark glasses covering narrow eyelets. Beneath those glasses, the wounded boy conjectured, were a second pair of glasses.

The killer, in complete costume—a black executioner’s hood with a white circle and cross on the chest—had appeared almost magical y in the

twilight on September 27, 1969. Zodiac had traveled north to Napa County and targeted the student and his young girlfriend, stabbing them with a

foot-long, inch-wide bayonet with a taped wooden handle. He had decorated the haft, carried at his belt in a handmade scabbard, with brass rivets.

“I don’t know how tall Zodiac was, maybe five foot eight or six feet, somewhere in there. I’m a pretty poor judge of height because of my height,”

said the lanky student.

Starr’s wide brow had breadth enough for a second apple-cheeked face; his neck was thick; high-set ears flew out like horns. His broad-

shouldered, six-foot-tall bulk was intimidating. “Everybody that I ever saw that met Starr underestimated his height,” Cheney later explained. “He had

that fearsome look in his eyes. Thick thighs and a big butt and a belly and strong shoulders and chest.” Yes, Starr was a heavy man, but then so

was Zodiac. The surviving Berryessa victim estimated Zodiac’s weight at between 225 and 250 pounds. “I described this guy as being real y fat,”

he said. “I don’t know, he could have been moderately heavy and wearing a thickly lined windbreaker.” But there was another way to tel .

Detective Sergeant Ken Narlow of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department had done a compaction test on Zodiac’s unique footprints. He had a

deputy sheriff weighing 210 pounds walk alongside them. “He didn’t sink down as deeply as Zodiac had,” Narlow told me, “In order to put that print

so deeply into the sand we figured the Zodiac weighed at least 220 pounds. Clear prints at the heel had indicated that Zodiac was not running when

he left.” Morril , the handwriting examiner, as conservative with the compaction test as with handprinting, told me, “It depends on how the sand was

at the time too. If the guy was taking big loping steps or mincing along. They were guessing at the size from the indentation he made. Suppose the

sand the day before was different. Suppose there had been water in it.”

But the ground had been dry and he had been striding leisurely. The prints were firm and especial y clear at the heel. Napa cops arrived almost

immediately because Zodiac had boldly phoned them from a booth within four and one-half blocks of their headquarters. “He was bound to have

some blood on him,” Narlow told me. “To come in from Berryessa and hit that particular telephone he had to pass, I figure, some twenty to twenty-

one telephones. He came in close enough to hear any possible sirens rushing out of the city of Napa. He could cal in from the lake, but he would be

trapping himself up there. It’s a twenty-five-minute drive down. The booth was twenty-seven miles from the crime scene. If we had found out he was

calling from the lake we could have sealed the area off.”

At the lake there was further proof that Zodiac’s considerable weight was not padding. He had impressed unique marks deeply into the earth. A

circle on the sole reading “SUPERWEAR” showed clearly in Narlow’s plaster moulages. Zodiac’s military motif, suggested by a black holster at his

belt containing a blue-steel semiautomatic military .45, was enhanced by the identifying logos of his shoes—black boots used primarily by the

Navy. Wing Walker shoes were worn almost exclusively by aircraft maintenance crewmen for walking the wings of jets. Narlow discovered that, but

only after his men culled 150 shoe boutiques with names like “The Spinning Wheel” and “Willow Tree.”

In 1969, 103,700 pairs of Wing Walkers had been shipped to Ogden, Utah. The Weinbrenner Shoe Company of Merril , Wisconsin, had

manufactured them per a 1966 government contract for one mil ion pairs total. The last pairs were distributed to Air Force and Naval installations

on the West Coast. Only active-duty personnel or former active-duty personnel, or their dependents, could have purchased such shoes. These

personnel were required to present an I.D. card that carried a thumbprint and photo to enter any base exchange and make any purchases there.

Val ejo, its economy directly related to military operations, served as home for many skilled employees with Navy or Air Force ties. They toiled at

Travis AFB, north of Val ejo near Fairfield, or at Hamilton, Mather, and McClel an Air Force Bases, nearby Mare Island, Alameda Naval Station, and

Treasure Island. The FBI believed in the military connection.

“UNSUB [unknown subject of an investigation] may have military background,” the FBI file said, “inasmuch as UNSUB used bayonet and two

separate 9mm weapons and one of the surviving victims observed UNSUB to be wearing military-type boots.” Not only were these unusual-looking

chucker-type boots available only through a limited outlet, but police had their size. Zodiac wore a size 10½ Regular shoe, which indicated a tall

man, as did his long stride.

Toschi, recalling Zodiac’s unusual homemade costume, later told me: “We sent our artist to Napa County [on October 24, 1969]. Surviving victim

Bryan Hartnel described the Zodiac’s hood as black and sleeveless, the white circle and crosshair in the middle of the chest. The hood looked well

made and well-sewn [the corners had been stitched and there was neat stitching around the flat top] with clip-on sunglasses over the eye slits.” And

Starr could sew (he had been a sailmaker). But the police in that cramped refinery office scarcely wondered about the suspect’s sewing skills or

paid much attention to his shoes—they were studying his face. Beyond his strength and the build of a potential Gold Medal swimmer gone to seed

was a highly intelligent mind. Starr’s I.Q. was 136.

“We’re investigating the Zodiac murders in San Francisco and Val ejo,” said Armstrong, “and we have some questions for you.” The detective

pulled out a chair for the chemist. Toschi noticed barely perceptible droplets beaded on Starr’s wide forehead. “An informant has notified us that

you made certain statements approximately eleven months prior to the first Zodiac murder,” continued Armstrong. “If these are true, then they are of

an incriminating nature.” Armstrong, though referring to Cheney’s recollected dialogue with the suspect, did not mention his name. “Do you recall

having such a conversation with anyone?”

“I don’t recall such a conversation,” Starr said mildly. Oddly, he failed to ask with whom he had reportedly conversed. He seemed already to

know. “Others are quick to react to what you say and do,” his horoscope had read in that morning’s Chronicle. “Choose your words careful y.”

“Have you ever read or heard of Zodiac?”

“I read about the Zodiac when it first appeared in the newspapers,” said Starr. “I didn’t fol ow up on it after those first reports.”

“Why?”

“Because it was too morbid.”

But Starr, later in the interview, made other statements that were in direct conflict with this remark. First, though, he volunteered this: “A Val ejo

police sergeant questioned me after the Zodiac murders at Lake Berryessa.”

Al three investigators were stunned.

“We weren’t aware you had ever been questioned by the police before,” said Armstrong.

“I told him,” said Starr, “that on that particular weekend [Saturday, September 27, 1969] I had gone to Salt Point Ranch near Fort Ross to skin-

dive. [Salt Point Ranch lay in the opposite direction from Lake Berryessa.] I went alone, but I met a serviceman and his wife who were stationed on

Treasure Island. I don’t recall his name, but I have it written down somewhere at home. I got back to Val ejo about 4:00 P.M.”

Armstrong, Toschi, and Mulanax listened intently. Outside, a steam whistle blew and a foreman barked orders. Inside, Starr’s voice droned in the

heat. They could almost hear wheels turning in his head. A palpable tension choked the little office. “I recall speaking to a neighbor shortly after I

drove into my driveway,” Starr went on. “I guess I neglected to tel the Val ejo officer when he questioned me about being seen by this neighbor.”

“And what was the neighbor’s name?” asked Armstrong.

“[William] White. But he died a week after I was questioned so I never bothered to contact the police.” That was very convenient. Suddenly, Starr

made a bizarre leap in subject matter—one so strange that Toschi caught Armstrong’s attention with a quizzical raising of his eyebrow. Without any

questioning about a knife such as Zodiac had used in the Berryessa stabbings, the suspect made an astonishing statement:

“The two knives I had in my car had blood on them,” he said. “The blood came from a chicken I had killed.”

The day Zodiac stabbed two college students at Lake Berryessa, Starr was to have been there shooting ground squirrels and had told his sister-

in-law so. His new story was that he had gone scuba diving instead—elsewhere. Starr both skin dived and scuba dived. To explain why Zodiac

chose sites near lakes, a theory had circulated that Zodiac was a diver who hid his weapons and souvenirs in watertight containers underwater.

And that’s why the killer had a paunch—a weighted diving belt around his waist. To Toschi, that hypothesis now looked considerably less far-

fetched. Starr was not only a boater, but an avid skin diver and spear fisherman.

“Starr thinks we have some information regarding a knife,” thought Armstrong. “He thinks we know more than we do, but knowledge of that bloody

knife is information we don’t possess.” Al the detectives could fathom was that someone had glimpsed the stained knives or knife on his car seat

and Starr knew they had. Did he think that his neighbor, William White, had observed a bloody blade when he returned home that day and

mentioned it to someone? More than likely, thought Toschi, Starr’s brother, Ron, or sister-in-law, Karen, were the ones who had spied the bloody

blade. Starr was hedging his bets and explaining away in advance any information that the police may have received.

“Were you in Southern California in 1966?” asked Armstrong.

Once again, Starr volunteered startling specifics without prompting.

“You mean about the Riverside killing?” he said. “Yes, I was in Southern California at the approximate time as the Riverside murder in which

Zodiac is a suspect.”

The information about a Zodiac stabbing in Riverside had been made public only ten months earlier. Phil Sins, a southern resident, had seen

parallels between a local murder and Zodiac’s Northern California activities. The break ran in the Chronicle. But hadn’t Starr just stated he had long

before ceased reading articles about Zodiac? The headline story suggested Zodiac had killed a Riverside College coed, Cheri Jo Bates, just

before Halloween Night 1966. The writer of the handprinted Riverside notes had also been fond of writing taunting letters to the press (“BATES

HAD TO DIE THERE WILL BE MORE”) and using too much postage. A squiggled signature on three letters was either a “2” or a “Z.” Most

importantly, Morril had identified Zodiac as the author of the Southern California notes.

“I admit I’m interested in guns,” Starr continued, “but the only handguns I own are .22-caliber. I don’t have and have never owned an automatic

weapon.”

“Have you ever owned a 1965-66 brown Corvair?” asked Armstrong. Zodiac was driving such a vehicle the night of his Fourth of July murder.

“No.” Starr folded his arms. He was dressed in a short-sleeved white shirt, his forearms as massive as “Popeye’s.”

Toschi noticed a big watch on Starr’s wrist. “It was a rugged man’s watch,” he told me later. “It’s the kind of watch a man would buy to be seen

—‘Look at what I’ve got on my wrist.’ And I spotted it instantly—the word ‘Zodiac.’ I asked him specifically to show it to me. ‘That’s a nice watch

you’ve got there,’ I said. ‘Oh, I’ve had it awhile,’ he said. ‘Do you like it?’ I said. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. And you can see the letters Z-o-d-i-a-c. I still

remember seeing that watch. And he wanted people to see what he had on his arm. He wore it in defiance. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. When we

saw the watch we were amazed—and the brother and sister-in-law afterward mentioned to Armstrong and I that, ‘He even wears a Zodiac watch.’”

“May I see that?” said Armstrong. He gestured toward Starr’s wrist. He had also noticed their suspect was wearing an unusual-looking watch. A

ray of light through the blinds made the crystal face sparkle. Above the watchmaker’s name, in the center of the face, was emblazoned a bold

emblem. It froze the officers in spite of the heat. There, glowing stark white on black, was a circle and crosshairs— Zodiac’s symbol.

The expensive watch on Starr’s wrist had been manufactured by Zodiac Astrographic Automatic, LeLocle, Switzerland/New York, a company

whose roots stretched back to the nineteenth century. Now Mulanax saw it too. Neatly printed across the bottom, in upper and lower case, was the

word “Zodiac.” The name and symbol were exactly like those used as a signature on Zodiac’s letters.

“Only in Zodiac’s letters had the name ‘Zodiac’ and the killer’s crossed-circle symbol ever appeared together in the same place,” Toschi thought.

He knew because he had searched everywhere for that crossed circle. To this moment, he had assumed it represented a gun sight. Starr turned

the watch on his wrist as if admiring it. “It was a birthday gift,” he said to Armstrong. “This watch was given to me by my mother two years ago.”

Mulanax counted back in his mind. “Let’s see—exactly two years back from today is August 4, 1969. On August 4, 1969, the killer had used the

name ‘Zodiac’ for the first time in a three-page letter to the Examiner. The paper had buried his note in the late edition at the top of page 4. Only

five days before, Zodiac had introduced his crossed circle symbol to the papers.” Though a later CI&I report stated Starr had gotten the watch in

August 1969, his brother, Ron, contradicted that. He said that Starr “received the watch from his mother as a Christmas gift in December 1968.”

Starr’s thirty-fifth birthday had been December 18, 1968, just two days before Zodiac’s first known Northern California murders.

Starr would own a second Zodiac watch later. The manufacturers of the “World Famous Zodiac Watches” manufactured a Zodiac Clebar Skin-

diver Underwater Chronograph in 1969: “It’s a stop watch! Aviator and skin-diver’s watch. Tested for 20 atmospheres (comparable to 660 feet

underwater).” Starr was, by then, both an aviator and skin diver. Like its brother, a logo in the lower right-hand corner of the watch was a crossed

circle on a dark background above the word “Zodiac.” It was quiet in the office. The Zodiac watch, mention of a bloody knife, Starr’s volunteered

information had dazed them al . What was coming next?

“I’m willing to help you in the investigation in any way possible,” the suspect said, licking his lips. He coughed and cleared his throat. Starr

apparently wanted to interpose a high note, one with some humor, reconciliation, and good fellowship all round. “I can’t wait until the time comes

when police officers are not referred to as ‘pigs,’” he said with a sad shake of his head. Some antiwar protesters and students of the period

commonly cal ed police “pigs.” Zodiac used the same epithet. “I enjoy needling the blue pigs,” he had taunted. “Hey blue pig I was in the park.”

“Can you recall anyone whom you might have had a conversation with regarding Zodiac?” interjected Mulanax.

“I might have had a conversation with Ted Kidder and Phil Tucker of the Val ejo Recreation Department when I was working there, but I’m not

positive.” Starr continued answering questions before they were asked. In this way he might defuse any damaging evidence against him in their

minds. What had they heard? He had no way of knowing which of many acquaintances had turned him in as a killer. He said some very strange

things in private. He liked to talk and he talked loud and his remarks made him the center of attention. Suddenly, Starr paused—he realized who

had sent the police!

“‘The Most Dangerous Game,’” he said.

“What?” said Toschi.

Out of nowhere, Starr had mentioned the title of a short story he had read in the eleventh grade, a tale that, by his own admission, had made a

deep and lasting impression on him. Toschi recalled Langstaff’s Manhattan Beach report and recognized “The Most Dangerous Game” as the

same story Starr had rhapsodized over a full year before the murders began. Toschi smiled inwardly—Starr had final y figured out who had ratted

him out.

“It was cal ed ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’” Starr elaborated. “It was the best thing I read in high school.” Zodiac had given “The Most

Dangerous Game” as his motive in a cunning, almost unbreakable three-part cipher. But Salinas schoolteacher Don Harden had cracked it on

August 4, 1969, exactly two years ago today, though Harden’s solution was not made public until August 12. Encrypting mistakes and all, the

bizarre solution read:

“I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE FORREST BECAUSE

MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL TO KILL SOMETHING GIVES ME THE MOST THRILLING EXPERIENCE IT IS EVEN

BETTER THAN GETTING YOUR ROCKS OFF WITH A GIRL THE BEST PART OF IT IS THAT WHEN I DIE I WILL BE REBORN IN

PARADISE AND THOSE HAVE KILLED WILL BECOME MY SLAVES I WILL NOT GIVE YOU MY NAME BECAUSE YOU WILL TRY TO SLOW

DOWN OR ATOP MY COLLECTION OF SLAVES FOR AFTERLIFE . . .”

Roughly, the short story by Richard Connell dealt with the son of a military officer hunting humans with a rifle and bow and arrow for sport in the

forest. Aptly, Starr, the son of a military man, hunted in the woods with a bow and arrow. Mulanax summarized the story in this manner: “This book

was made into a movie and concerns a man shipwrecked on an island and being hunted by another man ‘like an animal.’” It might be important to

study that brief story in depth for clues, thought Mulanax, learn if it had been a movie or dramatized on television, learn where Zodiac might have

stumbled across it and when.

“Starr mentioned ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ during that questioning,” Toschi told me later, “and his brother afterward confirmed that he felt that

man was ‘the most dangerous game, not shooting game.’” The precise words Starr had used, verified by another witness than Cheney, were: “I

think of man as game.” The adventure story might have been the flash point, no less a catalyst than the re-forming process Starr performed daily as

an assistant chemist.

The informal cross-examination ended.

Less than an hour had passed since those elevator doors had opened, but it seemed longer. As an interview it had been mild. Though Starr had

been isolated, a true interrogation would have been more focused, the setting bleaker, the intimidation more intense. Pointedly, the trio escorted

Starr back to his lab, then left. Inwardly, the chemist boiled at being taken out, humiliated, and “questioned like a thief.” Toschi admitted that he

found Starr “a dangerous animal,” and though armed, had some fear of him in close quarters. Starr’s ears were crimson; his face flushed. He could

barely control his anger and he had never been a patient man. Men al around him, in their lab coats, paper booties over engineering boots, were

staring and whispering. He sat at his work station. “You don’t know what it’s like,” mumbled Starr to a coworker, his eyes fixed on his desk.

“Everything is fine—going good. Then somebody cal s you to the office. And they suggest terrible things about you. You just can’t know—terrible

things. And all the time I’m racking my brain to figure out who sent them. They make you sweat, then take you through the halls—in front of everyone

—like a child! I can’t forgive that.” The next time Starr met Toschi and Armstrong, he would claim not to remember them.

Ignoring the buzz of his coworkers, Starr began scanning test results. He might be in a predicament—he was Zodiac’s weight, height, age. He

had the same color and length of hair. He crossed his legs and removed the paper booties over his shoes. Absently, he surveyed the unusual-

looking chucker-type Wing Walker boots he was wearing. Like Zodiac, Starr wore a size 10½ Regular. Two women he knew had seen him in those

shoes and could testify to that. But in the end, perhaps he was only a man who liked people to think he was Zodiac.

Outside, the investigators climbed back into their car. Their unanimous consensus was that the investigation of Starr should continue and in

greater depth. “Absolutely,” said Toschi with feeling. “But what I real y want to know is who the hell questioned him just after the murders?”

Mulanax had absolutely no idea. “God, that was over two years ago,” he said. He made a mental note to fine-comb the Val ejo files regarding any

questioning of Starr as a Zodiac suspect and any previous reports about a bloody knife or knives on a car seat.

3

arthur leigh allen

Wednesday, August 4, 1971

Someone had desperately wanted us to know such a thing as a Zodiac watch existed. I studied the neatly penciled letter in my hand. At the San

Francisco Chronicle, where I worked as an editorial cartoonist, everyone wondered about Zodiac. His terrifying letters had irrevocably linked him to

the newspaper. Gradual y, a determination grew within me to disentangle the killer’s clues and unmask his true identity. Failing that, I intended to

present every scrap of evidence available to ensure that someone might recognize Zodiac and resolve the missing pieces of the puzzle.

At the window I contemplated the long shadows stretching across wide Mission Street. On Fifth Street, strangers mil ed about the Pickwick Hotel

(Hammett’s “Pickwick Stage terminal” where the Maltese Falcon had been stashed). Transients huddled in front of the Chronicle Hotel, and wel -

dressed men with briefcases stood on the marble steps of the indestructible Old Mint. Zodiac could be any of them. He was a watcher. The first

letter in which he christened himself “Zodiac” carried a different watermark than three earlier letters (Monarch-cut bond, imprinted with an “Eaton”

watermark). The new watermark was “FIFTH AVENUE,” an imprint of Frank Winfield Woolworth’s national chain. A huge Woolworth’s stood just a

block away from the Chronicle, at the cable car turntable at Fifth and Market and Powell. In the basement, next to the goldfish, Woolworth’s sold

blue felt-tip pens and paper exactly like Zodiac used. What if he bought his paper and blue felt-tip pens there? What if he spied from the shadows

as his letters were delivered?

Last March Zodiac had been writing industriously, casting his net wide; spreading his word southward. After the oil refinery interview with Starr,

the flow of words halted abruptly. Nonetheless, Chronicle reporter Paul Stuart Avery optimistically left standing orders with the city desk. “We can

probably expect to receive a new Zodiac communication any day now,” he said brightly. “As usual, every effort should be made to prevent any

Chronicle employee’s fingerprints from getting on the letter.” The letters had been handled by a lot of the staff—Carol Fisher, Brant Parker . . .

Toschi had already fingerprinted all the copy people.

Sometimes Zodiac attempted to sneak letters into print. Since Letters Editor Carol Fisher retained all reader submissions as hedges against

libel, this anonymous letter from November 1970 had been on file.

“Dear Sir,” the note read. “In reading a recent issue of ‘Playboy’ magazine I noticed an advertisement for ‘Zodiac’ watches. The trademark

on the face of the watch is identical to that used by the notorious killer. Since I’ve always read in the press that the crimes have been interpreted as some sort of astrological thing. The fact that such a singular hieroglyphic [sic] effect is in fact a watch brand emblem seems somehow interesting.”

Had a gloating Zodiac slyly cal ed attention to the inspiration for his name and symbol? After “a Val ejo cop” had cleared him, Starr must have felt

secure. He had gone on wearing his Zodiac wristwatch, at least until Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax surprised him. I visualized a tantalizing

sequence of events—Starr, obsessed with “The Most Dangerous Game” since high school, received a Zodiac watch from his mother on December

18, 1968, and began wearing a second birthday gift, a ring with a “Z” on it. Thirteen days later, he had a conversation with Cheney, much like earlier

discussions in which he mentioned putting a light on the barrel of his gun and hunting couples. He spoke of calling himself “Zodiac” and shooting out

the tires of a school bus. This chronology set down a definite time frame for Zodiac’s choice of name, symbol, and M.O.—sometime between

December 18, 1968, and January 1, 1969, after which Cheney moved to Southern California to work for a new company. Starr had revealed a

monumental secret about himself on New Year’s Day, but then Zodiac always chose holidays for his most important crimes and revelations.

Cheney’s visit, the symbol on the watch, its exotic trademark, the ring, his favorite story from his youth—all must have been bubbling in Starr’s

head. The first two murders occurred on December 20, two days after Starr’s birthday. On August 4, 1971, two years after the killer had first signed

his name “Zodiac,” he told Armstrong he had received the Zodiac watch “exactly two years earlier”—August 4, 1969. Either scenario presented a

fascinating sequence of events and explained the killer’s choice of name and symbol.

Police, during their manhunt for Zodiac, zealously guarded the prime suspect’s real name. If his name was never publicized, this ensured any

subsequent tip about Starr would be valid. As for myself, I made a practice of never writing, until now, Starr’s true name.

His real name was Arthur Leigh Al en.

Almost a decade after the oil refinery questioning, I final y located the “Val ejo cop” who had questioned Al en so early in the case. Detective

Sergeant John Lynch talked to me at his home on Carolina Street in Val ejo. A slender, solid older man with penetrating eyes, he began speaking

the instant we sat down at his dining room table. The room was almost completely dark. I had just mentioned Al en. “Oh,” he said, “Lay Al en.” He

pronounced “Leigh” as “Lay.” I realized because of the different spellings Lynch thought that “Leigh” and “Lee” were two different suspects in the

case. “Lee” was not a new name in the case—just before Zodiac shot a couple out at Blue Rock Springs on the Fourth of July, an unknown man

named “Lee” had already been an object of speculation.

“I talked to Leigh at great length several times,” said Lynch. “He was up the coast at Bodega Bay [where he had a trailer] . . . he’s a skin diver; on

that Fourth of July, 1969, he said he was with three or four other guys.”

“When did you speak to him—in 1971?” I asked, at first thinking Lynch had been fol owing up Panzarella and Cheney’s tip to Manhattan Beach

P.D.

“Long before that,” he answered. “Within one or two months. Leigh was employed as a janitor at that time at one of the schools here. I went up to

the school—I don’t know how I got his name in the first place. You know the way things were going then, there were so damn many people to talk to

and we were getting so many phone cal s and letters and clues. I got so I almost looked at the guy and said, ‘That’s not him,’ to myself. And when I

saw this Leigh Al en. He was bald-headed and he’s a great big guy. Have you seen him?”

“Yes,” I said. Linda Del Buono, Blue Rock Springs victim Darlene Ferrin’s sister, had prepared a composite drawing for the Val ejo P.D. “They

compared Linda’s composite to another Zodiac composite, and told me, ‘Everything but the chin was right.’ This was supposed to be a profile of a

guy named ‘Lee’ who hung out at Darlene’s painting party, the same guy Linda observed harassing her sister while she was wait-ressing at Terry’s

Restaurant. Did you ever speak to this ‘Lee’?”

“Leigh Al en?”

“I don’t know. Al Linda knew was the name ‘Lee.’”

“No,” he said. “Anyway, I was positive it wasn’t Al en. The minute I looked at him, I said mental y, ‘That isn’t Zodiac.’ [Val ejo Lieutenant Jim]

Husted liked Al en best. I liked him least. I only typed in five to six lines on the report—only in order to get Al en’s name in. Checked his car and he

had his scuba gear in the back of the car. Real old dirty car.”

Lynch explained that on Monday, October 6, 1969, he sought out Al en about the stabbings at Berryessa ten days earlier. Al en, then thirty-five

and an occasional student, worked part-time as a custodian at Elmer Cave Elementary School. At 4:05 P.M., Lynch turned south off Tennessee

Street onto Vervais. He reached the school at 770 Tregaskis and immediately saw Leigh across the playground. For his report he scrawled this

description: “241 pounds and almost six-foot-one.” As Lynch observed a few children playing tether ball, an intuitive thought about child molesters

entered his head. Al en had been suspected of such crimes and Lynch, and later Mulanax, would wonder if they had missed any obvious signs.

Lynch turned his attention from the kids back to the suspect—single, unmarried, and living with his parents. He was well educated and not only a

custodian at Cave School, but a janitor at Benjamin Franklin Jr. High School at 501 Starr Avenue, very near a Zodiac victim’s home.

They chatted. According to Al en, he had gone skin diving on Salt Point Ranch on September 26, 1969, stayed overnight, and returned to Val ejo

on September 27 at approximately 2:00 to 4:30 P.M. “For the remainder of the day,” Al en said, “I stayed at home. I don’t recall whether my parents

were home on that day or not.”

“Someone thought you might be the Zodiac killer and reported you,” said Lynch matter-of-factly. “Is that a fact,” Al en said with a laugh as if such

an accusation was an everyday occurrence. He placed his broom against the wall. Lynch looked him up and down. “Well, Zodiac had curly hair,”

Lynch said, thinking of Linda’s description, “and you obviously don’t. So that’s it.”

Had Lynch’s visit been a flash point?

Five days after Leigh’s reassuring interview with the easygoing Lynch, Zodiac drove to San Francisco, shot Yellow Cab driver Paul Stine, and

fled into the Presidio, police dogs nearly at his heels. He ran in the direction of the huge Letterman Complex. There, at a new ten-story Army

Medical Center, future Zodiac victim Donna Lass was working that night. She and her roommate, Jo Anne Goettsche, had been in the practice of

going flying with two men from Riverside who lived in the San Francisco area. Leigh, of all the suspects, was a pilot.

Seven days after Lynch’s questioning, Zodiac dropped the Chronicle a line. He enclosed a bloody swatch of the cabbie’s shirt to provide

irrefutable proof he had murdered Stine. Police speculated Zodiac had switched to a bigger city to garner bigger headlines. But wasn’t he simply

distancing himself from Val ejo where things had suddenly gotten too hot? Zodiac’s intimate knowledge of Val ejo’s back roads and lovers’ lanes

branded him as a longtime resident. Thanks to that bloody swatch Zodiac was now forever identified as a San Francisco killer.

Eighteen days after Leigh spoke with Lynch, William Langdon White, Al en’s seventy-three-year-old neighbor, died of heart failure at 9:55 P.M.,

just after seeing his doctor. White, California-born and a twenty-one-year resident of Val ejo, had lived seven houses down from Leigh’s at 45

Fresno. He had been Leigh’s al eged alibi for the Berryessa stabbings. “I recall speaking to a neighbor shortly after I drove into my driveway,” Leigh

had said. “I guess I neglected to tel the Val ejo officer. . . .”

White had also been a possible witness of a bloody knife on Al en’s car seat. As a longtime business representative for Butchers’ Union Local

532, White logical y might have paid attention to any knife. Coincidental y, William White’s birthday, December 20, was also the date of the Lake

Herman Road shootings. White shared a last name with Sergeant William White, the second ranger to reach the couple Zodiac stabbed at Lake

Berryessa. Al through October 1969, Ranger White had been highly visible in a series of television interviews about Zodiac.

“Yes, I talked to [Al en] at great length several times,” Lynch recalled. “I spoke to him within one or two months of one killing.” He now recalled a

typed three-by-five card addressed specifically to himself had arrived at the Val ejo P.D. on August 10, 1969. It had gone to the FBI, and he could

not recall if it had been returned or not. “Dear Sgt. Lynch,” it read. “I hope the enclosed key will prove beneficial to you in connection with the cipher

letter writer. [signed] Concerned Citizen.” At that time only a Val ejo resident would have known Lynch was handling the then-embryonic Zodiac

case. “Concerned” had included a valid key to Zodiac’s three-part cipher. The key bore handprinted letters and symbols beginning “A-G-backwards

S-L.” The FBI reported, “It was a substantial y accurate key for decryption of the three-part-cipher mailed by Zodiac.” A solution to the cipher was

not published in the Chronicle until two days later.

In a letter to the San Francisco Examiner a week earlier, Zodiac explained he did not leave the scene “with squealing tires and racing engine

as described in the Val ejo papers.” This was another indication Zodiac was a Val ejo resident who read the limited circulation local paper. So was

his instant reply to Val ejo Police Chief Stiltz’s August 1 entreaty for “more details.” It would be a considerable time after the oil refinery questioning

before Lynch’s 110-word report on Al en would be found—sandwiched between FBI Flyers #59 and #4316, and a local tip that went nowhere.

“Another example of a lack of coordination,” Val ejo Police Captain Roy Conway lamented many years later. “Sergeant Lynch, a good personal

friend of mine who was assigned to the case for a long time, died in the last couple of years. He has a police report that says on a particular date

he interviewed Arthur Leigh Al en about his whereabouts on the day of the Berryessa homicide. Which is all well and good, but he doesn’t have any

recollection whatsoever what information he had that made him interview Arthur Leigh Al en.

“Arthur Leigh Al en told him at that time—it’s just one little paragraph in the police report—it doesn’t say why he went to see him, what caused him

to see him, what conclusions he reached—nothing. Just that ‘I interviewed him about what he was doing the day of the Lake Berryessa killing.’

Coincidental y, Leigh had told Lynch, ‘I was on the way to Lake Berryessa that day to go fishing, but I changed my mind and went to the coast.’”

Detective Bawart also agreed with Conway in hindsight. “There’s a lot of instances that occurred in this case that happened in one area and the

other area didn’t know about it,” he said. “The Val ejo Police Department interviewed Arthur Leigh Al en in 1969 about the stabbings at Lake

Berryessa. The sergeant who did that interview went down and talked to him as he had talked to probably a hundred other people. Asked him

where he was the day of the Berryessa slaying. He said he had not gone to Berryessa but up the coast instead. Now we get back and look at this

years later and we go back to this Lynch, a lieutenant retired then—‘I don’t remember why I was talking to the guy,’ he says. ‘Somebody must have

cal ed his name in.’ He steps back and says, ‘No, I just don’t recall .’ If we knew who cal ed his name in, that person must have had some reason for

suspecting that Arthur Leigh Al en was responsible, had something to do with the case.”

County Sheriff’s Detective Sergeant Les Lundblad had also questioned Al en. Someone had tipped him too. This interview apparently was

unknown to the VPD because the Val ejo Sheriff’s and Police Departments were separate and independent forces. The third week after the

teenagers out on Lake Herman Road had been murdered by Zodiac, Lundblad went to see Al en. The stocky man had an alibi for that Zodiac

attack too, one considerably similar to that he would give Lynch. “I was out at Fort Point near Big Sur scuba diving,” he said. After each Zodiac

murder, Arthur Leigh Al en had been sought out. He was not such a new suspect after all . Someone out there knew something, and who that person

was was as much a mystery as Zodiac’s true identity.

Wednesday, August 4, 1971

Directly after speaking with Al en at the refinery, Toschi and Mulanax decided to fol ow up on Ted Kidder and Phil Tucker—the men Al en

mentioned he might have shared conversations with about Zodiac. “I think Al en initial y assumed Kidder and Tucker had tipped the police,”

Mulanax said. “That’s why he volunteered their names so promptly.”

“Yeah,” said Toschi. “I think you’ve pegged it. It just took him a bit longer to realize he should have been thinking of Cheney and Panzarella.” But a

lead was a lead, so the detectives hustled over to the Greater Val ejo Recreation District, where Kidder and Tucker worked. If Al en had predicted

Zodiac’s coming to Cheney, maybe he had done the same with Kidder or Tucker. Mulanax slid into a spot right in front of 395 Amador Street, and

they went inside looking for Kidder. Tucker might be the General Supervisor for the Recreation District, but Kidder was his boss.

“Do you know Arthur Leigh Al en?” Toschi asked Kidder. Kidder’s name had appeared on teacher’s applications Leigh filed with the Calaveras

Unified School District on December 23, 1965, and June 18, 1966.

“Sure,” he said.

“Has Leigh ever mentioned the Zodiac case?”

“To my knowledge, I never discussed the case with him. He was formal y employed by the Recreation District as a lifeguard and trampoline

instructor.” Cheney confirmed that sometime later. “Al en was going around teaching kids on the trampoline. He liked that. He was very adept on the

trampoline and a remarkable swimmer and diver—a champion on the diving board. He was superb at any athletic activity that did not involve

walking or running—Al en was not good at running. At that time, wel into his thirties, he was stil active, at least with the trampoline, while he was in

Val ey Springs. He would set it up in the front yard and he loved getting a bunch of kids and coaching them.”

Al en left GVRD for the same reason he had left Wogan’s station—his inappropriate actions toward smal children. “I had received numerous

complaints from concerned parents about acts he had made toward their children,” said Kidder. “But no formal complaint was ever lodged to the

police about Al en’s actions, no formal complaint anyway. As recently as three weeks ago, Phil Tucker and I had a discussion about Al en being a

suspect in the Zodiac murders. This talk came about primarily because of Al en’s suspected possibility of being a sexual deviate. That and his

physical description. We both considered Al en a loner type.”

Had either Kidder or Tucker been the original informant to Lynch and Lundblad? Tucker had reportedly gone to school with Al en at Cal Poly at

San Luis Obispo. He would know more. Toschi asked for Tucker to be summoned to Kidder’s office so they could ask him the same questions.

Tucker related that he had known Al en about five years. Lieutenant Husted of the VPD later told me more about Tucker. “Tucker and Al en often

talked with each other about death and about murder for sale,” he said. “I have a 1971 application fil ed out by Al en for a job as a Rodeo

[California] service station attendant, Tucker’s name on it. Tucker’s name is on al of them. I found it in the margins of one application. Very reliable

guy, Tucker.”

Tucker confirmed to Toschi that Leigh was equal y proficient with both hands and ambidextrous as an adult. This skil with both hands might

explain why Leigh’s handprinting did not match Zodiac’s. Zodiac, a born leftie, was writing with his right hand. “His handwriting is not real good,”

said Tucker, “and so he prints most things.”

“So, Leigh could write and shoot with both hands?” said Toschi.

“Yes,” Tucker admitted, then added, “For the last two years, Al en has brought up the Zodiac case in conversation. I feel he has an interest in the

case.” He sat back and thought. “I remember on one occasion he had told me that police considered him a suspect.”

“To your knowledge, did Al en have an interest in guns?” Toschi asked Tucker.

“He said he did have. He owned two handguns. One was a revolver, the other some type of automatic. I don’t know the calibers because I don’t

have much of a knowledge of guns myself. I think the guns in his home might be .22-caliber revolvers, and I saw at least one automatic. I recal that

he discussed having a special light attached to a gun barrel so that a person could shoot accurately at night. On more than one occasion he

admitted to shooting with special sights for firing in the dark.”

Toschi rubbed the back of his neck. Another portion of Cheney’s story had been corroborated. It was even hotter.

“Another time, about eighteen months ago,” continued Tucker, “my wife and I visited Leigh in his home. He made a remark that he had something

he would like to show us. ‘I only show this particular thing to very certain people,’ he said. Or something to that effect. He then took a paper from a

gray metal box he had gotten from his bedroom. This paper was handprinted and contained several pages of legal terminology and several pages

of letters which had symbols or codes or cryptograms on them. He said they pertained to a person who had been committed to Atascadero for

molesting a child. This paper rambled on and on in language of a legal nature, that sort of terminology, this and that. It was about this person having

been betrayed by his attorney. I noticed in this script there were various symbols used by Zodiac in his coded messages.”

Toschi nodded. He didn’t find it unusual that Tucker could recognize the symbols as Zodiac-like. The kil er’s three-part cipher had been widely

reprinted. On June 29, 1970, the approximate time of Tucker’s visit, the Chronicle had published a new Zodiac two-line cipher. “I only expressed

polite interest in the paper,” said Tucker, “but my wife showed genuine interest. She found the symbols or codes or cryptograms unusual. She

asked him if she might borrow the paper to study it, but he refused to al ow her to take the paper. He did promise to have a copy made to give her.”

“And did he?” asked Toschi.

“No, he never did.”

“Do you know if Al en has ever owned a 1965-’66 brown Corvair?”

“Not to my knowledge,” he replied.

“I see,” said Toschi.

“But I did,” said Tucker.

“You did?” said Toschi, wheeling. “You owned a 1965 brown Corvair?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever loan this car to Al en?”

“No, I haven’t. At the time I had two cars, the Corvair and the Pontiac. I let him use my Pontiac on occasion. I was living in Berkeley at that time. In

the summer of 1969 I left the Corvair parked at the Richfield Service Station at Nebraska and Broadway [in Val ejo] for about two weeks. I was

trying to sel it. I left the keys at the station and at this particular time Al en was employed as an attendant at that station.”

“Exactly when in the summer did you leave your car?”

“I can’t recal the exact time, but it was mid-summer of 1969.”

Tucker recol ected that three weeks prior, Karen, Leigh Al en’s sister-in-law, had visited and wanted him to speak to Al en on her behalf. “The

family had gotten another complaint about his recent involvement with a child,” Tucker said. “I went to Al en’s home and spoke to him about

resuming psychiatric treatment. However, I was unsuccessful and so I washed my hands of him. I told him, ‘I don’t want you to come around my

home in the future. Our association is at an end.’”

Toschi studied his Timex, anxious to compare notes with Armstrong. He visualized his partner equal y anxious to get on his motorbike and take

to the suburban dirt trails, the warm sun in his face. The rugged trail would rattle the cobwebs from his head. On weekends, as a diversion from

stress, Armstrong focused on salvaging his perpetual y wilting backyard garden. As for Mulanax, he was as fired up as he had been days ago. Now

he was interested in contacting Mrs. Tucker as soon as possible. He wanted to see what she recal ed about the printing inside the gray box. He

rang her from Kidder’s office, and learned she was working the graveyard shift at an Oakland hospital. That meeting would have to be postponed.

Instead, Mulanax decided to speak with Al en’s sister-in-law, Karen Al en, a twenty-six-year-old former schoolteacher. Mulanax phoned Karen at her

job and arranged to have her come into the Val ejo P.D. She arrived promptly at 2:00 P.M. and took a seat.

“Let me tel you why I asked you in,” Mulanax said. On the surface, Karen seemed surprised that her brother-in-law was suspected of being the

long-sought Zodiac kil er, but offered to give whatever help she could. Mulanax wondered if she could be the original tipster. He confirmed that

Karen knew of Al en’s preoccupation with children. She stated another thing positively—her brother-in-law hated women. “He has never had a

serious relationship with a female of his own age,” she said. Sandy Panzarel a had voiced similar remarks. “Leigh just pretended to be interested in

women,” he said. “Eventual y he gave up even that slender pretext.” Various women Leigh had dated afterward voiced the same opinion—their

relationship with him had only been platonic. In most cases sexual psychopaths have few social or sexual affiliations, and might never have

experienced normal sexual intercourse. In these uncommon individuals, for reasons unknown, aggressive and sexual impulses intertwine early in

childhood. Ultimately, these confused feelings find expression in vicious sexual assaults and sadistic murders. Lacking a conscience, Zodiac had

no remorse for the pain he inflicted on others. Their pain brings him pleasure.

Karen disclosed that, after her marriage to Ron, it became apparent that Leigh viewed her as an intruder. He believed she had come to separate

him from his brother, and actual y made threats against her. “He was spoiled and pampered by his mother,” she said with a trace of bitterness.

“She does his cooking, washes his clothes, cleans up after him, and gives him money. She even paid for his two cars and two boats.” It was odd

that Al en intensely disliked his mother no matter what she did for him, and even stranger that he had expressed such feelings to Karen, whom he

viewed as an interloper.

As for Bernice Al en, she had never forgotten her son’s squandered Olympic potential. Leigh had been a talented diver. “She’s always ragging

me about my weight,” he had snarled to Cheney and Panazarel a. A competition photo of him in a Val ejo paper depicted a slender, almost

handsome young man with blondish hair. Other pictures from the 1960s showed how much he resembled the younger, unamended San Francisco

Zodiac composite drawing. If Leigh had not been steadily gaining weight, he would have been a dead ringer for the sketch. Al en’s altered

appearance reminded Mulanax of a line Zodiac had written:

“I look like the description passed out only when I do my thing, the rest of the time I look entirle different. I shal not tel you what my discise

[disguise] consists of when I kil .”

Mulanax passed copies of Zodiac’s bizarre notes to Karen. She studied them and said she had noticed a paper with similar printing in her

brother-in-law’s hand in November 1969. “What is that?” she had asked. “This is the work of an insane person,” Leigh replied. “I’l show you later.”

As with the Tuckers, he never did. However, while the printing on the Zodiac letters was not familiar to her as being that of her brother-in-law, some

phrases were. Leigh had used the expression “trigger mach” instead of trigger mechanism. Final y, she thumbed to a copy of an authenticated

Christmas card Zodiac had mailed to attorney Melvin Bel i during a period when the master criminal wanted to give himself up.

An FBI report, December 31, 1969, noted the note had “not been written as freely as the other threatening letters in this matter.” However, an

enclosed blood-blackened portion of a victim’s shirt validated it. Zodiac’s handwriting was subject to change and in the space of months. At 1:59

P.M. the fol owing day, a man identifying himself as Zodiac cal ed the switchboard operator at FBI headquarters in Sacramento, then hung up after

beginning to name someone he had just kil ed. “‘Happy Christmass,’” Karen read aloud from the photostat. “I definitely recal having received a card

at Christmas from my brother-in-law,” she said. “‘Happy Christmass’ was spel ed exactly the same way.”

Karen, like Tucker, confirmed Al en was left-handed. “His elementary school teachers attempted to make him right-handed,” she said. “He

learned to write that way, but soon reverted to writing with his left hand.” While Morril believed the letters were written right-handed, he suspected

that Zodiac was natural y left-handed. The obscuring effect of a felt-tip pen and a left-handed man printing firmly and unnatural y with his right hand

might explain the difficulty in matching handprinting to any suspect. Sergeant Mulanax was hungry to learn more.

“Could I drop by tonight when your husband wil be home?” he said. “We want to ask him some questions too.” Ronald Gene Al en, a thirty-two-

year-old landscape engineer, was currently attending Berkeley Col ege. He had attended Cal Poly from fal 1960 until fal 1968, when he attained a

bachelor of science degree. “He’l be late,” she said, but agreed that 8:00 P.M. would be convenient. After she left, Mulanax contacted Armstrong

and Toschi and asked them to rendezvous with him at 216 Aragon Street in Val ejo that night. An already long day was growing longer.

Mulanax reached the home first. It was just off Columbus Parkway, which led directly into Blue Rock Springs to the north. He suspected Zodiac

had used the parkway as an escape route after the July Fourth shootings. Mulanax stood in the deep shadows of the pleasant tree-lined cul-de-sac.

Somewhere in his cozy little town, the most cunning criminal he had ever come across was waiting. A cool wind blew in from San Pablo Bay. He

scanned the hedges and fences, unable to shake thoughts of a watcher. Fifteen minutes later, Toschi and Armstrong reached Ron and Karen’s

home and found Mulanax already inside and glad to be in the light.

As Karen had done, Ron offered to help in the investigation if he could. Mulanax believed his offer to be sincere. “But I can’t believe my brother is

a serious suspect in the case,” he said. At first, he offered little on either side of the scale as to his brother’s guilt or innocence. “I am wel

acquainted with your source of information.” So, thought Toschi, the informants, Cheney and Panzarel a, had spoken with Ron before the Manhattan

Beach P.D. He did not know that Cheney and Ron had been roommates in col ege. “They are responsible people,” the brother admitted. “They

wouldn’t have made such statements if they were not true.” He also explained that he had received a complaint from one of the informants that Al en

had made improper advances toward one of his children. “He has a definite problem as far as children are concerned and he does drink to

excess.” Though Ron didn’t say so outright, Mulanax reserved the possibility that a personal motive might be behind some of the accusations

against Al en. That would explain many things and it would mean they were on the wrong track. Few serial kil ers drank to excess. It had something

to do with the lack of control.

Ron confirmed that Al en’s two revolvers were .22-caliber. Zodiac had used a .22-caliber automatic pistol during the Lake Herman Road

homicides, but from then on had used various 9-mm automatics, a .45-caliber weapon, and even a knife. Though Ron had never seen any of the

handprinting Tucker had mentioned, he had observed the gray box. At one point it, he recal ed, had been kept in his old room.

“Ron and his wife were very cooperative,” Toschi said later. “What I heard is that he [Al en] was not close to his mother, that he just lived in the

house, that’s the only place he had. Al en, we learned afterward, had many weapons and, like the brother said, was very familiar with the roads and

side roads al around the area. Later, Karen just felt that her brother-in-law was the one we were looking for and that Val ejo P.D. kind of just kissed

him off, and that disturbed me. We had to work with these other detectives, and it bothered me that they felt we were the big-city detectives when in

fact we never came across that way at al .”

The three policemen left. Ron fol owed them out and promised again to do anything he could to assist. He was as helpful as his big brother had

been at the refinery that morning. Toschi looked back. Ron appeared a lonely and worried figure under the porch light. It was now 10:00 P.M.

Toschi reached his Sunset District home soon after, kissed Carol good night, looked in on his three daughters, Linda, Karen, and Susan, and

crawled into bed. Every bone in his body ached and cried for sleep, but he tossed and turned al night. He could not get that watch out of his mind.

And a neighbor had seen a bloody knife, dying only days after glimpsing the blade.

Wednesday, August 11, 1971

At 11:00 A.M., Mulanax got hold of Bob Luce, owner-operator of the Arco station at 640 Broadway in Val ejo. Mulanax told Luce, “I’m conducting an

investigation on a former employee.” He did not tel him why right off.

“Leigh worked for me on a part-time schedule for about half a year,” Luce explained, “but tended to be undependable. And there were those

complaints about him and children . . . he seemed too interested in smal girls. In April [1969] he came to work drunk again—once too often for me. I

fired him.” Mulanax wondered if the job loss had precipitated the July 4, 1969, Blue Rock Springs shootings by Zodiac. Mulanax laid his cards on

the table. This was unusual. “I knew Mulanax pretty wel ,” Bawart told me. “Mulanax was a kind of a close-to-the-vest guy.”

Mulanax brought up the possibility that Al en might have used Phil Tucker’s car to commit a Zodiac murder. “Tucker had his car here al right, but

it wasn’t for as long as two weeks,” Luce said. “No, that’s not right.” Tucker himself hadn’t kept a record of the dates, and Mulanax badly needed

Luce’s repair invoice. In spite of a diligent search, they could not uncover the exact days the Corvair had been left overnight at the station. On the

July 4, 1969, date of the Blue Rock Springs shootings, Al en was no longer working at the Arco station, and so the repair record didn’t matter—

unless Leigh had kept a set of keys to the station or made his own.

At 5:00 that evening, Mulanax contacted Tucker’s wife, Joan, at her home. Joan substantiated her husband’s story about the gray box and the

papers tucked inside. “I had been very interested in the content of the papers,” she said, “since I was preparing for a col ege psychology exam.

Leigh explained he had received these papers from a patient at Atascadero, and I said my interest was directed toward the working of this

person’s mind. I was impressed by the neatness and exactness of the printing and of the arcane symbols.”

The detective showed her Zodiac ciphers clipped from three Bay Area papers. Joan identified numerous symbols as being the same as those

on papers Al en had showed her. Her recol ection was that these were drawn with a felt-tip pen. At 5:30 Tucker returned from work and Mulanax

showed him the same cryptograms. He too thought certain symbols looked the same as those Al en had shown him.

“And we stil haven’t been able to track down the exact date you left your Corvair at the Arco station,” said Mulanax.

“I didn’t have any luck either,” Tucker said, “but I do remember that when my car was not sold, I left it parked in front of my father-in-law’s house for

a considerable period of time. It’s possible that Al en could have driven the car during this period, but I don’t know if he did. My in-laws are in

Europe now, and when they get back I’l ask them if they know.” The in-laws knew Leigh Al en as a friend of their son-in-law, and would not have

thought it strange to see him around the Corvair. Tucker began to speak more freely of his former employee.

“Leigh is a schizophrenic personality,” Tucker said. During Leigh’s therapy five different personalities had been found. “At times he actual y

seems to live the part of whatever literature he’s reading. He can tel a lie and actual y believe what he is tel ing is the truth.” Mulanax’s eyebrows

went up. This was a very interesting talent—one that might stand a lie detector on its head. Once more Mulanax heard that Al en truly hated women

and had said so on many occasions. No one hated women as much as Zodiac. The only victims that had managed to survive had been men.

Thursday, August 12, 1971

In the morning Mulanax typed up his reports and studied the various stories related to him about the best Zodiac suspect yet. Physical y, Leigh

matched Zodiac—from hair coloring to weight to height to wearing the exact size of the kil er’s unique flight-line Wing Walker boots. Circumstantial

evidence was compel ing: Leigh had predicted he would cal himself “Zodiac” and shoot couples in lovers’ lanes long before there was a Zodiac.

He had spoken of an “electric gun sight” and “picking off kiddies,” used phrases like “Happy Christmass,” and “trigger mach” before Zodiac had.

Al en wore a Zodiac wristwatch and kept Zodiac-like symbols in a gray box. Like Zodiac, he was enamored of “The Most Dangerous Game.” He

had been headed for Lake Berryessa the day of the stabbings and been seen with a bloody knife. Mulanax did not know that Al en and his former

friend, Don Cheney, had often fly-fished at Clear Lake and Grass Val ey, and once at Berryessa. “We fished in a stream below the lake and fifty

yards from where we parked,” he later told me. “It was crowded the one time we went.” Not only did Leigh have friends in those areas, a man and a

woman at Clear Lake, for instance, but there had been a recent murder at al three.

Meanwhile, at the refinery, Al en was in a rage—because of the questioning, he was certain he would be fired from his job at Union Oil. When

McNamara had cal ed him into his office, Leigh had known his days there were numbered.

Friday, August 13, 1971

After the two authenticated letters in March, al correspondence from Zodiac had ceased. Police in four counties speculated Zodiac might have

been arrested for another crime, institutionalized, or died. Nonetheless, Mulanax continued to plow through the files. For just over a week he had

been seeking a record of any officer questioning Leigh Al en back in 1969. Sergeant Lynch had not yet recal ed questioning Leigh. His meeting at

Cave School with the skin-diving chemist consumed only two paragraphs in the center of a single page. As the towering sheaves of paper became

an avalanche, that page was buried in an ever-increasing snowbank. Manpower stretched to the breaking point, and everyone feared Zodiac might

strike again.

Wednesday, September 1, 1971

The SFPD fared scarcely better than Val ejo. Armstrong and Toschi, routinely working six murders simultaneously, felt at times that the Bay Area

held a franchise on homicidal maniacs. Toschi, in spite of once being a fitness instructor, was subject to bouts of il ness from stress. He was a

contradiction—he was modest, but enjoyed the limelight. Some nights he slipped on his al -weather raincoat and Hush Puppies, then strol ed, head

down, through his Sunset neighborhood. Other nights he took long drives down the coast highway, or slumped in his easy chair listening to Big

Band 78s in stereo. As he desperately tried to sort it al out, he recal ed that exactly eleven years ago today Chief Tom Cahil had signed his

transfer to the Bureau of Inspectors. It had been the second happiest day of his life.

Friday, September 17, 1971

Armstrong and Toschi later ascertained from Ron Al en that his brother spent at least two days a week at their mother’s home. Al en’s mother,

Bernice, traveled abroad frequently, her trips spanning many weeks. These excursions, arranged through the Val ejo Travel Club, were financed by

pension money from Leigh’s recently deceased father. During his mother’s absence, Al en would reside alone at the family residence. Though the

upstairs was free to him, he stil clung, leechlike, to that dank, unkempt basement bedroom where the secret box had been stored. It was as if he

were guarding a fortress.

However, Bernice had been il and remained home. Out of respect for her, the police held back from searching her home. Al en was, after al , only

one of nearly three thousand Zodiac suspects. “We were always concerned about his elderly mother who was not wel ,” Toschi told me. “The family

had mentioned it several times and asked us not to go in. The brother is tel ing us, ‘I can search the basement myself. I know where he keeps things

especial y when he’s away.’ Jack Mulanax never wanted to talk seriously about a search warrant. He had been turned down on handprinting and on

fingerprints. He just said, ‘He sure looks good, but I don’t even know if I could get a search warrant.’”

“We did not search the residence at his mother of 32 Fresno Street in Val ejo,” wrote Armstrong later. “We relied on his brother, Ron, who was

cooperating with the investigation, to look through Al en’s room in the basement of this residence. . . . Ron had informed us that he had observed

some cryptogram-type materials, but was unsure if they were related to Zodiac. No further action was taken regarding a search of 32 Fresno and

the basement there.”

Whoever Zodiac was, he had a cel ar where he did his secret and devilish work. “What you do not know,” he said in an November 9, 1969, letter

to the Chronicle, “is whether the death machine is at the sight or whether it is being stored in my basement for further use.” Police, dumbfounded by

the bizarre threats of the “death machine” letter, said at the time, “We have reason to believe he’s a maniac. It appears to us that he’s kil ing just for

the thril of kil ing.” On April 20, 1970, Zodiac complained he had been “swamped out by the rain we had a while back.” Rain might flood a

basement room. A burst pipe or water heater would cause a similar inundation. No one checked to see if the house on Fresno Street had been

flooded. But what if Zodiac had not meant a proper basement? Mobile-home dwel ers cal the area beneath the trailer a “basement.” While it is

il egal to store things there, it is done al the time. Sometimes a rain puddle on the road becomes a swamp under a trailer. Leigh had a trailer off-

wheels in an another county, and for over a year had been squirreling away things under it. The problem was that Toschi and Armstrong were not

only unaware of the trailer’s location, but its existence.

“Al en’s got to have someplace where he can stash and hide things and be certain no cop wil ever know where he has everything,” Mulanax told

Toschi.

“What he’s going to show us is just things on the surface,” replied Toschi. “And we know that he’s laughing at us on the inside.”

Mulanax nodded.

Monday, November 22, 1971

Leigh was approved for his Red Cross Certificate for Standard First Aid. Since he was constantly boating in a sailing club, and considering

taking up air jumping over water, it was a useful skil . Meanwhile in San Francisco, Toschi and Armstrong had made scant progress in the three and

a half months since the questioning at the oil refinery. “Apparently,” Toschi told me, “Al en’s family stil harbored grave misgivings about him. The

brother and sister-in-law were very concerned because they see that Al en is stil walking around and don’t know how thoroughly the Val ejo Police

Department went into the investigation. What we didn’t know was that they were building up courage to speak to us.

“I could always tel Ken Narlow was a little disturbed because San Francisco was getting al the big play in the media. We were getting more work

too. Which we didn’t need. But it was because Armstrong and I were getting so much media attention that Ron and Karen later felt right in cal ing

us. And it put me in a very precarious position. I didn’t want anyone thinking we were trying to monopolize the case. My God, we had enough work

to do on our own without making more work out of another jurisdiction. We were getting so many tips and phone cal s just from San Francisco.

People cal ing him ‘the San Francisco Zodiac kil er,’ when there’re multi-counties involved. Zodiac came to us for more attention. He wanted to see

his name there.” More than once Toschi wondered, “Why?”

The situation was worse than on the surface. Every three weeks Toschi and Armstrong also had a load of brand-new homicides to crack.

Unknown to them, at that time, Al en was no longer in Val ejo. The morning of November 22, he had traveled south to Torrance, where Don Cheney

lived, perhaps for a confrontation. Long after, I asked Cheney, “Do you have any idea why Leigh visited Torrance on November 22, 1971?” There

was a gasp of surprise. “If I had known about it at the time, it would have worried me,” Cheney said. “And yet, though I was always listed down in

Southern California, I never got one crank phone cal or threat after police interviewed Leigh.”

Tuesday, November 23, 1971

Panzarella never realized Al en was in Torrance. Even if he had, it wouldn’t have mattered. Panzarel a was a cool customer. He hadn’t been

scared when Zodiac wrote the L.A. Times, even though he suspected Al en was the author. While he was in town, Leigh got into enough mischief

on Hawthorne Boulevard to be arrested for disturbing the peace. Cheney stil considered Zodiac’s connections to unknown murders in Southern

California as possible and Zodiac’s connection to Al en as “very probable.” Though Al en had ties to the area, most of his movements down south

were a mystery, at least to the police.

Wednesday, November 24, 1971

At times the Val ejo P.D. had a sense that the SFPD was trying to freeze them out and col ar Zodiac al by themselves. “Val ejo is smal potatoes

compared to San Francisco,” Detective Bawart told me, “but when you take and look at the homicide division in San Francisco, they’re like

anything else in police work. They divide up al the murder cases. One homicide detective there is working about the same amount of cases as one

homicide detective in Val ejo. It’s grueling.”

And in San Francisco, Toschi was equal y unsure he was getting everything Val ejo knew. “My thoughts were,” he explained, “when they would

say, ‘Wel , we talked to this person and that person,’ my mind was always like a minute ahead. I was saying to myself, ‘Did you real y?’ Because

when I said I talked to somebody, you can bet al your good money on it I did. I would never lie about that.” He began to fear the Zodiac information

highway might be a one-way street. And that was just the way Zodiac liked it. The kil er preferred to strike in zones of confused jurisdiction—

different counties, on borderlines, and in unincorporated wilderness areas. He counted on adjoining departments working against each other, not

sharing information—the more the merrier. It was a big case, a competitive investigation. Everyone wanted a piece of it and whoever solved it

would be the Ace of Detectives. Zodiac, with his huge ego, counted on the egos of policemen to al ow him to continue his deadly work.

Armstrong and Toschi could not get Leigh Al en off their minds, and sought to jump-start their investigation. They needed another tip. After such a

promising beginning, Toschi studied the growing face of the moon. He could almost hear Zodiac’s laughter—the laughter of Satan. And the rustle of

that terrible black costume.

4

arthur leigh allen

Arthur Leigh Allen, born in Honolulu, Hawaii, December 18, 1933, was a Sagittarius (November 22-December 21). His zodiac sign was The

Archer, and he became an expert with a bow and arrow. While Zodiac wore glasses, possibly as a disguise, Leigh rarely did (though the DMV

required he wear lenses to drive). In 1964 Leigh weighed 185 pounds, but within three years his weight had bal ooned drastical y. The photo on his

driver’s license [#3B672352], taken on October 13, 1967, depicted a moonfaced thirty-three-year-old whose weight now yo-yoed between 230 and

250 pounds. Al en, in 1967, listed his address simply as a post office box in Burson.

As for Leigh’s checkered educational record, he truly was a “professional student.” He attended Val ejo Senior High School, which shared the

same building on Amador Street as the junior col ege. Across the street at 801 Nebraska Street stood The Plunge, a Val ejo community swimming

center also shared by high school and junior col ege students. There, a slender, good-looking Al en, a member of the wrestling team, toiled at the

pool as a popular lifeguard from 1950 through his graduation in 1951 and a short time after. “Leigh was a hel of a diver,” one student recal ed, “and

drove a Cadil ac.” Al en, during this period, became intensely jealous of his friend, Robert Emmett, who was not only captain of the Val ejo High

School swimming team, but Leigh’s diving coach.

“I knew Leigh my last two years of high school and part of my junior col ege year,” his close friend, Kay, told me.“I lived in Carquinez and my folks,

about that time, bought a house in town and I became a ‘townie.’ My dad worked as a fireman, then at Mare Island. Leigh started offering me a lift to

and from school and soon was taking any number of our friends in his Cadil ac. In fact, I learned to change my first tire on that car. Leigh came out

of the house one time from visiting. He says, ‘Kay, have you ever changed a flat before?’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘Wel , there’s no time like the present,’ he

said, then sat and supervised.

“Other times we’d go to the pool. Leigh going up the ladder for a high dive would cause laughter because he was built sort of pear-shaped and

he would go up the ladder like a woman would. There would be a lot of snickering in the crowd. And so he would walk to the end of the board like he

was going to make his dive. He cal ed it a ‘Change Your Mind Dive.’ He would go up, hit the board, turn and do a back flip, landing back on the

board as if he had had second thoughts. Then he would suddenly shoot up in a two and a half forward somersault, cutting the water below without a

ripple. That gymnastic dive got the crowd’s attention fast. They didn’t laugh anymore! He could also start a front dive, do it backing up from the

board and end up doing a back dive, but that was real y hard and he missed that quite often.

“Leigh cut quite a figure with his Cadil ac, his trick dives, his white dog, Frosty, and Petunia, a skunk who was not de-scented. What he real y

liked to talk about with me was music and plays, anything from comedy to farce, mysteries to Gilbert and Sul ivan.” Kay assumed Leigh was gay as

he rarely dated. When he did go out, he brought along his father. “Leigh would give a cal and we’d take off to the movies together,” she recal ed,

“Leigh’s father was very gracious and took me to symphonies and plays with them. I knew the father from ’53 through ’56, a very, very gentle man. I

met Leigh’s mother only a couple of times. She never made herself visible. I saw her at swim meets. I liked to go and look at the guys. Leigh was

extremely intel igent, almost scary sometimes. He was a bright fel ow, but his brother Ron was the golden boy. His mother wouldn’t have much to do

with Leigh. I wasn’t ever privy to the fights, but I was privy to the cold shoulders. Commander Al en would ask her if she wanted to go along with us

and she’d snap, ‘Why?’ Sometimes Ron went with us and I would have thought she would have been glad to go. Sometimes Leigh spoke of a girl

named Bobbie who had ‘broken his heart.’ Bobbie was Leigh’s first big love, and he used to just talk in glowing colors about her. She was the love

of his life.”

Bobbie’s daughter later told me of her mother’s friendship with Leigh Al en. “She was a diver whose picture often appeared in Val ejo papers in

the sports section between 1952 to 1957,” she said. “Sometimes Al en’s picture was alongside hers in the paper. I think he was a platform diver

and a wrestler. Very clumsy walk when walking down the diving board, he looked terrible until he left the board and dove. Then he was very graceful.

But when walking he was terribly lumbering. He had a funny hip. In case you don’t already know.” Harold Huffman, Leigh’s childhood friend, thought

Leigh’s fluctuating weight caused the limp.

Leigh attended Val ejo Junior Col ege, majoring in the liberal arts, and became Al -American Diving Champ there. On September 18, 1954, he

enrol ed at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. During the 1950s and 1960s Cal Poly San Luis Obispo was affiliated with

Cal Poly Pomona, where Don Cheney, Sandy Panzarel a, and Leigh’s brother, Ron, studied. Leigh’s pal, Harold Huffman, was already down there

attending USC and coaching every sport he could. For awhile Leigh had difficulty choosing between an engineering or physical education major.

Since his math skil s proved too meager for engineering, he decided to focus on physical education. Ultimately, he settled on elementary education

as his major. On June 16, 1956, at the end of his term, he used his summer break to enlist in the Navy.

He received his associate of arts degree from Val ejo Junior Col ege in 1957. He returned to Cal Poly from January 1959 until June 13, 1959,

and excel ed. He became the State Col ege Trampoline Champion for Central California and Central California Spear Fishing Champ. On July 27,

1959, Al en applied at the State Department of Education in Sacramento for a position, but by January 4, 1960, was back studying at San Luis

Obispo. He remained until June 1960, when he began work at Hemet Mental Hospital only twenty miles from Riverside. One good thing had

resulted from his brief Navy stint—he was able to study on the G.I. Bil at Cal Poly from January 1961 until March 1961.

On June 19, 1961 he applied at the State Personnel Board in Sacramento as a psychiatric technical trainee, Department of Mental Hygiene, and

briefly became a psychiatric teacher at Atascadero. There he became friendly with a convicted murderer who had been jailed for several years. He

later said they exchanged samples of code. Al en graduated from Cal Poly with a bachelor’s in education (B.E.) on December 15, 1961. Only six

units shy of a master’s degree, he seemed unable to final y sever his ties with col ege life. During this time, he owned hunting rifles, at least two .22-

caliber pistols, and, true to his Zodiac sign of Sagittarius, a hunting bow and arrows.

From 1959 to 1963, Leigh, stil in the process of obtaining his teaching credentials, had various jobs. He taught fourth grade and P.E. at Santa

Rosa School in Atascadero just north of Cal Poly. “I real y enjoyed teaching elementary school kids,” he said. “My kids did wel —one little girl in the

third grade knew tenth-grade math by the time she graduated. My entire class could read at seventh-grade level. I sure loved working with

elementary school kids.”

Meanwhile, Panzarel a, Cheney, and Leigh’s brother, Ron, were attending the Cal Poly campus in Pomona together. Panzarel a’s major field of

study was electronic engineering, Cheney’s was mechanical engineering, and Ron’s, landscape architecture. They shared a rented house to cut

costs. “In 1961-1962,” Cheney afterward told me,“we al were living in a four-bedroom house with two students named Bil and Joe. We had two

guys in the one larger bedroom—Ron and I slept there. Those were good times.

“Ron had a good sense of humor, he was entertaining and a fun guy. Everyone liked him. He was a very easygoing guy and a notorious

underachiever. He was very wel laid back. He was bril iant in his landscape architecting work at school, but he didn’t keep his grade point average

up. He passed some courses, but not with flying colors, so he had to stay at Cal Poly for quite a while so that he could get his average up to

graduate. He would do very wel in other courses, but he could never get around to taking the final. He dragged on and on. He never made it to early

morning classes. He had an alarm clock—one of those Big Bens with the great big gongs on the top of it—that thing would ring, would run down

and stop ringing, and he wouldn’t twitch.

“Cal Poly Pomona was about two miles away to the west, and I rode a bike to school each day. Sandy graduated in the spring of 1964, but I

never actual y graduated. I should have graduated in the winter of 1964. I finished up and had a problem with my senior project and I wimped out on

that, didn’t do it.

“That house is where Sandy and I first met Leigh. It was 1962. I was stil single then, and married Ann later that year. I remember that one time

especial y. Leigh had just rol ed in there from Riverside. He had been attending sports car racing. He went every year for the big race they held

down there in the early summer. I went with Ron and Leigh together one time. In fact, the only sporting events Leigh and I went to together were road

racing. He frequented Laguna Seca, Vacavil e, and Riverside. He was a student there. Leigh owned an Austin Healey and used to go to a driving

school in Riverside; after taking those lessons he kept commuting down there for the races.”

Friday, May 30, 1963

Leigh Allen paid an unexpected visit to the house in Southern California. “I remember Leigh came down to visit us,” Panzarel a told me. “Leigh

was not living in the Pomona area, but had just come down to Pomona that weekend. I thought it was odd at the time. And he had a machete in the

car. For no particular reason, he walked in without a word and slammed it into the counter and tried to scare everybody. One of my roommates, Joe

Dandurand, was there. My ex-wife was there when it happened. Ron was somewhere in the house. That was just before I left at the end of the

semester and Ron and I went and got a place together in Walnut. I stil think about Leigh coming to Pomona to visit just before the boy and girl were

murdered. That’s creepy.”

Monday, June 3, 1963

In the morning, Leigh curtailed his visit and started back to Atascadero, where Santa Rosa Elementary School was closing for the summer. He

intended to pack up, then return to Val ejo that day. Heading north on Highway 101, on a direct line to Atascadero, he climbed from Ventura to

Santa Barbara, passing Goleta, then El Capitan Beach, and closing on Refugio Beach. The Santa Ynez Mountains loomed to the northeast, and

further east and far beyond—Los Padres National Forest. Sand blew across the divided blacktop and gul s wheeled in the sky. In places the north

and south lanes were neighborly, running side by side with each other, but in spots they widened away. A gray mist swept in from the sea. “They’ve

got me searching my memory for blank spots, for lapses,” Al en would say years later. Ahead he saw a turnout, just at the point where 101 leaves

the beach. His eyes strayed over the divide to 101 southbound. Beyond was the beach. He was now three miles south of the Gaviota Tunnel.

5

robert domingos and linda edwards

Monday, June 3, 1963

Three miles south of the Gaviota Tunnel, an attractive teenage couple, Robert George Domingos and Linda Faye Edwards, swung onto an oak-

lined turnout just off southbound 101. Domingos pul ed his gray Pontiac over and the laughing couple piled out, radiant in their youth and promise.

They had left home, ostensibly for a Lompoc High School seniors’ “Ditch Day” graduation party. Instead, the couple intended celebrating at the

seashore. Thick bushes hid their car from passing north-bound traffic. However, any auto cruising southbound could spot the vehicle, an indication

someone was down on the isolated beach.

Robert was the eighteen-year-old son of a wel -to-do Lompoc rancher; Linda was to be eighteen in three days. For both it had been a day of

farewel and anticipation as they looked forward to their nuptials in October. The teenagers were roughly twenty miles west of Santa Barbara and

three miles from El Capitan Beach. Robert dug a large blanket from the trunk, and the couple crossed the highway and over railroad tracks running

between them and a low bluff. From the bluff, one of the chain of unstable sea cliffs tracing the shoreline, they had a view of the mile-and-a-half-long

state beach below. Beyond stood the Channel Islands—San Miguel, Santa Rosa, and Santa Cruz. Robert and Linda commenced down a steep,

partial y hidden path to the beach, running the last twenty yards. Banana palm trees lining Refugio Creek gave the area a tropical atmosphere.

Where the creek flowed into the ocean, a freshwater lagoon had formed.

Robert and Linda reached an isolated spot frequented only by the occasional local fisherman. They saw evidence of recent activity. Long ago

this beach had been the chief contrabandista port on the coast, visited by genteel smugglers and ferocious pirates. At the mouth of the canyon,

buried in the sand, lay traces of an ancient adobe foundation. In early California days a grand rancho, La Nuestara Señora del Refugio, stood there.

It faced the sea boldly until the French pirate Hyppolyte de Bouchard—by gun, by knife, by rope, and by fire—put an end to that. His buccaneers

wounded the servants, cut the throats of the horses, tied up the Ortega family, and burned their impressive hacienda.

The teenagers spread out their blanket on the sand near the rocky shoreline. The day before, at just the same spot, a man with reddish hair had

been shooting at seagul s with a rifle. Rich tide pools, swarming with life, moved with each surge of salt water. Spray exploded against black rocks,

and the sharp tang of sea air fil ed the teenagers’ lungs. Sailboats danced in Santa Barbara Channel, and in the sky aircraft droned lazily—an

airport was nearby. The laughing pair lounged in their swimsuits at the surf line as the day passed and the sky clouded over. Of al transitional

domains, those between sea and land are the most disparate and prone to alteration. Robert and Linda grew drowsy, barely aware of the boom of

the waves and wavelets rustling eel grasses at the sea edge. The crack of a twig on the path made them start. The lowering sun flashing off the

water and gusts of sand blinded them. They drew back as a squarish shadow fel upon the sand. Peering up, they saw a man leveling a .22-caliber

rifle at them.

By Rope—He barked orders. First came fumbling attempts to tie them—the man had brought along precut lengths of narrow cotton clothesline.

First he coerced Linda to bind Robert. She had tied a loosely knotted length around his wrist, and was stil clinching a rope in her hand when the

stranger knelt. With trembling fingers, he began to finish the tying himself—first with a few granny knots and then marline hitches, a knot not

commonly used by laymen. In the midst of this, Robert and Linda leaped to their feet and plunged into the steep creek bed leading uphil from the

blanket. The couple tried to run in the soft sand of the creek bed. They lurched in the general direction of a shack, which had been barely visible

from the blanket.

By Gun—The interloper thundered after them, firing on the run. Slugs ripped into the young man first, hitting him in the back as he ran screaming

for help. There was no one to hear them. The bul ets were closely grouped, astonishing accuracy for shooting while moving. Robert dropped face

down. The stranger then swung the rifle toward Linda, firing into her back. He approached slowly until he stood over the couple. He pumped more

bul ets into the boy’s back, striking him in al eleven times. Linda had fal en onto her back, and so a fusil ade of bul ets penetrated her chest.

Altogether, she was hit eight times.

The kil er’s viciousness had not abated as he continued to inflict injuries upon the corpses. Dragging Robert face down by his legs away from the

shoreline, he left welts and abrasions just above the boy’s surfer’s trunks. Rocks scraped his chest and face, leaving deep contusions. The stranger

was sweating by the time he completed the first part of his gruesome task—hiding the corpse in the woodpile shelter by the nearly dry creek bed.

The primitive structure lay halfway between the shore and the railroad embankment. Almost lost among dense shrubs and trees, it was used mostly

by transients.

By Knife—He returned to the woman, cut down the front of her swimsuit with a knife, and exposed her breasts. He slashed her body, the wounds

describing a curved river. Next, he dragged her feet-first to the shack, and because Linda was supine, al the abrasions were to her back and

buttocks. After pul ing her inside the lean-to, he ripped off her swimsuit and tossed it cal ously over her fiancé. Then he draped Linda’s body, face

up, over the boy.

By Fire—Now the stranger looked around for things to burn. He gathered up his leftover lengths of rope and empty cartridge boxes and tossed

them into the shack. Smashing the lean-to, he ignited it with wooden matches he had brought along. A funeral pyre would hide al traces of his

crime. Although he tried several times, the structure refused to catch, or he might have returned to his car on the road above believing that

everything behind him was blazing.

Tuesday, June 4, 1963

When Linda and Robert failed to return, Domingos’s father filed a missing persons report. The Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department issued an al -

points bul etin. The father, along with other family members, joined the search party, and that night located the missing boy’s car in the turnout. A

Highway Patrolman took the trail to the beach below to look further. The lean-to shack was so concealed it took searchers thirty hours to discover

the teenagers. Tracks and postmortem marks on the bodies showed they had been dragged there. That there were no usable latent prints meant

the kil er had likely worn gloves. It was an incomparably evil crime.

No sexual attack had taken place, and that was uncommon. At least there was no presence of semen, though the relatively primitive forensic

techniques of the time might have missed it. Stil , that was doubtful. The board-certified forensics pathologist who performed the autopsies was

highly qualified, having been trained at the L.A. Coroner’s Office.

A contingent of jail inmates roved the crime scene. Prisoners had been bused there to scour the brush and comb a three-mile section of desolate

beach for evidence. The lead sheriff’s detective, Wil iam Baker, feared they might have compromised the integrity of the crime scene. “You have an

inkling of what I am up against,” Baker told me, “as I strive to resurrect from the ashes the reality of the case. You have to figure it was 1963. We’d

go out with either Search and Rescue, or sometimes get other explorers. This time they had trustees out there going on searches for cartridge

casings or whatever else they could find. I shudder when I think about it, but that’s the reality. And they did find some casings, quite a few, expended

along the victims’ flight path—a dry creek bed that led from the blanket near the beach up towards the shack where the kids were actual y found.

Two distinct points where more casings were located served to pinpoint where the victims were initial y dropped.”

One convict spotted twenty .22-caliber shel casings glimmering in the canyon creek bed. Detectives spied something too—shoe tracks cut

deeply into the light sand and sparse grass leading to and from the ragged shelter. The tracks came from a Navy or Air Force shoe similar to Wing

Walkers. Both the ammo and shoes were sold through base exchanges. Vandenberg Air Force Base, a SAC unit, lay near Lompoc, and was only

an hour’s drive from the murder site.

“And since this was an early experience for the kil er,” Baker noted, “he may have held onto his weapon and even the same ammo to use again.”

The murderer had used Winchester .22 ammo, long-rifle—the same brand and caliber Zodiac would use five and a half years later on dark Lake

Herman Road just outside Val ejo. “The location where Domingos and Edwards chose to spend ‘Ditch Day’ was isolated,” Baker said, “and not a

site where one would expect to find young couples, even with the presence of the victims’ car at the turnout. Given that, the kil er, armed with a

firearm and knife, along with precut lengths of rope and wooden matches, descended upon our victims with apparent murderous intent. Were they

fol owed there? Had he selected his victims beforehand and was there a way to find a connection between the victims and the kil er?”

Though Baker could not name them, he suspected items were missing from the crime site. In his studies, he scanned six eight-by-ten-inch police

glossies. One showed the arson attempt upon the lean-to, the male victim in situ within the shack. Another photo showed Sheriff James W.

Webster, Chief of Detectives Charles Taylor, and a local TV anchorman by the lean-to. The newsman was posed with his hand on the shack and a

cigarette in his mouth. Baker studied three pictures of Robert on the autopsy table showing contusions and abrasions on his knuckles. The

discoloration on the knuckles of his right hand (Baker could not see the left in the pictures) led him to suspect Robert had fought with his attacker.

“Those abrasions on his face were perimortem or postmortem when he was dragged face down by his feet to the shack,” said Baker. “I suspect the

same thing would have happened to the Berryessa victims if they had broken loose from Zodiac. Zodiac would have dropped his knife and gunned

them down. As for the red-haired man [seen the day before], police found him and determined to their satisfaction that he wasn’t involved. Other

circumstances didn’t lead me to give it any particular emphasis. As for Riverside, I felt Zodiac had only taken credit for that murder. But the attack

had occurred in Southern California and Zodiac talked about there being a lot more of them down here. He might have meant our case.”

Wednesday, June 5, 1963

Edwards and Domingos had just been kil ed and were in everyone’s thoughts. Certainly the tragedy occupied Panzarel a and Cheney’s minds.

They had discussed the murders at length. Because of that, they were able to accurately recal the exact weekend Al en appeared suddenly at their

door. In Lompoc the high school graduations ceremonies were stil held, but conducted around two empty seats. Above those lonely chairs, a flag

fluttered at half-mast. Six months passed as the terrible and motiveless murders remained unsolved.

Monday, December 9, 1963

Allen, still qualifying for his teaching credentials, continued to apply for various positions at the Department of Education in Sacramento. While he

was waiting, his scholastic record and military background al owed him to teach school at Travis AFB in Fairfield, not far from Val ejo. Though he

preferred elementary classes, he settled for instructing seventh- and eighth-graders in spel ing, health, and P.E. He was permitted to shop at the

base exchange, purchasing goods at discount—everything from ammo for his hunting trips to boots. However, Wing Walker shoes were not sold

there until two years later when the Weinbrenner shipment was dispersed. After a year at the Travis school, he was fired for habitual y leaving an

assortment of deadly weapons lying about his car in plain sight.

“The thing that got me,” recal ed Panzarel a, “was that when Leigh lost a teaching job, he came down in his Austin Healey sports car and tried to

convince us guys that he lost the job because they had a security check and he was carrying a revolver. But the real reason was child molesting. He

used the phrase that it made him so angry that he wanted to ‘kil the little kiddies as they came bouncing off the bus.’ That stuck with me al my life.

And that’s the phrase that was later used by the Zodiac kil er.”

In 1964, Leigh taught at Watsonvil e, north of Salinas, and heard a strange story. In the San Bernardino area at Pacific High School, a young

student in dark-framed glasses with a black elastic band strode unannounced to the front of the classroom. The teacher had not yet arrived. “In very

large letters, he wrote ZODIAC on the blackboard,” said a student there, “along with a few codelike symbols I cannot recal .”

In August 1965, Leigh lacerated his leg in an accident that required plastic surgery, and though his mishap hobbled him wel into 1966, he stil

sent out feelers for a new teaching job. “The injury,” he wrote on December 23, 1965, “put me out of commission until recently.” But he was

reportedly able to work a little for his friend Glen Rinehart’s brother, Dale, at an airfield in Texas, where he got his pilot’s license. His weight was

now 220 pounds.

Saturday, June 18, 1966

Claiming a state credential in General Elementary and four years’ teaching experience, Al en applied by mail to the Calaveras Unified School

District in San Andreas for work. “I also enjoy the country,” he wrote, “and I can’t stand smog.” He listed the grades he wanted to instruct in order of

preference—“4, 5, 6, 7, and 8.” “I can teach physical education and art and music, but not too wel .” The elementary school subjects that most

interested him were “athletics, science, nature study, and music appreciation.” He gave his height as six feet, altered his weight to reflect another

ten pounds gained because of his incapacity, and mentioned membership “until this year” in two professional organizations—the NEA and CTA.

Leigh exaggerated the time he had actual y taught, and claimed a present salary of $300 per month. He quickly altered the figure to $400. “When

can you come in for an interview?” he was asked. “Mondays or Tuesdays would be best as I am involved in recreation on other days,” he answered.

He began honing his teaching skil s at a school cal ed Mountain Town in the Sierras and at Val ey Springs Elementary School in Val ey Springs,

a Northern California town just west of San Andreas. On the Val ey Springs application he wrote down Ted Kidder as a reference. Leigh taught his

first year of grade school at Val ey Springs uneventful y, but soon old problems arose—his improper attentions toward children and poorly

concealed hatred of women.

“Leigh sent out a lot of resumes,” Cheney told me, “and worked hard to find a teaching job. But I didn’t know about the teaching jobs that he had

had. He didn’t speak about that. I knew he taught at Travis, but I didn’t see or visit him while he was there. He looked a lot like Dan Blocker, ‘Hoss’

Cartwright on the Bonanza television show, so in the sixties, when Leigh used to go to a big sporting event or there were a lot of people around, he

had a big white cowboy hat he would wear. He wanted people, especial y kids, to think he was Dan Blocker. As for that cowboy hat, Leigh had that

before I met him, and probably had been pul ing that deception since the show came on the air in 1959.” Leigh would smile and say, “‘Hoss’ is

Scandinavian for Good Luck.”

Sunday, October 30, 1966

Leigh Allen, wearing his white cowboy hat and “Big” Dan Blocker smile, traveled to Riverside to attend the Los Angeles International Grand Prix.

That autumn afternoon, he watched the race along with approximately eighty thousand people. At 6:10 P.M. Cheri Jo Bates, an eighteen-year-old

Riverside City Col ege freshman, set out along Magnolia to the RCC library. The library closed between 5:00 and 6:00 P.M. In order to realize her

ambition to become an airline stewardess, Cheri Jo had to meet education and age requirements. She would qualify by the end of her sophomore

year and had contacted many of the major airlines. Cheri Jo had just visited her fiancé of two years, Dennis Earl Highland, at San Francisco State

University. Inexplicably, she told two girlfriends, “I’m going to the library to meet my boyfriend.” However, Highland was at that moment playing

footbal in San Francisco at S. F. State. Police later conjectured that she had meant a former suitor.

A friend observed the strikingly attractive, blond cheerleader speed by in her lime-green VW. A 1965-66 bronze Oldsmobile fol owed closely

behind. She parked, leaving the right passenger window partial y down. Ten minutes later Cheri Jo checked out three books from the local col ege

library. Though her friends were at the smal , cramped library between 7:15 and 8:57 P.M., none recal ed seeing her there. At 9:00 P.M., when the

archives closed, she returned to her car to discover the engine would not catch. And here she had been working part-time at the Riverside National

Bank just to pay for the vehicle. Parked behind her car was a Tucker Torpedo that had not been there before.

In her absence, someone had gained access to the engine, yanked out the distributor coil and condenser, and disconnected the middle wire of

the distributor. As Cheri Jo ran the battery down, a man approached from the shadows and stepped to the partial y rol ed-down right-side window.

“Having trouble?” he said. “Let me take a look at the engine.” After failing to start the auto, he said, “My car is over in the parking lot. Come on, I’l

give you a lift.” She left her books on the seat and keys stil in the ignition. Did she know the man, or had he forced her to accompany him?

The unlit gravel road to the parking lot was long, dark, and silent. The pair walked approximately two hundred feet away and paused in a dirt

driveway midway between two vacant frame houses at 3680 and 3692 Terracina. Their conversation was later detailed in a typed “confession

letter” sent to the police. “It’s about time,” he said. “About time for what?” she asked. “It’s about time for you to die.” A knife was in his hand.

Between 10:15 and 10:45 P.M. a female neighbor heard an “awful scream.” At 10:30 another heard “two screams.” After a couple of minutes of

silence, an old car started up. In that time the kil er, trailing drops of blood, had gone back to search for something he had dropped.

Monday, October 31, 1966

A groundskeeper discovered Cheri Jo at 6:28 A.M. From the forty-two stab wounds, estimates were the knife blade was approximately three

and one-half inches long and one and one-half inch wide. The motive was mystifying—she was ful y clothed and had not been sexual y attacked or

robbed. During a ferocious, earth-churning battle, Bates had scratched her kil er’s face and ripped a paint-spattered Timex watch from his wrist.

The black band, broken away from one side of the watch face, measured seven inches in circumference. The Timex had been purchased at a

military base exchange. The B.F. Goodrich heel prints found near Bates’s body indicated a size-8-to-10 Wing Walker-like shoe manufactured for

the military by Leavenworth prisoners and sold by military exchanges. Just outside Riverside city limits lay March Air Force Base, a SAC base. A

number of greasy finger and palm prints were discovered on the left door of the victim’s car. Four workmen had been seen across the street from

where Bates’s car was parked on Terracina. The prints were sent to Washington and the Timex to CI&I.

At 8:30 A.M. Leigh Al en cal ed in sick. For the first time, he missed a day of work at Val ey Springs School. The next day, he fil ed out an

absence form and signed it. No one recal ed scratches on his face, but Al en said he was in Pomona when he heard Cheri Jo Bates was kil ed. He

had served as a painter in the Navy. That might explain paint specks on the base exchange Timex, but that was a long time ago.

“I was at the Riverside City Col ege library the night Cheri Bates was murdered,” an RCC student told me. “I had the same kind of car that she

had and I was parked in front of her. I normal y left the library when it closed, as she did, but I left earlier that night. The point is that I always felt [the victim] could have been me because of the timing and that I must have been in the library with him that night. Bates was a cheerleader and my best

friend.”

A transient, with a knife in his possession, was discovered sleeping in his nearby car, questioned, then released. A local mother found a kitchen

knife missing and told police she suspected her son might be the kil er. After questioning Cheri Jo’s friends, police turned to questioning fifteen

military men from the nearby air base. Fourteen days after Bates’s murder, Riverside police, under command to “drop everything and work this

case until solved!” ordered the sixty-two students, two librarians, and one custodian who had been at the library that fatal night to return for a

reconstruction. “Wear the same clothes you did two weeks ago.”

Sunday, November 13, 1966

Detective Dick Yonkers and Detective Sergeant LeRoy Gren coordinated the library reenactment. The two stage managers lifted the curtain at 5

P.M. just as six motorcycle officers under traffic sergeant Al Fogarty were stationed at Terracina and Riverside, Fairfax and Riverside, in the

al eyway paral el to Magnolia near Terracina, and at the al ey exit onto Fairfax.

Detective Earl Brown and D.A.’s investigator Loren Mitchel , working from a master list, questioned and tape-recorded each student as they

entered. “What vehicle did you notice parked in front of you?” asked Brown. “A ’47-’52 tan-gray Studebaker with oxidized paint,” came one answer.

After the initial interview, each student was given a card with an assigned letter and checked off personal y by Captain Irvin Cross, head of the

detective bureau, as they completed the reenactment. Cross fingerprinted and snipped a lock of hair from each student. “Is there anybody you recal

seeing here that night who isn’t here tonight?” he asked each. “Give me a name and description.” The curtain fel at 9:00 P.M., the time when the

library usual y closed on Sunday nights. Only two people hadn’t returned—a woman and a bearded, heavyset young man, five feet eleven and a half

inches—Al en’s height.

Agent Mel Nicolai later placed Al en in Riverside that dreary Sunday. “He wasn’t working or going to school at the col ege,” he said. “He would

just go down every weekend from Calaveras County because he was involved in a car club down there. He was definitely there that weekend.”

Monday, November 14, 1966

Headline in the Press-Enterprise: “City police hunt bearded man after staging scene in murder. A heavy-set man with a beard is being sought.”

Sergeant Gren said police are “very interested” in talking to this man. The implication was that the kil er had worn a beard as a disguise. Did

Zodiac disguise himself with various wigs—pompadour, black hair, crew cut? What sort of man relies on a hairpiece to look different? A man

without hair.

Tuesday, November 22, 1966

A nineteen-year-old University of California at Riverside coed, walking west on Linden, became aware of a car creeping slowly alongside her.

Looking around, she observed a man offering her a ride. “No, thanks,” she said. “Wel , after al , I’m not Jack the Ripper,” replied the driver. “Don’t

you recal ? I gave you a ride three weeks ago.” Three weeks ago Cheri Jo had been murdered. The girl smiled, vaguely remembering him, opened

the car door, and slid in. The ride went smoothly. He dropped her off at a local pizza parlor. When her boyfriend failed to meet her, she started back

toward the UCR library. The same man rol ed alongside again and picked her up, but instead of taking her home, drove rapidly up a dark road to

Pigeon Pass. “There are a lot of kooks running around,” he said as the car slowed. “You heard about that girl at City Col ege, didn’t you?”

Frightened, the girl leaped from the car. Racing along the road’s edge, she fel . “I’m not going to kil you,” he shouted as she scrambled to her feet.

“If I wanted to kil you, I could just hit you in the head with this piece of wood.” She returned to the car, but instantly his hands closed around her

throat. “Now if I wanted to kil you, I could just snap your neck,” he said. “Shal I kil you now, or are you going to take off your clothes?”

As he grabbed her sweatshirt, she wriggled free and bolted into the woods. The stranger gave up searching for her and roared off with her purse

and books. Sobbing, covered with scratches and burrs, she staggered to the Highgrove area. When police responded, she described the suspect

as “thirty-five, five feet nine inches tal with a chunky, protruding stomach.” Later descriptions of Zodiac mentioned “a slight potbel y” and that his

“stomach hung over his trousers.”

Tuesday, November 29, 1966

Bates’s killer (or someone pretending to be her murderer) mailed two unstamped letters from a rural mailbox to the police and Riverside Press-

Enterprise. The typed confession letters, repeating what he and Cheri Jo had spoken to each other in the dark, were blurry fourth- and seventh-

generation carbon copies. The original was never mailed, making a match to a specific typewriter difficult. The writer had used a portable Royal

typewriter, Elite-type, Canterbury shaded.1 Leigh’s mother had given him just such a portable. The length of the paper was unknown since the

author had torn off the bottom and top of a strip of Teletype paper. Oddly, he had folded back both bottom corners. The writer claimed to have

phoned the Press-Enterprise, but probably did not. Some of the language was Zodiac-like. “I AM NOT SICK. I AM INSANE. BUT THAT WILL NOT

STOP THE GAME.” Zodiac wrote: “why spoil our game!”

Wednesday, November 30, 1966

Allen received his first critique at Val ey Springs School. “It might be better to refrain from drinking soda pop in the classroom,” his evaluator

suggested, “and voice loudness needs to be refined.” Leigh’s personal characteristics were judged “satisfactory,” as were his classroom control

and management. “Very excel ent in use of Audio-Visual materials . . . needs to react with pupils so they can distinguish between friendliness and

familiarity.”

Friday, March 10, 1967

The Valley Springs administrator delivered his second appraisal. “Leigh accepts criticism and suggestions easily, is open-minded and

adaptable to new ideas,” it read. “I would suggest he take more care in his dress.”

But Leigh would sometimes, when the black mood was upon him, lower his head to his desk in the classroom and murmur the word “Titwil ow”

over and over. This and his unwelcome advances against the eleven-andtwelve-year-old girls in his classes caused great fear. He would have the

more developed girls bounce for him on his trampoline, then make unwelcome remarks. Two of the girls caught him spying on them at their

grandmother’s house across the freeway from Al en’s home.

It was morning, March or early April 1968, and classes at Val ey Springs had already started, when the mother of one of Al en’s pupils stalked

into the principal’s office. “Yesterday,” she said, “Mr. Al en had his hands al over my daughter right at his desk.” The principal, already suspicious,

believed her immediately. He cal ed and got a substitute teacher. When the substitute arrived, he cal ed Al en out of his class and fired him on the

spot. Al en started crying and sobbing. “Yes,” Leigh said, “I did it. I don’t know why I did it. I don’t know what’s wrong with me.” As far as the principal

was concerned, this was a “great big act.” Within days, Ron and Karen Al en drove to the school to apologize for Leigh’s behavior. They had been

amazed he had gotten a job there in the first place.

The official reason for Leigh’s termination was given as “improper conduct” and an “exaggeration of his teaching credentials.” Leigh filed his

resignation and moved on, continuing to work with children.

Sunday, April 30, 1967

Six months later, in response to an article in the Sunday morning Press-Enterprise, Zodiac cruel y wrote the victim’s father, the Enterprise, and the police. His three handprinted letters, on lined, three-holed school paper of poor quality, measured eight inches wide. Standard writing paper

was eight and one-half inches wide. His letters, like Zodiac’s letters, carried double postage, and like Leigh Al en’s personal letters to children,

were in pencil.

Friday, August 25, 1967

“In the summer of 1967 Leigh and I went on a deer hunt north of the Bay Area,” Cheney told me. “I used to be an avid hunter, but I don’t hunt

anymore. That was when I was growing up and that was what we did then. I didn’t go hunting with him often because I real y didn’t think he was a

superior hunting partner. I went a couple of times with him on a major deer hunt where we went and spent two or three days. A few other times we

just went out for the day to hunt smal game. He was al right to fish with, if you didn’t have to hike. He wasn’t that good on his feet. His feet hurt him.

He had flat feet and was overweight; sometimes he had gout. As for weapons, I had a Winchester Model 88, .308 NATO cartridge, but I don’t

remember what gun Leigh had. I didn’t have another large rifle to loan him at that time, and so he dug something up on his own. He got it from

somewhere.

“Just a couple blocks away from his house, nestled at the bottom of Fresno Street, was a pancake house. After the hunting trip, we were going

someplace for an outing when we saw a girl there, a waitress. Leigh indicated that he was interested in her and asked what did I think of her. He

thought he might make some headway with her. In al the time I had known him this was the only female he had ever mentioned, the only time I’d

seen him show interest in a particular woman. He liked women, but they just didn’t like him. The waitress was young, pretty, with brown hair. I don’t

remember her name and it was the only time Leigh mentioned her, the only time he mentioned a specific woman. That stuck in my mind.”

Monday, September 4, 1967

Allen began teaching at Camp La Honda YMCA at La Honda Gulch, never missing a day of work until Monday, February 5, 1968, when he

skipped three days in a row. “Personal business,” he scrawled on his absentee slip, then thought better of it and altered it to read “school business”

instead.

Friday, June 7, 1968

Allen left La Honda and for the next year toiled sporadical y at Harry Wogan’s as a mechanic, at the Franklin School as a janitor, and at a host of

other jobs in menial positions. He stil found room for good times. “Ron and Leigh went to Mexico,” Cheney told me. “I heard this story secondhand

from Ron. ‘Nasty Norm’ might have been along. They cal ed him ‘Nasty Norm,’ a school nickname, because he had dark curly hair, a French look,

kind of a low forehead, dark hair on his arms, sort of ape-looking guy. He was perfectly civilized, but he had that appearance. He and Leigh were

skin-diving buddies, and I did a little skin diving with them when we visited Norm at Morro Bay on one trip and in Monterey, on another. At that time

Leigh had a catamaran, a Catalina Cat, and he had a smal awkward boat. In Mexico, Ron, Leigh, and possibly Norm caught some lobsters and

talked a Mexican couple they met on the beach into cooking a big feast for them on the shore.” By October 6, 1969, Leigh was laboring part-time

as a custodian at Elmer Cave School. It was there that Sergeant Lynch, dispatched by some stil -unknown informant, questioned him as a suspect

in the Zodiac murders.

Monday, October 20, 1969

Riverside Police Chief L. T. Kinkead and Detective Sergeant H. L. Homsher contacted Napa Sheriff Earl Randol and Captain Donald A.

Townsend: “This letter is in reference to our telephone conversation of 10/17/69 regarding the similar M.O. of your ‘Zodiac’ suspect and the suspect

of our homicide File No. 352-481:

“One month after the homicide, letters were received at the Press and our department written by the suspect of our homicide. The suspect

used a black felt pen to address the envelopes and had used upper case print. The confession letter was typed. There are numerous errors in

spel ing, punctuation, etc., as you wil notice. The person who wrote the confession letter is aware of facts about the homicide that only the kil er

would know. There is no doubt that the person who wrote the confession letter is our homicide suspect. There are numerous similarities in your

homicide and our Inv. 352-481. I thought you should be aware that we are working a similar-type investigation.”

When the murderer disabled Bates’s car, he might have left prints. Unidentified latent prints were lifted off the vehicle and sent to the FBI, which

marked the file #32-27195, Latent Case #73096. The SFPD rushed copies of their latents from the cab to the FBI for comparison. However, the

partial prints did not match anyone in the case, and there had been innumerable suspects.

Fear on the RCC campus had escalated. More open space had been cleared and bright lights instal ed. Joseph Bates secured a loan on his

house to finance a reward for the capture of his daughter’s kil er.

Tuesday, October 21, 1969

San Francisco newsmen stil struggled to make sense of the case. “In al three cases,” a Chronicle interoffice Zodiac memo to reporter Mike

Grieg read,

“When there was a boy and a girl—Zodiac tried to kil both, got the girl al three times, but got the guy only the first time. There were 197 days

between the first pair of kil ings and the second attempt; 84 days between the second and third tries; and 14 days between the last tries—

they’re getting closer. Zodiac seems to strike exclusively on Fri. and Sat. nites—which makes it questionable how he’s going to get a school

bus. Any pattern I have tried to draw is broken at least once. Horoscopes (at least those in the Chron) offer no clue. Capricorn is vaguely

applicable except for the first murder. . . . I have been unable to find any statistical or numerological pattern here in about 2-3 hours work. . . .

[Lake Berryessa victim] was stabbed more than 20 times with a 12-inch butcher’s knife, in the chest, back and abdomen—with many of the

stabs coming in pairs, making Zodiac’s cross-hair mark.—[Marshal ] Schwartz.”

The last was not true.

Over at the SFPD, professorial, pipe-smoking Bil Hamlet was hunched over a makeshift desk in the hal way. “We put a little partition around him

so he wouldn’t be bothered,” said Toschi. “We were getting prints from al over the Bay Area and Northern California. He’s got his magnifying

glasses on, he’s working off three-by-five cards. That’s al he was working on. If you get too many guys examining prints, you lose something.” But

that cab print never matched anyone.

Wednesday, December 31, 1969

Zodiac’s periods of violent activity mirrored school-year vacation time and holidays—summertime, Columbus Day, Hal oween, Thanksgiving,

Christmas, and the Fourth of July. Leigh Al en’s revelations to Cheney had been imparted on New Year’s Day. Most of his time-consuming letters

and codes were mailed during school vacations. Few occupations outside an elementary schoolteacher’s offered holidays off, plus an additional

three months’ vacation. Zodiac’s activities fit the school year and hardly anything else.

Zodiac had threatened to shoot children as they dashed from a disabled school bus. He promised to plant bombs that targeted the buses by their

height and number of windows and detonated along school bus routes. “I feel that the odds are substantial that the kil er is a public employee,

possibly working for one of the schools,” theorized an expert. “His possible connection with a school or university, even if only as an area

maintenance man, is open to speculation.”

Though Leigh, at this time, was showing those closest to him cryptograms he kept concealed in a gray metal box, he never spoke of codes with

Cheney. “No, absolutely not,” said Cheney. “Leigh never talked about codes, didn’t even work crossword puzzles, and at no time evidenced any

interest in astrology. He liked to make up rhymes, however.”

Friday, January 30, 1970

Four Cal Poly at San Luis Obispo students provided a tip to the local police, who passed it on to the FBI Identification Division. Their information

was that a graduate of their university closely resembled the composite of Zodiac. “He owns 9-mm and .22-caliber handguns and frequently travels

alone in San Francisco and frequently remote areas of the state,” they said. “He was absent from Cal Poly the weekend of the last murder.” During

the time Zodiac was penning letters and committing a string of brutal murders, Al en was wel settled in the Bay Area. However, if it was Leigh the

four students were pinpointing, then he might stil be making frequent southbound trips to his old alma mater. He tended to rove the Golden State,

large blocks of his time unaccounted for, and this left his family wondering.

Monday, March 23, 1970

At 3:00 A.M, forty minutes after she escaped from her kidnapper, Kathleen Johns filed a report with Stanislaus Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Ray Lovett.

The pregnant woman and her baby girl had been abducted en route to Petaluma from her Compus Way, San Bernardino home. As with Bates, the

interloper had gimmicked her Chevrolet wagon to trick her into his car. He conveyed Johns on a terror ride until she and her baby leaped from the

moving car and hid in a field. He searched for them until the timely arrival of a passing trucker. Deputy Lovett later located her blazing auto on

Highway 132, about one-quarter mile west of the Delta. The abductor had taken the time to replace a sabotaged tire, drive the car elsewhere, and

torch it.

The kidnapper drove a tan late-model vehicle, wore glasses, a dark ski jacket, and navy-blue bel -bottoms. Johns had recognized him as Zodiac

from a wanted poster tacked to Lovett’s wal . He was thirty, stood five feet nine inches, and weighed 160—too light for Zodiac. “It was twenty-eight

years ago,” Johns recal ed recently, “and I perhaps wouldn’t know him now. . . . The calm voice—I remember it like it was yesterday. I don’t think you

could live through something like that and forget.”

Friday, July 24, 1970

Zodiac belatedly claimed responsibility for the Johns abduction in a letter not published until October 12. On June 26 he had claimed to have shot

SFPD Officer Richard Radetich, and that was a downright lie. It made Toschi wonder about his claims of a Riverside murder.

6

avery and the dark alley

Saturday, October 24, 1970

The Zodiac case was already affecting Chronicle reporter Paul Avery’s health. It would eventual y destroy it. In the early morning hours he drove

his car onto narrow little Mary Street. Mary lay in the shadow of the Chronicle and continued on northwest, running behind the Old Mint. Avery

parked where Mary intersected Minna, the dank al ey separating the Chronicle from the Examiner. It was a rough area and Minna at the time held a dubious honor. It was the site of more murders than any other place in the city. He was not gone long—from 12:40 A.M. until 1:40 A.M., but long

enough. During that time he traversed a long, dimly lit corridor into the city room. The Chronicle was a huge three-story barnlike building with a

tower at the Mission and Fifth Street corner. The quality of light was yel ow-greenish at best. Beneath his feet Avery felt the tremble of tremendous

presses grinding out an early morning edition. Teletype keys rattled nervously in a little room to his left—a ghost was on the line. Lines of rubber-

cement pots, rows of battered old Smith-Coronas, and stacks of used photo zincs, copper-backed and etched with acid, crowded desktops.

Avery filed a story, then returned to his car. The right vent window was smashed—the mark of an experienced booster. Only a few things were

missing. His Wel s Fargo checkbook, containing checks numbered 118 to 125, had been taken. His expensive Sony cassette tape recorder, which

held an interview with a Zodiac tipster—a man with a muffled voice—was gone. Avery was concerned enough to cal the police. Officers Gerald

Derham and Wil iam Thiffault reported.

It was then Avery noticed that his large gray briefcase, emblazoned with his initials, “P. A.,” had been stolen. He had stuffed that briefcase with a

complete clipping file on Zodiac. He looked up and down the darkened street. It began to dawn on him how close the kil er was. He seemed to be

privy to reporter’s notes and Sunday features before they were published; he used newspaper Teletype paper and supplies that might had been

purchased from Woolworth’s down the street. What if Zodiac were getting into the building late at night? The paper was a twenty-four-hour

operation, but manned by a skeleton crew at night. Security in the building consisted of a guard at a tal desk on the Fifth Street entrance, but there

were two sets of back stairs and two elevators that led to the editorial floor. Additional y, there was a passage between the Examiner and

Chronicle that spanned Minna Street and al owed people to walk from one paper to the other. Zodiac was not just watching the hunters; he might

be entering the paper at night.

A Chronicle printer believed Zodiac actual y worked there. “Many of the Zodiac cipher symbols are also printer’s proofreading marks,” he told

me. “The Zodiac symbol itself is a proofreader’s mark used to line up corrections on a tissue overlay and for color registration. His method of

numbering pages is also the printer’s method: 1/6, 2/6, one of six, two of six, etc. . . . to alert the typesetter and proofreader to fol ow the flow of copy.

The arrows used on the bus diagrams are also printer’s arrows. Not just a line with an inverted ‘V,’ but with the ‘V’ fil ed in.

“When Zodiac began writing his letters, the paper was attempting to enter the electronic age with a computer system known as the ‘Braegen.’

Rather than generating tape-punched copy for the Linotype machines on Fairchild TTS machines, copy was typed on IBM typewriters, then single-

sheet-fed into scanners, which in turn generated tape sent to the Linotypes. The paper used for typing was narrow fan-fold cheap bond such as

Zodiac used. Blue felt-tipped pens were provided to us (they would not reproduce on copy fed through the scanners) and used by the copy cutters

for instructions and the typesetters for notes questioning spel ing, continuity, and so on.”

Chronicle editors eventual y cast a jaundiced eye upon two former employees. The editors went over their employment records to see if any days

off corresponded with Zodiac crimes and letters. One worker, suffering bouts of severe depression, had disappeared during the night shift, leaving

behind a note for four years’ sick leave. The other vanished, leaving behind four payrol checks he never picked up.

Monday, October 26, 1970

In North Sacramento, two days after Avery’s files were stolen, twenty-eight-year-old court reporter and juvenile court aide Nancy M. Bennal ack

failed to show up at work. Friends discovered her bloody body, throat slashed, in her second-floor flat. The unknown kil er had entered by a sliding

glass door Miss Bennal ack had left open so her cat could get in. She was engaged to be married on November 28. She had not been sexual y

assaulted. Her apartment was a half mile from Nurse Judith Hakari’s apartment. Hakari, twenty-three, had been kidnapped from in front of her North

Area apartment after leaving her job at a local hospital. Her badly beaten body was found in a shal ow grave in a remote section of Placer County.

She too had not been sexual y assaulted. Like Miss Bennal ack, she was engaged to be married.

Tuesday, October 27, 1970

The next afternoon Zodiac mailed “Averly” a garishly decorated Hal oween card signed “Your Secret Pal.” My comparison of an unaltered card

demonstrated Zodiac had done considerable redrawing. He had careful y cut out and pasted a skeleton and an orange pumpkin to the card,

painted staring eyes, and skil ful y added brush lettering. It had taken him at least a day to prepare. “You can see how Zodiac must have taken

delight in putting his own markings on the card,” Toschi told me.

“Also, the ‘PEEK-A-BOO’ and the added printing on the card. Al done by Zodiac.” The card, il ustrated with a smiling skeleton giving Avery the high

sign, was signed “Your Secret Pal.” Zodiac had painted a smal number 14 on the skeletal right hand. Inside, he claimed victim “4-TEEN.” News of

Bennal ack’s death would not appear in the Chronicle until the fol owing morning.

Avery wrote Chief Al Nelder:

“Due to the death threat mailed me by the so-cal ed Zodiac kil er, I whole-heartedly agree with the advice I have received from Armstrong

and Toschi that discretion is the better part of valor and that I should carry a gun in order to protect myself should need arise. Therefore this is

my formal request that your office issue me on a temporary basis a permit to carry a concealed weapon.”

Nelder concurred, not only granting Avery authority to pack a .38-caliber revolver, but permission to practice on the police target range. Nelder’s

consideration got Avery in hot water immediately. Around 9:45 P.M., patting the reassuring weight of the .38 in a concealed holster under his jacket,

he waved good night to Night City Editor Steve Gavin. Avery retrieved his car from the multistory lot on Fifth Street and turned onto Minna. At the

corner of Sixth Street, twenty derelicts, peering from dark doorways and gloomy barroom entrances, watched intently. Avery’s headlights

il uminated a one-sided struggle. Only ten feet away, two men were grappling. The first, making hard, thrusting motions from the waist, was armed

with a hunting knife. The second, wounded in his chest, had doubled his belt around his fist as a shield and was backing up, warding off blows with

his arms.

Avery frantical y honked his horn, but the fight continued. Worried about his own safety, he made a quick U-turn to the opposite side of Sixth. The

knife man moved in as his victim final y toppled into the street. Avery, stil honking and yel ing, observed a drunk lurching up Sixth, supporting himself

close against the dirty building fronts. As the wino weaved by, the knife man wheeled, rushed the drunk, and stabbed him too. In a pathetic attempt

at self-defense, the drunk folded his arms over his heart. Anyone who crossed the knife man’s path was in peril.

“Someone is going to be kil ed,” Avery thought, and slipped from his car, drawing his weapon as he crept closer. Halfway across Sixth Street, he

shouted, “Drop the knife and get against the wal !” The knife man froze, then faced Avery. He raised his arms above his head and took a few halting

steps in the reporter’s direction, fixing him with a glassy stare as he came. Avery repeated his command, locking eyes with him and leveling the gun

until he heard, rather than saw, the bloody knife land at his feet. The knife man placed his palms against the front of 125 Sixth Street, a hotel. Avery

yel ed into the lobby to the desk clerk: “Cal the cops!” In a minute a relatively wel -dressed pensioner tottered to the door and said, “The police are

on the way.” For the next five minutes Avery kept wel back from his prisoner. Final y he heard the wail of a siren, a police car appeared, and two

officers climbed out.

“This guy just stabbed a couple of people—wil you take over?”

“Whose gun do you have?” said the senior officer.

“It’s mine,” said Avery, producing his special police star. He explained the circumstances leading up to authority being granted for him to carry a

gun. “You can check this up by giving the chief a cal ,” he said.

“Oh, yeah. I’m supposed to cal Chief Nelder at ten o’clock on a Sunday night.”

“Why don’t you cal Armstrong or Toschi?”

“You do it,” said the cop.

Toschi vouched for Avery and everything was fine, except that the two victims had limped away into the night.

“No victims,” said the cop, shrugging. “The best we can do is book him for brandishing a knife in a rude and threatening manner. Just

misdemeanors.” No one was questioned and, since Avery ended up being the only witness, he signed a citizen’s complaint. Next morning, he got

to the Hal of Justice by 10:30, but the knife man, sentence suspended, had already been released. “I didn’t exactly enjoy the role of policeman,” he

told Nelder. “I’m worried how close I came to kil ing the guy. I kept looking at him and thinking if he comes at me with a knife, if it comes down to it, if

it’s a matter of survival, I’m going to have to pul the trigger. I don’t think I ever real y paused to consider before that by carrying a gun, I was putting

myself in a position where sooner or later I’d have to use it. I’m going to get rid of it, Chief. The weight of that gun has gotten too heavy.” When Avery

returned to his houseboat in Marin County, he hauled down the sheet of steel plate he had instal ed in the one window that faced a shadowed

Sausalito street next to Gate 5. He felt sick and Zodiac had made him that way. Over time his lungs began to fail.

7

arthur leigh allen

Friday, November 13, 1970

A San Rafael graphologist analyzed Zodiac’s handprinting. “He is five feet eleven and one-half inches tal , sharp but not creative,” she speculated.

“His hair is sparse and he may sometimes wear a wig or false beard. He may wear lenses on occasion. He may have a malformation or fault such

as finger damage on his right hand. He puts himself under self-hypnosis consciously or unconsciously, and may know something of this in actual

fact. He always believes that he is drowning, either by emotional pattern or literal y by water or being overwhelmed by unpremeditated

circumstance. May have boat or houseboat. Has probably scuba dived. Brain damage. Tissue damage from oxygen lack at birth or later, maybe

from diving too long and running out of oxygen . . .” Zodiac had written, “Please help me I am drownding.”

In the fal Leigh had begun attending Sonoma State University in Rohnert Park, and rented a slot for his trailer in Santa Rosa. On Friday the

thirteenth, Al en had a motorcycle accident while returning from Sacramento where, earlier in the day, someone murdered Santa Rosa resident

Carol Beth Hilburn. She had last been seen at the Zodiac, an after-hours club on West Capitol Avenue frequented by members of motorcycle

gangs. She had been wearing a jacket with the large yel ow letters SANTA ROSA on the right side. Hilburn had been staying in Santa Rosa with

her sister while studying to be an X-ray technician. On the left side of her slick, hip-length black jacket was her name, CAROL. She was the third

attractive young woman to be kil ed in less than a year in Sacramento. Her nude, severely bludgeoned body was found in an isolated field near Dry

Creek on the city’s northern edge. A car had dragged her into a field and left her face up. Her throat was then cut and she was beaten so savagely

she was unrecognizable.

That afternoon, both Paul Avery and Detective Sergeant Dave Bonine requested Sherwood Morril conduct a comparison between handwriting

samples from Zodiac and the Riverside printing received in the Bates case.

Sunday, November 15, 1970

Over the years a white Chevy Impala would make many appearances in the Zodiac case. A victim’s baby-sitter saw a round-faced watcher on

Wal ace Street in an “American made sedan, white with large windshield and out of state plates.” Three women at Lake Berryessa the day of the

stabbings observed a suspicious man in a Chevrolet, “silver blue or ice blue in color, 1966, two-door sedan, ful size car, quiet, very conservative,

with California plates.” The Impala showed up again in Santa Rosa on November 15, 1970. At 4:00 A.M. a woman driver saw “a 1962-63 White

Chevrolet” fol owing her from a Santa Rosa post office. Shortly after, a “white Chevrolet Impala, sedan 1964,” fol owed a second woman on

Mendocino Avenue and Chanate Road. At 5:10 A.M. a “white Chevy, 1963-64” tailgating a woman on Fourth Street was stopped by police and

tried to speed off. The driver, a twenty-five-year-old Val ejo man, said he was lost and looking for way out of town. The officer escorted him out of

town. The next day came a break in the case.

Monday, November 16, 1970

Morrill found a match, linking Zodiac’s printing with three “BATES HAD TO DIE” letters and a wavering blockprinted poem discovered in the

Riverside Col ege Library. Zodiac had carved a ghastly verse into a plywood-board study desktop with a blue bal point pen. The poem was

probably written as early as January 1967, when the desk was stored in an unused col ege basement. “Sick of Living . . .” it began. Beneath the

gory poem were the incised lower-case initials “R H.” Morril checked over six thousand handwriting samples searching for a kil er with those

initials. “Most of those exemplars came from the Riverside Col ege and military instal ations,” he told me. “They were al on microfilm, blown up, and

I had a magnifier that I just slipped them under one after another. Now this is the weak link in the case—some of those registration certificates were

typed.” Captain Cross was encouraged. “Wel , it looks like we’re in business,” he said. The hunt for Zodiac was now statewide.

In the early evening of November 16, Al en stood in the doorway of his trailer nursing his wounds, physical and emotional, past and present. He

listened. The roar of traffic on Santa Rosa Avenue fil ed his head. He put on his white hat and locked the door to his trailer. He limped to his car and

started the dusty old clunker. Night was fal ing.

At 6:00 P.M. an employee at the Los Guilucos School for Girls, about eight miles from Santa Rosa, returned from shopping. She slowed for

heavy oncoming traffic at the corner of Pythian Way and two-lane Sonoma Highway. Approaching the narrow road for her turn, she flicked on her

turn signal, slowed, and waited for two cars at the corner. As the second car passed by, a hand shot from the bushes. It fastened on her door

handle. A face glared at her from the brush. It looked familiar. The features resembled the Zodiac wanted poster. “My impression was of light-

colored hair, somewhat receding, though not bald,” she recal ed. “He was dressed in a navy-blue jacket and I judged him to be about thirty-five and

wearing dark-rimmed glasses.” She stepped on the throttle, executed a sharp left turn, and raced another quarter mile to the apartment complex

where she lived. “I feel,” she said, “that the man at the corner and the man sketched in the paper are one and the same.”

Thursday, November 19, 1970

The Riverside P.D. held a secret Zodiac conference. While Armstrong remained behind, Toschi, Narlow, and Nicolai flew southward. “Sometimes

we split up,” said Toschi. “‘Do you want to do this?’ Armstrong would ask me, and we would take turns in order to accomplish different tasks at the

same time.” Toschi was shocked to discover Avery on the same plane to Riverside. “We saw him right away. He had his name stenciled on the

back of his carry-on. Narlow and Nicolai looked at me, and I said, ‘Hey, I don’t know anything about this!’ They thought Bil or I might have told him. I

asked Avery, ‘Paul, how did you know we were going down? You have to tel me. These guys think I’m a snitch.’ Avery said, ‘Captain Cross told

me.’ After we landed and were waiting for our Rent-A-Car, Avery had the bal s to ask to ride with us to headquarters. Of course the answer was no. I

liked Avery and had been able to trust him on cases where a lot of guys thought he was a little sneaky. He was never that way with me at any time.”

As Avery drove alone to the meeting, he thought back three days earlier to an incident on Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue. A stocky stranger,

“between twenty-five and forty-five years old” had approached two girls and offered them a ride. “No, thanks,” they said, gesturing to a VW at the

curb, “we’ve got our own.” They ate at a snack bar, returned forty minutes later, and discovered their car wouldn’t start. Suddenly, the same stranger

was at their side, extending his aid. A passerby noticed the man helping a young girl push a Volkswagen, the other girl behind the wheel. When he

offered to help, the stocky man, enraged at the intrusion, ran off. The second Good Samaritan checked the engine. “The middle distributor wire has

been ripped out,” he told Avery later.

“The girls filed a report with the local police that may contain the stranger’s license plate number,” the man added. Twelve hours afterward, the

Chronicle received an anonymous cal . “City desk, don’t bother with general rewrite,” the voice said. “This is the Zodiac and it’s the last time I am

going to cal .” Avery thought it odd that Zodiac knew newspaper lingo. Berkeley cops searched their files, but could not find the plate number.

Avery was actual y quivering. The pressure was tremendous and he had been increasingly “freaked out” over Zodiac’s threat against him twenty-

four days earlier. Ten days ago, when Avery first visited Riverside, he had begged the city desk to cal him if any letters came while he was away.

“Zode—as I cal him,” wrote Avery in a memo, “is something like the Viet Cong. [Avery had spent three years in Vietnam as a war

correspondent.] You don’t know who he is, where he is, or when or where he might strike next. I am getting cross-eyed from trying to keep one

eye directed ahead and the other over my shoulder. I real y doubt he intends to come after me, but I am being careful.”

“I wasn’t pleased with the Riverside visit,” Toschi told me. “I tried to be friendly as the meeting got under way, introduced myself by giving my

name, spel ing it T-O-S-C-H-I, and saying (as I always do), ‘That’s Italian.’ I’m very proud of my heritage—I spoke Italian before English because my

mother was Piemontese and my father Toscano. We spent the whole day in their office and had lunch. We thought we were going to get more

information. We got minimal. I was truly disappointed that we weren’t getting a heck of lot of anything. With the exception of [Detective] Bud Kel y,

who was always up front with me, we never got much cooperation with Riverside. These Riverside guys aren’t tel ing us anything. It’s so obvious that

they’re holding on to everything for themselves like we’re here to purse-snatch. And that was not the case. We were there to share information.

“They had confiscated the Riverside desk and kept it in a special evidence room at police headquarters. That desk real y got my attention . . . that

lettering was so obviously by Zodiac. Later, after we got the tip about Al en, Riverside never even bothered to check on him having been in the

region—and I asked, ‘Did you know Arthur Leigh Al en?’ ‘Did you arrest him?’ ‘Has he ever been cited in the area?’ ‘Can we connect him to RCC?’

They were kind of leaning against the fact that it could have been our kil er, Zodiac. From that moment on, they developed tunnel vision to any other

suspects. Riverside thought they knew who had committed the Bates murder.”

Captain Irv Cross of the Detective Bureau said, “We are not ruling out the possibility that the kil er may have been a local youth.”

Back in San Francisco, an anonymous typed letter arrived at the Chronicle—“It both angers me and amazes me,” I read, “that a wanton kil er like

the Zodiac has escaped detection and justice for so long.

“It is my personal opinion Zodiac has spent time in some type of institution—either prison or mental hospital. . . . Zodiac would not be

married. He is unable to function in a relationship with a woman, either sexual y or emotional y. . . . The hunt for the Zodiac kil er has been a

tragic comedy of errors. . . . I know this: every act of horror such as mass kil ers beginning their ugly business has a starting point which is

ignited by what I choose to cal a trigger. The beast within them lies quietly most of the time, but then something triggers it or sets it off. In the

case of Zodiac I speculate it was due to two things: an episode in his life at the time of the first kil ing, traumatic to the person known as Zodiac,

but not necessarily to anyone else. He seems to have a real hatred for police and enjoys needling them in their failure to catch him. Possibly an

encounter with police at that particular time. I don’t personal y believe he does his kil ing according to some astrological timetable. I think he

kil s on holidays and week-ends simply because he doesn’t work then. I suggest in al probability he has a job which is a forty hour work week

and five consecutive days. . . . I shal remain anonymous. I hope you wil not stop in your efforts to find this fiend. I wish you good health and

good hunting. [signed] Armchair.”

In the unusual letter “Armchair” mentions he never heard of a mother shooting an adult child. “I suppose I am too suspicious of everyone,” he

concluded. “But being suspicious has saved my bacon more than once.” And “Armchair” had not only used Zodiac words (“needling,” “trigger,”

“hunt,” “hunting”), but had lived in Riverside at the time of the Bates kil ing, quoting events and newspaper articles he had read there. I was never

able to track him down.

Friday, December 18, 1970

On Arthur Leigh Al en’s birthday, a burglar broke into a woman’s home. The thief took pains to conceal his identity—adhesive tape on his

fingertips, a white handkerchief tied over the lower part of his face. The sleeping owner awakened to find a man standing over her, brandishing a

basebal bat. Snatching up a rifle under her bed, she sent a glancing blow to his arm. Ripping the rifle away, he lacerated her forehead with the bat.

Her daughter, awakened by the struggle, glimpsed the intruder fleeing down the hal . “He was dressed in a dark nylon ski jacket, dark pants, navy-

blue knit cap, and wearing welding goggles,” she said, “but before I could get a better look, he switched off the light and vanished.” He left a bloody

handprint on the wal , but no fingerprints. In the entire time he had been in the house he had not spoken. The Contra Costa County Sheriff’s

Department issued an al -points bul etin for him; they believed he might be Zodiac.

Friday, February 4, 1972

Seven long months had crawled by since Armstrong and Toschi had questioned Leigh Al en that sizzling August morning. As far as they knew he

was stil attending spring and fal sessions at Sonoma State. Probably a hundred new suspects’ names had crossed their desk in that time. Al en’s

name lay somewhere at the bottom of that pile. And stil the tips poured in. “A lot of people would want to cooperate and forward this or that to you,”

Toschi told me. “Al the while you get the feeling down deep that they’re trying to pick your brain. The nagging feeling was that the case was a ‘round

neck.’ The round neck means the trash basket in your office, which means it’s going to end up in a file as ‘Unsolved.’

“We just couldn’t handle al the tip cal s. The other guys in the office were getting angry at us. ‘Hey, guys, we didn’t write the letters,’ we told them.

‘We just answer the phone. If we turn somebody off, hang up on what could be a positive lead—we’re not going to make this case and we’ve got to

make this case. Please don’t hang up on anybody.’” They fol owed up the most promising tips, but time was on Zodiac’s side. In two weeks, the

State Supreme Court would rule capital punishment unconstitutional. Thus Zodiac, if captured, would no longer face the death penalty. Witnesses

and surviving victims, fearful of Zodiac, went into hiding or moved away. Physical evidence began to be lost or destroyed. Meanwhile, the

detectives could only speculate what the “Cipher Slayer” was doing.

In Santa Rosa at 4:00 P.M., Maureen Lee Sterling and Yvonne Weber left the Redwood Ice Skating Rink at Steele Lane. The two twelve-year-olds

began to walk home, stopping along the way. Sterling, long brown hair parted in the middle, wore blue jeans, a purple pul over shirt, a red sweatshirt

with a hood, and brown suede shoes. Weber dressed similarly—blue jeans, lavender and white tweed pul over shirt, black velvet coat, and brown

suede boots. Like her companion, she had blue eyes and parted her long blond hair in the middle. Both girls were known to hitchhike. Along their

way, they disappeared.

Leigh Al en quit the oil refinery at 4:00 P.M. each day and left immediately to beat the traffic. His route from Pinole took him west on Highway 37

to San Rafael, where it intersected 101 North. He drove on to Novato, Petaluma, Sonoma, and final y Cotati. A little before five he would have

crossed the girls’ path.

Saturday, March 4, 1972

Sixteen days before the vernal equinox, at 5:00 P.M., Kim Wendy Al en left her job at Natural Foods, a Larkspur health food store. Twenty minutes

later the nineteen-year-old Santa Rosa Junior Col ege student was seen at the Bel Avenue Freeway entrance. She began hitchhiking north on 101,

hefting an orange backpack and clutching a straw carry-bag. A beige three-quarter-length coat protected her against the chil wind. Like the little

girls from the skating rink, she had blue eyes and long, light-brown hair parted in the middle. Like them, she vanished. The next day, two men

discovered her nude body in a creek bed three miles from Bennett Val ey Road. She had been strangled with white hol ow-core clothesline. Her

body showed signs of being bound spreadeagled for some time somewhere else. Superficial cuts were on her chest. The kil er had kept her white

embroidered blouse, cut-off blue jeans, green cotton scarf, and one gold earring. He’d carried away an unusual twenty-four-inch-long necklace

fashioned from driftwood, seaweed, seashel s, seeds, and eucalyptus buttons. She might have been raped. That definitely did not match Zodiac’s

M.O. However, she was found twenty feet from Enterprise Road in a body of water, and Zodiac had once signed “ENTERPRISE” at the bottom of a

letter.

Tuesday, April 25, 1972

Jeanette Kamahele, twenty, another Santa Rosa Junior Col ege student, was also hitchhiking north near the Cotati on-ramp of Highway 101

when she disappeared. Her intended destination was Santa Rosa, where Leigh Al en had kept a trailer since 1970.

Friday, May 5, 1972

Allen was in a rage—he had just been fired from the Pinole refinery. Though his questioning by the police had been ten long months earlier, he

considered his termination a direct result of their prying and innuendo. Leigh’s dismissal would create additional difficulties for Armstrong and

Toschi. Now that the prime suspect was a ful -time Sonoma State student, studying science and art, he began living most of each week in his Santa

Rosa trailer. In the future any serious search required they choose between Santa Rosa and Val ejo—cities outside their jurisdiction. The situation

was made more formidable by the fact that Al en was not their only suspect. A couple of others, at least in the beginning, looked good.

A while back, Larry Friedman, an NYPD cop for two years, rang Toschi. They met at a coffee shop. “I thought you would be interested in this,”

Friedman said. “A Crocker Bank employee lived a block away when Paul Stine was murdered.” Toschi already knew. “We had a couple of guys

here in San Francisco,” Toschi said, “who were absolutely convinced that the Zodiac was a local bank honcho. Al the circumstantial evidence fit

perfectly. He original y lived down in Southern California when Bates was murdered. He owned property near Lake Berryessa and went hunting

often in Montana, a place where Zodiac said he had been active; where it’s easy to buy guns that can’t real y be traced. Their information was so

good that we had to check their suspect out. We eliminated the man completely based on his prints not matching those on Stine’s cab.” The FBI

went a step further, analyzing a blockprinted note passed by a robber to a Crocker tel er to see if it matched Zodiac’s printing.

Another suspect looked like a bear, but a bear with a shock of red hair and wearing dark glasses. The “Bear Man” was a “kinda scary guy,”

Toschi told me, “steel-wool hair, loping long arms. He col ected guns and ammo—a rifle carbine, but no .22’s or 9-mm. He was a theater janitor who

lived on Hunter Street.” Police theorized Zodiac was not only a hunter, but might be named Hunter or might even possess a wild beast’s attributes.

“We put the ‘Bear Man’ on the lie detector three weeks after the Stine kil ing. I asked the suspect, who volunteered that he was ambidextrous, to

print for me. The writing didn’t match. Though he was general y familiar with Lake Berryessa, he didn’t know the side roads and was not intimate

with Val ejo. I was unable to find anything local y on the suspect, no wants, nor warrants, nor arrests.

“Zodiac might have been a cabbie like Stine. I checked the Department’s cab permit bureau back to 1963. If he ever drove a cab in this city, he

had to be fingerprinted and photographed as an applicant—I found no such person as the ‘Bear Man.’ If he drove a cab it was under another name.

I rechecked with DMV in Sacramento and they had no record of such a person with a current or past driver’s license. However, they purge after

approximately seven years. I sent a Teletype to Las Vegas asking for a copy of his driver’s license and his photo—a seven-to-ten-day wait for that.

And this was just one suspect—back when the case started.”

Like Stine, an earlier Zodiac victim had been shot at close range above the ear. Though police often discounted the Lake Herman Road murders

of December 20, 1968, as being Zodiac’s, a similar contact wound linked them to Stine. Past the rol ing hil s, peaceful pastures, and rugged

quarries out on Lake Herman Road strange things were seen. Three and a half years before, on that pitch-black and lonely thoroughfare, Zodiac

had murdered Betty Lou Jensen and David Faraday, two teenagers on their first date. Good kids: Betty Lou an honor student; David an Eagle

Scout, recipient of the “God and Country Award.”

The night of the murders, Robert Connley and Frank Gasser (of the Gasser Ranch on Highway #2) were out there hunting raccoons. At 9:00 P.M.

they drove their red Ford pickup just beyond Gate #10 leading to the Lake Herman Pumping Station. They parked the pickup twenty-five feet into a

field of the Marshal Ranch, near the pump house. The gated entrance itself was one-quarter mile east of Lake Herman Cottage. As the gate swung

inward, an unidentified truck began going out. The hunters observed a white four-door 1959-’60 Chevrolet Impala parked alongside its path.

Gasser, sixty-nine, wearing a hunting jacket and shining a three-cel flashlight, ambled over to the Impala. Curious, he peered into the front seat,

then the back. The car was empty. “Perhaps its owner is out scouting the area,” he thought.

An hour later Bingo Wesher, a rancher on the Old Borges Ranch by the Humble Oil Company, began tending sheep just east of Benicia Pumping

Station #9. He observed Gasser and Connley’s truck, recognizable by its wood sideboards and bright color, and saw the Impala parked by the

south fence entrance. He could not tel if it was occupied. A “dark car, lacking in chrome” had been seen in the area, and between 9:30 and 10:00

P.M. a blue Valiant, driven by two men, chased another couple along Lake Herman Road at “a high rate of speed.” Another witness saw a “White

Chevrolet, Impala sedan 1961-63” in the area.

Two other witnesses passed the pumping station entrance at 10:15 and saw a 1960 four-door station wagon facing toward the gate. The two-

tone (dark tan over light tan) Nash Rambler was the victims’ car. Fifteen minutes later the witnesses returned. The station wagon now faced the

opposite direction. At 11:00 P.M. Connley and Gasser finished hunting and saw the Impala was gone. The Rambler was parked in the same spot,

facing southwest and in a different spot than police found it an hour later. A Humble Oil worker driving home from Benicia after his graveyard shift

saw two cars parked at the pump house entrance. “The car parked nearest to the road was a 1955 or 1956 station wagon, boxy type, neutral color,”

he said. “The other was parked to the right and abreast of the station wagon. The cars were about ten feet apart. I could not give a description of

the make or color of the other car.”

The Rambler’s motor was stil lukewarm when Detective Sergeant Les Lundblad of the Solano County Sheriff’s office arrived at five minutes after

midnight. The car’s ignition key was on, but the motor was not running. The kids had been using the heater. The front of the four door brown-beige

’61 Rambler Station Wagon in the entranceway now pointed east. The right front door stood wide open, the remaining three doors and tailgate stil

locked, but the right rear window had been smashed. The girl’s white fur coat, along with her purse, lay on the rear seat on the driver’s side. Though

a deep heel mark was found behind the pumphouse, the gravel surface produced nothing of great significance in the way of readable footprints and

no visible tire tracks were left on the frozen ground.

Coroner Dan Horan, Dr. Byron Sanford, Captain Daniel Pitta, Officers Wil iam T. Warner, Waterman, and Butterbach, and a reporter from the

Fairfield Daily Republic, Thomas D. Balmer, were already there. Benicia cops Pierre Bidou and Lieutenant George Little, who photographed the

two bodies, joined the bustling scene. Zodiac counted on competing police agencies to hamper the investigation.

Warner did a chalk outline around David’s body. Horan pronounced Betty Lou DOS. and, after Little had taken as many pictures from as many

angles as possible, ordered her body to the morgue. Sergeant Cunningham had Deputy J. R. Wilson go to Val ejo General Hospital to take pictures

of David, but when he arrived he learned the boy had been DOA. In the meantime Lundblad ascertained that one bul et had been fired into the top

of the Rambler leaving a ricochet mark on the roof. Another had shattered the rear window. An expended .22-caliber casing from the kil er’s gun lay

on the right floorboard of the Rambler. Nine other expended casings were on the ground, to the right at distances of twenty feet, fourteen feet, eight

feet two inches, four feet one-half inch, three feet, two feet three inches, one foot eleven inches, and one foot one-half inch. They showed how the

boy had been shot as he exited and how the kil er pursued the girl on the run. The fatal bul ets that kil ed Jensen and Faraday were at first thought to

be from a High Standard Model 101. Along the road, Benicia police recovered a Hi-Standard H-P Military .22 automatic with eradicated serial

numbers. It had been previously disassembled by someone and the firing pin altered. They examined test bul ets with six right-hand grooves, as did

the questioned bul ets removed from the victims. Different guns had been involved. No one could explain how the kil er had fired so accurately in the

dark unless he had some sort of light on the barrel.

An irregularly flattened bul et removed from the left frontal lobe of the boy (he had been shot behind the upper right ear) and the bul ets from the

girl were analyzed. Al were Western coated .22 Long Rifle ammo with 6 RH class characteristics. They could only have been fired from a J. C.

Higgins, Model 80, .22 automatic pistol. Betty Lou had been shot five times in the back in a “remarkably close pattern.” Three of the bul ets had

emerged from her front. Betty Lou’s dress had no smoke or gunpowder residue in one hole in the center front. Nor was there any tattooing in the

five punctures in the upper right side of her back. However, in the topmost hole in back, a single grain of gunpowder was discovered. That meant

that of al the slugs that struck her, only one was fired at a closer range. Al the others were fired from at least several feet. Two of the ten bul ets fired

were never accounted for, lost in the nearby field.

Lundblad began timing the events of that night. First he drove to the home of Mrs. Stel a Borges, the woman who had discovered the bodies

sprawled by the roadside. From her ranch to the crime scene was two and seven-tenths miles and that took three minutes. From the crime scene to

the Enco Station on East 2nd Street in Benicia where she had flagged down police was three and four-tenths miles. It took Lundblad five minutes at

the “safe high speed” Borges had driven. “It is two and one-tenths miles from the intersection of Lake Herman Road and Luther Gibson Freeway to

crime scene,” he wrote, “a three minute trip.” Later he also timed the distances between two suspects’ homes and the murder site at various

speeds. Lundblad learned there had been a prowler around the Jensen home. Upon several occasions the gate leading to the side of the house

had been found open.

The unsolved murders forever tainted the region. On that forsaken road a man in a white Chevy cruised under the ful moon. Residents had taken

to cal ing him “The Phantom of Cordelia.” A big man was also observed roving the territory on foot, stalking over a gravel path to the old pump

house, scouting for game, practicing his shooting, and moving through the quarry and watery areas where he could dive like a ghost. The huge man

moved in other remote areas of Val ejo too, tracking the watery outskirts of Val ejo as if seeking something. Three astrological water signs—

Scorpio, Pisces, and Cancer—determined the timing of Zodiac’s assaults. To prove this, astrologers confidently pointed to his later double

shooting at Blue Rock Springs—committed during the sign of Cancer with the moon in Pisces.

Mrs. Stel a Borges’s ranch sat off Fairgrounds Drive and abutted the Syar Rock Quarry on American Canyon Road. To the east was Borges

Summit Reservoir, and to the north a creek that rushed year-round with water. The big man swam in the cold water and stood like an apparition at

her gate. Mrs. Borges, an important witness in the Lake Herman murders, saw him there herself. Forty-five minutes before midnight, December 20,

1968, she had set out for Benicia along Lake Herman Road. The lights of her car had il uminated the crumpled bodies of two teenagers at the

roadside. Heart pounding, she had raced the rest of the way into Bencia and flagged down a police cruiser. For some reason the stranger

reminded her of that traumatic moment.

Her nephew, Albert, had also noticed eerie occurrences a year after the murders. “We grew up on the Borges Ranch,” he told me.“My Aunt Stel a

saw a lot of strange things over the years and so did I. It was her home her entire life. In November 1969, I was in the military and had a weekend

pass. My ride dropped me off at the rest area around 10:00 P.M. My brother proceeded down Lake Herman Road to the rest area with his girlfriend

and waited for me. He was familiar with the road and the Zodiac incident the previous Christmas. We al were.

“He was armed with a pistol in his truck on the way back across Lake Herman Road. Not far from the Lake Herman gate someone had lifted a

huge log across the road. It was nine or ten feet long. We could not go around. We stopped. I felt uneasy, looked around, and I told my brother to

back up and go around the long way to Val ejo. There I cal ed the police and reported it. Later, [to the south] at wooded Dan Foley Park by Lake

Chabot, several teenagers on the hil were shooting BB guns. They observed a large man at a distance watching them. He stayed as long as they

did, then left. Many people saw this stalker.

“In the early 1970s, we used to go shooting and target-practice by the rock quarry. We had done that for years. My cousins told me about a big

guy who used to come up and shoot with a whole armory in his car—military-type weapons, .45 Colts, M-16s, and the like. He wore military

fatigues, bloused boots, and al . One day I was up there shooting and this guy was also there. When he saw me he immediately came up to where I

was and chal enged me. ‘What are you doing here?’

“This guy was a gun nut and had burned up one box of ammo after another. He was wearing a black basebal cap and was about six feet one,

large and muscular like myself. But I felt at a disadvantage, uneasy because he had strange eyes and he did not take them off me throughout his

questioning, even when I told him I was a member of the family. I drove by Lake Herman the next day, and stopped by the gate where my aunt found

that first couple of victims, and what a chil I got. It was like the incident had just happened. I thought to myself what if an old Chevy Impala should pul

up alongside—then got the hel out of there.

“I came to the conclusion that Zodiac was probably in the Navy or at least worked at the Mare Island shipyard. Val ejo police have fouled up in the

past, and I wonder if this fel ow was closer to the police than we think. I personal y believe that after shooting the couple at Blue Rock Springs,

Zodiac did drive down Lake Herman Road and since he was a pretty thorough person, had a police car radio so he could keep tabs on al aspects

of information being relayed.”

Mrs. Borges’s nephew was not the only one who had observed bizarre events on the outskirts of Val ejo. An Oakland man’s son had been out at

Blue Rock Springs the very evening of Zodiac’s Fourth of July, 1969, murder and seen someone quite like Leigh Al en. “They were out riding their

motorcycles along Columbus Parkway,” the father explained, “when they met a huge man walking along the road. My son was going to offer him a

ride, but he was so huge and the motorcycle so smal he decided against it. Besides, he said, it was near twilight and the man looked kind of

spooky. In any event, he appeared to come from a car parked further down the road. My son described a 1950s black Plymouth, but was vague

about the license plate number. It had an ‘X’ in it, he’s sure of that. He was very confident about the make and color of the car. My son was about

seventeen at the time, and I am sure he did not repeat his observations to the police, especial y when he heard a murder had taken place right

after. It probably frightened him in the extreme.”

Zodiac was a watcher—no doubt of that. The lonely always are.

Saturday, July 15, 1972

Carolyn Nadine Davis, long blond hair parted in the middle, gray-blue eyes, a fifteen-year-old runaway from Shasta County, left her Grandmother

Adelian’s house in Garbervil e. In the pocket of her black coat nestled a one-way plane ticket from Redding to San Francisco. At 1:50 P.M. the road

stretched ahead. She swung her green-print cloth handbag and eyed passing cars. In the bag was a false I.D. that identified her as “Carolyn Cook.”

She approached the on-ramp, began hitchhiking on 101 in a southerly direction, and was not seen alive again. The other missing women had been

hitchhiking north. If Al en were responsible, the change from a northerly direction to a southerly one was accounted for. He was no longer working in

Pinole and traveling north homeward each evening.

8

arthur leigh allen

Thursday, September 7, 1972

“There was a second meeting with investigators,” Panzarel a told me. “Leigh was then living in a house trailer somewhere on the coast and I had

been there. The most bizarre thing is that hanging on the wal was a picture of him buffed out, a senior in high school, winning the CIA Diving

Championship, and this guy’s total y healthy looking. Only seven, eight years later, he’s a three hundred pound blob.”

Bil Armstrong contacted Don Cheney in Torrance again. A year had now snaked by since he and Toschi had questioned Leigh Al en. So many

homicides, so many suspects, so many legal hurdles to clear. “Inspector, I was going to cal you,” Cheney said. “I don’t know if it’s important, but I

thought of something else Arthur Leigh Al en and I discussed in our conversation on New Year’s Day, 1969. When Leigh was discussing his plan, I

can recal that he asked me how you could disguise your handwriting. I remember my response. I told him, ‘I guess you could go to a library and get

books on writing examination to find out how writing is identified.’”

Armstrong absorbed this, then asked Cheney again if he was certain about his memory of his conversation with Al en.

“I am positive,” he said.

Things were moving again.

Toschi scanned a photocopy of the first letter signed Zodiac—the dread it inspired two years ago stil fresh in his mind. “This is the Zodiac

speaking,” it began. Zodiac had firmly handprinted these three pages twenty months after Al en’s conversation with Cheney. After studying the

originals and discovering no indented or secret writing, the FBI returned them to Sacramento on August 18, 1969. Thus, Toschi had only a copy for

reference. A phrase had stuck in Toschi’s mind, and so he leafed through the August 4, 1969, photostat, rereading it, misspel ings and al .

“Last Christmass—In that epasode the police were wondering as to how I could shoot & hit my victims in the dark. They did not openly state

this, but implied this by saying it was a wel lit night & I could see silowets on the horizon.

“Bul shit that area is srounded by high hil s & trees. What I did was tape a smal pencel flash light to the barrel of my gun. If you notice, in the

center of the beam of light if you aim it at a wal or ceil ing you wil see a black or darck spot in the center of the circle of the light about 3 to 6 in.

across.

“When taped to a gun barrel the bul et wil strike exactly in the center of the black dot in the light. Al I had to do was spray them . . .” Here

Toschi came to the remainder of this last sentence, one he and Armstrong had ordered the press not to print. It read: “as if it was a water hose;

there was no need to use the gunsights. I was not happy to see that I did not get front page cover-age.” [Signed with Zodiac’s crossed circle

and “no address.”]

An electric gun sight—exactly as Al en had suggested to Cheney. “Leigh actual y constructed such a device,” Cheney told me much later. “He put

a penlight on an H&R revolver with tape.” Zodiac, enraptured by his science fiction invention, referred to it again in his November 9, 1969, letter: “To

prove that I am the Zodiac, Ask the Val ejo cop about my electric gun sight which I used to start my col ecting of slaves.” Val ejo cop? What Val ejo

cop? thought Toschi. Had Zodiac, like Leigh Al en, been questioned by an as yet unknown Val ejo policeman at some point before November 9,

1969?

“The next time we saw Al en was up in Santa Rosa,” Toschi explained. “That’s when we felt we might have something. Leigh’s name was just

thrown at us again in a phone cal late one morning.” Toschi never did determine the exact date of that cal . He recal ed only that it was summer (it

was stil light out at eight o’clock that night) and that enough time had passed for witnesses to grow dispirited about the progress Val ejo police

were making.

“I would real y like to talk to you about a case you and your partner are working on,” began the cal er circumspectly.

“Are we talking about Zodiac?” Toschi asked.

“Yes, absolutely. You’re reading my mind. I’m the brother. I believe you know what I’m talking about.”

There was caution and concern in his voice. “I do,” Toschi said, recal ing the visit he and Armstrong and Mulanax had paid to Ron and Karen

Al en’s house one August night.

“I feel, and my wife feels, a larger police department with more resources could do a little bit more than what the Val ejo Police Department has

been doing. I can only speculate what they are doing at the present time, Inspector.”

“Have you given al your information to the Val ejo Police Department?” Toschi asked.

“Yes, but we don’t think they have done enough,” Ron said.

“When Ron Al en cal ed,” Toschi told me later, “he was a very concerned person and real y was asking San Francisco to talk to him. He says, ‘I

need to talk to you fel ows and I’ve already spoken to Sergeant Mulanax and some other officers.’ It was like he wasn’t getting the same officer al

the time, that he wanted to pass information on. And right away my brain is thinking ahead like, ‘Oh, God, here we go again because I’ve got to talk

to Jack Mulanax. We can’t drop the bal —I mean, it’s his jurisdiction.’”

“Where are you?” Toschi asked.

“I’m in the city,” Ron Al en said, and told him where—between Market and Mission on First Street.

“Can you get away this afternoon for fifteen or twenty minutes so we can talk to you and just see what you have?”

“Yes, I can take a break. How soon?”

“Can you spare some time so we can come down immediately?”

They agreed to meet in the lobby of the PG&E Building in downtown San Francisco in about thirty minutes. “What are you going to be wearing?”

asked Toschi. “The two of us wil be there.”

“And that’s how it al started,” Toschi told me.“We natural y went in and ran it by our boss, Charlie El is, real quick. I told the lieutenant what we got

and he says, ‘Another one, another tip.’ I said, ‘Charlie, this is a brother of the man that he believes is our kil er and he lives in Val ejo. This sounds

awful y good. He real y wants to talk to us,’ I explained. ‘We can’t turn it down.’ He said, ‘OK, get on it.’ Then we ran it by the chief of inspectors,

Charles Barca. ‘You usual y get your best information from a member of the family,’ he said. I had a smile on my face.

“Ron was so sincere on the phone, within thirty or forty minutes we’re talking to him in the lobby of his workplace. As soon as he came out of the

elevator, we looked at him. He was very slender, wearing a suit, and balding a bit. The strain had obviously worn on him. I could see a bit of relief

that San Francisco was involved and I realized he recognized us.

‘Thank you, Inspectors, for coming down so quickly,’ he said. ‘I’ve just got to talk to you.’ And we sat down and took some notes. Soon as we

spoke to him I could detect the truth coming out of his mouth.

“Initial y, what we did was listen. If you want to learn something, you listen. We asked him if we could speak with his wife. He said, ‘Of course. I’d

like you to speak with my wife because she feels like I do.’ And we felt this sounds pretty good, the best that we ever had of any suspect, with a

brother coming forward and not being satisfied with what the other sheriffs’ and police departments had been doing.

“We told him we’d like to come to his home that evening and take in-depth statements with his wife and get some proof and corroboration. ‘I

hope you don’t have a problem with that,’ I said. ‘No,’ he said, ‘My wife feels the same way. We’re both frightened. I’d like you to talk to my wife.’

“We cal ed Jack Mulanax to set it up. ‘I talked to the guy,’ Mulanax said. ‘We’ve checked Al en out pretty wel .’ ‘I know,’ I told him, believing him to

a degree, ‘but Ron’s giving us some more information and we just have to tel you we’re coming into your territory. It’s police courtesy. The brother

cal ed us. We can’t put it away.’” The behavior of the Val ejo P.D. had always puzzled Toschi. It was as if a second mystery underlay the watery town

of Val ejo, invisibly affecting the investigation at every turn. “For some reason Lynch and Lundblad didn’t want to come to some of our early

conferences in Sacramento. And here Bil and I are driving ninety miles up there.

“We arrived at the Al en home at 7:30 P.M. It was stil light out. Karen had expected us, but rambled for twenty minutes not real y saying anything.

It was corroborated later that evening how serious they took us. ‘I know there are a lot of leads coming in and clues,’ she said. They had consulted

an uncle before cal ing, to be certain they were doing the right thing.

“Everything was coming out slow, but every time she would say something of substance, Ron would shake his head, and say, ‘Yes, that’s true.’

They were both in sync with each other out of their fear and concern that he was stil out there.

“‘We’re very frustrated,’ Karen told me. ‘We just don’t know how serious Val ejo took us. I know there are a lot of leads coming in. We just

decided to cal you because we were seeing your name and Inspector Armstrong’s name in the papers.’ ‘Because of the letters to the Chronicle

and the media coverage,’ I told them, ‘we’re getting it al . We sure would like to spread it around a little more.’ That got a little chuckle from both Ron

and Karen. ‘When we get a cal , we take it seriously,’ I told them. ‘We just decided, you took the time to cal , we’l take the information now and notify

the detective from that jurisdiction, see what he knows and maybe it wil ring a bel .’

“I noticed that Ron was speaking with even more emotion than earlier. It was as if a little frustration had entered Ron and his wife since they saw

nothing more was coming from the Val ejo investigation. Ron and Karen told us that Leigh had spent time in Southern California and was familiar

with the area, but they weren’t too sure exactly what he was doing because he was on his own a lot.

“As we progressed we learned about the school in Sonoma and that he had a trailer up there. ‘Leigh has a couple of old junkers, old beat-up

cars,’ Ron told us. ‘He’s what you would cal a professional student.’ Al en’s sister-in-law told us that the suspect was now residing alone in a house

trailer in Santa Rosa part of the week [Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays]. Apparently this is where he kept al his personal property. We just didn’t

have enough at the time to move up there. You can’t just go running in ten different directions. We were very careful to see the chief of inspectors

when we came back, to keep him apprised of every move we made. ‘Keep working on it,’ Barca said.

“Next morning, I went in to see Walter Giubbini. We knew we needed more, but we had to fil in the number-two man in the D.A.’s office. Al the

fingerprinting had been negative and the handprinting of Arthur Leigh Al en had, according to Mulanax and Lundblad, been negative, but the chief

assistant sat straight up as we told him what the Al ens had related. ‘We’re pretty excited about it,’ I said.

“‘I wonder why Val ejo didn’t cal you guys,’ said Giubbini, ‘and tel you everything about this Arthur Leigh Al en.’

“‘We’re giving them everything we’ve got, Walter, so we can get closure on this. Do we have enough for a search warrant?’

“‘Frankly, you don’t. Unless you get more physical evidence, al you have is theories and speculations by the brother of Leigh Al en.’

“‘We’re making some enemies with the other jurisdictions, these other detectives,’ said Toschi.

“‘That’s natural,’ said Giubbini. ‘D.A.s are like that too. They want to hold on and hog the case. But this is too good for you to just drop off with

Jack Mulanax. You work it. They cal ed for you. It sounds good, but work it up a little bit more.’

“We just kept moving along on Al en,” continued Toschi, “kinda focusing on him, but not ruling anyone else out. You can’t do that if you want to be

a good detective. Because if al you’re thinking about is ‘John Doe,’ when ‘Charlie Smith’ is actual y your suspect, you’re in real trouble. We weren’t

getting tunnel vision on Al en and excluding other suspects. Stil , he was the best we had had up to that time. Most of what Ron and Karen told us

had already been discussed with Mulanax and Lundblad, only with more feeling with us. We were satisfied with Mulanax and his investigation. He

did what he could. But I kept in contact with Mulanax, Lundblad, and Nicolai and Narlow.

“In Val ejo there was resentment, which bothered me al the time, especial y when we went over to their headquarters. You could sense uniformed

guys kind of turning their backs and staring at us. Here I am walking in with my large black folder, which I had with me constantly. We were goading

the other guys, saying, ‘Stay with him. He’s too good to let go even if you’ve spoken to him ten times each. We are very impressed with this

suspect.’ We were getting a lot of misinformation from Val ejo, Solano. This is why there is such a long delay before we got a warrant.”

Each time Toschi descended from Homicide, he passed Giubbini’s office in the west corner of the third floor, and Giubbini would cal out, “Catch

Zodiac yet?” Then he would laugh. But as the two investigators continued to gather evidence for a search warrant, he slowly became a believer.

“Keep trying,” Giubbini said.

“Final y, when we felt we had built up enough information,” said Toschi, “that’s when we went to our lieutenant again. ‘I think maybe we could get a

search warrant,’ I said. We had a lot going, but we just pursued the case much more than the other detectives working on Arthur Leigh Al en. It just

sounded so right. That’s how we ended up final y getting a warrant.”

It was the information about Leigh’s trailer that impel ed Armstrong and Toschi to seek a search warrant specifical y for Santa Rosa. They began

laying the groundwork—a time-consuming and tedious business. The D.A.’s office, specifical y Fred Wissmann, in one county, San Francisco, had

to be convinced. A judge, James Jones, Jr., in another county, Sonoma, had to grant a warrant. If they wanted to search Al en’s basement in Val ejo

or his locker at the refinery in Pinole, that required warrants from Solano County and Contra Costa County. And negotiations with two other judges

and district attorneys.

“And al the time more information was pouring in to Armstrong and to me from Al en’s brother. I just kept gathering it up and putting it al into a

large homicide case folder. Then more physical evidence, until we reached a point where we went again to Giubbini and this time he listened.

‘Type up a search warrant for Al en in Sonoma County,’ he said, and we did.”

Thursday, September 14, 1972

“We compiled enough to complete an affidavit through our district attorney and search whatever property Leigh had in Santa Rosa,” Toschi said.

At noon, Bil Armstrong filed an affidavit for a search warrant to the City of Santa Rosa Municipal Court, Sonoma County. Specifical y, he and

Toschi wanted close look inside Leigh’s Universal trailer parked at the Sunset Trailer Park. He requested the warrant include the shed Al en kept

adjoining the conventional trailer. Armstrong described to Judge James E. Jones, Jr., the property they sought: two 9-mil imeter guns, ammunition

for them, and any expended 9-mil imeter casings; a .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol, ammunition for it, and any expended cartridges from that

weapon. They were especial y interested in any pistol with a flashlight attached to its barrel.

The detective listed other evidence, items that fel under the province of stolen property: identification taken from the body of Paul Stine, keys to

his yel ow taxi, and the missing portion of the cabbie’s bloodstained shirt. Until recently Zodiac had been including bloodstained squares of the

fabric inside his letters. Al communications from Zodiac had abruptly ceased eighteen months ago. Toschi suspected they would never receive

another scrap of that gray-and-white-striped sport shirt. From the Lake Berryessa attack Armstrong designated the square-topped, black

executioner’s hood with a white circle and a cross emblazoned on it; black Wing Walker boots, size 10½ R; a blue bloodstained windbreaker

jacket; a large foot-long knife, one inch wide with a wooden handle with two brass rivets and tape around the handle. Armstrong did not list the

wooden brass-riveted scabbard for the knife. He spoke to the judge in chambers and went over some of the more confidential information with him.

A stenographer took down his words.

“I remember the judge reading our affidavit and saying he actual y felt we had him. ‘Good hunting, Detectives,’ he said. ‘I believe you final y have

your man.’ And the D.A. here in San Francisco said, ‘I think you’ve got him.’ Even though other detectives had talked with the brother, we couldn’t

drop the case. Our district attorney felt the same way. We just had to be sure. As usual we shared everything we did with Val ejo. We even told them

we were going to Santa Rosa with a search warrant in case they wanted to come along. And they said, ‘No.’ Bil Armstrong and I didn’t even know if

Val ejo was being up front with us in 1969-70 and ’71. They almost resented us because of everything flowing into San Francisco because of the

Chronicle. I told Giubbini, ‘Bil and I aren’t out to badmouth the other detectives. We have a job to do.’”

Toschi picked up aspirin at the little cigar shop in the Hal of Justice. He grabbed some animal crackers from the corner store. “I’d usual y bring in

two or three boxes when we’d start to go on cal on Monday morning,” he said. “I got so I liked them. So little time and I had to eat something. My

head was almost coming off from stress. I chewed more than my share of aspirin every day, and especial y the day we went to Santa Rosa.”

Toschi and Armstrong, accompanied by Bob Dagitz, an SFPD fingerprint examiner who had worked the Stine murder, and two local deputy

sheriffs, arrived at 2963 Santa Rosa Avenue. Santa Rosa was a busy road not too far from the rush of traffic. Some of the trailers had gravel lawns

spotted with foliage more suitable for the desert. They began hunting for the trailer.

“When we make an arrest, our work in Homicide begins,” said Toschi. “Is it a strong case for the grand jury? Is it a weak case? How can I build it

up? What didn’t I do properly? Unlike my television counterparts, much of my time is spent in dealing with the families of the deceased and the

families of the suspect. I must sympathize with one and be extremely sensitive with the other. I’m an average guy and I’m an honest policeman.

Anyone who is al owed legal y to carry a loaded gun, and the right to shoot it, has power, but it cal s for a lot of common sense. When I first put on

my first gun I felt like a cowboy. I have only used it twice.” Under his corduroy jacket, on his left side, Toschi wore his upside-down triple-draw

lightning rig. A spring in the holster held his .38-caliber Colt Cobra in place. They might be going up against a dangerous and powerful man. A refil

of six bul ets and handcuffs on his right side balanced the weight.

“As I said, I’ve drawn my gun twice. I was fired upon on September 22, 1956. Afterwards, they said I’d saved the life of a man who had been shot

a few seconds before I got there. I threw him to the ground as I saw they had a shotgun. I couldn’t I.D. either one because it happened too fast. I saw

the gun at the window, actual y kicked in the door—it was not bolted too wel , and caught one guy. Got the shotgun. The other guy got caught in the

backyard. About an hour later I wondered, ‘Why was I playing such a cowboy?’ That’s the closest I came to being kil ed.”

Ron and Karen Al en had provided them with precise directions on the trailer’s location. Sadly, they had never visited the trailer. Toschi, to be

certain, had Mrs. Reese, the trailer court manager, show them specifical y which stal the professional student used. They walked unsteadily along

the tar, concrete, and gravel sections that made up the stal s. At each, an aquamarine pole sported a miniature white streetlight. A few trees were

struggling to grow. The sky was so crystal blue it made their eyes ache. “That’s it.” Reese gestured. “A-7.” The trailer’s license, AP 6354, jibed with

their information. “But he just drove off before you arrived,” she said.

Leigh had been in such a hurry that he had left his trailer door standing open. Had he somehow known they were coming and fled with

incriminating evidence? His immediate flight was suspicious, but there was nothing they could do about it. The suspect, a police groupie, was

friendly with many officers and might have been warned. “You get friendly with cops and you hear things,” said Toschi. Perhaps his relatives had

had a last-minute change of heart. The detectives just didn’t know. Al they knew for certain was that they were dealing with a highly intel igent and

cunning man.

Toschi and Armstrong spent the time poking around the exterior. Al en had made some alterations to the trailer, an earth-colored affair streaked

with rust in places. “It was a standard trailer,” said Toschi. Tapered concrete blocks supported the off-wheels trailer. A locked shed adjoined it.

What the detectives didn’t know was that Al en had recently repaneled the interior of one of his trailers, possibly this one, maybe the one in Bodega.

Was something hidden within those wal s? “We kind of moseyed around because we had a search warrant,” said Toschi. The investigators invited

themselves in and made a cursory inspection of the trailer. It had an acrid smel like the refinery. Toschi indicated a map of Lake Berryessa taped

to the wal . Zodiac had attacked a couple there.

Bob Dagitz had been excited about Al en as a suspect as soon as he heard Al en was familiar with Berryessa and the outskirts of Val ejo. He

knew Leigh was ambidextrous, good with a bow and arrow, and proficient with various weapons. Toschi thought that Al en fulfil ed everything he

thought Zodiac should be. He moved Al en’s bed away from the wal and discovered the largest jar of Vaseline he had ever seen. Several large,

uncleaned dildos rol ed out at his feet. Sadomasochistic pornography was stacked in a box, and male blow-up dol s were in the trailer. Books on

chemistry and biology were everywhere, many stamped with Al en’s name. Some bloodstained clothing littered a table. But they knew Al en was a

hunter. Toschi pushed the bed back into place and entered the smal unkempt kitchen. He pried open the freezer. Little animal heart, livers, and

mutilated rodent bodies were inside.

Though no real sex was involved in Zodiac’s assaults, technical y he was a sexual psychopath or, more accurately, a sexual sadist. Stanford’s Dr.

Donald T. Lunde told me that sexual sadists commonly acted out sadistic impulses in their early teens—torturing and kil ing cats, dogs, and other

smal animals. “He tortures and kil s substitute victims, smal animals,” he said. “There certainly is the need to kil . . . something at certain intervals.”

Lunde believed that in adulthood, such an individual, if it were made very difficult for him to kil humans, might revert to kil ing animals. “It would be

better than nothing,” he said.

“The sociopathic murderer usual y has a physical y cruel, rejecting father and perhaps a hysterical, seductive mother,” Dr. Manfred Guttmacher

reported in The Mind of the Murderer. “The effects of cruelty on the smal child are more than simple neglect. In retaliation, the sociopath inflicts

cruelty on others and feels no guilt in doing so. The earliest objects of his cruelty are often animals.”

Though Al en was working toward a degree in biology, he hadn’t yet requested permission from the state to dissect and experiment on smal

animals. He would file an application for a scientific col ecting permit with the Resources Agency of the California Department of Fish and Game. “I

intend to col ect the fol owing species,” Al en would write, “chipmunks—number indefinite. I expect to col ect in the fol owing localities: Marin County,

Sonoma County and Mendocino County, (Possibly Solano, Napa & Lassen). I desire to col ect by the fol owing methods: Live traps (Havahart &

home-made).” He was under the sponsorship of Dr. John D. Hopkirk, an associate professor of biology of Sonoma State Col ege, where Al en

majored in biological sciences and minored in chemistry.

Forty-five minutes after racing off, Al en returned. They heard his old clunker approaching, and were outside to meet him as he parked. A cloud of

dust arose. “It was nice seeing Al en drive up and real y introducing ourselves,” Toschi said later. “Both of us said, ‘Leigh, how are you—we’re San

Francisco police inspectors.’ His car was dirty. Through the dirty rear window, we could see clothes, papers, and books in the backseat. He was

frightened when he showed up because he had never had two detectives actual y talking to him with a warrant in hand and we took him by surprise

—the first time he had met two cops who meant business, face to face, inches away, and he didn’t know if we were going to arrest him.” Because

Leigh was into a lot of other stuff, he wasn’t sure, at first, what had brought the police to his trailer.

The huge chemist crawled out of his car.

“What’s al this about?” he said cool y.

Al en didn’t recal Toschi and Armstrong from their visit to the refinery a year ago. He should have remembered, or might have been shamming.

“We want to talk to you, Leigh,” said Armstrong. “We have a search warrant for your trailer and for your person. We have information that you are

a very good suspect in the Zodiac murders.”

Al en explained he thought Zodiac had been arrested. “Besides, I live in Val ejo,” he added, “and I’ve already talked to Val ejo P.D.”

“We know,” Toschi said. “Here’s your copy of the warrant.”

“Wel , help yourself,” conceded Al en with a shrug.

Now the investigators began a more exhaustive scrutiny, dragging furniture away from the dingy windows and drawing back the sheets. Toschi

tugged the bed away from the wal as if for the first time. Again dildos rol ed out.

“I just sort of fool around,” Leigh said matter-of-factly.

He did not seem at al embarrassed by that, or the sadistic pornography the detectives ferreted out. In the close quarters of the off-wheels trailer

they were aware of how physical y powerful their suspect was. “Al en was an awesome and frightening man, a beast,” said Toschi. “He was so

upset and angry at our being on his turf at Santa Rosa. Over the next hour, we tore apart his place pretty good. I remember for some reason he took

an immediate dislike to me personal y. And I was always the good guy. The D.A.s would use me to disarm these guys. I remember some of the

guys saying, ‘With Dave it just comes natural. People believe him.’ I would just get them to talk to me, and I mean this without being pompous. But

Armstrong told me afterward, ‘I don’t understand it. He doesn’t like you. Everybody likes you.’ Even Bob Dagitz, who was with us to take his prints,

said, ‘That’s the first time, Dave, I ever saw a suspect not like you.’”

As they questioned Al en, Toschi did most of the talking, stil playing good cop. Al en had an “I’ve seen through your sweet-talking act” look on his

face. Toschi continued to probe. He noticed Al en was wearing a ring with a “Z” on it and the Zodiac watch, a gift for Christmas, 1968. He was

practical y shouting that he was Zodiac. “We have to take your prints,” Toschi told the student. Obviously annoyed, Al en fought against that. Final y,

Dagitz got good fingerprints. He went to a lamp in the corner, and began making comparisons to the prints found on Stine’s cab. They believed

Zodiac had left behind eight points on each of two fingerprints on the taxi. Partial fingerprints usual y contain twelve characteristic points. Al

fingerprints have a delta, which serves as a starting point to tal y the number of friction ridges separating it from the core of the pattern: radial loops,

ulnar loops, arches, tented arches, and whorls. From the symbol numbers assigned to the components, the final classification is evolved. Toschi

knew that less than twelve points of similarity would be subject to an expert’s “opinion” and that fragmentary prints, such as they had, most often

could not be positively matched. He also knew that Dagitz was one of the best print men. Dagitz worked quietly by the lamp in a corner of the trailer.

He wrote down: “0 9 R 001 13/4 18 U 101 13.” Then they went about getting samples of Al en’s handprinting. Toschi had two sheets of paper with

typed sentences supplied by Sherwood Morril . He had been carrying them around for three years. “Sherwood had given us forms when we had the

opportunity, as he put it, ‘to have a strong suspect’ print for us,” recal ed Toschi, “and I had them ready. On the original letters, the ink was quite

dark, as if Zodiac had pressed very, very hard. He was very deliberate in what he was saying. The printing was smal , most of it lower case. Once

you saw one, you would pretty much immediately recognize another as from him.” The detective told Leigh he had to reprint the sentences on the

first page. “We want you to print right- and left-handed and in upper case and lower case,” he said. “We want you to print this list of sentences.”

“You’l notice,” Toschi told me later, “that in the exemplar that Leigh printed for us we had him use a black felt-tipped pen. We thought since we

were going this far, we might as wel do it right. There are only a few companies putting out such inks as he uses. Sherwood had always said that

Zodiac was probably printing right-handed in his letters. I asked another expert [Postal Inspector John Shimoda] later and he felt the same way

—‘the printing was of a right-hand type.’ But Al en was known to be ambidextrous, and I remember him tel ing us that he ‘usual y did things left-

handed, but could use both hands in certain activities.’ Al his family and friends told us positively that Leigh could write, shoot, and shoot bow and

arrow with either hand.”

Toschi showed Al en the phrase “up until now I have kil ed five.” “We want you to just print the way you normal y print,” he said. “I understand you

have some ability with your left hand,” Toschi added. “I don’t do it left-handed,” said Al en. “Who told you that?”

“We know what you can do and what you can’t.”

Al en had been born left-handed and forced to be right-handed in elementary school. Everyone there knew that. He cooperated with the

investigation and wrote handwriting exemplars with both his right and left hands. Al en appeared to have some difficulty writing left-handed. “I can’t,”

he said.

“He is ambidextrous,” thought Toschi. “Do the best you can. Print capital letters, smal letters. Print what we tel you,” said Toschi. Al en didn’t like

that at al . “We had him go from ‘A’ to ‘Z’ and from ‘1 to 10.’”

“Why can’t I print what I want?” he snarled.

Toschi, impatience showing in his voice for the first time, told him, “Because this is what we want you to print.” “The suspect’s right handprinting

and his left handprinting were almost identical,” Toschi told me, “but right-handed his printing was a bit larger. When you see Leigh again you might

pay attention to what hand he uses to write with. Al en appeared to be disturbed as he printed. It was not as neat as samples of his earlier writing.”

Then Toschi asked Al en to print, “This is the Zodiac speaking.”

“What are you making me say? That I’m Zodiac?”

Toschi told him no, and promised if the printing did not match Zodiac’s, they would walk away. “We wil rule you out completely. But we have to be

sure.”

Right-handed, Al en wrote the phrase in large letters. He was obviously altering his printing. But Al en’s printing had that spacey quality found in

the Zodiac letters. Toschi noted, “His printing varied from smal , neat, sloppy, then larger in the Santa Rosa trailer. He printed a bit larger. Zodiac’s

lettering was quite smal .” Toschi laid down Morril ’s second page of quotes. “Print, ‘In answer to your answer for more details about the good times

I had in Val ejo, I shal be very happy to supply even more material.’” he said. Al en copied it faithful y, repeating the word “more.”

Then Al en was ordered to print a phrase from a letter in which Zodiac quoted from memory and paraphrased Gilbert and Sul ivan’s The Mikado.

“Al people who are shaking hands shake hands like that.” The last lines Al en wrote tilted toward the bottom right side of the page, as was common

in Zodiac letters. He also copied, “I am no longer in control of myself.” On December 20, 1969, Zodiac had written: “I am afraid I wil loose control

again and take my nineth & possibly tenth victom.”

But time was running out and the policemen had found no smoking gun inside the trailer connecting Al en to the Zodiac. “Al en seemed to know

what to say,” said Toschi. “Not a dumb man. A very wily man. I’l never forget being in his presence. He mentioned Berryessa. He shook our hands.

We left our cards.

“And I could feel the hatred as we were leaving. He must have been relieved, thinking that ‘I’m not going to get busted,’ but also thinking, ‘Are they

going to come back?’ As I left I said, ‘I’l be seeing you again, Leigh,’ Anything he was planning went on hold. Al en wasn’t cool when we left. There

was a lot of frustration when we left the trailer court.”

The detectives adjourned to the Holiday Inn Coffee Shop at 3345 Santa Rosa Avenue, about six blocks away, to have lunch and discuss the

exploration. It was hot. Toschi could tel Dagitz was pretty depressed. The fingerprint expert put down his cup and said, “The prints on Stine’s cab, if

they were those of Zodiac, do not match Al en’s. It’s a positive no.”

“But,” said Armstrong, “there were so many fingerprints in this public cab, that it is unknown that if, in fact, we have Zodiac’s fingerprints at the

crime scene or not. In some of the letters Zodiac wrote us, he bragged that he put airplane glue on fingers to obliterate any fingerprints.”

“So they have a latent print,” Mulanax later told me. “It’s my own personal opinion there’s a lot of doubt this could be a Zodiac print. You dust a cab

and you’re going to lift some latents off it. Doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the guy who did the job. On the same thing, up in Napa, they have a partial

palm print, but how many people use a public phone booth?”

“When we drove back from Santa Rosa,” said Toschi, “even though we were told we had to have a little bit more, we then went up to see

Sherwood Morril . The refinery where Leigh had worked was not too far from Val ejo. Every time I pass it going up to Sacramento, I’d see the darn

thing and it would bring back memories. I would think, ‘I wish we could close this case.’ This is what was on my mind constantly. Constantly. And I

felt we did.”

In Sacramento a heavyset, scholarly man in a three-piece pinstripe suit greeted them. Morril took the two pages Al en had printed. He studied

them through his thick glasses. That night he would put them under his twin microscope. “Morril , to be honest, shot us down,” Toschi recal ed, “He

phoned and said, ‘Sorry, Dave. There’s just no match. I’m sure you have the right suspect and I’m sure you’re on the right track.’ Sherwood

indicated that the handprinting was similar, but not the Zodiac kil er’s.”

“The thing that impressed me about the handwriting,” Detective Lynch recal ed, “every time I’d take a handwriting sample to Morril , he’d just sit at

his desk and I’d hand it to him and ‘No good.’ He did that I don’t know how many times. Al I know is that when Zodiac was writing these letters, he

was either drinking, smoking pot, or taking some kind of narcotics because it just seemed to me that as he wrote his handwriting would just

deteriorate.”

Terry Pascoe, a Department of Justice Document Examiner, reported to Armstrong. “If the writing had been a product of a mental state,” he said,

“the writing of a subject can be different when in a different mental state, or it could be a case of an intentional deception. With the talents that [Al en]

has, writing with both hands, this could be done.” He later told Detective George Bawart that “a person of high intel igence could study the methods

used to examine handwriting and fool a documents examiner.” Afterward Bawart reported, “Our handwriting expert, Cunningham, confirms that if

Al en had the ability to write with his left hand, this could explain the inability to match the handprinting to Arthur Leigh Al en.”

Armstrong listened intently to Pascoe. “Do not eliminate this subject because of handwriting,” he warned. But Morril , who had examined al the

known writings of Zodiac, told Toschi and Armstrong that he did not feel a mental state would change a person’s handwriting. He was a rival of the

younger Pascoe and the two often differed on opinions. Armstrong was never able to reconcile this problem. It was not unprecedented. Peter

Kurten, the Dusseldorf Ripper, wrote letters reproduced in the same newspaper his wife read each morning. She never recognized the writing as

her husband’s. Kurten’s altered mental state while composing the notes made him a completely different person with a different handwriting. I

wondered if Leigh had other personalities. “By the way, Robert,” Morril confided to me later (November 17, 1980), “I do now note that the printing

that Al en is doing is contrived and not natural to his own.”

Toschi had thought they were real y going to find something. “As soon as we started getting information from the sister-in-law and the brother,” he

said, “I felt Al en was the one. It al sounded just perfect, but we just couldn’t find a way to prove that Leigh Al en was the Zodiac kil er. We had done

everything but stand Arthur Leigh Al en on his head. We found no physical evidence inside the trailer linking Al en to the Zodiac case. Everything he

had, according to his brother and sister-in-law, was in that trailer. We checked the Department of Motor Vehicles. He might have some other

trailers and vehicles not registered. A very shrewd, very wily individual.”

The mistake lay in failing to obtain search warrants for Val ejo (in spite of Al en’s ailing elderly mother) and Santa Rosa. The detectives might

have had the misfortune to search the wrong place. From the inception of the murders, Zodiac had used the multiple-county strategy, striking in

unincorporated sections of Val ejo or areas of confused jurisdiction between sheriffs’ and police departments. Benicia police actual y secured the

Lake Herman Road crime scene until Val ejo sheriff’s men could be brought in. And of course the VPD wanted part of the action. And so did the

Oakland P.D.

If Arthur Leigh Al en was Zodiac, then after the trailer search, he had only to speed to his Val ejo basement and destroy al physical evidence

connecting him with the crimes. And what of Al en’s other trailers? He might have caches in every county Zodiac kil ed in. “We were always

wondering,” said Toschi, “is there another vehicle nearby? We were just wondering if we could find the right one. The right piece of evidence that

says, ‘That’s him. Gotcha.’”

“When Armstrong met with Cheney and I in another meeting,” said Panzarel a, “that’s where I learned about the trailer search. Armstrong’s tel ing

us about dead animals, al the vibrators Leigh had for having sex with himself, dildos and al that stuff. But they stil couldn’t get anything on him. The

more I think, over the course of a lifetime, when I think of the most interesting people I’ve met in my life, Leigh certainly was one of them. And the

more we know about him, the more we know he was certainly capable of doing something like that. You’ve got a smart guy who decides his

contribution to the culture is he’s going murder people in unincorporated areas mostly manned by smal police departments. You know it’s pretty

easy to get away with that if you’re smart. It’s al circumstantial, but who else could it be but Leigh Al en. It frightens me, I’l tel you that.”

And thus the best Zodiac suspect of al had passed every one of the detectives’ tests and they went on to other suspects. So far Zodiac had sent

three pieces of the gray-and-white-striped sports shirt he had torn from Stine after shooting him. Toschi estimated, “That leaves about 120 square

inches of the shirt stil unaccounted for.” At the San Francisco Chronicle, we al awaited the next scrap of bloodied fabric and the horrifying

message wrapped around it.

9

policeman and sailor

Monday, November 13, 1972

But that blood-soaked letter did not arrive. Zodiac had apparently disappeared. But on the Southern California front, Zodiac’s shadow was not

only present, but looming larger. After sleuthing hundreds of hours, the Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department believed they had final y linked

Zodiac to the deaths of Domingos and Edwards.

In July 1971, when Detective Baker of the Major Crimes Unit sent out a statewide Teletype, he’d asked for similars. “Both Bil Armstrong and Mel

Nicolai gave me a cal ,” he told me, “and expressed their suspicions that our case may be linked to Zodiac. Just on the basis of the description I

offered them there was a good possibility Zodiac was responsible. I ended up traveling and talking to most of the investigators in most of the

jurisdictions where the crimes were attributable to Zodiac. And just reviewing their cases and talking with them and they in turn reviewing what I had.

“Mel Nicolai, who I judged to be one of the single most knowledgeable people on al of the cases, told me he felt our case may wel be the work of

Zodiac. If it isn’t, it amazes me how someone could commit murders like those of Linda and Robert and not be heard from before or since. I’ve

worked on other serial-kil ing cases and the psychopathology involved in our case is no different. When the Lake Berryessa circumstances were

described to me, the hair on the back of my neck stood up. I’m sure you can discern the striking similarities.”

Just as in the vicious Berryessa attack, the victims were students, a young couple reclining on a blanket by an isolated shore. A sexual sadist

tends to target members of his own race, often chooses victims with specific occupations or similar characteristics. His apparently random victims

are chosen because they meet some psychological or symbolic need within the murderer’s system of delusions. A sadistic sociopathic kil er like

Zodiac, say FBI profiles, “selects his victims for the purpose of venting certain deeply rooted sexual and sadistic urges, such as the need to mutilate

parts of the victim’s body to achieve sexual satisfaction.” Once he is captured, the kil er’s detailed and grisly confession itself is a brutal assault

thrown in the face of the police.

What if Zodiac was choosing victims who were students like himself? Robert and Linda were targeted because their car on the road above had

attracted a roving kil er who fol owed their path down to the water. In both the Napa and Santa Barbara slayings the attacker brought along a knife, a

gun, and precut lengths of clothesline. And why tie victims he intended to kil ? So he could torture? A serial kil er’s pleasure springs from his ability

to intimidate, command, and exert power over his captive. Terror and the power it brings are a sexual sadist’s trademarks because he feels terror

and is powerless. Such a man as Zodiac kil s those, young couples, who share an intimacy he is incapable of sharing. Gratified by the sight of a

cowering, whimpering hostage, he is al owed by the rope to prolong the kil ing as long as he wishes.

“Both victims were hit in the back (relatively close grouping considering they were running away when hit),” said Baker. That linked Baker’s case

to Zodiac’s Lake Herman Road shootings, also accomplished with accuracy and tight grouping. Zodiac had shot a fleeing woman with deadly

accuracy while racing behind. He had done it in the pitch blackness of a country road.

“On the floor of the shack were two empty fifty-round boxes for Winchester Western Super-X .22 long-rifle cartridges,” said Baker. “Spent casings

had been found along Robert and Linda’s flight path. They had six lands and grooves with a right-hand twist.” Zodiac had used Super X copper-

coated .22 long-rifle ammo in the Lake Herman murders. The double murders had been committed on December 20, 1968, two days after Al en’s

thirty-fifth birthday. The recovered slugs, in good condition, also had a right-hand (clockwise) twist with six lands and six grooves—a “six and six.”

“Stock numbers on the boxes found in the shack could be traced,” Baker explained. “The ammunition lot number was TL 21 or TL 22. Our W-W

ammo was probably purchased at Vandenberg Air Force Base Exchange based on the fact that it was the nearest source for that lot number. The

only store anywhere within a hundred miles that sold it was VAFB. It was determined to a degree of probability to have been purchased there.

However, it could be that the same ammo lot number (metal urgical-common origin/batch) was available at other bases as wel . The usual clerk at

the base exchange at the time was a man named Summers or Sumner. The SAC unit base near Lompoc is less than an hour’s drive from the

crime scene. That was just one more thing that told us that there might be a connection to Zodiac—I was also considering March AFB or Travis

AFB.

“It’s not so much hard evidence that links Zodiac with the double murder here, but the pattern of the slaying. We don’t have any corroborating

fingerprints, bul et or casing marks, or eyewitness observations. If there had been any shoe prints, anything identifiable, I would have jumped on that

just for the possibility because I was aware of the Lake Berryessa case.” The shoes Zodiac wore at Lake Berryessa in September 1969 were sold

through base exchanges only. “Military shoe prints would have been significant. And if there had been anything, I certainly would have remembered

that. Whether or not the Riverside case was a Zodiac kil ing, our case preceded the others by at least three years, far earlier than would be

expected. There appears to be a high degree of probability that this subject is responsible for the double murder in our county. Several significant

similarities between our case and the others, as wel as other evidence, al tend to connect Zodiac with this crime.

“When I last talked to Bil Armstrong at a CHIA conference in San Francisco, he told me he’d never think of the Zodiac murders without including

our case as one of them. I never had contact with Dave Toschi after our initial meeting at their office in 1972. I’ve felt very strongly about it ever

since. It’s not something that goes away over time. It’s the kind of thing that sticks with you.” Baker was the kind of cop who would never give up.

Outside of Jack the Ripper, there had never been a greater uncaught or more elusive monster than Zodiac.

“The very real possibility of a connection of our case to the core Zodiac case,” said Baker, “is the impetus that has brought me to believe that my

decades-old suspicion of our case being the work of Zodiac was not misguided. Not to overstate the role of the Domingos/Edwards case in the

realm of ultimately solving the Zodiac mystery, I wil emphasize again that I firmly believe, within the context of what is probably his first murderous

rampage, that within our case lies the solution.”

Zodiac himself had provided the link between himself and Baker’s case, and had done it in such a devious manner that I only recently tumbled to

it. It took an understanding of Zodiac’s mind-set of mirror images and transparencies to unravel his visual clue. In his letter of June 26, 1970, Zodiac

had circled double-peaked Mount Diablo on a cut section of a Phil ips 66 road map. Apparently, Mount Diablo was important to him—its elevation

of 3849 feet cal ing to mind that Stine died in front of 3898 Washington, an address Zodiac himself chose. The map, coupled with a two-line code

at the bottom, supposedly told where his bomb was set. On July 24, he dropped another clue. “PS.,” he wrote. “The Mt. Diablo Code concerns

Radians [a mathematical term representing an angle of measure] &#inches along the radians.” Mt. Diablo is a bench mark used by the U.S.

Geographical Survey to separate north, south, east, and west—the towns connected by a 57-degree radian. The map also mentioned something a

pilot might use—“magnetic north.” An “F”-shaped symbol coupled with a backward “7” appeared twice on his threatening Hal oween card to Avery.

“F” stood for wind speed and direction—north at fifteen to twenty miles an hour. The complete symbol was also an exact copy of a cattle brand used

on Fred Harmon’s Pagosa Springs, Colorado, ranch. Harmon’s comic strip cowboy hero, Red Ryder, was a highly recognizable salesman for air

rifles during the 1940s and ’50s.

“Zodiac’s Mt. Diablo code is a binary spacing code,” an expert told me. “The top line is the alpha line, the bottom line is the beta line. This code

uses Greek letters, which are to be used as numbers. Example: Alpha=1, and Beta=2. Delta=4. The code operates by the key code letter, and

upside-down Greek Gamma, Gamma=3. Therefore, to start this code, you ‘ask’ the code key questions, like: Who are you, what is your message?”

But the map said something entirely different, something visual.

First, I knew that Leigh loved Mad magazine and that the Zodiac code of April 20, 1970 (“My name is—”) could read “ALFRED E NEU-MAN”

when deciphered. “By the way have cracked the last cipher I sent you?” he asked in the same letter. Cracked magazine was Mad’s chief

competitor. Since May 1964, Mad had featured a visual puzzle on its inside back cover, a “Fold-In.” The instructions read: “Fold this section over

left, then fold back so ‘A’ meets ‘B.’” I folded the map so that the ruled corners met at the right edge. Then held the map up to the light so that the

back shone through. The crossed circle with an arrow at the twelve o’clock position pointed to the exact site of the Domingos/ Edwards murders.

Below Mount Diablo, Leigh began to sail again, losing himself in a seemingly endless thousand-mile maze, the Delta. The huge tideland marsh,

fed by the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers, was diked with countless levees for flood control. Yet Al en never real y lost himself in those twisting

channels. A point of reference, Mount Diablo, constantly towered in the distance—the amount of acreage visible from its peak second only to that

seen from Mount Kilimanjaro. With his flat feet, Al en felt most at home on the water or in the air.

“Big” Dan Blocker, 350-pound star of the Bonanza television western, had died suddenly during the previous summer. Al en ceased wearing his

enormous white cowboy hat. He could no longer be “Hoss.”

Tuesday, November 21, 1972

An anniversary of sorts—three years earlier, David Odel Martin came to the FBI’s attention when he slashed his wife and eleven-year-old

daughter with a broken bottle and knife. Just before police fatal y shot him, Martin shouted, “I’m the Zodiac kil er!” Armstrong immediately informed

the FBI: “Martin is definitely not identical with UNSUB in this matter.” Toschi told me, “In the first four years of the Zodiac case, I would say about

fifteen men have told cops throughout the country that they are Zodiac. Some of them were drunk at the time, some had obvious mental problems,

the rest were being booked on other charges and were seeking publicity.” When cranks weren’t confessing, rumors took the place of new leads in

the investigation. One such attributed an undertaker’s murder and theft of his embalming fluids to Zodiac.

In Santa Rosa, thirteen-year-old Lori Lee Kursa went shopping at the U-Save Market with her mother. Blue-eyed, long blond hair parted in the

middle, she was distinctively dressed in polished-denim bel -bottoms, a brown leather jacket, and brown suede cowboy boots. Around 5:30 P.M.

she apparently wandered off. Half an hour later, Lori was observed briefly by a family friend, Barbara, in the same market, but after that nothing

more was seen of her. Immediately, her mother reported her missing. The search dragged on through November and into the first week of

December, but police unearthed no leads. “You know what was strange about our victims?” Santa Rosa Sergeant Steve Brown later told me. “The

first one he threw in the ditch was found by bike riders the next day, so he decided, ‘I better hide them a little bit better.’ Then he ended up throwing

them out by Franz Val ey and it’s pretty remote. You would need to know that area. You don’t just drive there. I recently re-drove it. Of course if the

kil er lived here and drove around a lot he would know. I’m thinking about a guy who’s living in Lake County or Napa County who traveled that road

back and forth and who worked over here. If you are going out of Santa Rosa, the dumps are al on the left side of the roadway. You wouldn’t pul

your car over to the left side, facing the wrong way, to dump a body. He’s not going to park on the right side, drag the person across the road and

throw them. It doesn’t make sense. I was thinking, just like you, he goes out, there’s a shed, trailer or barn that he uses. And after they’re dead, when

he comes back, he’s now on the right side of the roadway. That’s when he stops and dumps them and then goes back into Santa Rosa.”

On December 12, a hiker, Lex Moore, stumbled across Kursa’s body in a ravine, about fifty-five feet from Calistoga Road. She had been

dumped at the scene completely nude and her body had frozen from the extreme cold. Police estimated she had been dead only a week, though

she had been missing for three ful weeks. She had been kept alive “somewhere,” but they had no suspects.

Someone had broken her neck, dislocating her first and second cervical vertebra. “Strangulation,” Stanford’s Dr. Lunde explained to me, “is not

like shooting someone with a gun. It involves a kind of muscular tension . . . the sensations that come from that play a part in the sexual aspect of

these people for which sex and aggression seem to be intertwined. It is also a way of proving to the person their power over the victim. Assertion of

raw power, and since that is a big part of the enjoyment for these people, it is prolonged by strangulation. . . . I know one such person who very

consciously, more than one, at least two, have volunteered they would take twenty, thirty minutes to strangle victims to prolong the pleasure so to

speak.”

Kursa’s unusual clothes were missing. She had not been sexual y assaulted. Unsuspected by the police, the solution to another mystery lay only

one hundred yards away. There, a shal ow grave in a ravine near the roadway concealed Jeanette Kamahele’s corpse—her hands and ankles

bound to her neck and white clothesline wrapped around her neck four times. But because the area was deeply wooded, police failed to find her

and would not for many years—not until July 6, 1979.

Thursday, December 28, 1972

At four in the afternoon, twenty days after a freakish snow dusted Twin Peaks and Golden Gate Park, two men discovered the bones of Maureen

Lee Sterling and Yvonne Weber. They were off a rural road 2.2 miles north of Porter Creek Road in the Franz Val ey Road area. A powerful

murderer, to avoid leaving tracks, had bodily lifted the corpses over shrubs and a ditch, then hurled them down a sixty-six-foot embankment.

Apparently, he considered his victims as rubbish to be dumped.

Cause of death and any sexual assault were impossible to determine, but patterns linked the homicides to the others. The kil er had murdered

them elsewhere and kept their clothes. And the kil er tied knots like a seaman. How would those knots match up with those in the Santa Barbara

murders—granny knots and marline hitches? The victims had been abducted in this rotating order: on Friday, Saturday, Tuesday, Friday, Saturday,

and Tuesday. Al vanished around 5:00 P.M. in a period of growing darkness. Al had been found in the rural, semi-isolated eastern section of

Sonoma County near lakes, rivers, ditches, and streams. The Santa Rosa crimes were water-related by name: Mark Springs, Calistoga (Water),

Creek Val ey. The furthest point between discovery sites was sixteen miles. Sterling, Weber, and Carolyn Davis, with a seven-month gap, were

found in the exact same spot—2.2 miles north of Porter Creek Road on Franz Val ey Road. However, Kim Al en may have been sexual y assaulted

and that did not fit Zodiac’s pattern.

“As far as the murders go,” continued Baker. “I was almost thinking a postman or PG&E guy just because of the places that they go. The last girl

that was found was in a very remote creek. It’s not a place where you can dump them off the side of the road and they land there. The three on Franz

Val ey Road were found in the same location along the side of the road. You don’t have to throw far to get where they landed. The last one we had in

the creek, I don’t know how the hel he got her in there.”

Several months earlier, officers on the way to the Santa Rosa area that a kil er had used as a dumping ground for murdered Santa Rosa coeds

had stopped in their tracks. Walking down the road toward them and from the secluded murder area was Arthur Leigh Al en. “I travel this road to go

skin-diving,” he said. In the same direction Al en visited two friends at Clear Lake. “Leigh always picked up hitchhikers especial y while attending

Santa Rosa JC and Sonoma State University,” a source told me. “This always bothered my mother. He picked hikers up on the highways. I

remember the two girls disappearing from the skating rink and the other murders. Those bodies discovered on Franz Val ey Road and in Calistoga

weren’t far from my parents’ home.”

Friday, December 29, 1972

Since August 4, 1971, when police questioned Leigh for what they erroneously believed was the first time, Zodiac had sent no letters. But we

hardly needed more clues from the kil er. We already knew a lot about Zodiac. He could be caught if we put our minds to it. Al the early suspects

were singled out because their handprinting was like Zodiac’s or they resembled the composite sketch. Few were as tal or heavy as the kil er

actual y was; some were slender as a boy.

Zodiac had three qualities, had to have these qualities—he was strong and he was smart and he possessed specialized technical proficiency in

code, chemistry, firearms, engineering, electronics, and bomb-making. More tel ing, Zodiac knew forensics, leaving behind false clues and wearing

glue on his fingertips. In fact his marksmanship skil s, knowledge of police I.D. techniques, and use of Highway Patrol cutoff maneuvers to box in his

victims pointed to Zodiac being a policeman. Two victims had been reaching for their licenses when he blinded them with a flashlight and

unleashed a fusil ade of bul ets.

And yet Zodiac was compel ed to deride police in his letters, the thril of baiting them becoming a powerful motive in his game of outdoor chess.

He taunted authority as if striking out against a control ing figure in his daily life—a boss, a father, or a policeman. Serial sadists, enraptured with

the various tools of police work and with policemen themselves, were frequently police groupies. Some sexual sociopaths dressed in uniform when

trapping and torturing their victims, often applied for police work, or expressed a desire to work in some law enforcement capacity. Invariably they

would offer aid in the hunt for themselves. The known serial kil ers were remarkably alike.

FBI agent John Douglas’s psychological profile of the Atlanta child murderer spoke volumes. He said the kil er “would live in the area, sometimes

pose as a police officer, show extreme interest in media coverage of the case, and have difficulty relating to members of the opposite sex. In fact,

children who lived near [the suspect Wayne] Wil iams thought he was a policeman because he drove cars that looked like police cars, showed

them a badge, and ordered them around.” Wil iams monitored police-band radio, just as California multiple murderer Ed Kemper did. Kemper

frequented a local bar to become pals with off-duty policemen. “He showed me his gun and his handcuffs right here in the bar,” recal ed the

bartender. “He handcuffed a friend and shoved him up against the wal . . . . You see, Kemper always wanted to be a policeman. Al his friends were

cops. He used to talk about it al the time . . . said he had been hired as a security guard somewhere in the Bay Area—but he was only a big guy

who sometimes worked as a gas station attendant.” After slaying his mother, the Santa Cruz giant left a note behind, ridiculing his former friends on

the force.

Ted Bundy used a gold badge and handcuffs to masquerade as “Officer Roseland” at a Salt Lake City shopping center. One of the “Hil side

Stranglers,” Kenneth Bianchi, had wanted to be an L.A. policeman, even taken a police science course at a Rochester community col ege. When

cops apprehended Bianchi in Bel ingham, Washington, he was enrol ed as a deputy in the sheriff’s reserve training program. His white, late-model

auto with silver spotlights mounted on both sides resembled a police car. Inside his black attaché case he carried a highway patrolman’s badge

and cuffs.

John Wayne Gacy, as a youth, dressed in the policelike uniform of his local civil defense squad. Fascinated by the trappings of law enforcement,

he obsessively fixed upon James Hanley, a detective with the hit-and-run unit. Gacy became “Jack” Hanley, a brutal, muscular homicide cop who

existed only in his mind. Jack, “a devoted hater of homosexuals,” was the savage, sadistic cop that Gacy both admired and feared. When Gacy

was drunk or stoned, his alter ego assumed control and committed the acts a sober Gacy never could.2 Because Jack had been in charge, Gacy

suppressed the details of his crimes. He forgot the acts he had committed on the boys he buried in the wal s of his house. Fantasy Detective Jack

made nightly forays into the seamy sections of town, cruising slowly in an old black Oldsmobile, radio scanner squawking, spotlight and red lights

rotating. Dressed in a leather jacket, trousers, and highway patrolman’s shoes, Gacy picked up boys and handcuffed them. Some psychiatrists

analyzed Zodiac as being at least “a latent homosexual to whom bul ets and knives afforded perverse satisfaction.”

Dr. Lunde warned to look for a suspect who had a col ection of guns and early interest in guns, knives, and various instruments of torture. “As an

adult,” Lunde wrote in Murder and Madness, “a col ection of such instruments, proficiency in their use, and an emotional attraction to weapons may

be seen which goes far beyond that of any ordinary col ector.” Serial kil ers wil become incredibly skil ful in their use. Whenever Zodiac’s lair was

uncovered and a search made, I was certain huge numbers of weapons would be present—guns, bombs, or the “Death Machine” Zodiac bragged

about. Had Arthur Leigh Al en—like Wil iams, Bianchi, Kemper, Bundy, and Gacy—once wanted to be a policeman?

He had.

On May 2, 1952, Al en, then nineteen, sought employment with the Val ejo Police Department. They turned him down. “He applied right out of high

school to be a Val ejo cop,” a source explained, “and they said no. Therefore he had a very good reason for hating the Val ejo Police Department—

rejection.” Al en offered his heart to the law again much later. On June 11, 1964, he was a non-certified personnel applicant at the Watsonvil e

Police Department. Watsonvil e spurned him too. Sometimes it seemed everyone did. “Wel , there you go,” said Toschi. “A guy who is a ‘wannabe’

cop and cannot make it, hates al cops. It’s been proven. They hate any authority figure after that because they couldn’t pass whatever tests were

necessary.”

Chicago clairvoyant Joe DeLouise, who felt tuned into Zodiac’s mind, agreed. “The person who created Zodiac was somebody very familiar with

law enforcement,” he said. “I think he was an ex-cop. In his letters to the police he knew everything that was going on with the police. He knew his

victims. I feel he wil kil until he is caught.” Had Leigh, like Kemper, gotten close to the police and learned about the impending search of his trailer?

California Highway Patrolman Lynn Lafferty had been Leigh’s childhood friend, and possibly Al en may have wanted to emulate him. Lafferty had

been anxiously searching for Zodiac on his own.

Leigh had been an occasional teacher at Travis AFB, where Wing Walker shoes were sold at the base exchange. He qualified for exchange

privileges on several counts—as a dependent of a Navy commander, an employee, and as a former Navy man. Naval enlistments ran from four to

six years (with thirty days leave each year), but Leigh served only from 1956 to 1958. I was told why. “Al en was in the military—in the Navy,” the

daughter of a woman Leigh once dated platonical y told me. “What led to his being discharged was his arrest by the Val ejo Police Department for

disturbing the peace [on June 15, 1958]. He had gotten into a fight with a friend [Ralph Spinel i]. He went into the Navy in 1956, was in there two

years, and less-than-honorably discharged—a cheap way to get rid of someone you don’t want. I think Leigh Al en was trying to become a frogman

in the Navy. For either psychological or physical reasons they would not accept him into the program for deep diving or being on the submarines for

long lengths of time. My mother remembers this as a very, very large disappointment for him. I believe he did have an intense dislike for his father

because of his militaristic attitude. I believe that when my mother was ever at his house, he had to address his father as ‘sir.’ Perhaps his father’s

influence had something to do with this also. My mother felt this period of time had a great influence on his life.”

Though civil charges were dismissed on July 8, 1958, Al en received a “less than honorable discharge” from the Navy late that year. One of the

ancil ary reasons for his expulsion was that he had again left weapons in plain sight in his car. From 1959 on he listed his draft status as “Non-

finished active duty and reserve time, USN.” Because of the police, Al en’s greatest ambitions would never be realized. He would never become a

Navy Seal or submarine commander or cop. By the end of 1972 Al en had at least five reasons for hating the police—his rejections by Val ejo and

Watsonvil e P.D., VPD’s arrest of him and resulting Navy discharge, his firing from the refinery, and the humiliating search of his trailer. If he were

Zodiac, he had a sixth reason to despise cops—SFPD had nearly captured him.

In the Navy Al en had worked on a refrigerator ship, mostly scraping and painting hul s in the bright California light. “Leigh was also an excel ent

marksman in the Navy,” my Val ejo source verified, “one of the best in his group. Additional y, he often wrote to my mother and used the signals

used by the flags at the bottom of the letters [Zodiac symbols in the letter codes could be matched to various semaphore flags]. Yet she burned the

letters after her knowledge of Leigh later being sent to Atascadero.”

He had even taken training in code. Zodiac had a masterful knowledge of code. “He did know code, and not only sewed wel but was a sail

maker,” said a source. The neat stitching on the hood worn by Zodiac at Berryessa suggested a man who could sew. It was doubtful Zodiac could

ask anyone else to sew him an executioner’s hood. Leigh not only learned aquatic scuba diving during his Navy stint, but briefly worked as a wire

operator, third-class radioman. Napa Captain Narlow was convinced that whoever Zodiac was, he also had technical knowledge of a #15 Teletype

transmitter—he had duplicated its circuitry on one of his bomb plans and an early note attributed to him had been on Teletype paper.

“The plans for Zodiac’s bomb came from [the schematic of a] UP 15 teleprinter,” an expert told me. “I also noticed that in his schematic

diagrams, he properly draws ‘jumpers’ over two intersecting lines. I think these are the best clues for finding the Zodiac and that there is more than

a fifty percent probability that he was an amateur radio operator (also known as ‘hams’). First, operators who used RTTY (Radio Teletype) used

these surplus machines. . . . Secondly, the simple fact that he uses ‘jumpers’ on his schematic diagram tel s me he has more than just a passing

knowledge of electronics, which hams must master . . . other possible alternatives are Navy and Coast Guard personnel such as electronic techs

and radiomen.”

The relationship between heavy Leigh Al en and his slender father was complex. The strongest Navy influence came from the father. Ethan

Warren Al en, a wel -known, highly decorated Naval commander and pilot, was born April 6, 1903, in Meade, Kansas, the son of George M. Al en

and Cora Woodard, both of Kansas. Leigh’s father, a twenty-five-year Val ejo resident, put in twenty-four years of service in Hawaii and on Treasure

Island in San Francisco Bay. In his retirement, Ethan became a draftsman for the City of Val ejo. When he married Bernice Hanson of California,

they had two sons, Arthur Leigh and Ronald Gene. Ethan passed on a love of hunting, flying, and sailing to both, but his elder son, Leigh, took it

most to heart.

It was no coincidence that Leigh hunted, had a pilot’s license, and sailed. But after his plane crash, Ethan, no longer the vibrant and confident

officer he had once been, could not curb’s Leigh’s outbursts and abuse of Bernice. The death of his stern father set Al en free, but the earlier jet

crack-up had given him license to pursue his desires. In this home, dominated by a strong-wil ed woman, the father, Ethan, became a shadow in the

years before his death. Ethan died of carcinoma of the prostate with metastases on March 17, 1971.

January 4, 1971, two months before Al en’s father died, an anonymous letter came to the paper:

“If you are game print the fol owing letter. An open letter to The Zodiac. You need no explosives for your big blast, just go to the nearest

Police station and tel the truth about the man who has made a kil er out of you, your father who has been getting away with famous American

crimes since 1947 and is now an expert at giving kil ing lessons. Once you asked ‘What wil they do to me?’ You wil be placed in a mental

institution which is better than a session with a double edge sword or a shot in the back because after the conviction of the scapegoats for your

father’s murders with your help, he wil have to take care of you since you have been placing a dent into his good reputation by duplicating his

murders.” The typed letter went on to talk about an older brother. “Think about the big noses you could rub so many big boo-boos, it is fantastic.

. . . You could also clear up a little mystery. If two people with only their hands tied do not run out to seek help, is it not because they are already

in the process of being kil ed by two men. . . .”

Father and son kil ing alongside one another? An odd theory and an even odder fantasy.

Something certainly had happened in Zodiac’s life during the month of March 1971. After a six-month gap, Zodiac had penned two letters—

March 13 to the Times and another on March 22 to the Chronicle. The first used the phrase “don’t bury me . . .” and the second depicted a man

digging with a shovel.

Ethan lingered in the Oakland Naval Hospital for seventeen days. As Al en’s dad was dying, he was hospitalized in the 94566 postal district, the

same ZIP code from which Zodiac mailed his letter to the L.A. Times. The two threatening March letters might have been Zodiac’s panicky stab at

anonymous immortality. I recal ed how old-fashioned Zodiac’s clothes had been—pleated pants pointed to an older man, or someone wearing an

older man’s clothing. The Zodiac costume was real y only Navy dress, his appearance only that of a sailor: close-cut hair, shined shoes, bel -

bottoms, dark navy-blue jacket. Had Al en, out of hatred or love, dressed in his father’s clothes to do his kil ing as Zodiac? But Ethan, unlike his son,

had been a slender man and Leigh, because of his size, could never have worn his father’s Naval costume.

Sergeants Lynch and Lundblad had interviewed Al en from the first, Lynch more than once. Each time Al en pointed to his scuba gear or smiled

his watery smile. His alibi was that he had gone diving alone or with people whose names he did not know at “Fort Point” or “Bodega Bay.” On the

outskirts of Val ejo the quarries and creeks, ponds and lakes ran stil , cold, and deep, holding who knows what secrets and mementos. The

weapons police sought might even lie beneath the frigid clear waters of Lake Berryessa.

Sources speculated that Zodiac had financial resources because he “purchased any number of guns, attended theater, saw numerous films,

read multiple newspapers, overposted his letters, and had the luxury of free time in the summer and many cars and residences.” Others speculated

that Zodiac was either rich or received money from relatives or a trust fund. Leigh Al en’s family had some money; police had known that from the

first.

10

the devil

Tuesday, March 6, 1973

Though eight months had dragged by since Toschi and Armstrong ransacked his trailer, Al en knew he was stil under scrutiny. He owned a

police scanner and listened in on Val ejo police staking out his basement from a block away. But for large stretches of time he was unobserved.

The Zodiac case was simply too immense, the pool of suspects too enormous, and manpower stretched too far for unbroken surveil ance to be

feasible. And there were hundreds of other suspects. One of Zodiac’s chief hunters, Dave Toschi, was often sidetracked by il ness or suddenly

diverted from his pursuit by other tasks.

“We were not only working on Zodiac when it came our week to go on cal ,” Toschi told me, “but catching other cases. That particular week we

had four. The night before we had a fireman stabbed to death out in the Haight. I was so exhausted because we had to go into the office on

Saturday and I had nothing to eat but animal crackers and cold coffee. Then I dropped into bed about 8:30 P.M. An hour later the phone rang. I was

barely able to get out of bed—punchy—a headache, but I had to get up. We had another one.”

Mayor Joe Alioto also handpicked Toschi as a special investigator for the San Francisco Criminal Grand Jury on March 6, 1973, the first such

assignment since a 1936 scandal. Alioto wanted Toschi to probe two riots and two fires at the San Bruno main county jail. Chief Don Scott and

Chief of Inspectors Charlie Barca cal ed Toschi in. “The mayor wants you to take statements at the county jail.” “This real y stinks,” said Toschi. “I

don’t want to get involved, Chief.” “You’ve been ordered. You’re on loan, Toschi, as of tomorrow morning. And keep quiet about your findings.”

“And I did,” Toschi told me. “I worked alone to investigate the recent uprising at the county jail. The department was in terrible, terrible shape.”

Toschi’s assistance was invaluable. James Rodman, Grand Jury foreman, wrote Chief Scott that the SFPD was “indeed fortunate to have persons

of Inspector Toschi’s calibre as a member of its staff. It would have been impossible to carry out our assigned duties were it not for his assistance.”

Leigh Al en put his experience as a Union Oil chemist to use. His new job with Union Richfield in the East Bay al owed him time to settle down

evenings in front of his trailer. He was a likable man when he chose to be (his staunch and unshakeable Fresno Street defenders, the children who

thought he was a cowboy star, his drinking buddies, al were proof of that). These days, though, he carried a grim set to his mouth. He stil had not

forgiven the ransacking of his trailer or the oil refinery visit that got him fired. He stood in an arid patch of gravel, drinking a Coors, leaning back

against the stil -hot metal of his trailer, and watching autos rushing by on Santa Rosa Avenue. Droning like insects, the cars spun away, turning the

bend toward remote Franz Val ey Road. Crickets chirped. A warm westerly shrouded the court. He faced west, rocking on his heels, and peered

beyond two pink flamingos listing drunkenly in the gravel. Between their metal legs echoed the tumultuous roar of traffic on 101, which ran paral el to

Santa Rosa Avenue.

Leigh shuffled inside, where he had unlimited time to brood and to hate the SFPD. When he wasn’t working, diving, or hunting, he sought

diversions. Each year he attended the Scottish Games with his mother. But he missed the family dinners. “My mother longed for a happy family life,”

said a friend of Leigh’s. “I think she enjoyed going to Leigh Al en’s house because it appeared to be such a ‘nice family.’ Everyone had nice table

manners, and I think Leigh’s mother decorated the house very wel —that type of thing. It only goes to show you you can’t go by what’s on the

surface.” Leigh continued to attend Sonoma State Col ege, majoring in biological sciences and working toward a master’s in mammalogy /biology.

He had minored in chemistry, and had already earned a degree in botany and elementary education on the G.I. Bil in 1971. Learning came easy to

him. Life did not.

Tuesday, July 31, 1973

Just around that bend from Al en’s trailer and down the country road, 2.2 miles north of Porter Creek on Franz Val ejo Road and down a familiar

wooded slope, bodies continued to be found. Caroline Davis was discovered in the exact spot as Sterling and Weber. It could not be determined if

Davis had been sexual y molested. Zodiac had threatened to experiment with different ways to kil people, and it appeared he or someone else

was doing just that.

Her body exhibited signs of tetanus, such as rigid muscles, indicating strychnine poisoning. Death from strychnine is similar to that from lock-jaw,

but more rapid—about fifteen minutes. Because of the irritating action of the poison on the spinal cord, muscular twitchings lead to generalized

convulsions that become so intense the spine arches. The body’s entire weight is borne on the heels and back. Final y, the skin darkens to gray-

blue and respiration ceases. Sergeant Brown wasn’t so sure Davis had been poisoned. “It’s kinda like when we get lab results on our autopsies of

a guy who has a lethal dose of amphetamines in him,” he said much later. “If the guy is a chronic crank user a lethal dose to him and me are going

to be total y different. As for strychnine poisoning, the state lab told me there’s a hal ucinogenic mushroom that creates strychnine or a derivative of

strychnine when it’s in your body. Basical y, it’s like when a junkie uses heroin it becomes morphine in his body. It doesn’t necessarily mean this girl

was poisoned; it means that she had probably taken these mushrooms. It doesn’t mean that poison kil ed her, but it might have been a contributing

factor. She also had a good ligature mark on her neck.”

Wednesday, October 24, 1973

Zodiac’s symbols were always open to diverse interpretations. His crosshair symbol, used in targeting nuclear bombs, led police to quiz a

nuclear weapons expert stationed at Travis AFB. His other signs represented weather symbols to a pilot, silver hal marks to a jeweler, and

something else entirely to a postman at the North Station Post Office in White Plains. “I spotted a Zodiac cryptogram in the New York News,” he

explained to me. “After showing the three lines to several other postal employees, they al agreed that the symbols in the cryptogram were the same

twenty-five symbols used in the Civil Service Post Office examination.” Zodiac’s symbol could also represent the astrological Southern Cross

inscribed in an el ipse.

Chemistry formulas and symbols danced through Zodiac’s letters. That the bombs he diagrammed were chemical bombs had not been lost on

Toschi. Leigh Al en was an East Bay chemist. The previous April, the entire region had been jolted when a chemical plant there exploded. Physicist

John Dalton’s icons for types of elements and their atomic weights resembled Zodiac code symbols—hydrogen: a circle with a dot at its center and

sulfur: a crossed circle—the kil er’s personal signet. The aroma of sulfur and brimstone persistently clung to Zodiac. One could almost hear the

clatter of cloven hooves.

At the stroke of midnight the Devil made his appearance in the Zodiac case. A San Francisco man, attending a nude rock dance of the Venus

Psychedelic Church on Third Avenue, arrived dressed as Satan. As he approached a group of four nude men, one was leading a discussion about

Zodiac. “Zodiac must be some sort of devil or fiend,” interjected the costumed devil. The man discoursing about “Mr. Zodiac” wheeled suddenly and

pointed a finger at him. “YOU ARE THE ZODIAC!” he shouted. The red devil smiled, blushed beneath the red dye staining his face, and replied, “I

am Satan incarnate.” He moved on. However, the man fol owed and drew Satan aside. “I am the Zodiac, you fool,” he hissed, “and I made a point of

outfoxing the police and newspapers. I have kil ed many more than have ever been identified as Zodiac kil ings.”

“Is this because Zodiac has already kil ed twelve of the astrological Zodiac signs?” said Satan uneasily.

“I have kil ed more than thirty-seven,” said the burly but good-looking stranger. He now seemed, the devil recal ed, “cool, calm, col ected . . . an

OK, normal, 100 percent Al -American Guy, sound as he could be.” “Most of my victims are unknown,” he continued, “and never even linked to

Zodiac. It’s just a game like Monopoly, chess or checkers or bridge. I enjoy kil ing people as a game between myself and the police. Kil ing to me

means no more than flicking ashes.” The man rushed away with a pale, thin-lipped woman. The reveler never saw either again. Oddly enough, a

future letter from Zodiac on January 30, 1974 (the last time he gave a specific figure) claimed almost the same number of victims—thirty-seven.

“We continued to get tips on Satan worshippers and astrology freaks throughout the investigation,” Toschi said. Zodiac’s arcane symbols drew

wild theories, even threats against those involved in the occult. Satanist Anton Szandor La Vey, master of the Church of Satan, publisher of The

Cloven Hoof and The Satanic Bible, received a death threat from someone who thought he might be Zodiac. Because of the astrology angle,

witchcraft symbols, and satanic black robes (the “Code Kil er’s” grisly executioner’s costume had obvious ties to the Black Mass), La Vey himself

had once been a suspect. Immediately, he sent the letter over to Avery at the Chronicle.

“Dear Satan . . . Now women lay in the streets in your Devil control. But of course al things come to ends . . . forces are working against you.

My fight against you has been going on for many generations with little success. This real y bothers me, Satan, to no end! You can choose your

choice of weapons, but I prefer knives. . . . I wish more than anything to have your blood on my sword.”

“He prefers knives,” thought the journalist. He rang fel ow reporter Dave Peterson for his opinion on the threat. “And knives are used in rituals,”

Peterson told Avery, “which brings me to black magician Aleister Crowley’s ceremonial hooded robe. Crowley’s robe, used in arcane rituals, was

emblazoned with the Rose and Cross of the Secret Order of the Golden Dawn—a crossed circle.” If Zodiac was part of a satanic cult sacrificing

victims in accordance with the phases of the moon and religious holidays, that might explain everything. How else could Zodiac drive so many

different cars, kil over a sizable geographical area, come in so many shapes and sizes, and write letters in different handwriting styles? The hand

of Satan had to figure somewhere in the mystery.

“Satanism—possibly,” said Zodiac buff David Rice. “Satanism is a more fruitful area.” Zodiac used inverted words, the number thirteen, Sartor

Crosses, and Black Mass phrases. He employed astrology and numerology and drew evil eyes and bloody crosses. His triangles (representing the

Holy Trinity) were turned upside down. I had heard tales of the Blue Rock Springs victim’s interest in the occult—“a candle and skul in her San

Francisco apartment,” said her sister, “witchcraft in the Virgin Islands where she had gone skin diving on her honeymoon,” and “a Val ejo satanic

cult.”

Later on October 24, Dr. Gilbert Hol oway, an ESP expert, was interviewed by Jack Carney on KSFO Radio. “I have a possible leaning that the

kil er’s name is something like Cul en, Col in, or Cal en,” Hol oway said. He spel ed the names out. “I see a detective with an Italian name—

something like Banducci or Sanducci, tackling the Zodiac. But he has poison on his body like Herman Goering and does not expect to be taken

alive. . . . Zodiac has some acquaintance with the First Church of Satan in San Francisco. He is under largely Satanic influence.”

Satan caught the interest of the California Department of Justice too. Their 1971 report from Napa read:

“Because of Zodiac’s letter talking about the afterlife and ‘slaves in paradice,’ the Department of Justice focused on people in groups who

had these weird beliefs and they were able to eliminate everybody including al male members of the Manson family.”

“[Zodiac] has an evil deity with him who advises him,” an acknowledged mystic explained. “I saw it when I was in that card shop on Market

Street.” To give weight to his comments, the seer included copies of his psychic resume and a letter from the Premonitions Registry in New York.

Peter Hurkos, consulting psychic on the Boston Strangler and Sharon Tate murders, received threats from Zodiac while he was in Palm Springs.

He offered his services to the SFPD to help catch Zodiac (in exchange for a plane ticket to San Francisco), but they turned him down.

“Did Leigh ever discuss an afterlife?” I asked Cheney much later. “What were his feelings?”

“Victims to be slaves in the afterlife,” replied Cheney tersely.

Monday, December 13, 1973

A broad-shouldered man continued to stalk the marshes, quarries, and lagoons along Lake Herman Road. Winds from the west stirred fields of

brittle grass. As evening fel , he stood motionless—indistinguishable from surrounding rocks. The same setting sun that colored the boulders gold

enlivened his impassive face. Meanwhile, in San Francisco the wait was maddening. Thirty-four months had passed since Zodiac’s last letter.

Why? Zodiac was al we talked about, al we thought about.

Over on Bryant Street, Toschi fished out a Zodiac letter received that morning. “I assume the writer wants me to think he is Zodiac,” he said with a

sigh. “He uses an Oakland address as a return, but the Oakland police building has a zip code of 94607. However, the writer has the San

Francisco Hal of Justice code correct, 94103. The word ‘HOMICIDE’ on the envelope is written by a clerk in our mail room.” He held it to the light

and squinted. “Notice the obvious crossed t’s and the dots over the i’s. Notice the paper size is 8½ by 11, and a legal-size envelope, different from the odd size of the Zodiac letters. This size envelope and size of paper is consistent with the stationery given inmates in the county jail or in prison.

It is different from the Zodiac letters and has a different watermark. Another hoax! As far as phony Zodiac writers, the number would be more like,

what, Bil ? Fifty so far?”

Something about Zodiac led to imitation: first hoax letters, then attempted murder, and final y homicide. For ten days in May 1973, a Richmond

teacher had been bombarded by menacing cal s from a sobbing man identifying himself as Zodiac. “I’m going to kil the lady in the blue house,” he

told the teacher. “I went to a Martinez school in search of victims, but left because the police were there.” Afterward, the teacher discovered his

back door had been pried open by a prowler. Shaken, he went to the refrigerator. Absentmindedly, he took a swig from an open bottle of cola. A

metal ic taste fil ed his mouth and he quickly spat the drink out. Someone had added a lethal dose of arsenic.

Another Zodiac copycat nearly severed noted lamp designer Robert Salem’s head with a long, thin-bladed knife. Homicide Inspectors Gus

Coreris and John Fotinos, cal ed to his posh workshop behind the San Franciscan Hotel, discovered his mutilated body on a bloody mat. In the

victim’s own blood, the kil er printed on his body and the wal , “Satan Saves—ZODIAC.” Salem’s murder was solved in a horrible way. South of Big

Sur, a Highway Patrolman pul ed over two young Wyoming men driving the car of a young social worker found floating in the Yel owstone River. His

heart, head, and limbs had been severed as if in ritual sacrifice. “I have a problem,” one of the men told the officer. “I am a cannibal.” Both were

carrying wel -gnawed human finger bones in their pockets.

Like Zodiac, Paul Avery typed on a manual typewriter, had intimate knowledge of the Chronicle and police techniques, and wore Wing Walker

shoes. Like Leigh Al en, Avery had been born in the thirties in Honolulu and raised in a military family as the son of a career Naval officer. He had

his own theories about Zodiac. “He might be some sort of merchant seaman,” Avery told me, “because for long intervals we don’t hear from him.

For some reason Zodiac’s grown cautious. Whether or not ‘Zode’s’ in prison or has simply stopped kil ing, I stil have to contend with this—” He

snatched up a particularly vicious copycat letter:

“Paul Avery: I kil ed Erakat [Zuheir Erakat, a victim of the Zebra kil ers, a case Toschi had been assigned]. The Blind Lady is next, then you.

The Grand Finale wil be suicide, with TV coverage, from the Golden Gate Bridge. Soon My mission in life is done. Aloha.” Two Zodiac

symbols served as a signature to the letter.

“Scoop. Paul Avery and the Fuzzy S.F. Pigs: a .45 automatic and a plastic bag with a draw-string over his head got his cooperation, but he

was yel ow and whined. That deal was extra and commissioned by someone now dead. My California activities are unaffected—just on ice

presently—you are stil there, so say your prayers—the Zodiac cannot be trifled with. Zodiac Claims 17 . . . Paul Avery—Hah!”

The thirty-nine-year-old former war correspondent found himself buried beneath tips. “This is the half-brother of the Zodiac speaking,” one fretted.

“I’m concerned that Zodiac might be using my High Standard .22-caliber semiautomatic pistol.” But of them al , Wil y’s3 story was especial y tragic.

Wil y’s family, convinced their son was Zodiac, sent stacks of handwriting exemplars, along with their own handwriting expert’s opinion, to Avery:

“After lengthy study and consideration of specimens of handwriting done by ‘Zodiac’ and comparison with letters written by him, it is my

belief that al of these handwritings were done by the same person.”

“They don’t seem to be nuts,” Chronicle reporter George Murphy advised Avery, “just a pleasant couple who believe they are acting as good

citizens. My first reaction is to go to Oakland and ask their suspect, who’s now out on bail, if he’s the Zodiac. I’l be around for further interrogation

this afternoon, but it doesn’t seem like Zodiac.” Wil y had been jailed soon after Zodiac’s letter to Bel i, but Avery scanned a few passages anyway.

“I am sorry for al the people that I have kil ed and maimed,” wrote Wil y. “But understand something if you can, every person that I ever kil ed

actual y deserved it. . . . I never wanted to become what I was, it was an accident when I kil ed that first man in San Francisco, and from then on

I had to do what they wanted. Do you know what it’s like to look someone in the face and then pul a trigger. You never get used to it. And I’m

not crazy, just always scared.”

Avery realized “Wil ie” thought he was a mob hit man. With a shudder, he forwarded Wil y’s letters to Sherwood Morril , who said, “They’re not

Zodiac’s handwriting.” The reporter was burning out. Lines etched his face; against the bright blue shirts and red neckerchiefs he often wore, his

complexion stood sal ow.

Saturday, December 22, 1973

Toschi and Armstrong worked to exhaustion, grabbed a bite at Original Joe’s, then rushed back to their office to begin the daily cycle al over

again. The Zodiac case was like the tide—hopes lifted, only to be dashed against the rocks. And yet beneath the surface they felt

tremendouscurrents—another unsolvable mystery, a hint of deeper crimes as they waded through sluggish water. To the north in Santa Rosa,

outside their jurisdiction, bad things continued to happen. At the winter solstice, a day that held significance to Zodiac, Theresa Diane Walsh was

hitchhiking on 101 from the area of Malibu Beach to her home in Garbervil e. A sliver handmade cross swung from her neck, a fire-opal ring and a

copper-band ring flashed on her fingers. Ten dol ars of colored beads she used for making bracelets rattled in her backpack. Somewhere along the

way, she too disappeared. Her strangled body, hog-tied with one-quarter-inch nylon rope, was discovered next to Kim Al en’s in a creek six days

later. Zodiac had tied his victims at Lake Berryessa with clothesline, but Walsh, like Kim Al en, may have been sexual y assaulted and this was

unlike Zodiac, whose pleasure was pain.

Monday, January 28, 1974

All month long the world’s oceans had been uncommonly wild, whipping the West Coast with fury. Hurricanes, high tides, and thunder-storms

relentlessly beat the shores. A major coincidence of cosmic cycles had occurred. Earth, moon, and sun had aligned in a nearly straight line—a

configuration cal ed syzygy. During the new and ful phases of the moon, positive ions charged the atmosphere and freaky, motiveless murders

occurred as far away as Miami.

Zodiac hunched over a light table, the glow highlighting his intent face. In the past, his desire for notoriety had compel ed him to boast. Now a

more commanding power, a celestial power, drove him to break his three-year silence. Because of the timing of his kil ings, experts had long

believed Zodiac was “moon mad”—sensitive to the gravitational influences, enhanced luminosity, and electromagnetic field changes of ful and new

moon phases, changes that affect the human nervous system and increase the brain’s nervous activity.

“If one considers the human organism as a microcosm,” psychiatrist Arnold L. Lieber wrote, “comprising essential y the same elements as, and

in similar proportion to, those of the earth’s surface—approximately eighty percent water and twenty percent organic and inorganic minerals—one

could speculate that the gravitational forces of the moon might exert a similar influence upon the water mass of the human being.” Studies on

nuclear magnetic resonance demonstrated that biological tissues respond to the interaction between moon and Earth. These biological tides might

be sufficient to trigger emotional, psychological, and physiological outbursts in certain predisposed individuals.

“Ironical y, on dark, moonless nights,” Toschi told me, “al my years in Sex Crimes, Aggravated Assault, and Homicide, my home phone was

relatively quiet—even when on cal . When it was a clear, bright moonlit night, nights of ful and new moons, violent crime increased. Inevitably the

Toschi home phone would ring—Operations Center reporting marital fights, shootings, stabbings—al night long. Contrary to popular belief, dark

spooky nights would be a normal tranquil night for a policeman.” At Stanford, Dr. Lunde suggested another possibility for the timing of Zodiac’s

assaults. “Were Zodiac’s nighttime murders always at a time when there was fairly good moonlight?” he asked me. “Always a ful or new moon,” I

replied. “So he would be able to see at night,” said Lunde. Coincidental y, a Sacramento Bee Sunday article on Morril had appeared prominently

the day before, January 27. So the new letter might in part have been an ego thing, a competition with Morril for publicity.

Zodiac bent to his labor. A film had been terrifying San Francisco, much as he used to, receiving as much publicity as he once had. Lines of thril -

seekers stretched around the block, sixty thousand since Christmas, waiting to enter the Northpoint Theater and see The Exorcist. Once inside,

after a two-hour wait, a few immediately exited and were sick on the sidewalk. Zodiac had seen them himself—“Disgusting!” his letter commented

on this phenomenon and the sickness of the public at large. He had revved his car and rushed away. The postmark, 940, wouldn’t be much help to

the police. It only indicated the letter had been mailed from an adjacent county south of San Francisco and picked up before noon on Tuesday.

Wednesday, January 30, 1974

For over a month the two-man Zodiac Squad had not seen any real action. Zodiac had mailed his last letter just under three years ago. The

number of tip letters dwindled, fal ing from fifty a week to ten to practical y none. Toschi, working il and out of sorts, had taken to glaring at the

sealed five-foot-tal steel-gray filing cabinet crammed with Zodiac artifacts. “One drawer is marked ‘Concerned Citizens,’” he said. “The second

drawer is for suspects only.” (Ultimately there would be eight drawers.) “Do I think we’l ever catch the guy? Of course I do. I have to feel that way, or

I’d have given up long ago. To me it’s a major chal enge, a major case. Bil and I are the Zodiac Squad of the country.”

Recently they had been busy tracking down the infamous Zebra kil ers who slaughtered fifteen and wounded eight random victims over a 179-day

period. Though al of the victims were white and al of their assailants black, that was not why the religiously motivated cult murders came to be

known as the “Zebra” kil ings. “The special unit we put together worked mostly at night,” Toschi explained, “because that’s when the kil ings were

occurring. They used a radio channel that was seldom used to keep it available for anyone who cal ed in who might have seen some suspects.

They put it on ‘Channel Z,’ which was never used at al . It was ‘Z’ for ‘Zebra’ and the press picked up on it and our kil ers became the Zebra kil ers.”

Members of this fanatical cult had to pass an initiation that consisted of shooting or hacking to death men, women, and children in order to reach

the rank of “Death Angel.” Two nights ago, between 8:00 and 10:00 P.M., another Zebra murder had set off a round-the-clock manhunt. Dog-tired

and aching, Toschi had stayed in bed this one morning. He glanced at the clock, studied the sky outside. Everything was out of kilter. As a fuel-

saving device, Daylight Savings Time had arrived three months early this year. Toschi, unaware the kil er’s unexplained silence was about to be

broken, buried his face in the pil ow. Over at the Chronicle Carol Fisher slit open a letter, froze, and read the fol owing:

“I saw and think ‘The Exorcist’ was the best saterical comidy that I have ever seen. Signed, yours truley: He plunged him self into the bil owy

wave and an echo arose from the suicides grave titwil o titwil o titwil o PS. if I do not see this note in your paper. I wil do something nasty, which

you know I’m capable of doing”

This wasn’t the first time Zodiac had quoted Gilbert and Sul ivan. Carol recognized the “titwil o” lines from the second act of The Mikado,

specifical y the aria of Ko-Ko, the fainthearted Lord High Executioner. Three and a half years ago the kil er had also paraphrased Mikado lyrics (“a

little list he had of al those who would never be missed”). He had quoted them at great length from memory. Divergencies from the original text,

primarily Acts I and I , proved that. “And that singular anomaly, the lady novelist” had been changed to “and the singurly abnormily the girl who never

kissed.” Various alternatives to lady novelist—lady dramatist, lady motorist, lady bicyclist, etc., were usual y suggested by the actor portraying Ko-

Ko. I believed that Zodiac’s little list was a rol cal of real people he knew and whom he fancied had wronged him—“banjo seranader,” “piano

orginast” and “al children . . . up in dates [students].” Police had always believed Zodiac had essayed the role of Ko-Ko professional y. I suggested

a col ege production.

The night Zodiac hailed cabdriver Paul Lee Stine, the Lamplighters had been rehearsing The Mikado nearby on a stage smal er than a Pacific

Heights living room at Presentation Theatre, 2350 Turk Street. During their entire run, from October 18 to November 7, 1969, no Zodiac letter was

received. Scrawls at the bottom of the new letter even resembled the rounded ersatz Japanese cal igraphy on Ko-Ko’s paper fan. On January 30,

1974, music director Gilbert Russak was stil putting Ko-Ko, Nanki-Poo, Pooh-Bah, Pish-Tush, and Yum-Yum through their paces. Carol thought

Zodiac might be a member of that cast.

In the letter’s lower right-hand corner, Zodiac had printed “Me-37 S.F.P.D.-0.” Fisher cal ed Homicide and they rang Toschi at home. The

detective, burning with fever, forced himself up. The last time he had felt this bad was on the front lines in Korea. Drafted after leaving Galileo High,

he had faced seven months of hard combat with the 24th Infantry Division. Within half an hour, Toschi had parked under the Chronicle tower, ridden

to the third floor, and was reading Zodiac’s score. “Thirty-seven!” he muttered, praying the kil er was lying. “Another Gilbert and Sul ivan swipe and

another shot at SFPD,” said Toschi. “Jeez, why does he single us out every time. What is this grudge? And why Gilbert and Sul ivan?”

Dr. Murray S. Miron of the Syracuse Research Institute reached some conclusions on the new letter. In a confidential FBI psycholinguistics report,

he suggested “suicides grave” might indicate Zodiac was contemplating suicide. Miron referred to Zodiac’s letter to Attorney Mel Bel i in particular.

It contained hints of a depression that “frequently overtakes him. . . . It is not entirely unlikely that in one of these virulent depressions, such

individuals could commit suicide.” Possibly, the suicide Zodiac references is “the symbolic death of Zodiac . . . the sociopathic personality

eventual y ‘burns out’ . . . as he ages.”

“I would agree,” wrote FBI profiler Douglas, “that the Zodiac might eventual y commit suicide, but I also believe that, even in a depressed state,

the Zodiac wrote letters with the goal of manipulating, dominating, and control ing their recipients and the larger audience he knew they would

reach.”

Once a paranoid schizophrenic is into his mid-thirties (if he does not kil himself), the rage may burn itself out or go into remission. If Zodiac had

symbolical y died, then the kil er might lead the rest of his life uneventful y. He might not recal he had once been Zodiac. Miron believed the kil er to

be a Caucasian, unmarried male . . . “isolated, withdrawn and unrelated in his habits, quiet and prepossessing in disposition.” He thought Zodiac

had “good uncorrected eyesight because of the use of minute distinguishers for the differing code symbols.”

Police had once studied surveil ance photos of the Bates burial. Many kil ers were unable to stay away from their victim’s funeral. For that same

reason the Chronicle snapped pictures of the extended lines curling around the Northpoint Theater and stretching up Powel between Bay and

Francisco Streets. Photos were taken each night on the chance Zodiac would see The Exorcist again. Perhaps he would wave to the camera.

The Exorcist letter carried only a single eight-cent Eisenhower stamp. Zodiac usual y doubled, tripled, even quadrupled postage. A similar

sociopath, the Unabomber, who came after Zodiac, stockpiled large quantities of symbolic stamps long before he began posting his heavy mail

bombs. For the bomber, Eugene O’Neil stamps signified a hidden message. Maybe O’Neil’s plays were a grim comment on the Unabomber’s

troubled family life. Other stamps indicated the strength of the infernal device or target selected—specific or non-specific. Only the bomber knew

what each symbolized.

Zodiac’s paired stamps of presidents—Lincoln, Eisenhower, and FDR—might be equal y symbolic—al had served as wartime presidents.

Lincoln stamps might indicate someone named Green (Lincoln Green), Ford (Ford’s Theatre), or Booth (the assassin Booth or any actor for that

matter). FDR stamps might stand for Delano, a county abutting Deer Lodge, Montana, a spot linked to Zodiac by his own words during a

conversation with a surviving victim. This time Zodiac had decorated the lower right-hand corner of his envelope with gummed labels. Running

vertical y were these instructions:

“Stamps in this book have been gummed with a matte finish adhesive which permits the elimination of the separation tissues. This book

contains 25—8 cent stamps—four on this pane and seven each on three additional panes. Sel ing price $2.00.” In the upper right corner were

the gummed stamps “MAIL EARLY IN THE DAY” [showing clock hands] and “Use ZIP code.”

Did zip code somehow match up with one of Zodiac’s numerical codes as a key? The Exorcist letter re-energized the case. “Since the latest

Zodiac letter was published,” Toschi said, “I’ve had fifty people in my office! Each claims he knows Zodiac personal y. Bil and I have probably

fol owed up a thousand leads in this case and heard a lot of weird stories. People tel us they’re sure it’s their neighbor because he looks like the

drawing and walks around with a knife in a scabbard. . . . There are times when you’re listening to this and it’s hard to keep a straight face. But I feel

I’ve got to listen to everyone, no matter how outlandish their story is.”

Thursday, January 31, 1974

“Are you aware of a rumor going around concerning a possible link between Zodiac and the San Francisco choral group the ‘Lamplighters’?” a

woman informed Avery on Thursday morning. “A girl I heard talking about it used to belong to the group and thought one of the men in the group fit

the description of Zodiac. She was reluctant to go to the police much as we tried to persuade her. Then it was dropped and I’m not sure what

became of her. In any case, did the police check out that group? Zodiac (who’s probably Mr. Ordinary Guy Leading Typical Life who also happens

to be a psychopath)—obviously listens to Gilbert and Sul ivan. I would have written this directly to the police but what with giving parking tickets and

busting pot rings, I know they are too busy to fight crime. Al us ordinary citizen taxpayers are imprisoned within the wal s of our homes because

murderers, rapists and burglars who are free to roam can’t seem to get caught until they cal in from a phone booth with their exact longitude and

latitude.”

Thursday, February 14, 1974

Carol opened the morning mail and got a second shock—the flood-gates had truly been opened:

“Dear Mr. Editor: Did you know that the initials SLA [Symbionese Liberation Army] spel ‘SLA’ an old Norse word meaning ‘kil .’ [signed] a

friend.”

Though the hand-lettered postcard was of doubtful authenticity, she alerted the FBI. They included it in their inventory of valid Zodiac letters.

Almost three months passed. The next communication would be real—Zodiac was growing bolder again—restless, the old passions rising to the

surface.

Monday, April 15, 1974

Leigh had been let go from Union Richfield. Adrift again he ceased attending Sonoma State University and began work at the Sonoma Auto Parts

Store at 248 West Napa in Sonoma. Financial y, his next job was a step down, but he knew and liked engines. He had gained expertise at

Wogan’s Service Station before being fired. On a brighter note, Leigh was working with Jim, a friend he could confide in. “I’m almost through with

al my academic requirements at Sonoma State,” he told Jim, although he would not receive his degree for another eight years. He told Jim other

things too, unsettling hints about a secret life. Perhaps, now that Leigh’s professional student days were ending, good things would begin to happen

for him. At age forty-one, he was about to go out into the world. The fires were cooling. Zodiac was, for al purposes, dead and Leigh Al en had a

friend to confide in.

Wednesday, May 8, 1974

Every homicide Bill Armstrong investigated impacted him as hard as his first. The cold, dreadful finality of the deed always brought him up short.

“Probably a .38,” said Armstrong at a crime scene. “Looks like the slug stopped here, behind the forehead.” He pointed to a swol en bulge just

above the victim’s eye, then stood, shaking his head. “We’re real y just information gatherers,” he said. “We put each case together the best we can

and lay it on the table for the courts to decide.”

Meanwhile, Zodiac was writing yet again. As with The Exorcist, he had returned to being a defender of public morals:

“Sirs—I would like to express my consternation concerning your poor taste & lack of sympathy for the public, as evidenced by your running of

ads for the movie ‘Badlands’ featuring the blurb ‘In 1959 most people were kil ing time. Kit & Hol y were kil ing people.’ In light of recent events,

this kind of murder-glorification can only be deplorable at best (not that glorification of violence was ever justifiable) why don’t you show some

concern for the public sensibilities & cut the ad? [signed] A citizen.”

Constantly suspicious, Zodiac drove to Alameda County to mail his latest letter. But as days passed, he scanned the front pages and grew

furious. He had warned them before how much he hated to be ignored and what he would do if they showed him no respect.

Monday, July 8, 1974

Fuming after a ful month’s rejection, Zodiac puzzled why his tongue-in-cheek Badlands letter had not been printed. Over the years the publicity-

mad kil er had tried to sneak letters into print under pseudonyms, mailing them from everywhere except where he real y lived. Al because the police

had gotten too close to him; it was dangerous to mail any letter signed “Zodiac.” Because the Chronicle might be testing him, he prepared a

second letter, a swipe at at a Chronicle columnist, and signed it, “A citizen.” He raced to San Rafael, deposited it in the first post box he reached,

then rushed home to worry.

Wednesday, July 10, 1974

Zodiac had no way of knowing his first letter hadn’t reached the Chronicle until June 4 and they really were testing him. Although he had not signed it “Zodiac,” Carol recognized his handprinting. “He’s not fooling anybody—no matter what his game is,” said Toschi as he scanned the

postcard. “There’s no doubt in my mind about either one . . . he’s trying to slip letters and cards into the Chronicle without being detected.” They

also recognized a letter mailed two days ago as a Zodiac communication. The kil er wrote about Chronicle columnist Count Marco this time. The

former hairdresser was “The man women love to hate,” or as Time put it, “The voice from the sewer.”

“Editor—Put Marco back in the hel -hole from whence it came—he has a serious psychological disorder—always needs to feel superior. I

suggest you refer him to a shrink. Meanwhile, cancel the column. Since the Count can write anonymously, so can I. The Red Phantom (red with

rage).”

Why had Zodiac singled out the Count, an anti-feminist, national y syndicated radio commentator whose real name was Marco Spinel i? Did

another Spinel i somehow figure in his past and was this threat, in Zodiac’s maddening indirect way, actual y meant for him? The Count was almost

as colorful as Mel Bel i.

Count Marco’s business cards carried a royal crest. He lived in a fourteen-room apartment at the Stanford Court and wore a watch with sixty

diamonds surrounding its face. He owned three Rol s-Royces, each with a chauffeur and footman. One Rol s was painted with twenty coats of silver

to match Marco’s hair. He reserved the second for hauling his considerable luggage. The third belonged to his dachshund, and she was driven

about attired in a diamond and emerald tail ring, crocheted hat, dark glasses, and a white mink stole. Her fur was dyed to match the Rol s.

More than three years previously, the Count had received another anonymous letter. “Dear Morning Star,” the January 11, 1971 letter read. “Don’t

you worry, Don’t you fear, Tea-time comes but once a year. . . . To lift thy spirits columnist Three bags of Tea within to twist Those drops of lemon

(aromist), Also enclosed a few biscuits, Approved and used by 12 fair fists—Faithful Savant. Have a nice day!” Count Marco had joined the

Chronicle in 1959, the same time as Avery, but had had enough of such unsigned love letters. He left to divide his time a bit more securely between

Hawaii and Palm Springs.

Friday, September 27, 1974

Sporting his Zodiac watch and ring, Al en, now weighing 240 pounds, spent the morning in his trailer, puttering about. An hour later, his world

col apsed. The crunch of boots on the gravel had already alerted him, so he didn’t jump when there came a furious thumping on his trailer door.

“Open up!”

“Who’s there?”

“Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department!”

Deputy Haas’s arrival was not total y unexpected. Events had been set in motion on September 23 when a complaint was lodged against Al en.

Yesterday the Sheriff’s Department had filed against him in Central Municipal Court. “You’re under arrest,” Haas said. “The charge is PC 288, 288a

—child molesting and exciting the lust of a minor under fourteen years old.” Between July 11 and July 25, Al en had enticed two boys into his trailer

bedroom. Afterward, he had pressed money, two quarters, into their hands.

“I know you don’t like it,” Al en told the deputy, “but I’m just a nasty man.”

“It was one of the oddest remarks I had ever heard under the circumstances,” recal ed the officer.

As soon as he was arrested, Leigh wanted a pencil and piece of paper so he could work out his thoughts on paper. He was trying to decide if he

should plead guilty or not. He drew a line down the middle of the paper. On one side he wrote “guilty” and on the other “public defender,” then listed

the pros and cons of each. He began to sob.

The next day, Al en was released on $5,000 bail for each count of felony child molesting. However, back in Val ejo, he told friends he had been

arrested because he “was the Zodiac.”

“In 1974 Leigh Al en molested a nine-year-old boy from the Fremont Elementary School in his trailer.” A Santa Rosa police sergeant elaborated.

“Another eight-year-old was there too. Leigh had lured them inside to see some chipmunks and committed lewd acts involving oral copulation upon

the two children. The file says he worked part-time at Yaeger and Kirk’s Lumber Yard. And we have his traffic ticket here. He has a ‘D file.’ On the

file is a notation that I’ve never seen before: ‘RS-6,’ [a CI&I high priority code] and this notation is marked ‘yes.’” The daughter of a woman Al en had

known for years related, “As I understand his incarceration at Atascadero, it was for molesting the son of a female friend of his. The boy was maybe

anywhere from eight to thirteen years old. The version he told my mother was the woman was just jealous of his relationship with her son. I believe

he was dating the woman. He said that was why she had turned him in—jealousy.” This turned out not to be true. Their relationship had never been

anything but platonic, as had al of Leigh’s relationships with women.

“Sexual sadists like Zodiac are limited or incapable of forming normal adult sexual relationships,” Dr. Lunde told me. “And so what are the

alternatives? One is sex with dead bodies or kil ing for sexual satisfaction. Another is sex with children.” CI&I, alerted by the arrest, requested

Al en’s Val ey Springs School file and began probing for earlier signs of improper relationships with children. Police also contacted every school

where he had taught. As authorities tried to build a bigger case, Al en remained free on bail. He took to harassing a deputy testifying against him.

At night, he stood menacingly outside the man’s house. Final y, the cop rushed out and chased him away. Just before Leigh’s trial, someone mailed

an anonymous typewritten letter to a local judge. The judge brought it into the Calistoga P.D.

“Did you miss me?” it read. “Was busy doing some nefarious destardly work, for which I am wel suited. . . . Ah yes! Justice shal be done. I

had to laugh. [San Francisco Chronicle columnist] Herb Caen mentioned that Toschi was the only man looking for the Zodiac. Zodiac gave me

a car to pick up the evidence. He knew my Plymouth was sabotaged.”

A disabled Plymouth had been spotted by a teenage boy at Blue Rock Springs the night of the Fourth of July murder.

Thursday, January 23, 1975

Police drove to Al en’s home in Val ejo and rearrested him. His mother let the deputies in and they descended to find Leigh shrieking in the center

of the basement. Live chipmunks were crawling al over him—the pets and victims he let share his subterranean room. “Squirrel shit was dripping

from his shoulders,” recal ed one cop. “He remained in our custody from that date on. When he was at the Sonoma County Jail, cel block #2B2, he

came to the attention of three Mexican guys who tried to ‘punk’ him. He let them screw him. Later, in court, the other little boy testified against Al en.”

Thursday, March 13, 1975

Sergeant Mulanax had not given up on Al en, and wrote the FBI:

“SYNOPSIS: Subject fits the general description of Zodiac. He was born in Honolulu, Hawaii. He attended school in Riverside, California. He

is employed in Oakland Calif. He is a convicted sex offender of children. TYPE OF EXAMINATION: Evaluation of fingerprints and palm prints.

Evaluation of handwriting exemplars submitted, with evidence on file. MATERIAL SUBMITTED: 1. Two yel ow pages of yel ow material (partial

text of Zodiac messages.) 2. Red diary written by subject over period of one year. 3. Palm prints of subject of left and right hands. 4. One white

sheet containing Zodiac text, written with ink pen by subject. 5. Solano County jail arrest record.”

Later that day Al en was sentenced to Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminal y Insane.

“As for the little animals Leigh always had,” a friend of Al en’s told me, “he definitely had lots of chipmunks, and even a skunk at one time. When

he was sent to Atascadero he gave the animals to the Elnoka Nursery off Highway 12. He had an abundance of the little creatures. I remember

hating to see them caged al the time and now Leigh was going to be caged as wel .”

A sharp-eyed officer, Sergeant John Burke, noticed he was wearing a Zodiac wristwatch and entered the fact in his file.

Friday, March 14, 1975

Leigh arrived at Atascadero and began serving his sentence. Back in 1969 he had shown his sister-in-law several pages of handprinted legal

terminology and cryptograms. “They pertain to a person who had been committed to Atascadero State Hospital for molesting a child,” he had said.

“This is the work of an insane person.” Leigh had been prescient, for he was now in that very situation. Meanwhile, al Zodiac-type attacks,

sightings, and letters ceased. That inactivity from Zodiac was extraordinarily tel ing. Only the investigation continued, grinding slowly, but

exceedingly fine. The old clock in the Homicide room in San Francisco ticked on as if measuring off three years as slowly as it could.

Meanwhile, Al en’s friend, Jim, was troubled. “Leigh cal ed me at work one night,” he told me later, “I felt sorry for him so I would listen. That’s why

he thought I was his buddy. ‘I have to go to jail,’ he said. ‘I need to come down and talk to you. I have some unfinished business, something I want to

get off my chest. I want you to be by yourself, and I want you to wait for me after work.’ I thought, ‘Good grief, this is weird. Al these stories are flying

around. I don’t know if I real y want to meet him after work alone.’ But I told him I’d wait for him. After work and a couple of beers, he’d go through his

two-hour dissertation. Another kid was working with me, Paul Blakesly. So I told Paul, ‘You know, old Leigh wants to come down and see me by

myself, and I don’t real y trust him. I don’t know what he’s got up his sleeve, so would you hang around and break a beer with me and we’l wait for

him.’ So we laid a couple of club-like things around the store just in case. Old Leigh comes down and, of course, he looked like hel . His eyes were

al red, and he had a little stubble al over his face. He had been crying his guts out. He wanted to spil the beans—that he was being investigated

for the Zodiac thing when they’d picked him up again.

“He’s going on with this big story al about Zodiac. Leigh claimed he was being checked because a bunch of girls had disappeared up the

Russian River area, and they were al on his days off or time off. The police had come down and checked his time-card records behind closed

doors. A lot of coincidences pointed to him, he said, but they were circumstantial. It seemed so beyond comprehension that I was afraid if I start

repeating al these stories—Christ! They could hang him on a story and I don’t want to tel them the wrong thing. This went on to probably nine

o’clock at night. Nothing happened and we al parted ways.”

11

atascadero

Tuesday, October 14, 1975

Allen had been to Atascadero before, but in the capacity of a therapist. Now he returned as a prisoner. If police had comprehended how

repugnant the mental institution was to him, how terrified he was of being confined there, they might have employed a useful tool. Al en’s fear might

have been used as a pry bar to extract information about Zodiac. But Al en coped, began working in the print shop, and soon had mastered new

techniques. In the print shop he devised a plan to get the police off his back.

Back home the Times-Herald reported that:

“Zodiac is stil considered a possible suspect in a series of Sonoma County kil ings. . . . Zodiac threatened in one rambling letter to torture

his victims, and Sonoma County has some murder victims who were tortured to death through slow strangulation and by administering

strychnine. . . . Sonoma County’s seven young female victims [between 1972 and 1974] al were dumped in rural areas. A Sonoma County

man recently was considered a Zodiac suspect but was ruled out, according to Sonoma Sheriff’s Captain Jim Caulfield. He was a molester of

young boys, however, and has been committed to Atascadero State Hospital.”

“While Leigh was in Atascadero,” a Val ejo source told me, “I think that’s when my mother first became aware he may be the Zodiac. He wrote to

her that they suspected him of the crimes. At one point, I think my mother cal ed him there and spoke to him. She asked him directly if he was the

murderer. I believe he was somewhat jovial about it, but never admitted to the crimes. She verified that he was the suspect through the Santa Rosa

District Attorney, John Hawkes.”

Leigh, signing himself “Drawer A,” wrote Jim in Sonoma. “If Zodiac writes one letter while I’m in here,” he wrote earnestly, “then that wil clear me

of being the Zodiac.” The remark was puzzling. Everyone knew Leigh was imprisoned for child molesting, not for being Zodiac. He repeated the

same remark to women he knew. In his long outdoor chess game with authorities, Al en seemed always one step ahead. For the second stage of

his plan, he hoarded his daily medication and got a job in the dispensary. Like Zodiac, Leigh knew explosives. For his third step, he and a

companion began building a bomb to blast their way out of the prison.

Monday, November 3, 1975

In order to pass various psychiatric tests during his incarceration, Al en boned up on the proper responses to make. He took al his tests in this

fashion: “He would not smile or show emotion and would speak in a low monotone.” He took tests as a man drugged. During TAT (Thematic

Apperception Test) evaluations, Al en was asked to make up stories based on simple line drawings portraying people in ambiguous situations.

(“Explain what is going on in this picture.”) Indirectly, his answers revealed aspects of his subconscious feelings and personality—“he has a violent

fantasy life . . . a hyperthymic (highly emotional) individual unable to establish normal social contact.”

Final y police decided to give him a lie-detector test. “A polygraph machine is only a stress detector and anxiety detector,” Toschi told me. Lie

detectors, a favorite investigative tool, are fal ible and register false positives about fifteen percent of the time. Polygraphs measure changes in

pulse, blood pressure, and breathing, but can be tricked by real y good liars.4 Even the term “lie detector” is a misnomer. Erle Stanley Gardner

wrote in his Court of Last Resort, “Lie detection is impossible. What is possible is the detection of stress (and in a few cases the covering up of

stress). A polygraph or Psychological Stress Evaluation test should never be used as the sole judge of a person’s innocence. As with al scientific

evidence, these tests need to be evaluated. The lie test is not permitted as evidence in court except by stipulation because it is undependable and

subject to the interpretation of the operator. As late as 1998 the Supreme Court would rule lie detectors unreliable. Leonarde Keeler, though not the

inventor of the lie detector, had done the most to refine the machine. The lie detector is in use today much as he developed it. Briefly, the polygraph

records changes in the body’s physiological responses to questions.”

Details for the test were ironed out, and Leigh agreed. “What happened,” Detective Bawart told me later, “was a guy from the Department of

Justice who was working under Fred Shirisago went down to Atascadero and they put Al en on a polygraph. That was Sam Lister—the head

polygraph guy at DOJ.” Al en entered a plain soundproofed and air-conditioned room. Lister had him sit in the examining chair. Careful y, he

hooked him up to three devices, a procedure alone that usual y causes stress in a subject. First a blood pressure-pulse unit—a sphygmograph—an

instrument similar to that used to take blood-pressure readings—was connected to graphical y record the movements of his pulse. After the blood

pressure sleeve was wrapped around his biceps, a flexible corrugated tube, a pneumograph, was strapped around Leigh’s chest to measure

changes in his respiration. Final y, an electro-dermal unit, usual y metal tubes clenched in both hands or electrodes on the hand (a monitor pinched

on a fingertip), measured galvanic changes or responses in his skin. As the prisoner’s reactions to each question were recorded on a moving strip

chart, he was observed through a two-way mirror.

Were he to lie, his heart would beat faster, his breath come more quickly, and changes would take place in his skin moisture. Pens on a moving

strip of graph paper recorded reactions. Leigh had already been put at ease in a cordial pre-interview. Leigh kept to a monotone and did not smile,

later claiming the test lasted ten hours. “A polygraph wil take maybe an hour—max,” Toschi told me. “Al en’s lying about that.” There are usual y ten

to twelve questions, and those are brief, basic, and easy to understand. Leigh was asked his first name, his last name. After each question there

was a pause of fifteen to twenty seconds. Then he was asked if he knew who had kil ed Darlene Ferrin, the Blue Rock Springs victim.

“No,” he said.

“Do you live in California?” asked Lister.

“Yes.”

“Did you yourself kil Paul Lee Stine on October 11, 1969?”

“No.”

“Were you a resident of Val ejo?”

“Yes.”

“Did you have anything whatsoever to do with this homicide?”

“No.”

“Are you forty-two years of age?”

“Yes.”

“Are you deliberately concealing or withholding any guilty knowledge of the homicide at Washington and Cherry Streets?”

“No.”

“Is today Friday?”

“Yes.”

“Have you deliberately lied at any time during this entire interview?”

“No.”

“Let’s do the test once more completely,” said Lister. It was common practice to talk over results and learn the reasons for responses. “People

overreact, underreact, have guilt complexes, are frightened, are angry,” said polygraph expert Chris Gugas. “The examiner has to take into account

variables such as intel igence, emotional stability, reaction to shock. The process in never cut-and-dried.” Thus the expert can start again with a

revised set of questions, or repeat the same questions so responses could be compared. Lister indicated that Al en had passed his polygraph

examination both times. “He is not the Zodiac Kil er,” he said. Al en cal ed afterward to tel his family and friends that he had passed and was not

Zodiac.

“And they ran Al en at Atascadero and he came up clean,” Bawart lamented. “That bothered us. Wel , we had two other experts read his charts,

and they say, ‘He was on drugs during this time.’ Our polygraph examiner, Johnson, examined the charts and said, ‘It’s my opinion that Al en was on

some type of drugs while he was taking the test.’ It was also his opinion that Al en did not pass the polygraph exam and that it was inconclusive.

And then we served a search warrant at Atascadero and I had a bunch of shit about that, but anyway, he was on Thorazine. Atascadero is a mental

hospital and many of the inmates are on different types of tranquilizers. These other guys who read the charts said, ‘Hey, old Lister here didn’t give

him any control questions about whether he was on any drugs. We’re looking at this thing—this guy’s loaded. You could’ve asked him if he had a

mother and father and he would have said no.”

Polygraph tests can be neutralized by a subject through drugs or pain, but the subject’s responses would be noticeably high and flat. Al en had

reportedly stockpiled his daily medication of Valium tranquilizers and pilfered Thorazine, a drug prescribed for extreme paranoia, from the

dispensary where he briefly worked. “Thorazine was for the real y psychotic patients,” said Bawart. “It wouldn’t be the common drug they would hand

out, but he had access to the dispensary. They were giving Valium to him. Al he had to do was save it up. This is only guessing. You know you’re

going to take a polygraph test—you’ve got your buddies down there. In fact he had a strong buddy—he was going to build a bomb and blow his way

out of Atascadero and they caught him. That infernal device was close to lethal quality.”

Dr. J. Paul De River, in Crime and the Sexual Psychopath, wrote that “disregard for civil or moral law, and the cunning and stealth are also part

of the make up of the ‘non sexual’ psychopath. Like his sex-motivated counterpart, he is only ‘mad’ sporadical y, and for the rest of the time he

might lock the details of his acts out of his consciousness.”

“Al en had a letter,” Bawart continued, “that he phonied up that was signed by—the guy’s name was [Jim] Silver, an investigator. And Silver had

done some correspondence with him [requesting a polygraph examination]. Al en got Silver’s signature from the correspondence. Al en worked in a

print shop there at Atascadero Hospital, and he made up a letter that he duped on this guy Silver’s signature with a phony Department of Justice

heading on it. He had used a mechanical means to lift the signature of the investigator from a document, placed it on prewritten letters, and printed

them up. It was a letter to any law enforcement agency and, as I recal , said: ‘To Whom It May Concern: This man is not a suspect in the Zodiac

case and has been completely cleared. He has passed a polygraph examination and law enforcement should no longer consider him a suspect in

the Zodiac kil ings.’ Just a bul shit thing so he could show people. Of course Silver would never write such a letter.” Though he had passed the lie

test, Al en had lied about the letter clearing him.

Monday, December 1, 1975

Allen wrote a Santa Rosa Superior Court judge, tel ing him of the lie test results and including “a copy of a letter received from the State

Department of Justice” exonerating him.

“After five years of being the subject of investigation, interrogation, search and other forms of harassment,” he explained, “I was final y subjected

to ten hours of polygraph examination, administered by the Justice Department, here at the hospital. I signed away my rights and cooperated ful y,

in order to final y resolve the issue, and have subsequently been removed from the Department’s suspect list for the crimes specified in the

enclosed letter.

“Since . . . I doubt the Department wil take the trouble to distribute their findings to other concerned agencies, and since I do contemplate

returning to the Santa Rosa area to live, I am taking it upon myself to impart this information to you, in the hope that it wil find its way to its resting

place in the proper file. I am hoping that, in the future, I wil be able to go in peace, and not get sweaty palms at the mention of another unsolved

homicide.

“The above has been quite a weight on my shoulders for the last five years. Now that I am cleared, I do heartily wish to forget the whole miserable

affair. . . . Thank you for your time and consideration, and have a pleasant Holiday vacation. Sincerely, Arthur Leigh Al en, Case #74-0109-68.”

Though Al en claimed to have been the subject of five years of investigation, he had not become a real suspect until 1971. In his mind he must

have dated the beginning of his troubles from Sgt. Lynch’s brief questioning at Cave School. As for the ten-hour lie test—“Al en’s lying about that,”

Toschi said.

Al through the rest of 1975, Leigh’s mother faithful y wrote to him in prison, one of the few stil corresponding with him. But in counseling, Leigh

revealed how cold he felt her letters were and how much he hated her. Leigh felt an even stronger hatred for Atascadero. He feared staying there

more than he dreaded the police. At night he could hear strange cries echoing down the highly polished floors. A big man could be afraid too.

While Al en was locked away, brooding and planning, the Val ejo Sheriff’s Department doggedly pursued their Zodiac investigation. “Zodiac was

a certain man,” Les Lundblad told his son, Les, Jr., who had just returned from a golf match. “The only time I played golf,” Les, Jr., recal ed, “I played

in a foursome with this man. I produced a Polaroid of the foursome to my dad and he pointed the ‘beady-eyed’ man out.” Detective Sergeant

Lundblad thought this beady-eyed suspect was protected by a powerful official. Later an ex-Highway patrolman interviewed Les, Jr., and told him

that this official had ordered Sergeant Lundblad to back off. The son didn’t think his father would have obeyed that order, but was at a loss to

explain why more wasn’t done with the ‘beady-eyed’ man. However, the late Sergeant Lundblad’s interest in this early suspect predated the police

interview with Leigh Al en in 1971 and his subsequent visit to Atascadero to see Al en who had by then become the chief suspect.

Sergeant Ralph Wilson told me that when Lundblad returned from Atascadero, he said, “That’s him!” His remark carried conviction. Three years

later, I was in the main sheriff’s office just above the jail—Fairfield, California, Criminal Division. Captain Vince Murphy had arranged for me to look

at some evidence. The switchboard operator, a slim, dynamic woman, paused between cal s and recal ed the late Les Lundblad with admiration. “I

was there when he came back from Atascadero,” she said. “He was furious. ‘That’s him!’ he said, ‘That’s Zodiac. That’s the son of a bitch and we

can’t do anything about it!’ and he believed this right to the day of his death.”

The operator was troubled, concerned that she once had spoken to Zodiac when he cal ed the sheriff’s office. Zodiac had told her his real name,

but she couldn’t remember it. She’d lost the name in al the excitement. “I worked closer with Lundblad than with Lynch,” Narlow told me. “I always

got the feeling that Lundblad knew who Zodiac was. That story [about Cheney and Al en talking about hunting humans] is so bizarre you don’t know

whether to believe it or not. Sometimes people concoct things like this for whatever reason. But that story about him talking about those things is so

pat, that if in fact he did say it, then he has to be the Zodiac.” And so Toschi, Armstrong, and Mulanax probably had the right man, but somehow

were being outfoxed. No one could get around the handprinting, the partial print on the cab, and now the lie test. Those obstacles were the big

three. The Sacramento Bee and Santa Rosa Press Democrat’s secret witness programs established a $20,000 reward for Zodiac’s capture,

adding to Yel ow Cab’s existing reward. So many Zodiac tips trickled into Val ejo P.D. that Detective Bawart was assigned to help track new leads.

12

witches

Monday, January 5, 1976

Sonoma County Sheriff’s Detective Sergeant “Butch” Carlstedt blinked, then looked again. He perceived links between twelve Jack the Ripper-

style murders and the long-sought Zodiac. Zodiac might be arranging his crimes in a broad “Z” extending over the Bay Area. He might be tracing

out an even larger “Z,” encompassing the entire West. Sonoma County Sheriff Don Striepeke agreed, pointing to Rodeo; Vancouver, Washington;

Seattle; Salt Lake City; Santa Fe; and Aspen-Vail as locations where girls were slain. He surmised this psychopathic kil er might practice

witchcraft, kil ing slaves for his afterlife just as Zodiac had boasted. Ultimately, though, the assailant turned out to be Ted Bundy, not Zodiac.

But Striepeke was not deterred. From the beginning, Zodiac’s occult bent had fascinated him. The sheriff examined diagrams—a series of

arranged sticks discovered at a murder site along semi-remote Franz Val ey Road. Was this a witchcraft symbol? The sticks formed a square and

a rectangle joined together to indicate a human figure. Inside the rectangle were two stones, and outside, two more pebbles. Four sticks ran around

the outer edges. Striepeke thought the design might represent the black magic “Seal of Vassago.” Vassago is a mighty prince who declares things

past, present, and future and discovers what has been hidden. A local teenager claimed it was a design he made to show his girlfriend the shape

of his new trailer, but it stil might be a witch sign. Zodiac also used other esoteric symbols in his codes—dots such as those used in astrological

horoscopes. The nearly invisible Zodiac scarcely needed witchcraft—the Santa Rosa murderer was powerful enough to heft bodies over a ditch

and hurl them considerable distances down a hil side. Witches mail bloody swatches of cloth to their enemies. So did Zodiac.

Berkeley Chief of Police Wes Pomeroy was interested in the occult angle too. He had written to the Department of Justice, OCCIB, on February

14: “Enclosed are five photographs of various signs photographed in a rural (Val ejo) area. Please determine if the enclosed photographs

represent signs in witchcraft. If so, please determine what each individual sign’s significance is in mutual cases of interest.”

“It’s highly doubtful that witchcraft might be involved with Zodiac,” David Rice assured me, “as the Wiccan Rede prohibits harm to anyone,

including animals.”

I drove to Val ejo to ask Sergeant Lynch about Zodiac again, hoping he might recal something new. I recal ed how, after the Lake Berryessa

stabbings, Lynch had issued a public appeal to Zodiac to surrender. “We wil see that he gets help and that al his rights are protected,” promised

Lynch. “[Zodiac] is obviously an intel igent individual. He knows that eventual y he wil be taken into custody. So it would be best that he give himself

up before tragedy is written in blood.” I sat down in his darkened dining room. “I think there were five of us in the investigation bureau,” he began

softly. “I think what real y happened was we were spending so much time and going so many places that I guess they got dissatisfied with the way it

was being handled . . . when we first started on this case there was this guy George—he used to go down to the coffee shop [where Darlene Ferrin

waitressed]. He was trying to date her, but for some reason Dee [Darlene’s nickname] didn’t want to have anything to do with him. Constantly

bothering her and fol owing her. Dee was deathly afraid of him. The whole investigation original y seemed to focus on this guy.” George hadn’t

visited his familiar watering hole, Jack’s Hangout, since the July Fourth shootings. Next their search led Lynch and his partner to the Kat Pad on

Sacramento Street, Kaiser Steel in Napa, then to the Pastime bar in Benicia. “Me and Ed Rust,” said Lynch, “we found out he quit the Pastime, and

went up to Yountvil e. I got a description of him from his landlady, Mrs. Violet Peeler. He was five foot seven, with a stocky build and a dark

complexion. Kind of plump with dark straight hair. Unfortunately, while George had a water-related last name, he had an airtight alibi too.” A

December 3, 1964, Solano County Fairfield police report, 242, PC Battery, gave George’s weight then as a mere 127 pounds.

“In Val ejo, we checked everybody out,” Lynch concluded. “Once I got a cal from someone who said Zodiac lived on Arkansas Street. I drove over

there and found a man whose only connection was that he’d painted stars on his ceiling, including the Little Dipper. Everyone was a suspect and no

one was safe.” Even in the dimness, I saw the tol the case had taken on Lynch.

Saturday, July 24, 1976

“I watched Herman die in my sleep for eight weeks,” Inspector Armstrong told the press, recal ing Police Officer Herman George. George had

been gunned down in the street in November of 1969. “He died a very slow and painful death. . . . When I leave the office at night I forget the job

completely. I never discuss my work at home . . . wel , I can’t real y. I find other ways to unwind.” Armstrong became a man who could never sit stil , a

man constantly in motion. Final y, he burned out on Homicide. The next day, Armstrong transferred to the Bunco Division, leaving Toschi as the last

remaining San Francisco policeman working the Zodiac case.

“At least a year before he left Homicide, Bil just didn’t want to do it anymore,” Toschi said. “Now that I’m the only one working on it, I never let a

day go by without remembering Zodiac. It’s gotten to be more personal. Every day I wonder what became of him.”

Six cab drivers had been murdered since Stine’s kil ing in 1969 and six suspects had been arrested and tried. Five were convicted of first

degree murder, one of second degree. Just ten days after Stine’s senseless murder, Toschi and Armstrong had investigated another Yel ow Cab

driver slaying only blocks away . . . “driver shot in the head . . . wal et stolen, cab lights left blazing . . . engine running. A row of brightly colored shirts littering the sidewalk.” Toschi and Armstrong quickly nabbed a Tenderloin busboy in bed with his girlfriend. She had nagged him about money, so

he flagged down a cabbie, held him up, and shot him during a struggle. “I took twenty-seven dol ars off him,” the chain-smoking youth said, “then

threw my .22 revolver down a storm drain. I knew I’d get caught. I left my fingerprints al over the cab. I’ve got a record so I knew it was only a matter

of time before you picked me up. Sure, I feel bad about it . . . especial y for his wife and little girl. Whatever I get, I got coming. You don’t kil

someone and not pay for it. You see, I never wanted to see the inside of a jail again.” Only Stine’s kil er stil remained at large. It began to look as if

Zodiac might win his lethal chess match with the police simply through attrition.

“My mom and I,” a Southern California resident later told me, “visited Mr. Al en in Atascadero State Hospital almost every Saturday, and when he

was released he even stayed at our house just north of Atascadero and west of San Luis Obispo. . . . I remember when he stayed at our house, he

stayed in my mom’s room with her. She always said that nothing happened, and I tend to believe her, since I remember him as not a very sexual

person. Mr. Al en was very good to al of us kids. He spent a lot of time with my brothers and us girls. He taught us basic values, he was an avid non-

drinker and non-smoker. He had a lot of smal pets. He especial y liked kangaroo rats, and had a permit to keep them and do research. He taught

my brother how to drive, shoot, fix cars, and do al of those other guy things. He used to go to his various trailers, and they used to go target

shooting in the mountains and river bottoms of Northern California. Mr. Al en was an expert marksman.”

While Al en was incarcerated, Zodiac refused to die, living on in speculation, in every dark shadow along a lake and in al our hearts. If Zodiac

had simply faded away, good men like Toschi, Armstrong, Mulanax, Lynch, Narlow, and Avery had been beaten.

Tuesday, August 24, 1976

The 1965 blue Volkswagen van bus had been in and out of the garage on A Street several times. On June 23, 1976, its owner had the motor

overhauled for $520.74. In July, Wilfred Roenik, manager of the German Car Center east of Merced, noticed the van back again. A fix-it ticket said

the rear lights weren’t working. “The vehicle has ground problems,” Roenik explained, but its owner did not ask to check the headlamps. The owner

reappeared on August 2, saying he needed a voltage regulator and battery. Those were instal ed for $39.05. On Tuesday, August 24, he returned

the battery. “It cost too much,” he complained, and that afternoon instal ed his own new battery.

Around 8:00 P.M. the van’s owner, a forty-one-year-old Santa Rosa Junior Col ege teacher, climbed behind the wheel. He was tal , six feet three

inches, 190 pounds, with brown hair and hazel eyes. An ex-soldier, he had served at Fort Hamilton, New York. In 1959, he’d received an early

release from the Army as an overseas returnee. Six years later, he became an English teacher and part-time art instructor.

It was a clear night, the road ahead was dry. He was not under the influence of barbiturates or alcohol. He had just eaten. Going only fifty, five

miles under the speed limit, he took his van eastbound onto an expressway with no streetlights. Highway 12 began as two lanes separated by a

forty-foot-wide divider strip, real y only dirt with grass and weeds, then abruptly became a four-lane divided expressway. At 8:30 P.M., just where the

highway curved west of Wright Road, the van’s headlights blinked out. At the start of the divided section, the VW eased onto the center divider and

drove along there for a distance. The van ignored the curve, kept going straight, and flew across the dirt divider into the westbound lane.

A man en route to a friend’s home in Sebastopol entered the point where the two westbound lanes merged to one. He could clearly see the

headlights of other vehicles in the eastbound lanes. “Oh, my God!” he cried when he saw the van cross straight into oncoming traffic. There was no

braking action, only light skid marks about two feet long just before impact. The van col ided head-on into a 1972 Toyota traveling west in the #1

lane. Both vehicles bounced nine feet into the #2 lane and came to rest on the north asphalt shoulder less than three thousand feet east of Merced

Avenue. Both drivers were pinned in their cars. At 8:50, the fire department extricated them. The woman driver in the Toyota would be OK.

At 9:00 P.M. they wheeled the teacher into the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital Emergency Room and doctors began working on him. Deputy

Durham spoke with Dr. Larson. The wounds were severe: a tear of the pericardial sac of the heart and left pulmonary vein . . . abrasion of the

zygomatic arch, multiple fractures of the right lower extremity, a fracture of the left hip and right arm, multiple fractures of the ankle, laceration left

lower leg, radial and ulna on right. They couldn’t keep his blood pressure above 60. At 1:25 A.M. the teacher died on the operating table. Sheriff

and Coroner Don Striepeke ruled the cause of death to be: “Shock due to multiple traumatic lesions.”

Durham retained the teacher’s wal et and personal property. The only address they had on him was a P.O. box in Santa Rosa. The deputy ran a

1028 registration check, and learned that the victim lived in a trailer home in Sebastopol. At 9:30 A.M., Durham spoke with the teacher’s ex-wife

and discovered he had been having some epileptic seizures control ed by medication. At 3:00 P.M. Investigator Siebe, interested in items inside

the trailer, sealed it. It wasn’t until November 8 that police returned the property, noting for their records: “Landlord and Ex-wife are going to itemize

things in his room and store them at landlord’s place to free the room.” Why did police keep the teacher’s possessions so long? Were they

connected with the Santa Rosa murders? A decade would pass before I found out.

Friday, August 27, 1976

At midnight, San Francisco Supervisor Dianne Feinstein, working late at City Hal , opened the last of her mail. “Did you miss me?” a note read.

“Was busy doing some nefarious dastardly work, for which I am very wel suited.” She rang the police, they cal ed Toschi, and at 5:00 A.M.,

unshaven and bleary-eyed, he hustled upstairs to study the letter. “This isn’t from Zodiac,” he explained. “It’s ‘Old Tom’ playing games again. I’ve got

an entire file on Old Tom’s bogus letters. Oddly enough, he isn’t drunk when he writes his Zodiac letters. The typing is far too elaborate for a guy

who is sauced. And a guy who keeps doing a thing like that when he’s sober has gotta have something wrong with his head. He’s kil ing himself

with alcohol.” The detective arranged for the McCauley Clinic to treat Tom for malnutrition; tried to get him into Napa under a section of the Welfare

and Institution Code about being a danger to himself. However, Tom, an old pro, got himself a writ, and eight days later a judge dropped him back

into the Tenderloin. I visited Old Tom in his flea-bitten hotel room, found him curled up on a urine-stained mattress. He was total y obsessed with the

case. If that made him crazy, then we al were.

Toschi stil had seven years left until his minimum retirement date. “I’m watching the mailbox,” he said, “to see if I get a seventh-anniversary card

from Zodiac.” An ad had run in that morning’s Chronicle: “ZODIAC Your partner is in DEEP REAL ESTATE. You’re next. The Imperial Wizard can

save you. Surrender to him or I’l terminate your case. R.A.”

13

the voice of zodiac

Friday, November 5, 1976

Toschi bumped into Karl Malden (“Lieutenant Mike Stone” on The Streets of San Francisco). The actor was on location at the police

identification bureau, shooting a scene with costar Michael Douglas. Malden recal ed Toschi from a meeting the previous year and hailed him. “You

had that unusual upside-down holster and gun,” he said. “I had never seen anything like it.” They spoke of the job like two cops. “I’l get Zodiac

someday,” Toschi vowed to Malden. “And I’l bring him to justice. That’s my motivation—justice. I’m not a vengeful type, but when a life is taken,

there must be justice. He has taken six lives; who knows how many more? I work with death, sorrow, and tragedy. Yet I like my job because it’s a

useful one. I bring in kil ers for society’s judgment. Ringing bel s and knocking on doors, good old-fashioned police work. That’s what does it. I’ve

even gotten religious-type letters where they tel me to pray, to talk to God, and then I’l catch Zodiac, they say. These people don’t know they’re

talking to the biggest believer around.” It was a speech he not only gave often, but believed in his heart.

“The Zodiac case is like the unsolved Black Dahlia murder in Los Angeles,” Toschi told me later. “The chief detective in that case always said he

would know the kil er if he questioned him by means of one secret question he never revealed—I’ve held a couple of things back from the press too.

. . . I remember meeting Clint Eastwood while he was making Dirty Harry, an almost shy person . . . faded jeans, a T-shirt, white tennis shoes, and

he was a star. And Stu Rosenberg, the director of The Laughing Policeman. Walter Mathau was wonderful, Bruce Dern terrific in that film. Stu took

a cab and met us at a murder scene. ‘I don’t know how you do this,’ he said. ‘My God!’”

Two months later, the House Select Committee sought out the nation’s top investigators and invited Toschi to participate in a second look into

the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr. He declined. The assignment would have taken him away from Zodiac for two

years. As Christmas approached, Toschi’s mood lightened. One of the crime lab people snapped a candid shot of him grinning on the phone and

wearing fel ow Inspector Rotea Gilford’s Zebra-patterned hat.

For years, amateur sleuths had groped for any clue that might unmask Zodiac. His use of English was a valuable lead. A U.C. Berkeley linguistics

professor, examining Zodiac’s use of vernacular, concluded he was of English or Welsh extraction. English cartoonist Jim Unger, who drew the

syndicated strip Herman, was once a British policeman. “The letters from Zodiac show he is a man from the north of Great Britain,” Unger said. “Of

course, we know he speaks with no accent, but he may have lived there.” A British police car currently in service was cal ed the “Zodiac,” its hood

insignia a crossed circle. Author Nancy Ashbaugh told me: “‘Tit Wil ow’ is a song sung by English mothers instead of ‘Rock-a-bye-Baby.’ Zodiac

mentions peppermint and ‘phompfit. ’ Zodiac means pomfits, a term for candies. ‘Give the child a pomfit [violet squares and lavender squares].’

There are pomfits in Alice in Wonderland.” A mind reader stated, “Zodiac is definitely of German-Irish ancestry.”

Writing in future tense—“I wil . . . I shal ,” Zodiac also used purposeful misspel ings. Was there a man in the case who, in his daily life, habitual y

misspel ed words in a mocking, taunting, or jocular manner? Spel ing mistakes in the three-part cryptogram might not be encrypting mistakes, but a

hidden message. Zodiac had used extra letters such as the r in “forrest” and e in “expeerence” and omitted letters such as the s in “dangerous.”

Using these divergences, Zodiac buff J. B. Dahlgren was able to spel “Science is mysterious Isis,” but admitted that skil ed anagramists might find

better combinations.

Along with oddly spel ed words, X’s ran through Zodiac’s letters: “X’mas” and “Super X.” The circled 8 in the letter might be a Taurus or Cancer

symbol. Toschi, himself a Cancer, had gotten in the habit of regularly picking up astrology magazines hoping one might provide an overlooked clue.

An astrologer, using the dates when Zodiac had struck or mailed letters, tried unsuccessful y casting his horoscope backwards. “That way I can

ascertain his birth date.” Another was sure Zodiac was a Capricorn. “Saturn is the ruling planet of Capricorn and Zodiac’s activities are tied to

certain events in Saturn,” he said.

“Look in the Chronicle,” John H. Grove advised, “and see what the horoscope recommended on days he kil ed. After al , Hitler wouldn’t move

without his astrologer’s okay. . . . Cappies are usual y good spel ers, and his errors could be a ruse to throw everyone off the track. Zodiac

appears to be strongly affected by the dice naturals 7 and 11, the latter especial y. Apart from gambling and the occult his assumed name may

be interrelated with his love of eleven. The word Zodiac is derived from the ancient Greek Zodiakos. The Hel enes had no separate numbering

system, each alphabetical letter having a numerical value. I was amazed when I computed the numerical value for Zodiakos and found it to be

1111. Is Zodiac aware of this? He probably is. He may be crazy or a doper or both, but he is neither stupid nor il iterate.”

If the number eleven was important to the kil er, what did twelve mean to him? There were twelve signs to the Zodiac. Zodiac’s nature (and that of

most serial kil ers) was to clip and col ect stories about himself. Since buying three papers a day might attract undue attention, he might have home

subscriptions to them al . The Examiner had not only buried Zodiac on page 4, but begged him to surrender to them (an unwise suggestion to a

madman who enjoyed being in control). Zodiac never wrote them again. Police might look for a man who had many subscriptions, but canceled the

Examiner.

Wednesday, March 30, 1977

Allen had now served thirty months—two years and fifteen days at Atascadero. He was returned to the Sonoma County Jail to prepare for a May

13, 1977 probation hearing. He waived that right.

Tuesday, August 30, 1977

Leigh had spent a total of 150 days in the Sonoma County Jail. Between there and Atascadero he had been behind bars for two years, four

months, and twenty-five days. During al that time not one offense attributable to Zodiac had been committed. The attacks in Santa Rosa had

ceased; no new bodies were discarded below Franz Val ey Road; no genuine letters from Zodiac had been received. Even as late as this nine

hundredth day of Leigh’s captivity, a note—a sentence—a single word postmarked from outside Atascadero would have removed Al en from the

suspect list. But Zodiac’s last letter had been received three ful years before—July 8, 1974.

In the afternoon, a Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department deputy ushered Leigh downstairs. Their heels echoed in the long impersonal hal ways.

The deputy arranged white plastic numerals, #4-7-9-3-2, below Leigh’s face for an I.D. mug shot. He was garbed in prison clothes, his mustache

and goatee now showing gray. His expression was scowling, though the next day he was to be a free man. A friend of mine saw a different

expression in the same photo. “I think he looks sad,” she said.

California law enforcement authorities, under Section 290 of the State Penal Code, relied on convicted sex offenders to keep tabs on

themselves by notifying police when they moved. Since the state had no enforcement program, it was no surprise that only a handful of the multitude

of discharged offenders were currently registered. Atascadero officials notified the prison registry and the registry notified Val ejo authorities that

Al en was on the streets again. The next step was up to him. He returned to his cubicle, his steps echoing down the hal s, his image reflected ful

length in the highly polished floor bigger than ever.

Wednesday, August 31, 1977

Liberated from Atascadero, Leigh Al en went to stay with friends in Paso Robles. The fol owing day Toschi received a typed letter from him, the

first mention of Zodiac within recent memory. “Kil ers invariably try to inject themselves into the investigation,” I said to Toschi. “Have any of the

suspects ever offered to help you catch Zodiac? With his disdain of the police, Zodiac would be irresistibly drawn to offer to catch himself.”

“Only one,” he said.

“And I bet it was typed.”

“Yes, it was. It just arrived.” He searched his desk. A bright shaft of light cut through the grimy window. Traffic crawled sluggishly along Bryant

Street. The old sign flashed its red neon in bright sunlight, “OK BAIL BONDS—OPEN 24 HOURS—WE SPECIALIZE IN TRAFFIC.” Toschi found

the letter and read aloud: “If I can ever be of any help to you just let me know. I’m sorry I wasn’t your man, but I’m out now and I’ve paid my debt to

society. [signed] Leigh Al en.”

“Sorry I wasn’t your man!’” said Toschi in wonderment. A note like this, with its mocking tone, was exactly the kind of letter Zodiac would write.

“He’s the one,” I said.

Back at the Chronicle, a sick, unpostmarked letter signed with a Zodiac symbol arrived that afternoon. Even crank letters like Old Tom’s were

treated seriously. Actual y, any Zodiac letter, no matter how obvious a hoax, always created a stir. No possibility could be dismissed. Police

lavished attention on each because Zodiac’s handprinting may have changed over the years.

“ILL DO IT BECAUSE I DONE IT 21 TIMES I CANT STOP BECAUSE EACH THAT I KILL MAKES IT WORSE AND I MUST KILL MORE

MAN IS THE MOST PRIZED GAME ILL NERVER GIVE MY NAME. . . .”

What perversity drove anyone to copy Zodiac? Future copycats had darker motives and bloodier hands. They went further than imitating writing—

they acted on the Zodiac crimes themselves.

Tuesday, January 3, 1978

Allen returned to Val ejo. Water Town had changed little—lying clean, sprawling, and mysterious as always. Robert Louis Stevenson once said,

“Val ejo typical of many smal California towns—a blunder.” First thing, Leigh applied as a fleet mechanic to Benicia Import Auto Service. He was

honest about his past. “I served two years and a half at Atascadero,” he admitted. After they hired him at $6.15 an hour, he roved the hil s trying out

his wings. He was seemingly unaware the search for Zodiac had not abated in his absence. The same hounds were stil howling and leaping al

about him and across the waters in San Francisco. But on a national level, the FBI focused on new Zodiac suspects:

“At Buffalo, New York. Wil question an informant regarding his knowledge of and basis of his al egation of Zodiac’s activities, and why he

considers him a suspect in the ZODIAC case,” read a bul etin. “At Jacksonvil e, at Tavares, Florida. Wil advise Lake County as a possible

ZODIAC suspect. Wil obtain photos of subject and furnish to Sacramento, and also to Buffalo. ARMED AND DANGEROUS.”

The gray straits appeared icy in the morning. Leigh parked where a causeway across the Napa River and the straits joined Val ejo at the west to

an island. He gazed toward Mare Island. In Water Town’s early days, a barge transporting a herd of livestock had overturned. General Mariano

Guadalupe Val ejo, an early California land baron, had rescued a white mare swimming for the island and christened the cay Isla de la Yegua

—“Island of the Mare.”

Across the water, battleships moored alongside three-tiered warehouses with brick smokestacks. The Naval Shipyard was Val ejo’s principal

industry, served by third-, even fourth-generation workers. During World War I it returned a thousand repaired ships to duty and manufactured three

hundred submarines, destroyer escorts, sub tenders, and landing craft. The West’s oldest Naval instal ation assembled battleships like the

California, cruisers like the Chicago. It was the first Pacific yard to build atomic-powered subs. The shipyard, completely self-contained,

manufactured everything it needed from bricks to rivets. Al en was equal y self-sufficient. He gazed longingly toward the sea, drove into work, and

got bad news. Import Auto Service was laying him off. “So soon?” said Leigh. “Business has just been too slow,” said the manager. Al en clenched

and unclenched his fists at the hopelessness of it al .

Friday, April 28, 1978

On Monday, someone had dropped a letter with too much postage and signed “Zodiac” into a mailbox. Its postmark designated a Santa Clara or

San Mateo County origin. On Friday, April 28, the Chronicle received its first Zodiac letter since 1974. If it was not a hoax, the kil er had been

elsewhere for almost four years. The letter met al the usual requirements of a genuine Zodiac communication. But it had a forced look about it, and

quite quickly cries of “Hoax!” went up. Sherwood Morril in Sacramento ruled it authentic. For a while so did John Shimoda, Director of the Postal

Crime Laboratory, Western Regional Office, San Bruno. Eventual y Shimoda reversed his position and sided with expert Terry Pascoe, claiming it

to be a clever hoax. I wanted it to be authentic, but as time went by, my doubts about the letter increased. The cunning forgery would cause agony

for everyone.

“He’s lurking somewhere,” Toschi told the press, “and it scares the hel out of people, including my wife. The case has put considerable strain

upon my family. My three little girls were not big enough in 1969 to appreciate the magnitude of the case, but they were old enough to hear stories

from their schoolmates that their daddy was working on a case about a dangerous murderer. They would come and tel me they were afraid that

something horrible would happen to me. They lived with this fear. Of al the cases I have handled, this one is real y a personal case. . . . He’s playing

the ego game, trying to taunt us. . . . I try not to let this bother me, but it’s frustrating. We have not given up. The case is worked upon anytime

something is forwarded to us and we act upon it. The surrender box is stil open.”

Monday, May 15, 1978

“I wasn’t surprised a popular film like The Exorcist drew Zodiac out back in ’74,” Toschi told me. “This guy is a real nut on movies.” I showed him an anonymous letter sent to me—exactly the kind the egotistical, publicity-mad kil er might write: “To Editor, or who ever is in charge of the Zodiac,”

it said. “Have you ever considered making a short film about the Zodiac?

“Like some of those Hitchcocks, you know where you have to come to your own conclusion for an ending as to who is the kil er? If a muvie

could be made, it can be shown in one of those smal theaters where mostly sex muvies are shown so that it wil look like some unknown

thought of the idea just to make money on something that sel s. . . . As I look at it, since the Zodiac takes so much pride in himself for his work,

He’l probably love the thought of a muvie about himself, and since he feels shure knowbody knows him, there is no reason for him not to go

and admire himself. . . . Thank you—no name . . . sorry for the mess, but I’m kind of in a hurry, I have work to do.”

Tuesday, May 16, 1978

Because of furor over the April hoax letter, cries for Zodiac’s capture intensified. San Francisco residents put Police Chief Charles Gain under

terrific pressure to solve the case. He asked FBI Director Wil iam H. Webster to analyze six Zodiac cryptograms mailed to local papers in 1969.

Gain wrote:

“Three of these were subsequently broken but the others remain unsolved. We request that a new attempt be made to break these ciphers—

ENCLOSED:

1. Photo copy of ‘Zodiac’ letter with 13 characters. ‘My name is——.’

2. Photo copy of ‘Zodiac’ letter with 31 characters. 3. Photo copy of cryptogram excerpt from letter. 4. Copy of three broken

cryptograms.”

FBI attempts to decrypt, using the old key as part of a combination cryptosystem, failed, as did linear and route transposition. Experts examined

the first and last halves for a cyclic use of variants, did hand anagramming with the message as written or backwards or written columnarly. They

read it as first line forward and second line backward. They ran a sliding word through the messages. They tried concentrated anagramming

—“took, look, book, cook, shook, hook . . .” Al endeavors were non-productive. Toschi was not too surprised. Like many policemen, he had no

great faith in the elitist bureau.

Friday, May 19, 1978

In the meantime, Gain obtained FBI lab results on his petitioned comparison of the Zodiac letters. The Questioned Documents examiner

considered sixteen manila folders containing the letters between October 13, 1969, and April 24, 1978. The expert renumbered them Q 85 through

Q 99. (The Riverside letters, including the desktop, were studied separately in photographic form and labeled Qc100.) The report, in longhand,

read:

“The handprinting on the Q 85-Qc100 letters show a wide range of variation and various writing speeds. Additional y, portions of the

material, particularly the three Riverside letters, may have been disguised or deliberately distorted. For the above reasons, the handprinting

examination of these letters was inconclusive. However, consistent handprinting characteristics were noted in the Q 85-Qc100 letters which

indicate that one person may have prepared al of the letters including the Riverside letters and the message found on the desk top in the

Riverside case.”

A month later Gain requested the Behavioral Science Unit at Quantico review the letters’ contents and develop a psychological profile of Zodiac.

Later I cal ed to see if Cheney ever wrote any letters to Leigh Al en. “I couldn’t help but notice that your printing resembles Zodiac printing,” I said.

“Could Zodiac be copying your handprinting?” “Maybe!” said Cheney. “Before changing to permit microfilm, upper and lowercase lettering was

standard drafting practice.” Cheney, an engineer, referred me to Technical Drawing (Geisacke, Spencer, and Mitchel , Macmil an, 4th edition).

“Though I never got a letter from him with double postage,” he said, “Leigh typed his letters and recipes, misspel ing certain words on purpose.”

Al en began meeting with his parole officer, Bruce R. Pel e, Deputy Probation Officer, County of Solano. Pel e noticed that Al en consistently wore

old-fashioned pleated pants to their conferences. Their first monthly meeting was troubling to Pel e and uncomfortable for Al en. The parole officer

attempted to see just what would set him off, threatening him with a return to jail if he did not cooperate more ful y. This brought a lowering of his

head and a refrain of “I wouldn’t like that at al .” Al en’s improper relationships with children had not concluded either. When Pel e first visited Al en’s

home with his partner, Lloyd, the parolee had al the neighborhood children out front riding bicycles. Leigh had them circle their car waving red flags

to direct the officers into the driveway. He also maintained a friendship with a nine-year-old that would only cease when she reached sixteen.

One evening, Pel e gazed out his apartment window at the Bodega complex where he lived. Two stories below, the smel of chlorine and suntan

oil drifted upward. Next to the intermittently sparkling pool Leigh was holding hands with a little girl—a direct parole violation. Pel e realized that

Leigh had fol owed him home after their session. For some reason the ex-convict was trying to intimidate him or taunt him by his close proximity to

a child. Why? Pel e made some cal s, learned the girl was Leigh’s cousin, and ultimately let the matter pass. Shortly afterward, he learned that Al en

was a serious Zodiac suspect.

“In fact the day I found out,” he told me, “I was home looking at copies of the Zodiac letters. Al evening I kept getting these cal s where someone

would just breathe. I kept tel ing my girlfriend, ‘I think that Al en knows that I know and that he knows that I know he knows.’ I told him:

“‘Arthur, you’re suspected of being the Zodiac.’

“‘I know,’ he said.

“‘What do you think about that?’

“‘I think that was a real misnomer to do that to me. I think it was unfair.’

“‘It was?’

“‘Yeah.’

“‘Have you read the reports?’

“‘Yeah, I know what they’re talking about and that’s al a pack of lies.’

“‘Wouldn’t the person who was the Zodiac feel that it was a pack of lies?’

“‘Probably. Who in hel is going to admit to being the damn Zodiac.’”

He told Pel e that on the day of the Hartnel and Shepard stabbings, he was supposed to be at Lake Berryessa catching ground squirrels to

dissect. “Amazing coincidence,” Pel e remarked. He was also disturbed by Leigh’s mental evaluation. “Basical y, Arthur is an extremely dangerous

person,” he told me later. “He is sociopathic and possesses an incredibly high I.Q. Al en is repressing very deep hatred and is incapable of

functioning with women in a normal way.” Apparently, after his 1971 oil refinery questioning, Leigh, at the urging of his family, had been evaluated by

psychiatrists at U.C. Berkeley and Langley Porter. They had worked up mental reports on the prime suspect from May 1973 until September 26,

1974, when he had been first considered “capable of murder, dangerous.” Doctors had looked for indications of self-mutilation drives and a

disregard for the sanctity of human life. They noted his impulsiveness.

I asked Pel e if he had seen a light table or enlarger at Leigh’s house on any of his visits. I suspected Zodiac had projected grids through an

enlarger onto his blocks of cipher to align them so perfectly. “Yes,” Pel e said. “I recal seeing an enlarger in his home.” But of course there had to

be one. Whoever Zodiac was, he had to have access to a light table, grids to position his symbols, a T-square and triangle and other drafting tools.

Ethan W. Al en had been a draftsman for the city of Val ejo. Such items were the tools of his trade. As a professional artist, I knew that the Zodiac

letters, the 340-symbol code in particular, would tax the most experienced craftsman.

“Leigh’s got a new motorcycle now,” Pel e told me, “apple-green [a color close to Cheri Jo Bates’s lime-green VW ]. It’s not registered in his

name, but a friend’s. And he’s got a new job too. Leigh told me how much he hates working for a living. Told me forceful y. But when he chooses he

can project a calm and reasonable front. He’s working part-time at the California Human Development Corporation [1004 Marin Street] as a senior-

citizen aide. ‘For $4.00 per hour,’ Leigh explained, ‘I take seniors to and from hospitals, inspect and instal security devices in their homes.’

Security devices—that’s mighty interesting. As for Leigh’s brother, Ron, he’s now a city planner. He’s stil worried about his brother, but rarely has

any more contact with the police.”

One evening sometime later, I drove out to the first Val ejo crime scene—Lake Herman Road. Other visits had been at midnight, the time of the

murders. Tonight the wind trembled the trees along the road. The landscape, lost and found in every curve, was final y swal owed up in white fog.

After Al en’s release from prison, gossip again mentioned a big man roving near the water pumps and lake. He scouted, practiced his shooting,

and climbed through quarries where he could dive. Al of Zodiac’s murders had been water-oriented—Blue Rock Springs (eerily reminiscent of

Al en’s old school, Val ey Springs), Riverside, Lake Berryessa, Lake Street (his requested first destination in Paul Stine’s cab), and Lake Herman Road. Though I found the Lake Herman double murder site virtual y unchanged, one alteration had been made. The little gravel lane just past the

chain-link fence leading to Pump House #10 now had a name. A brisk wind rose, ruffling the standing water as I made my way to the gate to read

“Water Lane.” That told me that a decade ago Zodiac had been extraordinarily familiar with Val ejo. He had selected an unmarked path that fit his

mania for water-named sites. He knew al the secrets of Water Town.

Tuesday, June 27, 1978

And still we received tips portraying “what sort of guy Zodiac might be . . .” “I feel that he might have a bike or motorcycle,” a San Francisco art

director suggested. “. . . is bordering on genius . . . untapped and untrained perhaps, but mental y superior to the ways in which he has been able to

make a living . . . that he is hardly an accepted individual at al , but considered curious, temperamental, and a social y limited personality. His split

personality is fed daily by insults and fringe knowledge . . . of which he is a miserable spectator, not participant. He is, in my imagination, 35 to 40

years old. He is deathly afraid of women or impotent. He is, if the man is guilty of the wasteful, senseless crimes you’ve had to report, in dire need

of love. He also needs help. Unfortunately, he also needs to be caught.”

Assistant FBI director Thomas Kel eher, Jr., advised Chief Gain on Tuesday that they had been analyzing the unsolved Zodiac ciphers since their

acquisition, particularly the 340-symbol cipher. “The Laboratory wil continue analysis of these ciphers as time permits. You wil be notified

immediately of any positive results.” Cryptographers searched for hidden ciphers and messages. “Initial letters of words, first, second, third last

letters of words; line beginnings, line endings,” they reported, “did not spel anything.” There were no extraneous markings, no indentations, no

invisible writing. As for Zodiac, he was invisible too.

Monday, July 17, 1978

After controversy over the April Zodiac letter, Inspector Toschi was reassigned to Robbery Detail. An unfounded al egation that he had written

the letter caused his transfer. “Police officials emphatical y denied reports that Inspector Dave Toschi, who has investigated the Zodiac case for

nine years, ever was suspected of forging the latest letter attributed to the murderer,” reported the Associated Press.

“Now Mr. Toschi wil know what it feels like!” Al en told Pel e through clenched teeth after he read of the transfer. Leigh stil remembered his

dismissal from the refinery bitterly. As for Toschi, a great weight was lifted from his shoulders.

Wednesday, July 19, 1978

Avery was among the missing too. “Paul Avery and Kate Coleman who wrote the sizzling expose of Black Panther violence in the July 10 New

Times, have gone ‘out of the area’ after receiving the predictable threats,” wrote Herb Caen. The bogus letter reopened old wounds, driving the

populace to seek closure on the long-unsolved case. Zodiac tips quadrupled. “The Zodiac was shot to death by San Francisco police in March of

1976,” a reader informed Caen, “about four months after he set the Gartland Hotel fire that kil ed thirteen people.” Next day, an anonymous

typewritten letter from Los Angeles also arrived at the Chronicle:

“I am the ZODIAC and I am in control of al things,” it read. “I am going to tel you a secret. I like friction tape. I like to have it around in case I

need to truss someone up in a hurry. . . . I have my real name on a smal metal ic tape. You see, while you have it in your possession, I want you

to know it belongs to me and you think I may have left it accidently. I am athletic. It could be swim fins, or a piece of scuba gear. But maybe you

play chess with me. I have several cheap sets in closets al over. I have my name on the bottom of the lid with the scotch tape. . . . My tape is

waiting for me al over California. Do you know me? I am the ZODIAC and I am in control.”

Monday, July 30, 1978

Allen, while driving with a suspended license on July 30, was involved in an accident in Mendocino involving a car licensed ZEB 577. The State

Farm insurance underwriter who insured Al en’s car knew him personal y. Several days later, a woman approached the agent’s desk at the Rohnert

Park regional office, stood silently for a moment, then asked about obtaining accident file #91505505086. That was Leigh Al en’s file. “Why?” the

agent asked. “Because they’re watching any activity going on about this man,” she said. “Be careful not to get yourself involved with information

about him. They’l want to know what you’re up to. Two fourteen-year-old girls have disappeared in the Val ejo area, but I seriously doubt Leigh’s up

to anything since he’s being watched so closely.”

Wednesday August 23, 1978

A few days earlier, Toschi had slipped and fractured his ankle on an oily spot in the police garage. He chafed at anything that took him from work.

Anxiously, he consulted a bone specialist. “Toschi,” the doctor joked, “every cop I know wants to extend his disability time a bit more and here you

want to get right back to work.” Toschi only smiled and returned to the job with his special jel y-shoe soft walking cast on. By week’s end, he was

limping along on his bandaged foot as briskly as he normal y walked.

Utilizing the content of authentic Zodiac letters, the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU), headquartered at Quantico, Virginia, within the FBI National

Academy, attempted to develop a better psychological profile of the kil er. “Results wil be forwarded to your division for transmittal to requesting

agency when completed,” BSU notified the San Francisco FBI Headquarters. This Training Division of the Justice Department had been

established in the early 1970s. “But how many serial kil er cases has the FBI solved—if any?” said one agent publicly.

Just as Avery and Toschi were putting Zodiac behind them, Captain Ken Narlow of the Napa Sheriff’s Office was becoming increasingly

obsessed. “Many of the leads we were original y blessed with,” he told me in our interviews of August 25, 1978 and August 12, 1980, “have

become old and deteriorated to the point where they don’t have much value anymore. I stil think Zodiac is out there someplace. I sometimes look

out the window and wonder how close we’ve come to him at times. We rattled so many cages and kicked so many bushes along the way, we must

have been near him at least once.”

These days Narlow thought about one particular man. “I’ve always been high on him,” he told me. “We never had enough evidence to bring him in

and rol his prints. The more we started leaning on him, the more natural y defensive he got. The first couple of times we talked to him he was very

open; then it got to the point where it was ‘Either do something or leave me alone!’ He came down to complain and saw Avery at the Chronicle.

The first time we went over to his place by the water, we were there several hours. Very intel igent person, very interesting person. He didn’t mind

talking about his past.” The cops sat down and passed him copies of photos of Zodiac’s victims. The suspect realized they were not only gauging

his reactions, but trying to get his prints. So he picked up the pictures, looked them over, began to hand them back, then said, “Oh, I’m sorry, I got

fingerprints al over them. Let me wipe that off for you.” And he wiped them off.

From beneath a light brown, reddish-tinted Buster Brown haircut, the animated face of Oliver Hardy peered out at the cops. The eyes darting

behind dark-rimmed glasses were pop-eyed as a neon sign, but highly astute. During the prolonged questioning the suspect, though occasional y

fal ing silent on sensitive subjects, dominated the conversation. “He just talked a mile a minute,” Narlow told me. “He had me so confused I couldn’t

even write a report when it was over. This guy takes over when you’re around him and talks.” The suspect spoke of his two loves—engineering and

show business. He had done bit parts in movies in Southern California and, like Zodiac, could quote Gilbert and Sul ivan by rote: “I spent two

seasons singing grand opera and I’m a voracious reader. I am one of those singular people blessed with almost total recal . I can remember the

exact address and telephone number of the house I lived in in Texas in 1939. I can remember al the old King Kong and Dracula pictures and

where I saw them.”

“He has a [Model 15 Teleprinter] Teletype machine in his little basement theater,” Narlow told me. “That’s a sample of printing from his [Royal

portable] typewriter. . . . He did have three months of code school and has got an alias that I think is actual y his real name. I don’t think we were

able to establish this through a State Division of Public Safety check. A friend of mine I went to the FBI Academy with did some background

investigation. He was supposedly born in Lubbock County, Texas. . . .”

“Where the term ‘fiddle and fart around’ is used,” I said. “And he can sew. He has designed and sewn costumes in Hol ywood.” The subject had

lost his mother at age five and from then on “was on the outs” with his father, “a wealthy oil man.”

“There is also a certificate on file for his alias,” said Narlow. “Back in Texas a doctor just filed a birth certificate and that was it, not like today’s

date and age. So as we speak, there’s stil some question as to whether or not these two are one and the same individual. A delayed certificate

was filed in Probate Court showing that he was born in 1928 and 1926.

“A local guy is so convinced that this man is the Zodiac that he started his own book and then went to the television people and hired an attorney.

He was going to blow the whistle on this guy Andrews as a responsible 5 I told him you better be sure—there ain’t no way in hel that I can prove it!

You’re just going to leave yourself wide open for a libel suit. And final y the television people backed off too because I haven’t heard any more about

it from them. Besides, we weren’t able establish that Andrews had any sort of proficiency with guns.” Nervous, temperamental, the suspect once

said, “What I have is better than sex!” He told a Sambo’s Restaurant waitress he was “going to come back and blow her legs off.” “Avery

determined that this man was a student at Riverside City Col ege,” continued Narlow, “but I was never able to confirm that. There’s his apartment in

San Francisco, the one that was supposedly underwater. [On April 20, 1970, Zodiac wrote that the bus bomb he kept stored in his basement had

been a dud. “I was swamped out by the rain we had a while back,” he explained.] He worked at the San Francisco Airport—as a matter of fact he

would have been working there about the time of Cheri Jo Bates’s murder in October 1966. Wel , I’l tel you, if he is not the Zodiac, I’l take one just

like him.”

Two months before the first Zodiac murders, the subject had color-ful y remarked, “I felt the smartest thing I could do would be to pul an Anton La

Vey. He couldn’t make it as a bar organist, so he looked at himself in the mirror one day and said, ‘I am a character.’ Then he hired a press agent

and became Satan. I am a character too, right off the old screen, but I can’t afford a press agent. I am also humble—because I see how absurd this

game is!” Zodiac had written, “I am insane, but the game must go on.”

My friend, Fay Nelson, spoke with Andrews in San Francisco. “His car at the time of the Blue Rock Springs murders was a white Renault

Caravel e, a car similar to the Corvair in appearance.” We learned Zodiac was not this man, but there was a link of sorts—he had a vintage movie

theater. Police thought so too. They compiled a list of everyone who ever worked there. I discovered the fol owing: The Most Dangerous Game, a

film that inspired Zodiac, had played there in May 1969. After January 1, 1969, the theater had gone to Friday night showings and Zodiac had

begun attacking on Saturdays. Darlene Ferrin, the Blue Rock Springs victim, had written two names her notebook—“Leigh” and “Vaughn.” Robert

Vaughn was the name of the silent-movie organist at the Avenue Theatre. Both he and Avery’s suspect had worked there since March 1968. Was

this a theater Zodiac frequented regularly? I decided to pay another visit there and find out.

Friday, September 1, 1978

Classic cars parked on the rain-slick street made the silent-movie palace at 2650 San Bruno Avenue hard to miss. The theater’s large domed

ceiling had once been decorated in a Spanish motif. Now, around a chandelier right out of The Phantom of the Opera, an artist had painted al the

symbols of the Zodiac.

Narlow’s suspect managed the theater, existing in genteel squalor to finance his passion for flickering silents and early talkies. He defrayed costs

by exhibiting unique contemporary films. The previous week he had shown a 3-D thril er, Man in the Dark. On Fridays “Photoplays and Concerts

with ful Wurlitzer accompaniment” were featured. Fans flocked to these early Pathe Freres Films, D. W. Griffith one-reel Biographs. They adored

stars like Mary Pickford, Lionel Barrymore, Doug Fairbanks, and Buster Keaton.

Waddling like Charlie Chaplin, round-backed, roly-poly, and bandy-legged, the suspect roamed the aisles bel owing “Road to Mandalay.” At any

second his two-hundred-pound, five-feet-eight-inch frame threatened to burst from a tux three sizes too smal . He recited Shakespeare in a

booming voice. The surviving victim at Lake Berryessa had characterized Zodiac’s voice as “like that of a student . . . with some kind of drawl, but

not a Southern drawl.” Andrews admitted that though his own voice was moderate in sound, “that is, not high- or low-pitched, I have something of a

gift of mimicry—I can imitate W. C. Fields and have done both male and female voices on the radio—and I just enjoy what a pompous ass I am. . . .

I may look OK on the outside, but inside . . .”

While Vaughn, the organist, pumped on a mighty Wurlitzer pipe organ (Zodiac had mentioned the “piano-oginast” on his “little list” of potential

victims), Narlow and Avery’s interesting find became the projectionist. After the double feature they ripped down a handprinted felt-tip-pen poster

advertising “The Big Parade with John Gilbert and Renee Adoree.” Someone at the theater drew them for the constantly changing bil s. I retrieved

another from the gutter and took it to Morril in Sacramento. He studied the handprinting. “With the exception of the three-stroke K it’s a good

match,” he said, beaming. “That’s the closest Zodiac lettering I’ve seen!” Not only might the theater’s discarded posters have provided Zodiac with

his alphabet of printed letters, but the Academy Standard leader on each strip of film was fittingly a crossed circle.

Wednesday, October 17, 1978

I drove over the Golden Gate Bridge toward Santa Rosa in a steady downpour. I stopped along the way and parked amongst the gray

warehouses where the theater manager had once kept his warren of connected apartments. The building had been redone and repainted, the old

line of mailboxes in the courtyard taken down, and his gadget-cluttered rooms (movie equipment, theater seats, rows of 35-mm monochrome film-

processing machines) emptied. Time was marching on and Zodiac was no closer to being caught than a decade ago.

Leigh was nowhere around his trailer when I got there. Eighteen days earlier he had ceased instal ing home security devices and quit his job as a

senior-citizen aide in Val ejo. “Could Narlow and Avery’s suspect and Leigh Al en be working together?” a policeman suggested to me. “Check out

the possibility, however remote, that there is a connection between the two.” The thought of some sort of Zodiac confederate was never far from my

mind. I had noticed the odd spacing in the Zodiac letters: “He plung ed him self . . . wand ering.” It reminded me not only of sign painters who did

one letter at a time, but someone taking dictation, writing each syl able as they came, stringing them together like a cars on a train and with no

regard to sense.

Thursday, October 18, 1978

Bill Armstrong retired from the SFPD. “I could feel the fire had gone away,” Toschi said of his partner. “I remember, when he left Homicide in late

’75, he told me, ‘Toschi, I’ve stood over my last body.’ However, the fire was stil burning inside me.” The same day Al en begrudgingly began

seeing a mental health professional.

As a condition of his release from Atascadero, Leigh had been required to see Dr. Thomas Rykoff, a Santa Rosa psychiatrist6 Prior to their first

meeting, Leigh, as he had in prison, probably combed the library. In the 1960s he asked Cheney, “Are there books on how to disguise your

handprinting and change your appearance?” Cheney said, “I’m sure they exist.” It made sense he would now bone up on proper responses to

psychiatric tests. Under present law, a fragmented man such as Zodiac could not be considered legal y insane. Dividing “sane” from “insane”

becomes difficult with “murderers who seem rational, coherent, and control ed,” wrote Dr. Joseph Satten, “and yet whose homicidal acts have a

bizarre, apparently senseless quality.”

Unlike schizophrenics, a sexual sadist such as Zodiac “does not exhibit obvious aberrations, but takes considerable pains to appear normal and

avoid capture. Of al murderers, he is most likely to repeat his crime.” After the first kil ing, these intel igent kil ers become amazingly proficient at

concealing themselves. They take great pains to appear normal, but often perversely throw suspicion upon themselves. The cat-and-mouse game

with the police eventual y becomes the principal motive for the crimes. Behind a smiling, secretive facade, he feels vastly inferior, hostile, anxious,

and persecuted. Yet that perverse urge to cal attention to himself as Zodiac is an itch almost impossible not to scratch. Or was Leigh’s secret that

he only thought he was Zodiac?

No one knows what creates a compulsive kil er—a missing sex chromosome? —an event during the first six months of life? Whatever the cause,

the condition is incurable. Cruel, rejecting parents and peers create pressures expressed in childhood by bed-wetting, shoplifting, and animal

torture. With the awakening of puberty, the anger manifests itself in ever-increasing and cleverly concealed acts of sadism. Sheriff Striepeke’s

privately commissioned psychological profile stated Zodiac was a white, unmarried man under thirty-five years old “who tortured animals, had a

passive father and dominant mother, and may have spent time in a mental institution.” Meanwhile, Leigh Al en continued to day-dream in his trailer

and basement. Dwel ing in an escapist world of science fiction and the occult, arrogantly intolerant of people, he tended to set his own rules. “I’ve

been able to personal y study several of these [serial kil ers] very closely,” Dr. Lunde told me. “Bianchi’s responses on psychological tests are

almost verbatim like Kemper’s. The whole sort of thing of seeing animals torn apart and blood and animal hearts.”

A psychologist working under conditions of Al en’s parole evaluated Rykoff’s tests and findings. When he gave the suspect a projective test, a

Rorschach (ink blot) test, Rykoff was warned to look for answers that contained the letter z. “The odds of more than one answer beginning with z are very remote,” the analyst told detectives before the Rorschach test. “I don’t expect any.” The first two mirror images Leigh was shown reminded him

of “a zygomatic arch.” The analyst was shaken by this. He went on. “What do you see in this?” At the end of the tests, he found that Al en had given

five z responses, far outside the norm. Cabdriver Paul Stine had been wounded in the zygomatic arch by Zodiac.

A doctor’s report on Leigh had said, “He’s potential y violent, he is dangerous,” and “he is capable of kil ing.” The same analyst thought Al en had

“five separate personalities.” Split personalities would explain how he passed a lie-detector test; why his handprinting did not match Zodiac’s. The

psychiatrists’ conclusions were mounting: Leigh “is extremely dangerous and is a sociopath . . . is highly intel igent and incapable of functioning with

women in a normal way . . . has a potential for danger.” In their private sessions, Dr. Rykoff discovered the violent side of his new patient’s nature.

Any kind of accusation set him off. The subject of his mother or prison enraged him. Leigh became defensive, shaking with anger until he regained

control, then became sarcastic. His remarks, icy, though witty, were packed with puns and double meanings. Immature, self-centered, with a strong

ego, he had a taunting way of speaking, but was capable of great personal charm. When Al en spoke of Zodiac, he felt persecuted. Worst of al , he

cried—long heartrending moans. Between sobs, Dr. Rykoff felt Al en was “repressing very deep hatred.” But on another level Leigh aced every

perception test from blocks to puzzles. “This guy can look at something, figure it out in a matter of minutes, and do it with the least amount of energy

and effort,” one expert had said. “And he laughed at other people for stumbling through the same task.” Al en took his psychiatric tests under duress

and always in the same manner: “He would not smile or show emotion and would speak in a low, measured monotone.” Al en’s parole officer,

Bruce Pel e, came to know this menacing, focused monotone wel .

Rykoff’s sessions with Al en were conducted as a favor to Lieutenant Jim Husted of the Val ejo P.D. and Pel e. Rykoff was in the middle of

studying Leigh when a new patient was signed on—a young woman. She desired to be hypnotized as part of a training program for a social

rehabilitation group she was organizing in Santa Rosa. Rykoff welcomed her, unaware that she was Leigh Al en’s sister-in-law, Karen. Whether or

not the police suggested Karen see the same therapist as her brother-in-law is open to speculation. But Husted, head of the Intel igence Unit, was

wily. Through his manipulation or not, somehow Karen ended up with Rykoff. During their sessions she remarked about a chemist brother-in-law

and his dark side. Rykoff saw the man constantly preyed on her mind. As Karen expounded more of her impressions and suspicions, Rykoff began

to realize the character she was sketching seemed familiar.

“He spoke of man as true game,” she said. “Once he and his brother got in an argument over dinner. He leaped on him and began choking him.”

“What’s this?” thought Rykoff. “That sounds just like Arthur Leigh Al en. The potential for danger is just the same.”

Thursday, November 16, 1978.

Dr. Rykoff had Karen back in. He placed her under a deep hypnosis conducted by Husted and Lieutenant Larry Haynes of the Concord P.D.

Haynes, trained by the LAPD’s Law Enforcement Hypnotic Institute, had hypnotized one of victim Darlene Ferrin’s baby-sitters back on June 16,

1977. “Does it matter how much time has passed since the incident?” asked Rykoff.

“No,” replied Husted, who gently uncovered a number of large crystals he kept swathed in soft black fabric. Each glittering gem hung from a

slender chain. Haynes induced a hypnotic trance by swinging or spinning a crystal. This time, when Karen recal ed the choking incident over dinner,

she saw something new.

“There was a second figure,” she said.

“A second figure?” said Husted. The big blond officer leaned forward. Rykoff put down his pen.

“He was on top of Ron as wel ,” she said. “I could see a second ghostly figure of Leigh on top of my husband, another identity. It was as if he were

a second Leigh Al en. When Leigh stood up, he seemed to change into yet another personality, like Jekyl and Hyde.” A source told me, “Leigh was

a twin whose brother died at birth.” Then Karen recal ed the paper she had seen in Leigh’s hand in November of 1969. This was the note she had

mentioned to Toschi and Armstrong years before. Husted and Haynes were certain she was deeply under and not fabricating the vision. Hypnotists

have to careful not to give subtle, unwitting suggestions to a person under hypnosis and create what they want to find. “Sometimes it’s difficult to

distinguish what is in a person’s mind from what you are putting there,” said Haynes.

“It was covered with strange lines of symbols,” she said. “‘What’s that?’ I asked him. ‘This is the work of an insane person,’ he replied. ‘I’l show it

to you later.’ He never did, and replaced it in a gray metal box he kept in his room.”

Haynes, Rykoff, and Husted were desperate to see what had been on that paper. But how? It had been destroyed long ago. They decided to see

if Karen could redraw these arcane symbols under hypnosis. In automatic writing, she slowly drew four lines of symbols. Automatic writing was

normal y sprawling and uncontrol ed, but Karen’s was straight, gridlike—like Zodiac’s codes. The symbols closely resembled the third line of the

Zodiac 340-character cipher mailed to the Chronicle on November 8, 1969. As the mesmeric session progressed, she spoke more and more

about Leigh. Karen began to shake and tremble. Her knuckles whitened. Husted had Haynes bring her out of the trance. Afterward, in his office, he

showed me the writing. Though I wasn’t al owed to photocopy possible evidence, I was al owed to copy it down as exactly as I could. Reproduced

for the first time here are the symbols Karen wrote:

Hypnosis was popular at this time, but by the 1980s state law enforcement agencies would rarely use it as an investigative tool. In 1982 the

Supreme Court would curtail the scope of testimony from witnesses who had been hypnotized, deeming such accounts inherently unreliable. Later,

California law would be shaped to the court’s decision—hypnosis could be used only to clarify information given before a person was hypnotized.

Testimony obtained under hypnosis could only be used in court after a judge has ruled that the evidence could not be acquired by any other means.

“Potential for danger,” Rykoff had thought. Increasingly, the doctor became more apprehensive of his patient and his “dark sense of humor.” At

the beginning of the month, he had asked his brother, a San Francisco policeman, to look into the matter. The officer asked Toschi and the reply

was anything but reassuring. “I remember Dr. Rykoff’s brother coming up to me,” said Toschi, “a real y sweetheart of a guy, real y straight up front.

No games. He wanted some information for his brother and so I told him, ‘We felt strongly then [August 1971] and now that Al en was our best

suspect. We cut him loose in 1972 because we weren’t able to find any physical evidence connecting him to the crimes. We did everything we

could with the guy. Personal y, my gut feeling is that he is the man. Tel Dr. Rykoff that when he talks to Leigh, do it in a place that he can get out of in

a hurry . . . and above al —don’t make him angry.” The officer reported back to his brother. “I’ve found out he’s the prime suspect, in the Zodiac

case,” he said. Rykoff blockprinted the word “sociopath” by Al en’s name in their next to last session. The term meant he was “selfish, impulsive,

and unable to learn from experience. He felt he was above moral codes and laws and was the most likely type of murderer to repeat his crimes.”

More unsettling, Leigh had caught me watching him more than once. Later, on March 12, 1980, I was waiting in a darkened car on Tennessee

Street as he drove by. He slowed alongside. I turned and looked directly into his eyes.

Friday, November 17, 1978

Leigh, as a member of the Pacific Multi-hul Racing Association, sailed only one of the boats his mother had bought him. He stored the second, an

adapted boat that “ran on unknown fuel,” elsewhere.7 His tan station wagon, #XAM 469, sat by the curb unused. On December 31, 1975, he had

registered a special construction trailer to be “used as a camper.” Where he kept it no one knew. Rumor had it it was stored in a friend’s woods.

One of Al en’s 1971 checks, made out to Tal tree Trailer Storage, suggested he was renting spaces for trailers somewhere else.

“You know, [Phil] Tucker was questioned by our department,” said George Bawart, “He was always a pretty straight shooter. When he left GVRD,

I wasn’t too much younger than he was. I knew him. I knew his family. If I were to say, just to guess, I wouldn’t think he had anything to do with

Zodiac.” When Al en worked at GVRD, next to the police department, he could have had access to reports, police techniques, and day-to-day

gossip. Once a police groupie, always a police groupie.

14

suspects

Friday, November 24, 1978

Though juggling caseloads of robberies, Inspector Toschi stil felt an al egiance to the Zodiac case. Between November 20 and November 24,

he received a typical number of phone tips on his former case. “The first cal was from an unemployed freelance writer who seemed in too much a

hurry to get to meet me,” Toschi said. “I thought about not going on my own time to meet him, but I cal ed the guy back and decided he was sincere

about giving me information. He was an ex-NYPD man himself, and he said he could see how the Zodiac case after ten years had real y gotten to

be an ego thing when you’re so involved as I was.

“‘If anyone in the country deserves to make the arrest on Zodiac,’ he said, ‘it’s got to be Dave Toschi.’ I thanked him, but since I was official y off

the case, referred him to Jack Jordan. Next, a lady named Katrina cal ed. She had gotten short shrift at SFPD. To set her mind at ease, she sought

me out. She had a suspect in mind, an ex-boyfriend who had accidental y died in 1973. Fortunately, I didn’t have to refer to the files. I had the

information in my head and answered her queries in about three minutes. Final y, at week’s end, a D.A.’s investigator stopped me in the elevator.

‘I’ve got some info on an old case of yours,’ he whispered. ‘I want to talk only to you on it.’ I listened and committed the tip to memory. So, I can

never get away from the Zodiac case and I do not think I ever wil . It’s become part of my life—on and off duty.”

On the morning of November 24, up at Lake Berryessa, Cindy, a waitress working at Moskowite Corners General Store, watched a strange man

enter. He sat down in the rear and stared at her so long he made her nervous. Final y, she approached him. “Can I get you anything?” she asked.

“Do you know you’re a very good-looking woman,” he replied. She went back to the counter. After a time he left. Only then did she recal that nine

years earlier, on the terrible day two PUC students were attacked, a similar-looking man had been drinking a Coke at the same table.

Police original y attributed the 1971 murder of Lynda Kanes, another PUC coed, to Zodiac’s hand. “I have always been haunted by this maniac

Zodiac,” a PUC graduate told me, “because I was attending PUC in Angwin during the time Bryan Hartnel and Cecelia Shepard were stabbed.

This was a very traumatic thing to happen to anyone . . . but especial y when it took place so close to home. I attended her funeral at the PUC

sanctuary, which had a massive turnout, and wondered if the kil er could be there secretly delighting in the pain of al who were grieving for Cecelia.

The police [and FBI] thought so too and took extensive photos of the crowd at Cecelia’s funeral.

“I also remember very wel the Lynda Kanes incident. I remember the day her car was found—radio stil on—but no Lynda. I remember the light

snowfal the next morning, the barricades, the horseback posses, the bloodhounds, and police asking for volunteers from PUC and others in the

vicinity to help search the rugged area by foot. It sent chil s through my soul as I remembered the countless times I have traveled windy, lonely Old

Howel Mountain Road . . . not to mention the countless times I have driven up to Lake Berryessa alone and spent the day wrapped up in a book

while baking in the hot sun. At the time most of the locals believed the kil er was ‘Wil y the Woodchopper’ at the base of Old Howel Mountain Road

where it meets Silverado Trail. Wil y got his name because he could be seen most of the time at his house chopping firewood. Lynda used to stop

and chat with him on her way back to campus from town via Old Howel Mountain Road.” Zodiac, much to our relief, had not been involved. In 1971,

in Napa Superior Court, Walter “Wil ie the Woodcutter” Wil iams was convicted of Kanes’s murder. Her bloodstained clothing had been found in his

home.

Thursday, December 7, 1978

Allen had been driving on a suspended license. In the morning his new driver’s permit (#BO 67-2352) became effective just as Homicide

Inspector James Deasy received the keys to that tough little number cal ed Zodiac. Deasy, formal y of the SFPD Gang Task Force, hunkered down

to take on the job of fielding Zodiac tips. Gathering leads on an unsolvable case was character-building, but futile. An informant rang Deasy from

Canada, claiming that a now-deceased Albion, California, public safety officer, retired Fire Chief Ralph Perry, had been Zodiac. He al eged Perry

had owned a Zodiac-style hood. The tip became more intriguing when Deasy attempted to check Perry’s prints.

Monday, December 18, 1978

“The funny thing about it is,” Deasy said, “we tried to check this guy’s fingerprints through his agency’s print files and found out that they had no

prints on record for him. Neither did the State Department of Justice. Neither did the FBI. We came up total y blank on this guy’s prints. Spooky.”

Deasy and Captain Narlow knew they had to convince a D.A. to issue a court order to exhume Perry’s body and take prints. He wondered how long

fingertip ridges survived underground. “Can you successful y lift prints from a corpse?” Deasy inquired of their print man.

Without enough information to obtain a search warrant, they conducted two explorations of the home with Perry’s widow’s permission. During the

first exploration, they turned up an il egal silencer for a .22-caliber pistol. “The widow said that her husband, right out of the blue, once asked her an

odd question,” said Deasy. “‘Aren’t you afraid, going to bed every night with the Zodiac?’” Deasy paused to sigh, then added, “We thought we were

getting pretty close at that point. Sometimes you get a feeling in the pit of your stomach and you say to yourself, ‘You just can’t eliminate a suspect

who looks good in every other respect just because he’s too old.’ I told her on our second trip that we had only a few more questions that we wanted

to check up on, just to satisfy our minds. She wasn’t too happy about it, but she let us do it. I told her that if we didn’t find what we were looking for,

we wouldn’t be back, and we haven’t. It just wasn’t there.” In Val ejo, Leigh Al en celebrated his second birthday since leaving prison.

Wednesday, June 13, 1979

“Personnel Order: Captain’s Order #21 Effective 0800 hrs., Inspector David Toschi, #1807, presently assigned to Pawnshop Section, Property

Crimes Division, is assigned to the Robbery Section. Captain Charles A. Schuler, Commanding Officer, Personal Crimes Division.”

15

arthur leigh allen

Monday, September 17, 1979

Though Leigh accumulated no more boats, his list of trailers continued to grow. The universal house trailer Toschi and Armstrong had searched

was only one of many. Another special-construction camper, #GS8803, was kept in an unknown location. While Leigh lived in his trailers, sailed,

and flew his plane, I spoke again with his P.O.

“Basical y, Arthur is that interesting in that he has access not only to the vehicles he owns, but to those of his friends. Almost any vehicle he wants.

His mother has a Mercedes. He’s got a white ’62 VW Karmann Ghia now—just like Hartnel ’s. I wonder if owning a car exactly like the Lake

Berryessa victim’s is a subconscious cal for attention.” Leigh had registered the car’s license, #DXW 186, only eight days ago. An identical auto

had attracted Zodiac at the virtual y deserted lake, signifying to him that potential victims were picnicking on a narrow peninsula.

During the summer, Leigh’s childhood friend Harold Huffman had driven his VW Dasher by Val ejo to introduce his eight-year-old son, Rob, to

Al en. Harold had married Leigh’s friend, Kay. “I had seen Harold play footbal and swim,” Kay told me. “I knew who he was, but I didn’t know him. At

the end of my first year at junior col ege, a mutual friend introduced us. He had come back to see the coaches. He offered me a lift home and I took

it. I offered him coffee and he accepted. I didn’t know how to make coffee and he didn’t drink coffee. He drank it anyway. That was the beginning of

the love story.”

“Leigh was like a grandpa figure,” Rob recal ed, “a tal , heavyset, balding man who lived in the basement of an old house.” Rob played with his

chipmunks while Leigh loaded wire traps into the trunk of their car. Leigh left the cages at various rest stops on their way to Lake County. “I hope I

don’t get caught,” he remarked slyly, “I no longer have a valid trapper’s license.” Rob took a quick liking to him. “He was quite funny,” he recal ed.

“Leigh told great stories at night when the three of us stared at the stars and treetops cocooned in our sleeping bags. By day, he would entertain

me . . . by doing somersaults off an old diving board into the shimmering melted snow below which sprayed in every direction upon his impact. He

limped on earth, but was an acrobat in the air and water. Like a fish, he used to sneak up on me underwater in the kiddie section of the lake and

grab my submerged legs—he could hold his breath for an eternity, so I never knew where he was.”

The trio picked up the stil -empty cages as they hurtled north to Blue Lake. At the cheap motel where they stayed, Leigh showed off by diving into

the motel pool and swimming the perimeter of the pool underwater for nearly two minutes. Toward the end of their stay Leigh slammed the car door

on Rob’s toe. The boy began to weep. “You’re tough and brave,” Leigh told him. “Most boys your age would have cried. You aren’t a sissy.” After

that they were real friends. Rob visited him at Ace Hardware and ate with him and his father at the corner IHOP.

Thursday, October 11, 1979

A major coin shop robbery had occurred on Irving Street and Toschi had been searching for witnesses. He realized it was the tenth anniversary of

his most daunting case. At 6:26 P.M., instead of going home, he stopped to relive old memories on the corner of Washington and Cherry. He heard

the evening news blaring from a nearby home as file footage of the Stine murder unrol ed. As he drove away, Toschi could not escape the sense

that he had not been alone on that dark corner among the solemn mansions.

Wednesday, October 31, 1979

On Halloween, Leigh registered another special-construction trailer, #ME86336. Why so many in so many places and what did he keep in them?

Certainly, he feared a second search, and knew such an inquisition must come eventual y. However, he feared something more than any intensive

inspection of his dreary basement. Any parole violation might remand him to Atascadero, which he dreaded above al . Recently, I heard, on old

Lake Herman Road where the Northern California Zodiac had begun back in 1968, a boy was found shot between the eyes and a girl strangled.

Monday, January 28, 1980

Leigh, already wrestling with weight and blood pressure problems, now battled a growing alcohol and vision problem. Haltingly, he strol ed the

short distance from his Fresno Street home to 1131 Tennessee Street—his new job at Ace Hardware. He later claimed March 19 as his first day,

but actual y began January 28. Steve Harshman was his new boss; Dean Drexler his supervisor. Drexler immediately put Leigh in charge of sel ing

electrical supplies. Eventual y, Harshman would make Al en a buyer for the garden and tool department. Highly educated, the former convict knew

he was worth more than the $5.35 an hour they were paying him. Quite quickly, he became dissatisfied in another area. Working every day but

Sunday gave him no time for other things.

A letter delivered to the Chronicle that morning read: “This is the Zodiac speaking, I have moved to higher country for my next victem good luck

Zodiac.” The return address on the envelope was “guess?” But the postage was not excessive and the ink red, not blue—another copycat. In

Sacramento, I visited Sherwood Morril , CI&I’s handwriting expert. Morril had been born and bred to the investigative bureau. His father, Berkeley

Police Sergeant Clarence S. Morril , opened CI&I in 1918. “My father was a little fel ow,” Morril said. “He was five feet eight inches, weighed about

140 pounds dripping wet. When they lobbied the bil to open the state bureau, they set it up with a board of managers. An independent agency—

they had a sheriff, a chief of police, and a district attorney who were appointed by the governor for staggered terms. In theory, no one person or

board could get control of the office. My dad wasn’t going to take the civil service exam but his boss, Chief August Vol mer, one of the most

progressive officers at the time, insisted. Dad came up here, opened the agency (January 1, 1918). He died in 1940 and he’d been at CI&I al that

time.”

It was Chief Vol mer who encouraged San Francisco writer Dashiel Hammett to speculate whether or not it was possible to transfer fingerprints

from one place to the other. Hammett decided prints could be forged successful y by laminating a set of prints onto fingertips, as he had a

blackmailer do in his story “Slippery Fingers.” Zodiac had written that he used glue on his fingertips. Was this the secret of the unmatchable prints

on Stine’s cab, the phony clues Zodiac claimed he left behind for police to find?

Morril had wanted to be a bal player, but instead learned handwriting analysis under Charles H. Stone, the state’s first documents expert. “He’d

been chief of police of Bakersfield before that,” Morril said. “My dad hired him to be assistant chief, but put him in charge of Questioned

Documents. He took me aside when I graduated from high school and told me, ‘There are no documents schools. California wil grow and with

growth comes litigation and with litigation comes the need for documents examiners.’ I studied psychology and science, and after working for seven

years took to the courtroom. In 1933, I went to work for Questioned Documents and they put me under Stone.”

“Because Zodiac wrote in manuscript instead of cursive,” Morril said, “that presents some idea of his actual age.” Teaching of that style of writing

had been confined to a few selected schools in the U.S. (such as Pleasant Val ey Grammar School in Camaril o, California). In 1969, those

students would have just turned thirty-five. Sherwood was studying a vicious piece of hoax mail addressed to Herb Caen. A huge staring eye,

deliberate misspel ings—“We have suche fun on the way here. We kil manie hitchhikers so slow to danse”—and comments about hot irons echoed

earlier Zodiac letters. “This is the second similar note we’ve received,” science reporter Dave Pearlman had written in a Chronicle memo. “It

seems unusual y ugly so I thought maybe the FBI folk would want to be aware of it.”

“What I look for when making an analysis varies,” Morril explained. “If a person has a peculiar style of writing, maybe one or two characteristics

wil tip you off. I just did one yesterday. There were several similarities, but there were several big discrepancies, which rules it out. Now this is the

same way you make an identification in fingerprints. If you have enough points, a partial print often contains twelve characteristic points and no

significant difference, you have an identification. The average print has about fifty ridge characteristics. The same thing happens if you find enough

individual handwriting characteristics in a person’s handwriting and no significant difference, you have an identification. But any one significant

difference would throw it out. You’d have to discard it. You may feel that it’s stil the same guy, but he made a goof. Now a significant difference is

one that can’t be reasonably explained.”

Zodiac might have memorized a series of just such “goofs” and used them consistently in his letters. The significant difference from his true

writing might be explained if he had trained himself to make these goofs.

“What’s so unusual about the k Zodiac makes?” I asked.

“That was one of the things at first we thought was consistent,” said Morril , “but Zodiac got away from it. He made it in three parts, but since then

he’s made them like you or I might make them.” If that k had been window dressing, then it was another indication that Zodiac’s writing—that

checkmarklike r, that cursive d always on the verge of fal ing over, and that three-stroke k—could be a purposeful fabrication. At times I suspected Zodiac had a confederate who wrote the actual letters.

A handwriting expert analyzed Zodiac’s writing:

“See those looped ‘d’s? That means he’s arrogant and proud and also doesn’t feel secure about himself. Misspel ing words like ‘nose’ is an

effort at disguise, an effort to make the letter seem anonymous . . . when you combine his very rushed writing, indistinct letters, variability in the

spacing, variability in the letter size, that would be an indication of a manic-depressive. In addition to that the writing slants downward at the

end. Even if he starts up by the end of the line most of the letters have fal en down, which be indicative of a depressed state. . . . Zodiac tends

to dot his ‘i’s very close to the stem . . . where the writing is beginning to fal over the ‘i’ dots are stil fairly careful y dotted. . . . He is also a very

lonely person and is very sensitive to criticism which means he might get upset if you cal ed him crazy instead of clever.”

Sunday, January 27, 1980

“What is it about San Francisco?” lamented Herb Caen. “What is it that seems to attract the dreamers and deviants, kooks and crazies. San

Francisco seems to be the last sanctuary for the rootless in its tolerance for every form of lifestyle.” The area had been inflicted with a blight of serial

kil ers, kidnappings, urban guerril as, religious cults, and political assassinations. Charlie Manson recruited his family from Haight-Ashbury’s drug

culture and flower children. The region attracted Juan Corona (murderer of twenty-five transient laborers), John Linley Frazier (who kil ed five to halt

pol ution), and Herbert Mul in (who slew thirteen in a deadly four-month orgy to prevent a state-destroying earthquake). In the Bay Area the SLA

kidnapped Patricia Hearst and used cyanide bul ets to slay Oakland School Superintendent Marcus Foster. The New World Liberation Front, the

Zebra Kil ers, Jim Jones’s People’s Temple, Dan White, and Zodiac al cal ed the environs home.

Avery and Toschi tried to forget Zodiac. So did I, especial y at the beginning of a new decade. We knew a little more now. In the 1970s serial

kil ers were stil a relatively new phenomenon. In the 1980s efforts to understand and profile violent repeat offenders began in earnest. On July 11,

1984, the Justice Department would propose a special unit at Quantico, Virginia, to be cal ed the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program—

VICAP. FBI agents—psychologists, psychiatrists, and regular investigators—pooled their resources, their jobs to make psychological portraits of

serial rapists, child molesters, arsonists, and kil ers. Interviews with mass murderers and sexual deviants might explain what motivated them to

commit their atrocities. Ultimately VICAP, to uncover uncaught repeat murderers like Zodiac, developed verbal and mental pictures of serial kil ers.

First, they listed traits they held in common. Zodiac, a combination of hedonistic and control-oriented types, was technical y an “organized nonsocial

offender.”

“Organized kil ers are cal ed nonsocial because they elect to be social y isolated,” wrote expert Greg Fal is. “Although they are often glib and

charming they may feel nobody is quite good enough for them. They . . . are often quite clever. More self-assured than the disorganized asocial

offender, these kil ers are wil ing to travel far to find their victims.”

Monday, March 3, 1980

“Allen has a friend I haven’t told you about before,” Lieutenant Husted of the VPD explained, “and he seems to have confided in him that he is the

Zodiac kil er and told him details of some of the murders. I’d like to put that friend, Jim, under hypnosis. This is the same man Al en met at the

Sonoma Auto Parts Store and wrote from Atascadero. Remember? Leigh was hoping that Zodiac would kil again and clear him. While Leigh and

Jim were drinking one evening, Al en al egedly confessed he was Zodiac. He offered to testify, but got cold feet. He’s afraid of Al en and his wife

has begged him not to speak with us. Eventual y, Al en did as much as fess up to a second man at the store.”

But neither witness was ever hypnotized, and like so many leads, this one was pursued no further. Leigh continued hunting in the hil s—carving

out the hearts and livers of captured squirrels and storing them in his freezer. Could the “death machine” in Zodiac’s basement have been a

reference to a freezer compartment that held the bodies of dissected chipmunks? This dismembering of birds, squirrels, and mice by the

ambidextrous chemist fit the pattern of serial kil ers who tortured and kil ed animals. He had given it a new twist—masking his dissections with an

assortment of scientific permits.

Monday, April 21, 1980

Leigh’s list of vehicles grew. He registered a 1965 Buick sedan, a blue Skylark, #MLZ 057. And he stil had the Karmann Ghia, gray Corvair, three

special-construction trailer campers, and two sailboats. He had reportedly owned a brown Corvair in 1965 similar to the car Zodiac used during the

Fourth of July murder. However, though Leigh once owned a 1957 Ford, he may only have been glimpsed in Phil Tucker’s 1958 Ford sedan, which

Tucker had given him permission to drive. I often circled by the Fresno Street home and saw his tan station wagon parked in front, unused. Most of

the time Leigh worked within walking distance at Ace Hardware, though I knew he hated walking because of his limp and fal en arches.

16

arthur leigh allen

Saturday, July 26, 1980

In front of Ace Hardware, five wheelbarrows were lined up beneath a poster of a smiling Suzanne Somers. She was dressed incongruously in a

Santa outfit. Inside, Leigh was no longer secluded in the rear. He manned the front register, conversing with customers in a loud voice. The name

“LEE” was sewn neatly over the left breast pocket of his orange work coat. His boss, Steve Harshman, initial y ordered the correct spel ing

(“LEIGH”), but the shorter version was cheaper. I needed more samples of Al en’s handwriting, but it was becoming difficult to trick him into printing

anything. Al en was piling boxes of fire extinguishers as a friend of mine approached.

“Could you help me find these items?” Fay asked. He stacked three more boxes without looking up. “If I help you, wil you help me?” he said

deliberately. He picked up a smal basket, fil ed it with her supplies, and tossed her list on top. “Couldn’t you write an itemized receipt for me?” she

said. “One of those people at the front registers wil help you,” he replied. “I’m not authorized to do that. Have a nice day.”

I spoke again to Al en’s parole officer. A sensitive young man, Pel e had been disturbed by various mental evaluations of his parolee. Al en’s

tests matched the profile a Napa State psychiatrist, Dr. Leonti Thompson, had drawn up. “[Zodiac’s particular type of psychosis] creates a

deepening helplessness,” Thompson commented, “from which the victim occasional y rouses himself by a terrific output of psychological energy . . .

and if to that private world of the schizophrenic is added the paranoid’s delusion of persecution or grandeur, then sometimes that distorted world

becomes a place where murder is born.”

“He is an extremely dangerous person,” Leigh’s analysis read. “He is sociopathic and possesses an incredibly high I.Q. . . . Subject is repressing

very deep hatred and is incapable of functioning with women in a normal way.” He is “a loner, inept at establishing any sexual relationships beyond

those of children.”

“I talked with Arthur about his mother,” Al en’s parole officer told me, “and that’s one of the major things in his therapy and the way he relates to

life. I approach this from the aspect of a parole officer and contrary to the image of me, I’m pretty much into how people are and what changes

motivate them. Basical y, Arthur is that interesting.”

“Do you think he hates his mother?” I asked, recal ing Leigh’s comments at Atascadero.

“Oh, yeah. He absolutely hates her,” said Pel e with feeling. “She’s in her sixties and would say to Leigh about the father, ‘He never takes care of

his familial responsibilities. Al men are al assholes. . . . You’re just like al other men. You’re this, you’re the other.’ Years of that completely

demolished Leigh’s ability to have regular heterosexual relations with an adult female. One of the things he does frequently is when his mother says,

‘Why are you the way you are?’ he says, ‘The reason I’m al fucked up is because of you. You made me the way I am!’ And she feels real y guilty and

the guilt comes out and she refuses to do anything to stop whatever behavior he’s involved in, at least whatever behavior that she knows about.”

The NYPD’s top psychologist, Harvey Schlossberg, profiled Son of Sam and reached findings that applied to Zodiac. “The inspiration for al his

hate and revenge is much more likely to be a woman—a mother, sister, or girlfriend who rejected him. Historical y such maniacs do disappear.

Jack the Ripper was never captured, nor was the more recent San Francisco Zodiac kil er.” Zodiac would have a seductive, dominant mother who

gives affection and rejection erratical y. Serial murderer Ed Kemper, a six-foot nine-inch-tal , 280-pound murderer of women, also fantasized about

kil ing his mother. Seven female victims in Santa Cruz were surrogates. He saved her for last. Her scolding tongue no longer would disapprove of

him.

Sexual sadists, because of their confused sexual identity, possess a great underlying hatred of women. Zodiac’s emotions were as tangled as a

strand of DNA—violence to him was love; love was violence. He was unquenchable in his blood lust, and the only successful relationship Zodiac

could ever have with a woman was murder.

“The sister-in-law knew the psychiatrist,” continued Pel e, “knew that she was revealing things the family wanted to keep secret, but as a good

citizen felt obligated to come forward. Al en had always considered her an interloper.” Pel e, to keep from fixating on Al en, considered other Zodiac

suspects. “There was this girl, Julie,” he told me, “who had run away from her home in Oregon and fal en in with a Hel ’s Angels gang member. One

day she tel s me that there won’t be any more Zodiac kil ings or letters. ‘There was this guy who hung around with us. He wasn’t a member of the

Angels, just a hanger-on,’ she said. ‘This guy says he’s the Zodiac and I believe him. I know he’s the Zodiac, but he O.D.’d last year on heroin—right

here in Val ejo.’ The girl had divorced (her husband was from Val ejo), and gone back to live in Oregon with her child. She said only that the guy

wore glasses and plaid shirts. She didn’t remember his name.” The Hel ’s Angels connection rang a bel . Initial y, Sergeant Lynch suspected two

Hel ’s Angels had committed the Lake Herman Road murders. On three different occasions, he and his partner had thrown them in jail for gas

station robberies. “They shot people,” Lynch said matter-of-factly, “but are in prison now.”

The next evening, Sunday, I parked across from Ace Hardware. Framed in the light of the window, Al en stood out as an orange blotch in the

twilight. I watched as he stocked a peg board with electrical cords. Was this Zodiac, under glass and in plain sight for al to see? When Leigh quit

the store at 6:15, he was wearing a dark navy windbreaker such as Zodiac wore during the Stine murder. I asked Leigh’s boss, Steve Harshman,

for samples of Leigh’s printing. He angrily refused, but I left behind my business card with my new unlisted phone number where Al en could see it.

From that point on, I received hang-up cal s at midnight every Saturday night. They were unsettling, even frightening, but I did not change the

number. I did not want to lose even that tenuous contact with the suspect.

Friday, August 8, 1980

“I agree the kil er is keeping his own file and mementos geographical y quite a distance from where he lives and works,” one reader suggested.

“Zodiac didn’t stop kil ing during some years. Perhaps he changed employment and that caused him to kil elsewhere occasional y. In the

workplace he is mild, discounted and comes across as slightly distracted. I bet his payoff is not in murdering specifical y, as much as in his

knowledge that he is final y powerful enough to have some momentous impact on others’ lives. He can confound the police and the best minds in

his area, therefore he is smarter than anybody. He can kil , therefore he exists.”

Al en, dissatisfied with his job at Ace, applied for an adult-education class after work. The class schedule stil gave him Friday evenings off— the

time Zodiac had done some of his kil ings. But as months passed, he became more disenchanted.

Friday, November 14, 1980

“I don’t see any possibility of advancement,” Leigh explained to Steve Harshman. “I work every weekend and only get one day off a week.” Thus,

Al en resigned his job at Ace Hardware, never realizing what a staunch defender he had in Harshman.

Saturday, November 15, 1980

Leigh’s new job as a warehouse supervisor in Benicia at Spectro Chrome Graphics paid $5 an hour, less money than he had been making, and

the job was farther away. Under his new boss, Harriet Hurba, he coordinated supply, receipt, delivery, and distribution in and out of the plant. Leigh

wrote Pel e about the new job. The letter carried too much postage and the handprinting on the envelope slanted downward like Zodiac’s. “It was

almost as if he wanted me to think he was guilty of being Zodiac,” said Pel e. “Al I could get out of this guy was a typed letter. And very neat. By the

way, our chemist’s into foot-powered planes now.” Pel e laughed. “He’s actual y trying to build one that flies, even with his weight and blood

pressure problems. But Leigh’s highly suggestible. His interest in man-powered flight probably came from a name-sake, Bryan Al en. Last year he

began tel ing friends he was considering building a foot-powered plane.” On June 12, 1979, Bryan Al en, a Visalia resident, successful y crossed

the English Channel in a bicyclelike aircraft, the “Gossamer Albatross.”

“And of course,” continued Pel e, “when that young girl was abducted last year we thought of Al en right away. Not only was he driving a white van

like the one seen, but he told me he was in that area and had engine trouble. It real y had me going for a while, but the police found the guy who did

it.

“Leigh’s incredibly strong. When he worked at the [Sonoma] auto parts store he was always getting hassled by the guys there and he dared a guy

to come at him. Al en picked up the guy and hurled him across the room into a stack of empty cardboard boxes.”

“A few times when Leigh and I would be coming back from someplace,” Kay Huffman recal ed, “we’d see a gang squaring off in a fight and he

would say, ‘Oops! Gotta hurry up and take you home so I can change my clothes and get back for the fight! I keep chains in my trunk for such

events.’ And so that’s what he’d do.” “One time Leigh took on a whole gang that had earlier harassed him,” Harold Huffman recal ed. He had

witnessed many of Leigh’s furious, youthful outbursts. “He ground out the leader’s eye with a thumb, sending the other members fleeing.” Sandy

Panzarel a later told me, “Remember the story of Leigh kicking the shit out of the five marines on a San Francisco street? Wel , he had enormous

physical strength. That was a true story.”

In San Francisco a personal ad appeared in the Chronicle: “BIG ‘Z’ Welcomes Big ‘A’. Permission granted.” And in San Francisco Zodiac

continued to prey on Toschi’s mind. He recal ed the days when Ron Al en would cal to express his fears. “He just couldn’t figure out why Val ejo

P.D. had ceased looking into his brother,” Toschi told me. “What had happened? I never knew and it bothered me.”

“By 1980,” John Douglas wrote, “I’d been at Quantico a few years and had some research under my belt when I learned the FBI wanted to take

another look at the body of Zodiac literature. I remember getting a file of letters to look at, and I had several conversations with Murray Miron over

the finer points of our analytical approaches. Before we could get too deeply involved, however, the letters were pul ed. I never did find out what

prompted the renewed interest at the Bureau, or what caused our involvement to be canceled.”

New adventures occasional y took Toschi’s mind off Zodiac. His encounter with San Francisco’s “Human Fly Bandit” was one. “He’s six foot one,

205 pounds,” he told me. “Now that’s one big fly. With al his robbing gear—ski mask, surgical gloves, hooded jacket, and sawed-off shotgun, he

was eerily reminiscent of Zodiac in costume. And this big fly is quite acrobatic. We cal ed him and his partner the Human Flies because of their

daring mobility on top of elevators and their cunning in maneuvering hotel elevators as they wished. I never saw such an ingenious method of

robbery before. With an obvious knowledge of elevator electrical circuitry, they first disconnected the elevator alarm bel and emergency phone.

They rode atop the elevators, then trapped their victims between floors. Sometimes there can be as many as twenty-five people squeezed into

these elevators and if these Human Flies strike, then they wil get a big score. I’ve got to admit it takes guts to ride ‘shot-gun’ on top of an elevator

on the twenty-fifth floor. Flinging open the escape trap in the elevator roof, the Flies covered their victims with a shotgun, lowered a mail sack,

ordered the guests to fil it with valuables and credit cards, then drew the sack up. They struck at the luxury Holiday Inn and a week later at the Hyatt

Hotel. I was kidded by every cop I saw. ‘Hey, Dave, catch any flies today?’”

Toschi kept tabs on any use of the stolen credit cards. “At one point,” he told me, “I was just two days behind the Flies when I heard from Portland

that they had a suspect with one of the stolen cards—the Flies were final y getting sloppy. Then the Alameda County cops picked up two others

trying to use stolen cards. It broke the case for me. I notified the East Bay cops that I had another suspect in custody in Portland and suggested they

tel the main suspect, in the Santa Rita Jail in Alameda County, that San Francisco was going to book his brother for robbery. The plan worked. The

kid broke and protected his older brother. So now they’re saying at the Hal of Justice, ‘There’re no flies on Dave.’”

Monday January 12, 1981

“I understand Les Lundblad had a guy he liked a lot,” I mentioned to Sergeant Mulanax at his Val ejo home. A cheery fire crackled in the fireplace.

Deer heads stared back at us with glassy eyes. “Lundblad had gone to a mental institution at Atascadero in 1975 and come back and said, ‘That’s

the guy. ‘That’s Zodiac and we can’t do a thing about it.’”

“Wel , I worked pretty closely with Les,” Mulanax told me. “He was inclined to get real high on a suspect where I wasn’t.”

“Was this Leigh?” I asked Mulanax.

“That was the only suspect I ever developed that I had any strong feelings about,” said Mulanax. “His father was a retired commander or

lieutenant commander in the Navy, a much-decorated serviceman. In fact, he worked for the city for a while. Old-time family, respected. He was an

assistant engineer or some damn thing for the city. I didn’t know him. Al en was down on the first Zodiac murder. Down at Riverside at that col ege.

But this was a long time ago and what was this, 1966? And this is off the top of my head.”

“He was working at an Ace Hardware store in Val ejo.”

“I don’t think there’s anything to prove now, but at the time I was real high on him. I think Armstrong and Toschi were too. Also Nicolai.”

“Did you ever have anyone besides Al en?”

“The only one that ever turned me on was Al en.”

“Do you think Zodiac is stil alive?”

“We had numerous meetings and it’s the consensus of the group that the guy is either dead or in a mental institution or penal institution.”

“Of course that’s where Al en was from 1975 until 1977.”

“I wasn’t aware of that.”

“And what I thought was interesting is that after Toschi and Armstrong questioned him in his trailer, we stopped getting letters at the Chronicle.”

“In Val ejo,” he said, “we wrote detailed reports and Dave and Bil , they didn’t. They’d scratch it on a piece of paper.”

“How did you personal y get onto Al en?”

“Some people who knew him . . .”

“Oh! The two guys he told he was going to become Zodiac.”

“Yes.”

“What gets me about that is that it’s such damaging testimony. I understand one of the men might have had a motive to lie in that Al en

supposedly had made improper remarks to his daughter. That made me doubt it a bit.”

Wednesday, January 14, 1981

Allen remained the best suspect. Outside of his admission that he had been in Riverside, police had ferreted out no concrete evidence of his

presence in Southern California where Zodiac claimed to have kil ed others. “Leigh’s family had told us something about Leigh being around the

Riverside area in the middle or late sixties,” said Toschi. “I was surprised that [Val ejo Lieutenant Jim] Husted said, ‘Forget about Riverside

because we can’t place Leigh Al en in the area.’ Of course, yes, he was there. Al en’s own family had told us that he had spent time in the Riverside

area and was familiar with Southern California, but they weren’t too sure exactly what he was doing because he was on his own a lot.”

“Leigh stayed with families down south before and after Atascadero,” I told Toschi. “He worked in the area, often drove to Riverside on week-

ends for car races, and later he flew a plane there. On Monday, Mulanax confirmed Al en was at Riverside City Col ege in 1966 when the murder

occurred.”

Toschi sighed. “We were the first ones to apprise Mulanax of Leigh, very, very briefly, when the family first came to us,” he said. “They had

already scanned Leigh very briefly. Mulanax’s eyes real y popped. He actual y thought we had him. To this day we stil may. Mulanax liked Al en very,

very much. Jack was so high on Al en in those days we were working with him. He said he had never come across a better-looking suspect. That’s

the way I felt also. We left Al en’s file in our metal file cabinet, two manil a four-inch envelopes of material on Al en, and we just put it away with much

regret. We just didn’t know where to go. Jack says he has an inch-and-a-half file at his house. Could it be he has information that never got into the

file at Val ejo? It’s a bit frustrating to realize that we had to put his folder back in our files.” Al en’s indelible presence tracked al over the south—in

Pomona, Hemet, Torrance, San Bernardino, Paso Robles, Riverside, and San Luis Obispo. Police had no substantial evidence that he was left-

handed.

17

zodiac suspects

Thursday, January 15, 1981

Other policemen besides Toschi and Narlow had cherished suspects. Highway Patrolman Lyndon Lafferty pegged Zodiac as a resident of

Fairfield, a town east of Val ejo. Since December of 1969, a Fairfield copycat had been dispatching typed letters to the Chronicle:

“This is the Zodiac speaking I just need help I wil kil again so expect it any time now the [next] wil be a cop . . .”

Two days later he wrote again, enclosing a drawing of a knife titled “The Bleeding knife of Zodiac,” Page fifty-nine of an astrology book, Day-by-

Day Forecast for Cancer and a horoscope forecast for Leo. “I just need help I wil kil again . . . I just want to tel you this state is in trouble . . .” he wrote.

Harvey Hines, a former Escalon, California, police officer, believed he had found Zodiac. In November 1973, while taking night-school

criminology in Sonora, he stumbled across reports of a flirtatious man who approached two South Lake Tahoe women in 1971. A year earlier,

possible Zodiac victim Donna Lass had disappeared from there. Intrigued, Hines inquired at the hotel where she worked as nurse and came up

with a suspect who had studied basic codes at radio school. He had been arrested multiple times since 1946, and in 1969 lived near where Paul

Stine had picked up Zodiac. Hines later told Hard Copy, “My suspect is the Zodiac. Every fiber, every part of my being tel s me he is the Zodiac

Kil er.” A televised clip showed a pair of slipper-clad feet—the suspect retrieving his morning paper. “Hines’s been chasing this guy through Vegas

casinos with a video camera,” a cop told me, “screaming, ‘He’s the Zodiac!’” But Zodiac was six feet tal , 240-plus pounds, and about thirty-five.

Hines’s suspect was three inches shorter, ninety pounds lighter, and twelve years older.

Was there a connection between Lass and someone from Riverside? The theory was that Zodiac had been a former kidney dialysis patient of

Donna’s when she worked at Riverside’s Cottage Hospital. Her roommate, Jo Anne Goettsche (Get-She), had also been a dialysis nurse since

1975. “Donna had never told me about any such person,” she told me. “Her family, though, asked me the same question. We worked on the same

surgical ward at Letterman General Hospital in the Presidio [where Zodiac had been last seen] and several corpsmen there were giving flying

lessons over in Hayward. We used to go flying with two men from Riverside in 1970.”

“Where was this?”

“Oh, right here in San Francisco.”

“San Francisco?” Mulanax had told me that Darlene Ferrin had also gone flying with two men, but he’d never checked them out. Leigh Al en flew.

“I don’t know if I can remember their names,” Jo Anne said. “Donna was here in San Francisco from February to June of 1970. She moved to Lake

Tahoe to work and three months later vanished. Donna was kind of naive, and not very experienced with men. She was easily drawn away. She

was hooked on gambling. That’s why she went up there. She liked to ski and liked to gamble, so she took the job in the casino hotel [the Sahara

Hotel, Stateline, Nevada] as a first-aid emergency nurse. I went up alone to meet her over the weekend, having talked to her earlier in the week.

She had moved to a new apartment, so that’s why we were meeting at the hotel on Saturday night. That was the first day she had the apartment and

I didn’t have the phone number. I was supposed to meet her when she was getting off work, and she would show me where she lived. She was

nowhere to be found so I stayed in a motel overnight and then looked some more. I didn’t know what to do. It wasn’t like her to just not show up.

When I came back to the city Sunday night without finding out anything, I don’t know why I didn’t cal the police. I was young, I guess.”

Donna’s older sister, Mary, told me, “Donna was always people’s favorite nurse. She used her credit card on Saturday [September 5, 1970] and

went to work that night. She worked from six at night to two in the morning. She was writing the log of the day at 1:45 A.M. (the last people she saw

were the Bentleys from San Francisco). As it ended ‘complains of,’ [c/o], her pen just trails down the page, dragged from the last word she wrote to

the bottom of the page as if she had been interrupted. It was not signed.” Donna’s car was later found parked near her new apartment.

An unidentified male cal er rang Donna’s landlord and employer and said that she would not be returning because of il ness in the family. “They

had received a phone cal that she had an emergency at home,” said Jo Anne, “and when her boss cal ed home to her mom, she said, ‘There’s no

il ness in the family. That cal is a lie.’ That’s when we knew. And we went there that night.” The family flew out from Sioux Fal s, South Dakota. “We

went to San Francisco and Jo Anne met us at the airport and drove us to Tahoe,” said Mary. “And she had been up there to see Donna. I had been

on vacation with Mom and my four little kids and we were there just two weeks before Labor Day. Then Jo Anne went up there to see her for Labor

Day, and so we went up Sunday night. We couldn’t get a word out of anyone at the casino—where she was or what was going on. As for the police,

they wouldn’t even put it out as a missing person until forty-eight hours had passed. The police had been in the apartment and searched it. We went

back up on the third of October and came back on Monday the fifth. There was someone Jo Anne and Donna were dating from Sacramento. There

was a phone cal South Lake police had received from Sacramento, but he never cal ed back.” Jo Anne said, “Her sister had a private detective

pursuing the investigation for years, but they never found her—ever! It was very strange.”

“What was real y strange,” Lynch told me, “is some guy came up to Val ejo P.D. one night and he was drunk. He said he had been trying to report

Donna Lass’s disappearance to SFPD, but apparently the guy was a heavy drinker and when he had gone there they’d thrown him out. He knew

there had been a previous murder in Val ejo by the Zodiac so he came up here to report. I talked to him for a long time, but I can’t think of that guy’s

name. Or the name of the musician he thought was involved, but that orchestra was in Tahoe at the time this girl disappeared. They never found her

did they? No.”

There was a tenuous Tahoe connection with Leigh Al en. A friend of Leigh’s had bought a hotel there, and Leigh might have been visiting him the

night Lass vanished. And I found a connection to the 1963 murders of Robert Domingos and Linda Edwards near Santa Barbara. “Donna left Sioux

City, went to Minneapolis,” said Mary, “then went to Santa Barbara and worked. They took this doctor east to this big convention, and when she

came back she went to San Francisco to Letterman General. The pay was good, but she got awful y tired of the hours—weekends, nights. Her

friends from Santa Barbara had moved up there to Lake Tahoe. ‘Oh, we have the perfect job for you. Come on up and join us and live with us.’ And

so that’s what she did for the summer.”

Under “Personals” in the Chronicle I spotted this ad:

“ZODIAC, We offer a National and interested forum to hear your story as you wish it told. Would like to interview you with complete

anonymity. Contact THE AQUARIAN AGE magazine 270 World Trade Center, SF 94111.”

They gave a local number and stationed a worker by the phone in case Zodiac should cal . The worker might stil be waiting.

Monday, January 19, 1981

As Mulanax and I drove to Blue Rock Springs, I watched storm clouds sweeping in from the San Pablo Bay. “Most of them I’d get a specimen of

their handwriting,” said Mulanax, explaining how he processed Zodiac suspects, “and have Morril check it out. Either that or the physical

description was so far off in age or some such thing where it couldn’t logical y be the suspect.”

“You mentioned this Tommy ‘Lee’ Southard?” I said.

Mulanax laughed. “That Southard,” he replied, “was one of the early suspects. A serviceman at Mare Island, as I recal . I didn’t investigate him.

Lynch and Rust conducted the investigation on him. Six weeks or a couple of months after this [Blue Rock Springs] shooting happened they came

up with him. He looked pretty good for a while.”

“Southard lived at home with his mom,” Lynch added, “and wore thick-lensed glasses. He also lived downtown in an apartment. We had a

burglary case on the guy and I tackled him at a restaurant. He was a real oddbal . He cut his wrists when I arrested him, and was later kil ed

downtown in a bar shooting on Virginia Street.”

Zodiac raced down to Napa after the stabbings at Lake Berryessa and rang up the police from a pay phone only four-and-one-half blocks from

the police station. Narlow found the location intriguing. “A guy here in Napa is very proficient at making bombs,” he told me, “and happens to trade

at the barbershop directly across the street from the booth where the cal was made.” Police technician Hal Snook, rushed in his dusting of a wet

palm print on the receiver (he was needed at Lake Berryessa), feared botching the job. He used a combination of a hot light and blow-drying to

accelerate the process, got some prints from the phone booth8 and sent them to the FBI. Tommy Lee Southard was the first they tried to match. The

FBI Identification Division replied on October 23, 1969:

“Seven latent fingerprints, three latent palm prints and one latent impression which is either a fingerprint or a partial palm print appear in the

submittedphotographs and are of value for identification purposes. We compared those prints to Thomas Leonard Southard—no identification

was effected. We could not rule him out conclusively since we do not have his palm prints.”

Latent prints recovered from the Lake Berryessa victim’s Karmann Ghia were compared with the comparable areas of the latent prints. Again no

identification with Southard was effected. The FBI tested the Napa phone booth’s prints against Zodiac’s first letter to the Val ejo Times-Herald

because someone’s prints were recovered from that letter. The prints did not match the car, cab, or booth fingerprints. Or Southard’s.

Friday, May 15, 1981

CI&I in Sacramento became the clearinghouse for al future Zodiac investigations. A decade earlier Paul Avery, in a confidential memo to his

editor, Abe Mel inkoff, had suggested just such a centralization. Toschi at the time had already been concerned about Avery. “I think he wants to

become more than an investigative reporter,” he told me. “I think he eventual y wants to run this investigation.” Toschi was right:

“I met with Attorney General [Evel e J.] Younger for 45 minutes,” Avery wrote confidential y, “outlined the Zodiac case in some detail and

proposed to him that the State DOJ take over and coordinate the investigation of the case by forming a special Zodiac Squad made up of

detectives from the various cities and counties which have actual or highly possible Z murders.” Three days later Avery sent Younger a resume

of the case, writing that “I am eager to begin assisting in the formation of your ‘Zodiac Squad’ and to plan its direction.”

Since a multitude of jurisdictions, counties, and departments were involved, their records had to be gathered and reorganized. Many files were

missing, scattered over the state, hidden in basements and attics or taken away as mementos. Inspector Deasy personal y drove the SFPD’s files

to Sacramento. On May 15, at 7:11 A.M., police and FBI agents arrested David Carpenter as the Trailside Kil er at his San Francisco home. This

wilderness murderer shot and stabbed hikers on Mount Tamalpais above the Golden Gate, at Point Reyes Seashore, and in the Santa Cruz

forests. Interestingly, Carpenter had hinted to accomplices that he was Zodiac—an intriguing possibility. Photos of Carpenter from 1969 with

glasses and crew cut bore a striking resemblance to Zodiac’s wanted poster. Carpenter had been in prison when some Zodiac letters were

mailed. But during the Trailside attacks police had ruled Carpenter out as a suspect because state computers listed him as being in jail. In reality,

he was living in a halfway house and walking the streets of downtown San Francisco.

Another riddle—the inoffensive ex-convict stuttered badly, while the Trailside Kil er did not. However, at his San Diego trial, Carpenter explained,

“When I sing [and he sang], I don’t stutter. When I whisper [and he whispered], I don’t stutter. When I get real y angry! [he roared] I don’t stutter!” The

jury drew back in terror. Carpenter the Trailside Kil er was a different person than Carpenter under control. Perhaps Zodiac was someone else too

when he wrote his letters—an inoffensive person who, from day to day, no one suspected.

“Another suspect, Mike, a six-foot-tal , eyeglass-wearing ex-Navy-man, had moved the day of the Blue Rock Springs murder,” Mulanax told me.

“He owned a 9-mm and a .45-caliber gun and, like Al en, worked at Union Oil. When he got too excited he would put his thumbs against his nose

and scream. Early on, we had been looking for a Taurus and Mike was a Taurus. His neighbor verified he was familiar with Lake Berryessa. But

that went nowhere. He did look good for awhile.”

Thursday, October 8, 1981

Few outside the FBI guessed the Unabomber existed. At the end of a sixteen-month period of inactivity, the nation’s first domestic terrorist struck.

He placed a bomb inside a large paper-wrapped parcel at Utah’s Bennion Hal , where it was safely defused. On an April morning fifteen years

hence, when Ted Kaczynski was captured in a remote, snowbound Montana cabin, the Unabomber would become an important Zodiac suspect. It

was not hard to see why.

“I was the first one to do that story,” Rita Wil iams, KTVU-TV Channel Two reporter, told me. “I did it like a week after he was arrested. I got the

fingerprint guy out in Walnut Creek to look at Kaczynski. These FBI guys I knew were laughing at me—‘Oh, there’s no way. It can’t be.’ I said, ‘Come

on, he real y fits as Zodiac. That strange family, mathematical mind ... chemical bombs ... ’”

The implication was that Zodiac had vanished because he had become the Unabomber. Here are reasons why that might be true. Both were

pipe-bomb-makers. Both mailed police taunting letters with too much postage, boasted of their intel igence, and promised dire consequences if

their words were not published. The Unabomber wrote the Times, threatening to bring down a California jetliner with a bomb, then admitted it was

“a joke.” Zodiac promised to blow up a school bus with an electronic bomb, but rescinded his promise.

Kaczynski had been a professor at UC Berkeley from 1967 to 1969, when Zodiac became active. Ted resigned June 30, 1969, and Zodiac first

wrote the Chronicle a month later. The Unabomber exploded his first confirmed bomb on May 26, 1978, and a month afterward Zodiac al egedly

wrote his last letter. Kaczynski wrote the San Francisco Examiner a month later. The two wore military gear—the Unabomber military fatigues,

Zodiac a Naval costume. Both used disguises, a hooded sweatshirt, a hood. Inexplicably, there were times when the Unabomber and Zodiac

simply stopped writing and kil ing. Both were asexual beings with dominant mothers and absent fathers. Both understood the complexities of code.

Code is nothing more than mathematics and Kaczynski was a bril iant mathematician. At Berryessa the surviving victim reported that Zodiac

claimed to be an escaped convict from either Colorado or Deer Lodge, Montana. Deer Lodge lay sixty miles from where Kaczynski eventual y built

his isolated cabin in Lincoln, Montana.

However, equal y compel ing reasons convinced me that Kaczynski was not Zodiac. In 1978, the Unabomber, in his guise as the “Junkyard

Bomber,” was using match heads and rubber bands to create his bombs. Nine years earlier Zodiac had mailed the Chronicle electronic and

chemical bomb diagrams far more sophisticated than the Unabomber’s a decade later. Would Zodiac regress and lose the ability to create

advanced bombs? More than likely, by 1978, he would be building better bombs. The Unabomber remained unknown for so long because he didn’t

write the press. The publicity-hungry Zodiac always used his murders to gain publicity immediately afterward. The Unabomber wrote the Examiner,

disguising himself as “FC.” Zodiac, with few exceptions, took pains to identify himself as Zodiac, and verified his identity by providing confidential

facts or pieces of bloody evidence.

The Unabomber targeted groups—computer experts and salesmen, behavioral modificationists, geneticists, engineers, and scholars. But his

bombs were delivered in such a way that anyone could have opened them. In 1987, he left a bomb in a Salt Lake City parking lot for anyone to find.

Zodiac’s targets were always specific with rigid requirements. He stalked his victims—young lovers, students by lakes on special days—with a

different weapon each time. Kaczynski was obsessed with wood and wood-related names, while Zodiac was obsessed with water and water-

related names. Kaczynski loved nature—he apologized to a rabbit for shooting it. Zodiac loved to hunt animals and progressed to people as wild

game. In 1967 Kaczynski was in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan getting a second doctorate when three Riverside letters were written by

Zodiac and postmarked in Riverside. In 1971, Kaczynski moved to Lincoln, Montana, and was living there when Zodiac letters at that time carried

Bay Area postmarks. Zodiac’s excessive postage was engendered by a rush for publicity, while the Unabomber’s stamps served two uses. The

value and subject of the stamps were a numerical code indicating the type of bomb inside and a symbolic statement. The second use was to direct

the flow of the parcel. Overposting made certain the package would not be returned to the fictional sender; too little postage insured that the bomb

would revert to the return address—the actual target, a scientist on the Unabomber’s hit list.

The physical appearance of Zodiac and inner workings of his mind present the biggest differences between him and the Unabomber. Zodiac,

“lumbering” and “bearlike,” differed considerably from Kaczynski’s lanky and gaunt frame—143 pounds, five feet nine inches tal . Zodiac, physical y

powerful, had a paunch, stood close to six feet, and weighed around 240 pounds. Though Kaczynski kept a journal in code (speedily solved by the

FBI), it compared in no way with the intricate, unbreakable ciphers of Zodiac nor with his handwriting.

The Unabomber’s own words offer the biggest difference. His manifesto’s tone is flat, unimaginative. Where are Zodiac’s clever turns of phrase

and imagery frightening enough to galvanize a city? The professor in Kaczynski lectures us, while Zodiac’s colorful expressions and memorable

use of popular culture are intended to frighten, bul y, and mystify—not instruct. His letters possess an ironic, biting quality that overflows with

melancholy, even despair. They chil anyone who reads them. When Zodiac was angry, we felt it.

Zodiac gave his motives for kil ing as “col ecting souls for the afterlife” and the thril of hunting people. The Unabomber’s apparent lack of motive

made the search for him difficult. Zodiac obviously hated women. Kaczynski, to the end, dreamed of a wife and children, and envied and detested

the brother who turned him in for possessing that domestic bliss. Kaczynski’s true hatred was reserved for those in the academic world who had

surpassed him. Zodiac was master of al weapons, the Unabomber only of bombs, which he had trouble making lethal. Zodiac had an intimate

knowledge of Val ejo. Kaczynski did not. Like a poisoner, Kaczynski imagined the death agonies of his victim from as great a distance as possible.

“By gun, by knife, by rope,” Zodiac got as close to his victims as he could.

18

arthur leigh allen

Friday, May 22, 1981

“I was terminated from Spectro Chrome Graphics in Benicia (with no warnings or conferences) quite by surprise,” Leigh said of his May 22 firing.

He suspected he could put his finger on the reason. “I believe my problem started three weeks prior when I destroyed a rol -down door with a forklift.

The estimate was $2300.”

Tuesday, June 30, 1981

“I am intelligent, hardworking, honest, dependable, and punctual,” Leigh wrote, applying for other work. “I am looking for a job where I can learn

and advance myself in the long term and hope you wil consider these points in evaluating my application.” He was asked, “Have you ever been

convicted of a felony or a misdemeanor?” “Yes,” he answered, “I committed one count of PC 288 and was sent to a state hospital for two years. I

am now stil taking therapy as was required by the courts.” His application, received July 1, 1981, was printed neatly—al the g’s were straight and

al the d’s cursive. There was even a three-stroke k.

Wednesday, July 8, 1981

Allen snared a new job on his old stamping grounds—a Benicia industrial park at the end of Lake Herman Road. Leigh’s friends told me he often

parked at a promontory where Lake Herman Road intersects Highway 21, northeast of the Benicia-Martinez Bridge. He popped open a Coors,

drank, and scanned Roe Island, Ryer Island, and a hundred sealed battleships dismal y riding their anchors in Suisun Bay below. The gray

entombed fleet, mothbal ed remnants of World War I , probably made him think of his father and his own failed submarine career. He stil hated

working, but the new position gave him ample time to drink, visit his trailers, and make subtle digs at the police. He continued to wear a Zodiac

skin-diving watch and a Zodiac ring. He continued to mention Zodiac to his friends, leaving a trail of hints scattered behind.

He started his car and swung onto the rutted road. At home, a letter had slid down the mail slot into his basement. After a long delay, he was

going to receive his bachelor of science degree from Sonoma State. Authorities stil had not searched that dank and dreary basement where

bombs and a “death machine” might be stored.

Though diabetic, Arthur Leigh Al en began drinking beer from a quart jar. He rode his green motorcycle, laid out remodeling plans for his home,

and bought more books on electronic gear, maps, and the occult. He studied birdhouses, and continued building a plane. Dr. Rykoff reported

regularly on Leigh’s progress and rehabilitation. Apprehensive of his patient, the doctor played taped excerpts of their sessions for a Santa Rosa

cop. He was shaken too. Eventual y, Rykoff fled to a wilderness hospital. Everyone who came in touch with Zodiac was hurt in some way. George

Bawart told me the bizarre story.

“The doctor had come to believe that Zodiac was his patient,” said Bawart, “and made hours of tapes which he wanted to publish. He had tapes

that Al en had made claiming to be Zodiac. Al en had talked to his doctor about putting bamboo stakes in pits around his house. The sharpened

ends, covered in manure, would both wound and infect, even kil . I went up and interviewed Rykoff at some sanitarium. He was in a wild area and

kept looking frantical y in each corner. ‘Look out for the snakes,’ he cried, dancing about. ‘The snakes—everywhere.’ I laughed, then jumped. I

looked, and there real y was a rattlesnake. The biggest rattlesnake I’d ever seen—right by my boot—rattlesnakes al over the joint. God, for a

psychiatrist, he was goofier than a bedbug.” Or just frightened?

In early 1970, long before Leigh began seeing Dr. Rykoff, a rumor circulated in San Francisco that Zodiac had lost a letter addressed to a

psychiatrist he was then seeing. Al egedly, it contained a death threat to the doctor’s family. A passerby found the letter and turned it over to the

police, who interviewed the doctor. Because of professional confidentiality he refused to name his patient, a Bay Area resident. Within this doctor’s

files, some believed, lay the real name of Zodiac.

“We went down and saw Pete Noyes,” Bawart continued. “He was one of the producers of Johnny Carson or Jeopardy. Somehow this guy got

involved with Rykoff, Santa Rosa cops, and al this goofy stuff. It was absolutely bizarre the stuff they were doing. They were gonna protect this Dr.

Rykoff because Arthur Leigh Al en was gonna come kil him. They thought one of the lieutenants on the Santa Rosa Police Department was in

cahoots with Leigh Al en. After I finished this I wondered, ‘Are these guys pranksters? Are they just that paranoid?’ Crazy stuff. It was to the point

when I developed al this—this guy in Santa Rosa didn’t want to talk to me. I was very straightforward. ‘I’m retired. I’m working this as a private

contractor for the Val ejo Police Department Homicide Investigation Division and I want to talk to you.’ Wel , he wouldn’t talk to me in Santa Rosa.

He insisted on meeting me in Petaluma, and he met me with his partner, a young fel ow. This guy, this cop, was real kind of superior-acting, as if I

were a dummy. That’s fine. To get what I want, I’l take that tack. And so we sat there and we chatted.”

“The main guy in this thing is somebody just too big. He’l get you and he’l kil you,” he told Bawart.

“Wel , tel me who it is,” Bawart said.

“I won’t,” he said.

“Wait a minute, pal,” Bawart said. “You’re a working cop and you’re tel ing me you won’t tel me something that’s germane to my investigation.”

“I won’t.”

“Wel , let me tel you what’s going to happen. I’m going to go back and speak to Captain Conway and Captain Conway is going to our chief of

police and say, ‘There’s a Santa Rosa cop that won’t cooperate with an investigation.’ Our chief of police is going to cal your chief of police and I

can bet you dol ars to doughnuts, fel a, you’l find yourself sitting in an office and tel ing me what I want to know. So make it easy on yourself and tel

me now.”

“No.”

“Wel , you’l hear from me.”

“Next day, sure as shit, that’s what happened,” Bawart told me. “This guy was ordered in the office. We al sat down. He final y told us who this

real y bad guy was—who turned out to be [a superior officer]. The reason he was a real y bad guy is because his backyard backed up to Ron

Al en’s. That’s no big deal. Ron Al en was a North Bay city planner. We interviewed the officer and Ron Al en and there was nothing to it. I got some

handwriting out of some guy out of Santa Rosa—not related to the psychologist, that was sent to me by this guy’s girlfriend. I looked at it. It’s a dead

ringer. The way he made his [check mark] r’s and everything. But I take it to the handwriting people and this was a letter that says, ‘Hey, honey, I

want to get back with you.’ It wasn’t a threatening letter. He was a kind of half-assed stalker and wouldn’t let her go. Anyway I took it to the

handwriting guy and he says, ‘Definitely not.’ They must know what they’re doing, but I’ve seen things in Al en’s handwriting that look good to me.”

Wednesday, February 17, 1982

Toschi had been having a little discomfort from recent surgery. The month before, an ulcer had brought on massive internal bleeding. He had

been rushed by ambulance to Children’s Hospital, but was now recuperating at home—reading, resting, listening to Big Band records on the

stereo, and doing a lot of walking and thinking about the unsolved case. For a man who excel ed in basebal and basketbal , any inaction was

painful. “There is no police work being done on Zodiac at al ,” he complained. “I know this for a fact.” I spoke to Fred Shirisago at DOJ. “Like I say, I

have gotten so many damn cal s on this Leigh Al en,” Shirisago said. “I spend my time trying to do background. I don’t want to be left holding the

bag, the last person on the case. . . . Look, Al en might be the guy. I’m not saying he’s not. He goes to libraries and does a lot of research on crimes

against women. Every investigator I’ve talked with thinks it’s him. I read everything I can about the guy.”

An Oregon man suggested police could catch Zodiac by creating a fictional story that the kil er was already in custody. “Duped by the fictional

arrest,” he said, “we could trap him like a blind dog in a meat house.”

Thursday, May, 20, 1982

In November 1981, evidence in the sixteen-year-old Cheri Jo Bates murder investigation had “come to light.” Riverside police assigned four

investigators ful -time and, believing themselves close to a solution, dispatched an outline to the D.A.’s office. “She had a couple of boyfriends and

there’s one guy in particular. We’re convinced the kil er might be him,” they argued. Since November 1968, they had been convinced one of Cheri

Jo’s former boyfriends or rejected suitors was her kil er. Al egedly he’d had scratches on his face (Cheri Jo had clawed her assailant’s face) and

had bragged about committing the crime. Not only was there not enough evidence to charge him, but friends alibied him. “The D.A.’s office tore [the

outline] apart from their point of view,” said Chief Victor Jones, adding, “The person we believe responsible for the slaying of Cheri Jo Bates is not

the individual other law enforcement authorities believe responsible for the so-cal ed ‘Zodiac’ kil ings.” Jones believed Zodiac had been in the area,

but taken credit for a kil ing he had not committed. Captain Irv Cross, indicating the seven-month delay in letters, also suggested Zodiac had been

trying to capitalize on the publicity.

Tuesday, May 25, 1982

“I called [Detective] Bud Kel y in Riverside this morning,” Toschi told me. He had cal ed in response to Chief Jones’s press conference. “He

couldn’t give me their suspect’s name, but they feel they know who kil ed the Bates girl. Some new information developed in the last three months

and the suspect does not check out as Zodiac. This suspect was looked at back when the murder occurred. I asked Kel ey if their guy was ever in

the Bay Area even for a short time. Answer: ‘NO.’ Their suspect has lived in Riverside al the time.

“Seems the Riverside P.D. has only a circumstantial case against their local man,” said Toschi. “No physical evidence can tie him to the case.

Kel ey says the Riverside County District Attorney does not like the case and is very hesitant about issuing a murder complaint. Kel ey says the

case wil probably never go to trial.”

Riverside P.D. stil had a single strand of hair caught in the watch-band of the paint-spattered men’s Timex Cheri Jo had torn from her attacker.

Police stored the hair in a refrigerated evidence locker. One day a conclusive test might be developed to either clear or incriminate their suspect.

The local man had had frequent brushes with the law. A secret psychological evaluation of Bates’s murderer had been completed eleven years

earlier for the Riverside D.A. The chief psychologist of Pat-ton State Hospital described Bates’s kil er as:

“[So] hypersensitive . . . that virtual y any little misperceived act could be blown up out of al proportion to the facts. He is obsessed and

pathological y preoccupied with intense hatred against female figures—al the more so if he sees the young woman as attractive. Because of

his own unconscious feelings of inadequacy, he is not likely to act out his feelings sexual y, but in fantasy. . . . I would like to emphasize that

there is a real possibility that he can become homicidal again.”

Sherwood Morril showed me a confidential handwriting analysis he had prepared November 24, 1970, for Chief of the Bureau A. L. Coffey and

Riverside Police Chief L. T. Kinkead. He had studied examples of the Riverside suspect’s writing.

“An examination of enclosures [case # 36-F-586] A through E [three envelopes and letters, photograph of a note signed ‘rh’ on desk,

photographs of five names beginning with H, two letters addressed to an acquaintance of the suspect, seven pages exemplar writing and

material of the prime Riverside suspect] resulted in the fol owing conclusions:

“1. It was first determined that the handprinting on the envelopes and letters of enclosure A was by the same person who prepared

the handprinting appearing on the desk, a photograph of which is enclosure B of this report.

“2. A comparison of this material with the Zodiac letters revealed many characteristics which resulted in the conclusion that

enclosures A and B were in fact prepared by the same person responsible for the Zodiac letters.

“3. The five names beginning with H could not be identified with any of the other material submitted.

“4. The letter postmarked in February of 1968 appears to have been drawn by a lettering set and does not conform with any of the

material submitted. The handprinted letter postmarked January 17, 1968 addressed to the suspect’s friend is stil in a different person’s

handprinting but does not conform with any of the other material submitted. It does, however, contain numerous divergencies from the

handprinting of the Riverside Suspect and definitely was not prepared by him.”

One thing was certain—the RPD’s prime suspect’s handprinting did not match the Riverside letters. Morril ruled that Zodiac did write those

letters.

Wednesday, June 2, 1982

At Sonoma State University, Leigh Al en official y received his bachelor of arts degree in biology with a minor in chemistry.

Wednesday, June 9, 1982

At his Montgomery Street law office, Bel i dropped a tape into his machine. “A pleasant evening to you, Melvin M. Bel i . . . (ha, ha, ha, ha, ha),” an

anonymous voice cackled. “OK, number one . . . I had thought possibly we might get together and meet and talk. I am at the point in this activity that I

have gotten into somehow. How, I don’t know. Why, I have no idea. Now what you should do is pul up a chair and sit down with your coffee or tea . .

. and relax because I am about to tel you the Goddamnedest story you have ever heard. Number one, our common interest is the interest of the

Zodiac kil er.

“Now this case has been going on for over twelve years. During that time—(the reason my voice is going down is I’m turning this radio down.

With this hil bil y music you can’t hear yourself think). Anyhow, at one point in these photostatic copies that I have of the Zodiac kil er there’s

reference . . . they’re talking of the cop. . . . ‘Over the years the five thousand people he has interviewed, the three thousand tips, the two thousand

possible suspects . . . ’ Anyhow, we’re talking there of almost over ten thousand items alone. Now I know where the Zodiac is. I know who the

Zodiac is. I know how to identify the Zodiac.

“For over a twenty-year period I have had a sincere interest in symbols, symbols of al kinds. . . . One week I went to a flea market and saw this

ring, which I paid sixty dol ars for. The ring has no identification marks of any country. The ring presented a chal enge, and so I said, ‘I’m going to

find out everything there is to know about this ring and the symbols on it.’ Over a period of four to five months I was laid off and started researching

the ring for many hours in the library. I have my own library, about a thousand books.

“Each symbol on top of the ring corresponded to seven different symbols—a total of thirty-seven symbols that related to chemistry and astrology.

The underside of the ring had more symbols. The guy who wore this must have real y been something. It had been the ring of a blind Norse god. The

things that have happened because of this ring are unbelievable. I’m laying this stuff on ya because I know of your sincere interest the last time the

Zodiac was active . . . you’re the very best of attorneys in the U.S. today. Now the reason that this cop could not catch Zodiac or even relate to him

is because he has such a spiritual background, such a reasonable amount of intel igence. He is the most intel igent man in the United States today.

“He comes from fire, he returns to fire. How are we going to identify this guy? He has a ring on his finger decorated with a sign of the Zodiac. That

sign, the sign of the Zodiac, is the sign of the ox. Now remember wel , my slim friend (heh, heh, heh), his ful power consists in the power of words

and the jumbling of words. His method of attack on these innocent young people was not of a frontal assault. His attack was first with the knife, then

with the gun, the rope, then reverting back to the knife for the blood ritual itself. The Zodiac’s ring is a blood stone, a darkishgreen stone with

sprinkles of red, and is governed by Mars. The blood stone and the ox are connected. Darlene Ferrin had seen Zodiac kil someone (a fact not

widely known until four years later).”

The speaker knew of a Zodiac ring such as Al en had worn since the murders began, a ring compel ing Zodiac to do horrible things. The unknown

voice might not be Zodiac, but his remarks about a Zodiac ring were truly unsettling.

Thursday, October 11, 1984

“I really didn’t think this fifteenth anniversary of the San Francisco Zodiac kil ing would stir up this much interest,” Toschi said.

Herb Caen wrote:

“THURSDAY, OCT. 11, is a special annvy. for Police Inspector Dave Toschi. On that day in 1969, 15 yrs. ago, Toschi, then assigned to

homicide, was summoned to Washington and Cherry, where a Yel ow Cabbie had just been murdered. Four days later, a bloody swatch of the

victim’s shirt and a letter from The Zodiac arrived at the Chronicle—and thus began the string of stil unsolved Zodiac kil ings, most of them

accompanied by taunting letters. The last one to Toschi said simply ‘ME-37 (kil ings). S.F.P.D.-0.’ After slaying the Yel ow driver, The Zodiac

presumably faded away into the nearby Presidio forest. He could be walking down Market St. this very minute. . . .”

Wednesday, July 3, 1985

After thirty-two years on the force, twenty-five of those as a police inspector, Dave Toschi, now fifty-two, quietly retired. He had already realized

his life’s dream when he joined the force in 1953, spending seven years as a patrol officer in the Richmond District “My dad always said that if I was

a cop, I’d always have a paycheck to bring home. He said I’d never get rich, though. He was right.” As a homicide inspector, Toschi won gold,

silver, and bronze medals of valor. “I stil consider the Zodiac case the most frustrating of al my cases. I real y believe it gave me bleeding ulcers.”

But he was proud of contributing to the solution of another case that had a “Z” in it—the Zebra murders that claimed the lives of twelve San

Franciscans between 1973 and 1974. “I’m gratified that I was part of a team that brought that terrible case to a successful conclusion.”

Toschi spent five years in Robbery Detail, receiving police commission honors as a “Heroic Officer” on February 22, 1984. Then he transferred

to the Sex Crimes Detail where he spent a year. Now, after working every crime against persons there was, including Aggravated Assaults, he was

retiring to become head of security at the Watergate apartment complex across the Bay in Emeryvil e near Berkeley. Within a year he would also

be a licensed private detective. What he did not know was that the Zodiac case was only half over.

Sunday, January 19, 1986

“Some of the Val ejo police agree with author Robert Graysmith, some do not,” wrote reporter Gene Silverman on my just released book Zodiac:

“Val ejo Police Department Detective Sergeant Jack Mulanax—who had inherited the Ferrin case from Sergeant John Lynch, differs from his

predecessor on the inclusion of one of the kil ings. Mulanax believes the Lake Herman, Blue Rock Springs Park, Lake Berryessa and San

Francisco taxicab attacks were al done by the same man, that the man was Zodiac, and this is the man [Leigh Al en] to whom Graysmith gave the

name ‘Starr.’”

“I don’t think there is any doubt on those,” said Mulanax. “Although I base my conclusions, at least in part, on a large amount of circumstantial

evidence. We might find out when more people read this book. Graysmith did a good job and I agree with him. The book actual y provided me with

information. I didn’t know what Napa police had. I wasn’t contacted but two times by [Detective Sergeant Narlow].

“Graysmith mentioned the lack of information-trading among police departments as a problem,” reported Silverman. “He said in his book, ‘I

thought to myself that Lynch had cleared Al en because he did not match Lynch’s visual impression of the kil er.’ Lynch says this was true. ‘From

time to time your mind changes,’ he says, ‘but certain things stick, such as descriptions of the kil er given by victims who either survived or survived

long enough to talk.’ Lynch also believed there was more than one kil er.

“I believe that Zodiac is probably stil alive,” said Officer Richard Hoffman. “If he’d died there would be evidence found in a place where he lived.

The coroner would have come into it. So I think he’s stil alive.”

“Why, in that case, have the Zodiac-type crimes seemed to have stopped?” asked Silverman.

“I don’t know he’s not kil ing,” Hoffman said. “One of his last correspondences said he wasn’t going to talk about it anymore, take the credit for it

anymore. This is Graysmith’s opinion too.”

Pam, Darlene Ferrin’s sister, subject of threatening cal s every year on the anniversary of her sister’s death, said, “Zodiac is definitely alive. I

don’t think he’s doing any more kil ings. I think when he saw the police getting closer, he stopped. I have read Graysmith’s book four times. This

book has real y jogged my memory—so much. I’d read two pages and think and think.”

Wednesday, February 12, 1986

A twenty-year employee of the Sonoma Sheriff’s Department, retired now and staying at her mother’s Val ejo home, wrote me. “On your TV

interview,” she said, “you tied in the seven girls who were found murdered in the Santa Rosa Area in 1972-73 to the Zodiac kil ings. I found this

interesting because the Sheriff’s Department in Sonoma County never did. I also agreed with you that the different police agencies did not

cooperate with one another or share any information that they might have that would tie in with what another county might have had.”

On August 25, 1976, while working in the coroner’s office, Sonoma County, she learned of a routine traffic accident fatality, a head-on col ision on

Highway 12 between Santa Rosa and Sebastopol. The deceased was a forty-one-year-old heavyset male school teacher. He had taught not only at

Santa Rosa Junior Col ege, which many of the victims attended, but Napa Junior Col ege and other surrounding counties including San Quentin.

“I believe he had previously taught in Southern California,” she elaborated, “but his only relatives lived in the East. Among the possessions in his

van were drawings of some of the seven victims in the Santa Rosa area, which portrayed them in hog-tied positions. Included with these drawings

were their names and sexual preferences. There was also a backpack belonging to one of the victims. Since the sheriff is also the coroner, the

deputy turned over his findings to the Detective Bureau where it was placed in evidence and the matter quickly dropped. The deputy said, ‘As long

as he’s dead, for his family’s sake, there’s no point in ruining his reputation. ’ Besides, if they declared him dead and a new lead came up across

country, the detectives wouldn’t get to go on another trip.”

She further explained that, as a general rule, the deceased’s belongings are usual y itemized and released to the next of kin. In this case,

however, not everything was itemized, only what was in his pockets were returned to his relatives. “By now,” she said, “the evidence has long been

destroyed. When I left years ago, they were in the process of micro-filming the coroner files and then destroying the file itself. We always kept the

driver’s license along with a coroner photograph in the coroner’s office. The file that was open to the general public at that time did not contain

everything on file in the County Clerk’s office. However, the County Clerk also wanted to get rid of Coroner files and about 1979 or ’80 we

discontinued filing them with the County Clerk. His fingerprints should be on file in Sacramento. . . . I think if he was real y the Zodiac that he could

also be tied into the Riverside murder because of his employment as a teacher down there.”

She gave me his name and case file number. Was this the murderer of the young women who passed near Leigh Al en’s trailer in Santa Rosa?

Leigh had been a student at Santa Rosa Junior Col ege. Could he have had a confederate al along, writing the letters for him, one that had died in

a highway crash while he was in Atascadero and could write no letters exonerating him?

“When the teacher’s widow was cataloging his property,” a Santa Rosa investigator told me, “she came across drawings of people being

whipped. The sketches suggested the husband had been involved in S & M. The instructor had drawn himself as a woman and labeled it with the

female version of his own name. Chief Wayne Dunham felt the deceased man might have something to do with Kim Wendy Al en’s death.” Kim, a

Santa Rosa Junior Col ege student, had last been seen March 4, 1972, hitching north on 101.

“I’ve actual y got a photocopy of two of the drawings they found,” Sergeant Brown told me years later. “He drew Kim and he drew himself as

‘Freda.’ He drew this other girl and those two girls had classes with him. And he had this hair in his wal et. They tested it, but it wasn’t Kim’s. I don’t

think the teacher did it. Maybe, but I doubt it. I read his letters. One investigator thought that the teacher had this sex/slave thing going, whips and

chains and al this weird stuff, and he was obsessed with big-breasted women. He probably taught Kim, and when she shows up dead, he became

real y obsessed with her. A weird dude.”

Wednesday, May 14, 1986

Pieces of the puzzle began to fal together for Sergeant John Burke of the Santa Rosa P.D. “We have a ten-man team who have been keeping a

two-month surveil ance on an individual,” he told me. “Dave Legrow [a friend of Sheriff Butch Carlstedt] and Gary Crenshaw and I have been going

through his file. He was booked at the jailhouse in 1975 and was wearing a Zodiac watch. He’s six feet tal , 240 pounds. Born in Honolulu. I’l give

you his name in a moment. . . .”

“You don’t have to—he was born in 1933.”

“Yes, Leigh Al en. It was the weight that threw us at first, but then last night I noticed that at the time of the kil ings this man weighed 180 pounds.

What is unusual about this guy is that we have his 290 sex registrant file . . . these are broken up into an Alpha file and what we cal the five-by-eight

section, a list of I.D. characteristics. This is the first man I’ve ever seen to have both classifications. His registration is attached to his Alpha file. He

gave his address here in Santa Rosa at his brother’s. We might be able to get him for failing to report a move under the sex registration law. In the

murders here in Santa Rosa there is something I think no one else knows. On al the bodies were found fibrous hairs. We found matching hairs in

Al en’s trunk in his car. You know what they were?”

“What?”

“Chipmunk hairs.”

“Amazing.”

“I know when I got off work last night—got home a little late at six o’clock—my wife was getting ready to go to work. She can’t put on her makeup

standing, so she sits on the countertop in the bathroom with her feet in the sink. When she heard what I said about chipmunk hairs, she fel off the

counter. I had to catch her. Al en was using chipmunks to entice kids. Wel , It’s not over til the fat man sings.”

Thursday, May 22, 1986

With the publication of what I had learned about Zodiac over a decade, an enthusiastic army of puzzle solvers were attracted to the hunt—my

intention from the start. As time passed, police files, spread to the four winds, began to show up in the hands of novice detectives. Zodiac buffs dug

them from garages and attics, lifted them from trash cans and closet shelves. Each day brought a final solution closer—that moment when

someone, somewhere would recognize Zodiac. But after someone mailed me a bloodstained shirt like Stine’s, I discovered I could no longer open

a single letter. A Times interviewer thought I “appeared uncomfortable dredging up details” of Zodiac. I admitted to him I had not read a single one

of the thousand letters I had received for fear of getting sucked into the case again. “I can’t deal with it—it’s hard to explain,” I told him. “I don’t want

to get physical y il again. I can’t do it. Not now.”

Warily, I studied boxes of manila envelopes forwarded to me—a dozen or so letters packed inside each. I opened them final y, surprised that,

with few exceptions, most were thoughtful, ingenious, even clever. This Thursday afternoon Leigh Al en had a minor auto accident. I had to wonder if

he was cracking up because of new interest in unmasking Zodiac.

Friday, August 8, 1986

Toschi, currently manager of nationwide Globe Security, received a State Senate commendation for long meritorious service. His joy was

dampened when he learned Paul Stine’s blood-blackened shirt had vanished from within the SFPD. Three months later to the day, someone got

into the Vallejo Times-Herald and stole their entire Zodiac file. I recal ed how Avery’s Zodiac file had also been stolen from his car. I kept mine in

the safekeeping vault at Bank of America.

Thursday, April 16, 1987

Zodiac might be powerful, intel igent, and extraordinarily deadly, but he had always lacked originality. From costume to weapons to motive to code

symbols, he drew his persona from outside himself—mostly from films. Movie-mad to the extreme, he had thus far resisted demanding a movie

about himself (though perhaps he had, anonymously). Two films had inspired his campaign of terror—the first and most influential movie suggested

his entire method of operation. He had seen it at a formative time in his life.

19

zodiac’s “dangerous game”

Zodiac: hooded, secretive, precise—with a predilection for bizarre handmade weapons and unbreakable ciphers. A scent of demonic

possession and brimstone clung to Zodiac. Intel igent, compulsive, yet never original, he plagiarized his modus operandi from a watch face, short

story, and film. In his deciphered three-part cryptogram he explained his primary motivation—an obsession with Richard Connel ’s thril ing

adventure story “The Most Dangerous Game.”

“I LIKE KILLING PEOPLE BECAUSE IT IS SO MUCH FUN,” Zodiac had written. “IT IS MORE FUN THAN KILLING WILD GAME IN THE

FORREST BECAUSE MAN IS THE MOST DANGEROUS ANIMAL OF ALL TO KILL. . . .”

Leigh Al en freely admitted he loved Connel ’s short tale. “It was the best story I read in high school,” he earnestly told detectives in that hot

refinery office. Connel ’s story existed as book and film. Which influenced Zodiac—printed story or movie? Subtle differences indicated which. It

was possible to learn when “a terrible thought crept like a snake” into Zodiac’s brain. “The Most Dangerous Game,” printed in Variety and

published by Minton Balch & Company in 1924, won the O. Henry Memorial Award for that year. The printed version, included in adventure

anthologies and high school texts ever since, goes like this:

Sanger Rainsford, a big-game hunter, fal s overboard from his yacht. Stranded, he hears the report of a .22, and thinks the hunter must have

nerve to tackle large wild game with so light a gun. He meets General Zaroff, a sadistic Russian expatriate sportsman. Zaroff (a name similar to

Zodiac) hunts at night with different weapons to make the hunt more exciting. When Rainsford says he considers the Cape buffalo the most

dangerous of al big game, Zaroff corrects him, “No. You are wrong, sir . . . here in my preserve on [Ship-Trap Island], I hunt the most dangerous

game. . . . My hand was made for the trigger, my father said. . . . My whole life has been one prolonged hunt. . . . I enjoy the problems of the chase

[so] I had to invent a new animal to hunt. I bought this island, built this house [an ancient castle with towers and a gargoyle-shaped door knocker],

and here I do my hunting.” Surrounding are jungles with mazes of trails, hil s, and swamps. “Every day I hunt, and I never grow bored now, for I have

a quarry with which I can match my wits.”

Zaroff’s “most dangerous game” is people. He provides Rainsford with three hours, head start and “an excel ent hunting knife.” He “cheerful y

acknowledges” himself defeated if he doesn’t find him by midnight of the third day. If Rainsford wins, the general’s sloop wil place him on the

mainland. Armed only with a .22-caliber pistol and bow and arrow (Al en’s hunting weapons), Zaroff pursues his quarry. On the first night Zaroff

al ows Rainsford to escape. Rainsford realizes he is saving him for another day’s sport.

The final battle is played out in the mad hunter’s bedroom. “You have won the game!” he says. “I am stil a beast at bay.” Rainsford cries, “Get

ready, General Zaroff,” and Zaroff is kil ed. But the written story lacked the costume and pursuit of a young couple by gun and knife that had inspired

Zodiac. Zodiac’s primary motivation, that galvanizing flash point, was a film, but which one and in what year?

In a conversation with his friend Phil Tucker, Al en spoke of a 1945 film, A Game of Death.9 With its stalking by crossbow and Zodiac-like title,

the film was likely an inspiration. General Kreigner’s insanity is attributed to a wound from a Cape buffalo rather than a need to dispel boredom.

Other adaptations of Connel ’s story fol owed.10

Because Wil is O’Brien’s animation of his giant ape, King Kong, took too many months to complete, producer Merian C. Cooper and directors

Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel decided to shoot a second movie employing Kong’s existing sets and much of its cast. RKO’s sixty-three-

minute-longblack-and-white adaptation of The Most Dangerous Game was shot in 1932, a year after Al en’s birth. Screenwriter James Ashmore

Creelman, while retaining Connel ’s dialogue, introduced a sexual pathology to account for the cunning Count Zaroff’s mania—hunting inflamed his

other passions. The hunt as a precursor for sex had entered the equation. Bob Rainsford (Joel McCrea), an American big-game hunter returning

from safari, swims to nearby Ship-Trap Island after fake channel lights lure his yacht onto a reef. Count Zaroff (Leslie Banks), archer, waltz

composer, and self-confessed barbarian in evening dress, is the perfect host. Costar Fay Wray (Eve Trowbridge) recal ed, “. . . the actor who

played Count Zaroff with a jagged scar across his forehead had something wrong with one eye and it gave him a real y scary expression.” Banks’s

face presented two dramatical y different profiles—the left brutish, the right handsome—the result of a serious wound the actor received during

World War I. His Jekyl -Hyde quality depicted the schizophrenic qualities of a cultured man possessed by bestial desires. “God makes some men

poets,” Zaroff explains. “Some He makes kings, some beggars. Me, He made a hunter. . . .

“One night as I lay in my tent with this—this head of mine, a terrible thought crept like a snake into my brain . . . hunting was beginning to bore

me. When I lost my love of hunting, I lost my love of life, my love of love . . . what I needed was not a new weapon, but a new animal. . . . We

barbarians know that it is after the chase and then only that man revels . . . you know the saying of the Ogandi chieftains—‘Hunt first the enemy,

then the woman.’ It is the natural instinct. What is woman? Even such a woman as this until the blood is quickened by the kil . . . one passion

builds upon another. Kil , then love. When you have known that, you have known ecstasy.”

“Here on my island I hunt the most dangerous game,” the count tel s Rainsford and Eve. “We are going to play ‘outdoor chess.’ Your brain against

mine—your woodcraft against mine. When I was only stirrup high [my father] gave me my first gun. . . . It would be impossible to tel you how many

animals I have kil ed.” Al en’s father, a military man, gave his son a rifle and taught him to hunt, and Al en was the only Zodiac suspect who was an

archer. The image that opens the film is a castle door knocker of a Dying Centaur, an arrow in his breast. A wal painting above the stairs depicts a

similar maddened centaur, armed with a bow and arrow, carrying the body of a woman through the woods. The centaur is the astrological symbol

for Sagittarius (November 22-December 21), Al en’s own zodiac sign.

Zaroff, his Cossack henchman, Ivan, and a pack of hounds hunt Rainsford and Eve. In the film the hunt takes place in one night, not three, and a

couple, not a single man, are hunted just as Zodiac hunted couples. If they elude Zaroff in the island’s foggy jungle, they wil be set free. With his

Satanic black hunting outfit, folds gathered and cinched at wrists and ankles, Zaroff races swiftly through the fog behind a pack of hounds. In a

sheath on his left side is a foot-long knife. The scabbard is decorated with rivets. In his right hand is a precision high-powered rifle. Pursued in the

watery sections—a swamp, a waterfal , the couple final y reach the ocean’s edge. The wounded count dies when he plunges over his balcony and is

devoured by his own ravenous hounds as Rainsford and Eve escape by boat.

Because of the weapons (especial y the bow and arrow), the costume, which so clearly inspired the outfit Zodiac wore at Lake Berryessa, the

nighttime pursuit of a couple near water, the concept of outdoor chess, and the image of the Dying Centaur, I am inclined to think this particular film

most influenced Zodiac. And it had played at the Avenue Theatre. “Those animals I hunted,” says Rainsford, “now I know how they felt.” With the

lonely, unloved archer, the elite exile, Zodiac had found a resonance with his true life.

Radio drama, at its zenith during Zodiac’s youth, adapted Connel ’s tale. The most famous radio version appeared on CBS’s Suspense,

September 23, 1943. Its fifty-eighth show starred Orson Wel es as Zaroff and Keenan Wynn as Rainsford. Jacques A. Finke wrote the script for

producer-director Wil iam Spier.11 Augmented by sound effects, ful orchestra, and the power of imagination, radio adaptations could be

formidable influences. Al en, ten at the time of the broadcast, would have been lying in the darkness listening that Thursday night, lit only by the glow

of the dial. The static of the broadcast fil ed the room. A formative age, ten.

“I don’t remember which day we had discussed ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ and hunting people,” Cheney told me, “but somebody did a

televisionpresentation using that plot and I think that’s what we discussed, that and the fact that there was a book. The plot has been used and

used.”

The inspiration for Zodiac’s gun that projected a beam of light came from a television show adapted from a story by Wil iam C. Morrison. A

1950s Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring Myron McCormick featured a young man with a flashlight taped to his rifle. “Just shoot for the dark spot in

the light and you wil hit your target,” he said—exactly as Zodiac wrote. Hunting smal game at night, he chanced upon two lovers—result: accidental

murder. A vengeful father says at the conclusion, eyes glittering: “The excitement of a manhunt—the most dangerous game!”

20

arthur leigh allen

Sunday, September 27, 1987

Arthur Leigh Allen, in spite of financial problems, lacked the wil power to resist a new purchase. He bought a $2,500 foam, fiberglass ultra-light

“aeroplane” with a folding-wing option. Likewise, he was compel ed to heap on additional paraphernalia, and draw up blueprints for clever

modifications. But his deteriorating vision drastical y curtailed his active lifestyle. His flagging physical stamina, due to growing diabetes and kidney

problems, anchored him close to Fresno Street.

“Kidney failure is a slow process,” a nurse explained. “It’s only imminent after years and years. You can have it most of your life, but it’s only

toward the end of the disease that you end up on dialysis. It depends how bad your hypertension is. Through the years the diabetes destroys the

blood vessels, causes them to be less resilient, and so you get high blood pressure. Then the high blood pressure destroys the kidneys and you

end up on dialysis. The vision goes.

“Natural y drinking is harmful. Your skin color has changed because your kidneys are not functioning properly. And so you look sal ow. Dialysis is

not painful, but it is debilitating. You wil get very weak afterward, and usual y not be good for anything the rest of that day. The treatment’s for three

hours, three times a week, for as long as you live. Sometimes it’s longer for people who drink too much. If they’re large individuals the time might be

extended.”

Against doctor’s orders, Leigh guzzled beer from a quart jar, scanning the newspaper where conjectures about Zodiac’s fate stil raged. They

were most plentiful on the anniversaries of the attacks, a day such as today. Explanations as to Zodiac’s whereabouts ranged from imprisonment to

death to police proximity so close Zodiac dared not act. Il health had hardly been considered in the equation. Thus far, outside law enforcement,

Al en’s name had not been linked to Zodiac in print. No fraudulent informant could target Al en if he hadn’t heard of him. But the prime suspect stil

flaunted his connection to the case—saving articles about Zodiac and perversely wearing the Zodiac watch and Z-emblem ring. It give him

pleasure. Gradual y, the genie emerged from the bottle. The leak came not from the media, but the local police department. A substitute teacher in

Santa Rosa junior and senior high schools became concerned.

“My occupation has given me the opportunity to observe how local teenagers have reacted to your book about Zodiac,” he informed me. “I’ve

seen copies pul ed out at free reading time in classrooms al over town, but I never had much interest in the subject until last spring when, at various

times, I overheard students and staff members discussing the book. Apparently one of the students is the son of a local policeman, and word has

gotten around that the man you cal ‘Starr’ works at Friedman Brothers Hardware in south Santa Rosa. Some of the kids seem to know the man’s

real name, or think they do.

“This caused me to worry on two counts. First the man they think is ‘Starr’ may not be him, and an innocent man’s reputation is being ground up in

the rumor mil . Second, the man might real y be Starr and he might real y be the kil er. This raises the unpleasant image of little bunches of junior

high kids trooping through Friedman Brothers on safari fol owing a dangerous paranoid. I’m sorry this sounds a bit negative. I thought your book

was wel done and I hope your work leads to the kil er’s capture.”

Born in 1971, Harold Huffman’s son hadn’t been too familiar with the Zodiac case until his father began tel ing him about his old friend, Leigh

Al en. “After my father spil ed the beans,” Rob wrote, “I read Robert Graysmith’s Zodiac. . . . I scared myself to death. I knew exactly who ‘Robert Hal

“Bob” Starr’ real y was. After digesting this horrific realization, I would brag to my friends regarding al I had learned from Zodiac and my father’s

(and mother’s) tales of Leigh’s violent outbursts when they were young. I would make al the connections. I would, in turn, scare my friends to death

—then break the ice by tel ing them how Leigh wanted to make raviolis for my father and I, but instead we went to IHOP. On other occasions my

Dad would bring home oranges from Leigh’s trees, and I would offer them to my friends. Once digested, I’d reveal to my pals that they had just

eaten Zodiac Kil er oranges (and again they would be scared to death).”

“Craig,”12 a young man, also learned of Al en through the Santa Rosa Police. In the late 1980s, he and his dad visited Al en’s house on Fresno

Street. Al en claimed he didn’t know who had turned him in to the police. Craig told him it was Cheney. “I’m very disturbed at the thought of that,”

Leigh replied. “Don Cheney is capable of perpetuating these crimes and he even frightens me. Don has a terrible temper.”

“He seemed to be speaking for Zodiac,” Craig said later. “He claimed that he was the one who created the Zodiac codes, or at least the codes

were inspired by him. He showed us his own code, which is the one he apparently showed Ron Al en’s wife. He had others that were different from

what Ron Al en’s wife saw.” Craig recognized a lot of the symbols as being Zodiac’s. Al en told them that the Zodiac ciphers he had in his

possession were the original work of a convicted murderer he had met at Atascadero. “It was while I was working there in the early sixties,” he said.

That much was true. “Yeah, Zodiac got this from this inmate and it inspired his ciphers.”

“What do you mean?” asked Craig. “What do you mean? How do you know that unless you’re Zodiac?”

Al en continued to draw suspicion to himself with such sly comments and appearances at crime scenes. And time was running out for the

investigators—nineteen years had passed since Zodiac’s last confirmed murder, thirteen years since his last letter. Would that unsolicited lead

linking Leigh Al en to Zodiac ever come?

Tuesday, October 28, 1987

Clairvoyant Joseph DeLouise claimed he’d been tuned into the hooded executioner’s thoughts for nearly twenty years. He had once psychical y

envisioned a box in the Zodiac’s possession and advised him to rid himself of it. I wondered if Leigh stil had the mysterious gray box he al owed no

one to open. DeLouise thought the kil er might be a Scorpio or Aquarian because of the figures 11-2 and 2-11, which he kept receiving.

Transmissions registered on DeLouise’s mind: a white dog and horses, loneliness, and an intense hatred of the police.

The Chicago-based psychic, known as the “Prophet of Specifics” because of his accurate predictions, had recently had a second vision. “Zodiac

is living near Berkeley,” he said on Monday. “I recently got a cal from a Bay Area woman who believed she was dating Zodiac. A few weeks after

the woman cal ed, I got an anonymous cal . ‘I’m back,’ it said. The woman promised to cal me back but never did. She may be dead. I see danger

around her. I don’t feel that she was putting me on. He’s out there now. He’s dating and he’s kil ing, but he isn’t taking credit anymore. What he’s

doing now is personal. He feels rejected by the women he’s seeing. I think he’l cal me soon. I can feel it.” As if in response to the psychic’s

entreaties, a gloved hand dropped two letters into a San Francisco mailbox on the morning of October 28. Addressed to the Chronicle and Vallejo

Times-Herald, both carried Zodiac’s familiar salutation.

Wednesday, October 29, 1987

The Times-Herald received its letter and passed it on to Fred Shirisago, who had it dusted for prints. “Our guy has never left a print in the past,” he said. But the FBI had once gotten a print similar to the cab print on one letter. I asked Shirisago if he believed in the bloody print. “I don’t know

myself,” he said. “There were some witnesses indicating that he wiped it al off.” A handwriting expert analyzed the printing on the new letter

immediately. The first three sentences read like the April 1978 letter. The text said:

“Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking I am crack proof. Tel herb caen that I am stil here. I have always been here. Tel the blue pigs if

want me I wil be out driving around on Hal oween in my death machine looking for some Kiddies to run over Cars make nice weapons. . . . The

pigs can catch me if they can find me out there. Just like in the movie: The car. Tel the kiddies watch before they cross the streets on hal oween nite. Tel Tochi my new plans Yours truly: [Zodiac symbol] guess VPD-0”

Kim Kraus, a Val ejo mother of three, heard about the new letter. “One of the neighborhood boys actual y brought a copy of the article down to our

house and showed my children. It frightened them.”

Darlene’s former husband, Dean, had no comment, but his present wife, Kathie, did. “I’m just hoping this is al a hoax,” she said, “but maybe if

Zodiac surfaces—hopeful y without hurting anyone—he might leave a new track that could lead to him being caught—and seeking help. I can’t

imagine somebody being quiet and stay back al this time if he were as batty as [Zodiac] was. A guy as cocky and conceited as him would have let

it be known he was busy again.”

“The only thing that would keep this guy back is the police being close,” I told reporter Gene Silverman. “I think the police are close and I stil

believe they are going to solve this. From what I saw, the letter looked like bits and pieces of other Zodiac letters. There’s nothing original about it.

Zodiac always had a macabre bent to his writing, and I don’t see it here. He misspel ed Toschi, and I can’t imagine him doing that. Zodiac, in his

way, has a lot of respect for Toschi. But I understand the desire to see the real Zodiac surface. It would be one more chance for him to slip up. I’l be

the first to say so—I think both letters are fakes.”

“Until Zodiac is caught, this fear wil always be hanging over the Ferrin family—over al of us in fact,” said Carmela (Leigh) Keelen, owner of

Carmela’s Cafe. In 1969 she had owned Caesar’s Italian Restaurant and employed Dean as a cook. “Every time I get a crank cal , Zodiac crosses

my mind.” At mid-month, Darlene Ferrin’s sister, Pam, had discovered a Zodiac symbol scrawled in blue felt-tip pen on her front door, and now a

threat to Hal oween trick-or-treaters was painted on the garage.

Thursday, October 30, 1987

DOJ agreed. Captain Conway, relieved the letters were hoaxes, nonetheless put extra patrols on the streets Hal oween Eve. Hal oween was an

important holiday for Zodiac. Val ejo’s “Big Game” was traditional y held that day. Zodiac had mailed a threatening Hal oween card, and often

mentioned “game.” Spirit Week for the Big Game included symbolic “burial” ceremonies of the Dr. James J. Hogan Senior High School’s footbal

team. Some of Zodiac’s victims had been Hogan High students. Val ejo High students stood watch over a coffin that contained a “body”

representing Hogan High.

Murder suspect Shawn Melton, a police groupie, confessed to police he was re-enacting a Zodiac murder when he strangled Jeremy Stoner.

Melton’s first contact with the police had been when he took the results of his own investigation of a Zodiac Val ejo murder to local detectives.

“Jim Lang, and Captain Conway and I met with Mike Nail,” Bawart told me, “who was a D.A. then and is now a judge. There was a kind of

infamous case from our county, a kid named Jeremy Stoner, a six-year-old, was abducted and ultimately found dead in the Delta. The responsible

on that was a guy named Shawn Melton. Melton’s father at one time al uded to the fact that Melton wrote letters to the newspaper [like Zodiac] and

his terminology was somewhat similar to the Zodiac. Somebody came out with this hair-brained idea that he was the Zodiac. But he wasn’t, I can

assure you of that! We were meeting with the D.A. at that time to see if he would refile on Shawn Melton. There had been two trials on him and there

had been two hung juries.” Melton was eventual y convicted. He was the first murderer inspired by Zodiac. To our horror, he would not be the last.

Tuesday, November 17, 1987

“I found it difficult to believe that such a horrifying murderer as Zodiac has not yet been caught,” a reader told me. “Your writings on Starr [my

pseudonym for Al en] certainly convinced me he is Zodiac. I believe that if the police had searched Starr’s mother’s house and especial y the

basement they would have found al the evidence they could possibly have wanted. By this time, Starr has obviously hidden any evidence. He also

figures prominently in my mind because Zodiac is obviously an intel igent man who uses deliberate misspel ings to throw off the police. Did Starr

have a habit of deliberately misspel ing words?” A good idea. I checked. Remarkably, I discovered he did.

Some Zodiac ciphers had never been solved. Buffs had not given up trying to crack them. The eighteen characters at the end of Zodiac’s three-

part cryptogram attracted the most attention. Ruth Gerstankorn rearranged them to read something other than the anagram “Robert Emmett the

Hippie” most had already discovered. She found “Before I meet eternity” and another possibility—“Before I meet them I pity them.” Another reader

said:

“The thing that chil ed my blood was that one of the symbols used was a circle bisected by a cross, used in the plotting of what is known as a

polar co-ordinate. My supposition is this, the last eighteen characters [BEORI-ETEMETHHPITI] in the August ’69 cipher is not a name, but

more important a location that pinpoints the murderer’s location. The letters are in actuality numbers laid out in algebraic fashion on a graph

with the graph being laid out on a north-south to east-west grid on principle streets or landmarks in the San Francisco area, with random letters

being inserted as a fil er to make the line come out even in respect to characters per line. Done in mathematical fashion, the accuracy of this

graph could easily pinpoint the location to a specific location in a specific room in a specific building.

“Another point—al eighteen characters are numbers and that both coordinates are fol owed by numerals after the decimal point. This type of

mathematical plotting is widely used in mechanical engineering and would be used by anyone familiar with science. Since the leading

suspects had been sailors at one time, the characters could stand for degrees of latitude and longitude. This can be used after compensating

for deviation and variation on a magnetic compass to pinpoint a location to within sixty feet, plus or minus. I would, after translation, use an

aircraft map of the area of summer 1969 vintage to plot the isogonic lines properly, inasmuch as the location of the earth’s magnetic pole does

change slightly from year to year. Latitude and longitude are customarily given as a series of numbers fol owed by a letter, in degrees minutes

and seconds.”

However, early on, cryptographer Henry Ephron reported to Sergeant Lynch that the eighteen characters were “symbolic dust tossed into the

eyes of any would-be solver” to confuse and delay solution:

“No one recognized that these meaningless characters [nul s] are standard practice in cryptography to fil out empty space and equalize

groups in size (in this case to fil out the space necessary with similar symbols in order to make the third part exactly the same size as the first

two, a project obviously dear to the heart of Zodiac).” Ephron explained that repetitions of symbols, digraphs, and longer groups are the means

by which ciphers are solved: “On the basis of frequency the value L should have had only two symbols, but because of the frequency of Ls in his

message, he switched after the enciphering was begun to using the square both half-black and ful y black, thus giving himself another symbol

for L and for greater variety in the double L’s he gave up the alternation regularity. But my first discovery on analysis was the identity of the two

squares and B (al the symbols for L). Zodiac’s symbol for A appears, seemingly by error, as S and S as A. More dust in the solver’s eyes!

There is no mistake there. He was trying to confuse the decipherer and he did.”

Paul Avery stil believed the eighteen characters stood for Robert Emmett.

“Everybody loves a good mystery,” he said. “People track me down to talk about Zodiac. I’m deluged with phone cal s and weird

correspondence.” “It’s the stuff legends are made of,” I replied. “In twenty years this case wil be like Jack the Ripper. But sometimes I feel like I’ve

created a monster by writing about it.” “No,” said Avery. “The real monster is Zodiac himself.”

To those around him, Zodiac, a borderline psychotic, might appear as wel control ed and calm, even reasonable. “He prefers the passiveness of

pictures, TV, and the movies,” Dr. Murray Miron wrote. “Zodiac would have spent much of his time in movie houses specializing in sadomasochist

and occult eroticism.” One particular movie had been set at the unique place where Al en’s father worked, where Wing Walker shoes were sold,

and where Leigh had spent time visiting and going to the movies. This second influential film inspired his letters. It would tel us more about Zodiac.

It told us where he had been.

21

zodiac at treasure island

Streets named Sturgeon, courts named Halibut and Flounder intersected, and an Avenue of Palms buttressed the island’s west side. An

enclosure of tile and marble had once been the Fountain of Western Waters. It had cascaded before a seventy-foot-high terra-cotta-colored statue

of the goddess Pacifica. Then, Treasure Island had been a city of light, floating upon the waves in the very climes where Robert Louis Stevenson

once trod. It shimmered briefly at the end of the 1930s as a beacon of peace, flickered, and then went out. But for a while the night had been lit with

pastel searchlights il uminating domes and towers; colored lights were reflected in stil pools and sparkled in fal ing cascades.

Treasure Island began as a series of jagged surf-lashed shoals north of Yerba Buena Island. Prevailing summer winds from the Golden Gate

forced workers to first construct a ten-story seawal . They massed thousands of tons of boulders to erect a barrier thirteen feet above sea level

around a square-mile area. The resulting lagoon, a mile long and two-thirds of a mile wide, was then fil ed in with twenty mil ion cubic yards of

seafloor mud. A ramp soon connected Treasure Island with central y located Yerba Buena Island and the Bay Bridge. Final y, San Francisco

decided to hold its third world’s fair on the man-made island.

The Golden Gate International Exposition of 1939-40 opened in February 1939. Under bright blue skies, visitors drove across the bridge or

came by steam ferries to enter Aztec-Inca “Elephant Gates.” The Exposition’s features included Pacifica, her hands raised in benediction; the four-

hundred-foot Tower of the Sun; and Benny Goodman’s Swing music rocking an amusement zone packed with rol er coasters, ferris wheels, and

nude dancers. A few months afterward, Hitler invaded Poland, and France had fal en by the time the fair closed in September 1940. San Francisco

abandoned al plans of converting Treasure Island into a city airport. After Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Navy transformed it into a Naval base, building

upon the detonated fragments of Pacifica, converting the Hal of Western States to a barracks, and turning the river-boat Delta Queen into quarters

and classrooms. They made the Food and Beverages Building the “world’s biggest mess hal ,” altered the large hangarlike buildings behind the

Administration Building, and modified the Exposition’s three permanent buildings at the south end of the island.

After the war Naval Commander Ethan Al en was stationed at this first U.S. stop for Navy men returning at the rate of twelve thousand a day. In

1947, a fourteen-year-old Leigh Al en wandered the artificial island while his father worked. The Naval Station housed four commands: the Naval

Receiving Station, Naval Schools Command, the Naval Station itself (which administered the island), and Western Sea Frontier Headquarters.

Movies changed daily and cost only a quarter to see. “He used to watch movies at Treasure Island al the time,” a friend of Leigh’s confirmed. “My

mom worked as a secretary on Treasure Island and she saw him there often and may have been his ‘date’ at the movies. The Exorcist was another

favorite of his.”

He saw a film about Treasure Island that became a last blueprint for Zodiac—the 1939 20th Century-Fox film Charlie Chan at Treasure Island,

starring Sydney Toler. In the 1960s local KRON-TV screened its seventy-two-minute length cut to fifty-nine minutes. “Zodiac?” asks detective

Charlie Chan (who is arriving in San Francisco by plane from Honolulu—Al en’s birthplace). “Yeah, he’s the big shot in the spook racket around

here,” says another passenger. Dr. Zodiac, a crooked medium dressed in black robes, uses his guise as psychic consultant to blackmail his

clients. He answers the phone, “This is Zodiac speaking,” carries an odd knife, and shoots a crossbow. One of his victims block-prints: “CAN’T

ESCAPE ZODIAC—” Eve Cairo reads the minds of assembled suspects at a party and says, “Dr. Zodiac. I hear the name Dr. Zodiac in his

thoughts. . . . I can’t go on! I can’t! I hear death among us! I’m frightened! There’s evil here! Someone here is thinking murder!”

Zodiac, says Chan, is “not ordinary criminal. He is a man of great ego. Criminal egotist find pleasure in laughing at police.” Chan uses the San

Francisco Chronicle and its police reporter, Pete (Douglas Fowley), to try to trap Zodiac. “RHADINI CHALLENGES DR. ZODIAC” appears on the

front page. A dapper magician, Fred Rhadini (Cesar Romero), of the Temple of Magic on Treasure Island, joins forces with Chan to expose

Zodiac. “I accept your chal enge. . . .” Zodiac replies in a note pinned to a wal with a knife. In the end, Rhadini turns out to be Zodiac.

“Favorite pastime of man is fooling himself,” Chan observes. “So far no one has col ected [on the chal enge], not even the great Dr. Zodiac.” One

bet you could be sure of winning was that Zodiac had seen this film and been inspired by it.

“Charlie Chan at Treasure Island was Leigh’s favorite movie as a kid,” his friend Jim told me, “and his dad worked on Treasure Island.”

22

arthur leigh allen

Tuesday, January 10, 1989

Allen’s mother, Bernice, died at age eighty-three. “Mrs. Al en was dead by the time I got real y involved in the case,” Val ejo Detective George

Bawart later told me. “For the longest time I was aware of Al en. As you know, the chief investigator on the Zodiac case until he retired was Mulanax.

Then, when Mulanax left, they turned it pretty much over to me. During this span of time, even when Mulanax was working on it, different things would

come in. I might be sitting at my desk and it would be something about the Zodiac. I’d either make a few cal s or do what had to be done on it. Most

of them were goofy things. I’d tel Mulanax, ‘I took this cal for you. I don’t think it’s anything but here’s my report on it. Do what you want with it.’ He

would file it, but then after he retired I became the receptacle for al those kind of cal s. I wasn’t actively working the case at al . When your book

came out our cal s went up ten thousand percent.

“I have copies of [Al en’s] handprinting done in the Santa Rosa trailer—where he wrote left-handed. Then I seized a whole bunch of writings he

had at his house. Forms, letters to friends—the content of it wasn’t anything germane to the case. It was casual handwriting he wouldn’t be trying to

disguise. It was actual y his handwriting. We turned those over to our handwriting guy. He looked at it and said it’s not the Zodiac’s handwriting.

That’s our biggest stumbling block in that case. There’s a theory that when he went into his Zodiac mode he had a split personality and became a

different person.”

One expert worried Zodiac might be schizophrenic, his Zodiac persona awakened, control ed, or influenced by the lunar cycles and planetary

cycles. “What if he doesn’t know he’s Zodiac?” the man said. “There were long delays in those murders and letters,” I told Bawart. “I always chalked

it up to the fact that you got real close and Zodiac backed off.”

“That’s my theory too. They got real close and he said, ‘Oh, oh, I better not do anything.’ Also, there was a span of time when he was in

Atascadero and there were no letters at al .”

“What was important was that after Al en’s questioning at the refinery, no letter ever again began, ‘This is the Zodiac speaking.’ From then on he

signed them, ‘Me,’ ‘A Citizen,’ or ‘The Red Phantom.’ After Leigh went into Atascadero, Zodiac never wrote another letter. That’s got to mean

something.”

The next day a woman contacted me. “This is a note that was left for me in a Lyons Restaurant in Antioch by an older man,” she said. “He said he

wanted to help me out with the Zodiac. The handwriting looks to me much like the Zodiac’s. SFPD has it. I gave it to Inspector Deasy, along with a

tape he left tel ing me he is my secret admirer.” The message was in excel ent Zodiac printing and suggested Zodiac had been a stalker:

“Sexual Sadist ’61-’62 white chevorlet Impala Stocky man five-foot, ten-inches, paunch 220 pounds. Watched 2nd victim Val ejo-Darlene

Ferrin.”

Friday, September 1, 1989

Bawart retired from the Val ejo P.D., but was retained on a contract-type basis to fol ow up any new Zodiac leads that trickled in. A wel -respected

detective, he had been lead investigator on the 1989 Hunter Hil Rest Stop murders. “During the span of my career, I don’t think the Zodiac is the

most interesting,” he told me. “Back in ’79 a guy on the most-wanted list came to Val ejo, shot a grandmother in the head, and was going to kil a

seven-year-old kid. I tracked him al over the United States. The one I’m thinking of is the Fisher Case. It was involved with a syndicate gang out of

Kentucky. It was supposed to be the most corrupt city in the world. I went back there and worked with cops who made a thousand dol ars a month

and lived in mansions. You knew they were on the take. But they knew their business. It real y had a twist in the end and if I were going to write a

story, I would write a story about that.”

Wednesday, October 11, 1989

Toschi had worked a variety of security jobs since his retirement—Mount Zion Hospital on Divisadero, St. Luke’s Episcopal Hospital on Army. At

work on October 11, he opened his morning paper to Herb Caen’s column.

“ANNIVERSARY: Today, retired police inspector Dave Toschi wil drive to Washington and Cherry, park and observe a few minutes of silent

contemplation. At that very corner on Oct. 11, 1969—20 years ago—the serial kil er who cal ed himself The Zodiac committed his last murder,

shooting a Yel ow Cab driver and disappearing into the Presidio, never to be seen again. . . . The Zodiac’s last taunting letters to Toschi always ended with ‘Me—37. S.F.P.D.—0.’ A blowout.”

Meanwhile, amateur detectives, undistracted by the grim procession of other murders that police faced, kept after Zodiac:

“I hope that you have been curious as to who is writing these stories and lessons in deciphering the Zodiac code,” a San Francisco man

wrote. “First, I’d like every one to know there is a purpose for my writing in this way. I know that there is a God, and he chooses me to do his

work. The Zodiac Crimes are not just another mass murderer gone bezerk, and on rampage, no, everything about his murders suggests

someone who has planned every detail careful y, step by step. In every communication, he has displayed a clever, even satirical style of writing.

This would seem that someone of extraordinary intel igence is committing the murders.”

After twenty years some of that confusion was about to be dispel ed.

Thursday, November 30, 1989

“I wonder if you ever heard of the name Arthur Leigh Al en?” City Hal reporter Bob Popp asked me.

“Yeah, sure. What happened?”

“Nothing, except there’s a woman who cal ed in yesterday. She’s the daughter of a woman who started to talk to you several years ago and then

got panicked and hung up. Scared. But now the daughter wants you to know that the mother is wil ing to talk about an Arthur Leigh Al en. And that

name kind of rang a bel with me a little bit. She wanted to know how to get in touch with you.”

“I wouldn’t mind hearing from her,” I said.

“Where do I remember that name from? He lived up north, didn’t he?”

“Right. A scary guy.”

“That’s what she said. She sounded lucid.”

Karen Harris cal ed. “I’ve waited I guess years to contact you,” she said. “Partly because my mother’s so afraid of anyone finding out about it.

She’s very afraid of this person. My mother knew the district attorney in Santa Rosa, John Hawkes. I grew up with his children. He said, ‘Yes, that is

the man we’re watching.’ I can understand your curiosity in wanting to solve it. I’d like to find out as much information as I can to give you without

letting my mother know. She never real y knew anything about him until he was arrested for molesting a young boy who was the son of a friend of

his, a woman.

“Then, while he was in Atascadero, he did write to us and say, ‘They suspect me of being the Zodiac kil er.’ I remembered he looked like Burl Ives

to me. Just last weekend, over Thanksgiving, I did drive by his house. I heard he had been working at Ace Hardware but had lost his job. I don’t

think he’s working now. I had been to his house as a child (I was an only child) when I was about seven. I remember him drinking the big bottles of

beer. My mother was concerned because he was diabetic.

“He lived with a roommate for a while in Val ejo—an Oriental man. I remember feeling more uneasy about him than Leigh Al en. He was of

medium build and busy doing smal household chores. Based on some written notes by my mother, I think [the roommate] worked for the phone

company. . . . And I’m not sure if we were at [Leigh Al en’s] mother’s house or some other location. I remember him cooking a large pot of chili and

we ate that while were were there. We went sailing with him on a catamaran. He does know how to make sails and al that stuff.

“Your book is at home. Mother has al kinds of notes in it of every instance where she remembers incidents. He had the Wing Walker boots—the

whole bit. She knew Leigh throughout the time he was in the Navy. The only writing sample she has is from a yearbook and that’s the only sample I

could get hold of. He was a teacher at an elementary school.

“My mother cal ed you once and hung up. She got scared and didn’t want to give her name. But I want to see him again for some reason. I want to

watch him.”

“You be very careful,” I cautioned. “It’s a very hypnotic, obsessive, and al -consuming project. That case just eats at you. It just doesn’t let go.”

“My mother is terrified of this man. He drives by her house sometimes.”

“Recently?”

“Probably around the time he got out of Atascadero. She got an alarm system in the house. He stil has the Karmann Ghia and a Skylark over by

the house in the back of the driveway. They’re watching him again according to the sheriff’s department. My parents know someone who works

there—he’s a deputy. Two fourteen-year-old girls have disappeared and now they’re watching him again. If he’s the one . . . Oh, why can’t they catch

him? I wish they could catch him.

“Leigh used to write to my mother with these Navy flag semaphore symbols. And she threw al that stuff away—I’d show you, but if my mother

were to find out . . . He looks pretty much how I remember him looking. I went by to try and see him from a distance. But he would recognize me. I’m

thirty years old, but when I was a child my face looked the same. I look like my mother. I thought for a moment, ‘Oh, no. He’s sees me!’

“During the holidays, such as last Thanksgiving, my mother was very nervous for fear that Leigh was in the area visiting his brother. He used to

drive by my parents’ home and stop and stare in the windows from the street. That’s when my mother put in an alarm system in their home. . . . She

was always extremely protective, especial y when she began to hear from Leigh Al en again while he was in Atascadero. She used to get

mysterious phone [hangup] cal s so she got an unlisted number.

“While I was home over last Thanksgiving, my mother brought out your book with al kinds of papers in it. She pul ed out an auto accident report

that Leigh had recently gotten into. He hit some woman in her car . . . [in Mendocino] the accident was his fault and he had a suspended license.

[He was not fined, but his State Farm premium was substantial y increased.] As I said, I drove by his house in Val ejo the day after Thanksgiving. It

was daytime, but the house was dark inside. Only in one brief moment did I think I saw a figure move by the window, but it could have been my eyes

playing tricks on me.

“There were a couple of times my parents would see Leigh Al en walking long distances down roads in the Bay Area. They would offer him a ride,

but he would always refuse. There was one point in time, either when my mother had just gotten married or when she had visited him alone, that he

said, ‘I’l never forgive you for what you did.’ My mother told me, ‘I was too afraid to ask him what.’ She let it drop and never pursued what it was.

She had never threatened to turn him in or anything like that. I believe he’s homosexual, so I don’t know if it’s because she married my father. I don’t

think so. That’s always puzzled my mother. However, I think Leigh always cared for her a great deal.”

“It’s an ‘outdoor chess match’ between an intel igent sociopath and the police,” I told her. “I always hoped that someone would be reading my

book, bel s would go off, and we’d get that name. I was at a dinner party with some professors Sunday and I said, ‘Someday somebody is going to

cal with that name—out of 2500 suspects, the name that I’m waiting for wil come. And here’s that cal .”

“I’ve waited ever since your book first came out. I tried to get ahold of you once, but you’d quit the Chronicle. The Val ejo Police Department told

me they bought fifty copies of your book to use as their case file. They gave al the policemen a copy to bone up on the case. You found a lot of

information for them.”

“I found it al over the state. I was at the Chronicle one day when they were remodeling. They lifted this box up. It was just about to go down one of

the chutes out the window. It was ful of Zodiac stuff. I’ve had that kind of luck al the way through. As for Leigh, I think as long as he is being watched

by the police you should just keep your distance.”

“But when I go by his house, I don’t see anybody watching him.”

“The important thing is that he thinks he’s being watched.”

“When the kids at Blue Rock Springs were shot,” she asked, “did Al en use diving as an excuse, an alibi?”

“Yes. Al en was the first or second suspect they came up with—a major player right from the very beginning. Lynch took Al en’s alibi at face value:

‘Where were you at the time of the murder?’ asks Lynch. ‘I was scuba diving,’ says Al en. ‘Can you prove it?’ asks Lynch. And Al en goes over to the

back of his station wagon and points to the tanks. And Lynch says, ‘Fine.’ Thereafter, every time Al en’s name came up, Lynch would say, ‘I cleared

him.’ Leigh’s a formidable guy. He’s no dummy.”

“Al en’s very intel igent. And an excel ent marksman.”

“How do you know that?”

“My mother knew him al through the Navy. My mother’s father worked at Mare Island and she used to go to Al en’s house al the time. His mother

was very domineering, very formal. But my mother always liked it there, because she grew up in a very poor family and she loved going to his house

because everything was so nice. And she used to like Leigh Al en. I don’t know what happened. My mother wil tel me if I ask questions innocently.

I’l try and find out more. This case has fascinated me forever. I guess some of it is curiosity, but I would like to see if he’s the one and can be

brought to justice. He’s never admitted to my mother that he was the Zodiac kil er, but kind of closely hinted. God, I wish she had kept the letters he

wrote her. But she burned them. She got so scared one day, she said, ‘I threw them in the fireplace. . . . ’ And where is Zodiac now? Don’t serial

kil ers usual y want notoriety? That’s what puzzles me.

“I don’t think of him as dangerous now—heavy and losing his sight. And I recal Leigh was so good with children,” she said.

“Don’t be fooled. I covered the ‘Trailside Murder Case’ in San Diego. David Carpenter was such a confidence man—he looked like somebody’s

grandfather—he stuttered—wore thick glasses—it al owed him to manipulate his victims, to play on their sympathies. That’s the way a lot of them

work.”

“I drive by his house,” she concluded. “It’s very enticing. I just want to watch him. Next time we speak, I’l tel you how he and my mother met and

more about his letters.”

23

arthur leigh allen

Tuesday, October 31, 1989

“A friend of mine runs a DNA lab,” said a close friend of Cheri Jo Bates. “He says that technology is a year or so away from being able to match a

hair sample that has been stored away for over twenty years. I do not know how, and if, the hair that was found was stored, but this could be the key

to solve her murder.” Bud Goding, another reader, echoed her sentiment. “Your report on the Riverside murder stated that traces of skin and tissue

were removed from beneath the victim’s fingernails,” he told me. “Since that case is stil open, that evidence should stil be available. If it has not

been preserved in formalin, it should be enough to perform DNA replication analysis (PCR) and provide a DNA profile of the Riverside kil er.”

However, in order to provide a DNA profile, the fol icle of the hair, the root, must be present.

A decade later, the Riverside suspect returned briefly from out of the country. Police got a DNA sample as he touched down at the airport. “The

hair is a long shot,” said a spokesman, “because we’re not sure whether that was the suspect’s hair or not.” In December 2000, an astounding

thirty-five years after Bates’s murder, they got results of a DNA analysis from the Department of Justice DNA Lab in Berkeley. The hair was not their

suspect’s.

Had Zodiac committed the Bates murder? As at Lake Berryessa and Gaviota Beach, the overkil had been horrendous. But there were

perceptible sexual undertones—Bates’s clothes had been disarranged. If Zodiac was not the kil er and had simply taken responsibility in a

“confession” letter, how had he known facts “only the kil er could know”? “The big thing in Riverside back in 1966,” a source explained, “was drag

racing. I used to go drag racing every week and since a lot of cops took part, I found out a lot of details about Bates’s murder. Leigh Al en was

down that weekend for some sort of auto club. Maybe he was there with his little car and heard some of these same details that I did. Who knows?”

Monday, March 5, 1990

Leigh Allen, doing some writing of his own, sent a letter to the young son of a friend. He dated it military-style “5/mar/1990.” He said:

“Dear___: Yer mean ol’ dad has been keeping me informed of your progress. congratulations on al the neat things you’ve accomplished.

And I have another accomplishment for you—a gift horse, so to speak. Namely I am giving you a foam Fiberglass ultra-light. I am been

squeezed into a smal er area, due to having to rent out the upper part of my house, and simply must have the space. So, if you can come up

with a U-haul or such, you may haul away a ($2,500 invested) aeroplane for free. I wil include a slug of associated paraphernalia.

“I have mentioned this to yer dad and he said he’d pass along the infor. He seemed to approve but sometimes he forgets, hence this letter.

So if you can inform me as to your interest, I would appreciate it. I’l have to move on it very soon. I have al the paper on the plane, and there is

a folding wing option. I also have some ideas on finishing it. You can’t live with a project al the time I have without getting a few ideas. Hope to

hear from you soon.

“Leigh Al en.”

Tuesday, March 6, 1990

Karen and I final y spoke again. She was very fearful. First she laid out a little family history—her grandparents had come to Val ejo during the

Depression and endured “some tough times.” Her grandfather worked as a ship welder on Mare Island, while her grandmother drove a school bus. I

recal ed Zodiac’s vendetta against school buses. Bobbie, Karen’s mother, was a diver whose picture often appeared in the Val ejo sports section

between 1952 and 1957. Sometimes Al en’s picture ran alongside hers. “My mother met Al en when she was about twelve or thirteen,” said Karen,

“when she had first begun diving. He served as a lifeguard at The Plunge, a Val ejo community swimming center, in 1951-52. I think he was a

platform diver and a wrestler. She dove with Leigh and trained daily. She almost made the Olympics in Helsinki, almost a runner-up, but she dove

out of order and lost the chance. He dove as wel . He had that lumbering walk, very clumsy walk when walking down the diving board. My mother

always talked about that. When he was a diver, he looked terrible until he left the board and dove. Then he was very graceful in the air. But when

walking he was terribly lumbering because of a funny hip. I’l try and get a picture of Leigh from his diving days in Val ejo.

“She started dating him when she was about twelve. He was always a good friend. He never attempted to kiss her—a kiss-on-the-forehead kind

of thing, and never made any sexual advances. I do know that while ‘dating’ him, it was more of a very deep friendship. [Al en admitted that he had

never had a successful relationship with a woman.] Bobbie married Mark, a gymnast for the University of California at Berkeley, in 1957 and her

diving trailed off. They met while they were both practicing on a trampoline. Mark studied criminology and wanted to be a policeman, but was just a

quarter inch too short. Toward the time she met my father and married him, Leigh Al en was rejected by the Navy, a deep blow to him.

“Leigh Allen definitely always wore the Wing Walker shoes. He did wear pleated pants al the time. He was very clean cut. He used to use a bow

and arrow for hunting, and was also an excel ent marksman in the Navy, one of the best in his group. My mother said he did know code. He not only

sewed wel , but was a sail maker. He was definitely ambidextrous as I’ve watched him make fishing flies. He was a good typist too.

“Another time we visited him, he took us sailing on his Hobie Cat in Half Moon Bay. Both times I noticed how overweight he was. I knew he was a

diabetic, yet he drank beer heavily out of large bottles. Both times [we visited], my mother was very tense. I was born in 1959 and when we visited

Leigh, I think I was around nine or ten. If so, this was during the time he may have been al egedly murdering people.

“My mother visited him alone. It was the first time she did feel some fear for her life because he asked her, ‘Does anyone know you’re here?’ She

answered, ‘Yes. My husband, knows I’m here.’ She told him my father knew, which he did. And then nothing happened. But after that she never went

back. And I don’t know why she went to see him in the first place. I just wish I knew why she had such concern about Leigh at the time. Something

was going on and she felt she had to see him.” She cal ed my father the moment she left his house so that he knew she had gotten out safely and

was on her way home.

“As I understand his incarceration at Atascadero, it was for molesting the son of a female friend of his. The boy was maybe anywhere from eight

to thirteen years old. He told my mother the woman was just jealous of his relationship with her son. I believe he was dating the woman. He said that

was why she had turned him in—jealousy. I think he spent about three years in Atascadero.

“While in Atascadero, I think that’s when my mother first became aware he may be the Zodiac. He wrote to her that they suspected him of the

crimes. At one point, I think my mother cal ed him there and spoke to him. She asked him directly if he was the the murderer. I believe he was

somewhat jovial about it, but never admitted to the crimes. He [Al en] often wrote to my mother and used the signals used by the Navy [semaphore]

flags at the bottom of the letters. The notes he wrote her were done in blue-ink-type pens—felt-tip pens. She threw away most of the early letters. I

wish she had kept them. She burned the rest after her knowledge of Al en being sent to Atascadero. My mother also told me after reading your

book, that it fit that his brother and sister-in-law did try to turn him in. There was a bloody knife in his car and that’s what real y got them concerned—

that’s what I was told. Some of Leigh’s friends were also aware of what was going on.

“I wil continue giving you any information I can get. I want to try and get definite dates or general times of certain situations and find out more

details of his relationship with family members and my mother. I wish I could get my mother to come forward to the police, but it’s doubtful. But

maybe she remembers more about the letters he wrote to her. Something that points to him as the responsible party. He told my mother he always

picked up hitchhikers especial y while attending Santa Rosa J. C. and Sonoma State University. This always bothered her. He picked them up on

the highways. I remember the two girls disappearing from the skating rink and the other murders. Those bodies discovered on Franz Val ey Road

and in Calistoga weren’t far from my parents’ home.

“Oh, and another thing. He always did talk about ‘The Most Dangerous Game’ to my mother. In fact I have read the story as young girl, never

realizing that this was a big part of Leigh’s life. As for a possible hiding place of evidence, my mom mentions that Al en put up paneling in his trailer

—it must have been the Val ejo one or Santa Rosa one. My mother notes she saw white gloves in his trailer in Val ejo and that he did have another

trailer in Bodega Bay, an area he knew wel .”

Toschi and Armstrong had never been told that.

Monday, April 2, 1990

Two Bernal Heights gardeners digging at 1114 Powhattan Avenue struck metal about six inches down. They unearthed a rusty metal box and

pried it open with their shovels. Inside were two hundred sticks of crystal ized dynamite that had been buried for years. The SFPD transported the

explosive to an isolated site and safely detonated it. Had Zodiac’s stash for his threatened bomb projects been discovered at an address he had

once had some connection with? I doubted it. But somewhere, Zodiac stil had bombs. One day, he’s going to die and the police wil go through the

basement and find guns and bombs—and the case wil be solved. Perhaps one person wrote the Zodiac letters and one person kil ed—only a slim

possibility. Zodiac seemingly acted alone at Berryessa. As far as police could tel , one man, the kil er, had written in felt-tip pen on the door of his

victim’s car and that printing matched Zodiac’s.

Sunday, April 1, 1990

“You wanted to know who he was,” another Zodiac buff, Daniel L. Kleinfeld, offered. I wanted to know why he was.

“Zodiac’s mother was very protective . . . affectionate, but extremely moralizing. His father—more passive did not have a great deal of

contact with him. To show affection the mother fed him copious amounts and the stocky child became fat, tormented by classmates. In

adolescence he became suffocated by his mother, unable to break away. He would continue living with her. Condemned by his mother as evil,

he grew to hate her. His feelings of superiority over his peers intensified. He is a military fetishist, like those who impersonate police officers or

soldiers. Zodiac was raised with a very clear sense of justice, of righteousness prevailing. Thus he came to his ‘slaves’ concept. To him, the

way his peers treated him was a grave injustice, which could only be repaid by them doing him service in ‘Paradice’—an afterlife with slaves is

always, to Zodiac, a paradise. He gained a great deal of weight between the shootings on July 4 and stabbings on September 27. He ate,

then murdered. Then ate more.”

Zodiac’s imagination was a slave to popular culture. Al the pieces of the Zodiac persona had been fitted together on the public stage. One

incredible inspiration to him—beginning August 16, 1969 (two weeks after the Cipher Slayer christened himself Zodiac), Dick Tracy began

pursuing the “Zodiac Gang” on the comics page. The Zodiacs, in black hoods emblazoned with white symbols of the zodiac, had drowned an

astrology columnist. Tattooed across the face of their leader, Scorpio, was an astrological symbol of Scorpio. Light-haired and moonfaced, he not

only resembled the prime suspect, but a description of Zodiac as “very round-faced . . . hair combed up in a pompadour.” On August 20, the

Zodiacs raid the police morgue. “Masked torpedoes came in,” says the bludgeoned attendant, “demanded the corpse’s shirt.” Later Zodiac would

steal a victim’s shirt and mail portions to the police. The gang is told, on September 24, “Scorpio has spoken. He is ready for operation west

branch.” Three days later Zodiac stabbed two students at Lake Berryessa while wearing a black hood with a white symbol. “The ‘Zodiacs’ have

done it again!” Scorpio crows. The day of Stine’s murder, October 11, Scorpio drunkenly toasts his success. “To jol y li’l old us—T’ jol y li’l old

Zodiac gang.” The story line ended November 4, 1969.

But how could Zodiac have seen Dick Tracy’s encounter with a Zodiac criminal before publication? Chester Gould drew Tracy six weeks in

advance to al ow time for the Chicago Tribune Syndicate to make changes and mail proofs to subscribing papers to size, retouch, engrave in

metal, and print. Pre-printed color Sunday sections with the same storyline were delivered weeks before that. If Zodiac worked at the Chronicle

then he might have had an advance look. He was a long time reader of the strip—“The Purple Cross Gang” in a 1936 sequence wore black hoods

with white crosses on them. Like Tracy, Zodiac used the archaic spel ing, “clews.”

More importantly, Dick Tracy provided Zodiac with a way to avoid leaving prints. “Put a coating of this liquid cel ophane on your fingers,” says a

gangster. “It prevents fingerprints and it don’t clutter up your sense of touch either.” On February 9, 1969 Tracy explained blood type analysis on a

toothpick left at a crime scene. “As you know, salivary secretion often is used in place of blood for type determination. Your subject had a blood

type AB.” Though DNA testing had not been introduced, there was a primative version—ABO-PGM testing. Saliva could speak volumes about

Zodiac and he knew that. Even in 1969, Zodiac would no more have licked a stamp than he would have forgotten to wear his gloves.

A comic strip and Zodiac watch had provided his name and symbol. Movies such as The Most Dangerous Game and Charlie Chan at

Treasure Island had inspired and influenced him. One prompted him to hunt humans, the other, set on Treasure Island, provided the black hood

and salutation for his letters, even inspired Zodiac’s duel by mail with the Chronicle. But if Zodiac could be motivated by popular culture, others

could be influenced by Zodiac himself. It was the most shocking byproduct of the entire case. Someone claiming to be the San Francisco Zodiac

Kil er was shooting people in New York City. Somehow he knew their birth dates and promised one victim for each of the twelve Zodiac signs. We

feared it was the original Zodiac, returned at last with guns blazing.

24

zodiac II

Bold headlines said it al in the summer of 1990: “GUNMAN TERRORIZES NEW YORK—CALLS SELF ZODIAC. SHOT 3 MEN, ONE

FATALLY, WOUNDED A FOURTH IN CENTRAL PARK.” Zodiac was shooting people in an eight-block section of Brooklyn and in Central Park on

Thursdays at twenty-one-day intervals.

“When I was a detective sergeant,” Mike Ciravolo told me, “I ran the the Zodiac case here. At that time they gave me and my forty-nine detectives

the Brooklyn Navy Yard. Let me tel you how the case developed. But before I go into detail—when we were working on our case you know what we

did? We went out and bought a case of your book, Zodiac. I had al my detectives read it to see if they could cul anything that might be of help in

our investigation.

“Let me go into 1990 for you. At that time I was a commanding officer of the crimes-against-senior-citizens squad in Queens. I had a smal unit—

eight detectives on the beat. I came in at seven o’clock one morning. A detective [Andy Cardimone] from night watch (which works out of the

Queens homicide squad right down the hal from us) came up and says, ‘Sarge, we had a shooting of a seventy-eight-year-old man last night and

he’s expected to live. You gonna take the case?’

“‘Sure, we’l take the case,’ I said.

“‘Something funny,’ he says. ‘I found this note on the step and it had these rocks.’ He hands me the fuckin’ rocks—three stones. ‘This note was

next to it.’ It was the first Zodiac note we became aware of. It said: ‘This is the Zodiac the twelve sign Wil die when the belts in the heaven are

seen.’ It had a round circle with three pie shapes in it and a little scribble. We didn’t real y know what it meant at the time.” The kil er had fol owed the

victim, Joseph Proce, a retired ice delivery worker, for ten blocks and into his front yard. He asked the old man for water and if he could go inside.

“Why do you want to go inside?” Proce asked. “Because I’m cold,” he said, then shot Proce with a homemade zip gun and ran toward Eldert Street.

“So when we get to the scene that morning,” continued Ciravolo, “uniform officers and the detectives who worked the midnight-to-eight shift have

responded. There were some clothes in a heap on the first stoop—this brown stuff where Joseph Proce was shot in the back, and I told Detective

Bil Clark, ‘Bil y, check those clothes over there.’ As he’s going through he says, ‘Sarge, a round just fel out.’ ‘Let’s get it to the lab,’ I said. We

canvassed the block. It was a very residential block [87th Road in Woodhaven, Queens], and we came up with a witness who saw a guy in an Army

fatigue jacket—the witness believed him to be black—running down the block towards Brooklyn. That street sat right on the Brooklyn-Queens

border.” In California Zodiac kil ed on town borders in an effort to create confusion and competition between authorities over jurisdiction. “So the old

man was taken to the hospital. He was expected to survive. I kept sending detectives back there every day to interview him.”

The New York Zodiac murders occurred at the height of the crack wars in East New York, and the 75th Precinct, where two of the victims were

shot, averaged a hundred murders annual y. Ciravolo continued. “Zodiac said, ‘Al shoot in Brooklyn,’ in some of his subsequent notes. He also

used to write ‘380’ or ‘9m’ [nine-mil imeter], ‘RNL’ [round-nosed lead], ‘no grooves on bul et—no grooves on bul et—’ By the way, there was never

any grooves on the bul et. Zodiac never, ever lied about what he said in any of his letters.”

“Was he making his own ammunition?” I asked.

“No, he wasn’t, but I feel he may have made his own gun.” A zip gun, made of duct tape, wood, and pipes of various sizes for different calibers.

Ciravolo laid out this chronology for me: “This attack on Proce happened on May 31. So now what happens—I take a copy of this note and I go to

Chief Menkin, Chief of Detectives for Queens. ‘Chief,’ I say, ‘I had a strange shooting last night—one of my senior citizens got shot. I think we’re

going to be able to interview him when he gets off the respirator. ’ (But he ultimately died three weeks later from infection from the bul et. But we did

interview him.) I said, ‘I think we got a nut going around here. I hope we don’t have a second Son of Sam.’

“‘Wel , keep me posted on this,’ the chief said. That was May 31. On June 19, I get a cal from the New York Post that a reporter [Anne Murray]

got a letter sent down there. They faxed me a copy. It’s our guy—it’s obviously the same handwriting—claiming responsibility for three prior

shootings. He says he shot a man with a cane in the street on March 8.” At 1:45 A.M., Mario Orosco, forty-nine, an immigrant from Medel in,

Colombia, finished work at a midtown cafeteria, and left the J train at Crescent Street. He paused at the corner of Atlantic and Sheridan Avenues

and noticed a man in a beret and bandana, dressed al in black, walking behind him. He was holding a homemade nine-mil imeter gun. Alarmed,

Orosco began hobbling away on his cane, but was shot in the upper back.

“Then,” Ciravolo went on, “Zodiac says he shot another man [Jermaine Montenesdro, thirty-four] in his left side in front of his house [at Nichols and

Jamaica Avenues in Queens] on March 29 [at 2:57 A.M.]. Then he said he shot an old man with a cane on May 31—which matches my case, the

Proce shooting. Then he says, ‘Al shoot in Brooklyn. ’ So I said, ‘He was wrong about my guy being in Brooklyn. He didn’t know the way the map

gets a little crazy right on the border. Obviously, when he shot this guy in Queens, he thought it was in Brooklyn, but he was about two hundred yards

out of Brooklyn on the Queens side. We started checking al the homicides in Brooklyn. None of them matched up. Then we checked al the first-

degree assaults—and boom! We got two guys who were shot and they survived. So we looked into these, and the next morning the Chief of

Detectives summoned us al down to his office and he decided to give me the case with nine detectives to look into this.

“I’d stayed up al night along with a couple of other detectives and we had come up with a theory. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘he shot March 8, then he shot

again March 29. Twenty-one days apart, al on a Thursday, by the way—and al in the early morning hours—between 1:45 and 4:00 A.M. So there

was twenty-one days in between the first and second shooting. Then sixty-three days in between my old man getting shot—which is three intervals

of twenty-one.”

The New York Zodiac wrote notes taunting the task force, which ultimately numbered fifty men. He vowed to kil one person born under each of

the twelve astrological signs. So far he had shot a Scorpio (Orosco, born October 26, 1940), a Gemini (Montenesdro, born May 28, 1956), and a

Taurus (Proce, born May 20, 1912). “So now here we are,” Ciravolo proceeded, “sitting in the Chief of Detectives’ office on June 20. I said, ‘Chief, I

think he’s going to shoot again. Tonight, after midnight is Thursday and it’s twenty-one days since my old man got shot.’ So he gives me thirty

detectives and everybody only gets two square blocks—’cause al of the shootings are within half a mile of each other. We got the streets blanketed

and then al of a sudden—six o’clock in the morning, I cal off the detail and I’m back at the station house. I’m signing everybody’s overtime slips and

I get a cal . He saw us in the neighborhood and jumped on the train.” On the nights of the Zodiac’s first three attacks, three star clusters—Orion,

Taurus, and Pleiades—were al visible. The three would al be seen again on June 21, 1990. The police waited, dreading the outcome.

Thursday, June 21, 1990

Zodiac struck in Manhattan on the first day of summer. The heat was on in Brooklyn. To dodge the tightening police net, he took the subway to

59th Street and went to Central Park about 7:00 P.M. It would be quiet there. He walked around a few hours until he saw Larry Parham, thirty, a

former janitor, now homeless. Zodiac had approached his victim days earlier to ask his astrological sign—Parham, born June 29, 1959, was a

Cancer. He slept nights on a park bench behind the Central Park band shel . Zodiac sat down a few benches away and waited until a few people

stil there left. Parham made a mattress from pieces of cardboard and a pil ow from his duffel bag. Five hours after the start of Parham’s

astrological period, and on the cusp of Gemini and Cancer, Zodiac shot him in the upper chest. He folded a note covered with astrological signs

under a rock amidst Parham’s meager possessions. “In the letter I left,” the kil er said later, “I used the phrase I read from the encyclopedia. It was to

throw you off the track. . . . I just wanted to increase the fear.”

Astrologists found themselves baffled in developing a coherent, star-based theory to predict the shooter’s next move. Previously, they had linked

the attacks to the first and second phases of the moon, but on June 21 the moon had been in its last quarter. Then came a startling headline:

“Expert: Copy Cat Attacker Goes by West Coast Book.” “N.Y.P.D. Combs ‘Zodiac’ Thril er for Clues,” a second headline read. The New York

Zodiac was using the San Francisco Zodiac as a guide. Psychologist Candice Skrapec, a professor of criminology at John Jay Col ege of Criminal

Justice, theorized that the gunman was imitating the California kil er:

“He’s fol owing an account in the book Zodiac written by Robert Graysmith,” said Skrapec. “He has seen the book and read parts of it. The

scope sight, the circle with the cross inside, the drawings, the name Zodiac, the astrological components . . . come from the book. We are

looking at an individual who is thinking the same thing he read in the book. . . . With this kind of behavior it would not be uncommon for the

crimes to escalate, and there wil be shorter time between incidents.”

Friday, June 22, 1990

Chief of Detectives Joseph Borrel i (“That’s Borrel i. Two r’s. Two l’s, boys.”) once led the “Son of Sam” probe. “The strange circumstances seem to fal under the zodiac signs of the dates of the shootings,” he said. “In the beginning when we looked at that, it was pure happenstance. But when

you get four out of four, you began to look at it more closely.” The day after Parham was shot, the New York Post received another note from

Zodiac:

“This is the Zodiac. I have seen the Post and you say

The note Sent to the Post not to any of

The San Francisco Zodiac letters you are

Wrong the hand writing is different it is

One of the same Zodiac one Zodiac

In San Francisco kil ed a man in the park with a

gun and kil ed a woman with a knife and kil ed

a man in the taxi cab with a gun”

“It was obvious from looking at the letter,” said Post reporter Kieran Crowley, “that Zodiac was anxious to convince everyone that he was the

same Zodiac who had kil ed people in California years before.” Crowley wrote:

“Below the diatribe was a drawing of a chubby Zodiac in a square-topped executioner’s mask, with his symbol emblazoned on his chest. To

the right he declared: ‘Me in the park; is this similar no; One Zodiac.’ This was getting interesting. If the California Zodiac had come to New

York, it was an incredible story. In fact, it was too good to be true. . . . He wanted us to think he was a heavy-set, middle-aged white guy from

San Francisco. Or did he actual y believe that he was the California Zodiac reincarnated? The incidents he described, especial y the drawing

of Zodiac in his executioner’s mask, were directly from the Graysmith Zodiac book. Graysmith, when I reached him by phone in California, was

appal ed that someone was apparently using his book as a blueprint for occult murder. The former political cartoonist for the San Francisco

Chronicle said his il ustration of the original Zodiac in a hood appeared only in his book.”

Crowley reached me at home. “Oh, my God, I feel terrible,” I told him. “This is a copycat and not the same guy as ours. When I first heard about

the shootings in New York, I checked up on a Zodiac suspect here who had never been charged. He is stil here.”

Another reporter wrote: “Fearful New Yorkers are snapping up copies of Zodiac, the 1986 bestsel er about a Bay Area serial kil er,” “Graysmith,

who spent ten years researching the book, is horrified that it might have become a how-to manual for terror, a macabre guidebook.” “I hope it isn’t

so,” I told him too. “I waited a long time after Zodiac ended his kil ings before writing this book for just such a reason.”

Monday, June 25, 1990

Jewelers saw sales of birthstones plummet as New Yorkers pondered how Zodiac had known his victims’ signs. NEWS REPORT:

“Police are tel ing people not to tel strangers their birthday. Four people have been shot, targeted for their astrological signs. Today one of

them [Joseph Proce, his third victim] died. The gunman claims to be the Zodiac Kil er of San Francisco fame in the late sixties, but police don’t

believe it. Meanwhile fifty New York detectives are on the case, the tabloids are going crazy and presumably New Yorkers are even more wary

of strangers than usual.”

“The computerized system,” Police Commissioner Lee Brown reassured the public, “enables us to make sure we capture al the tips, al the

information that comes in and gives us a chance to pul it up rapidly. The system employs a light scanner that permits clerks to feed information

from incoming cal s directly into the computer for handwritten notes.”

Zodiac I wrote, “Only Orion [The Hunter] can stop Zodiac and the Seven Sister. No more games, pigs.” A map published in the the Daily News

overlaid a diagram of the Orion constel ation upon a map of the city. The first three shootings in Brooklyn lay over the part of the constel ation known

as Orion’s belt.

Thursday, June 28, 1990

One man, his symbols, drawings, and letters identical to Zodiac’s, brought New York to its knees. Such deadly imitation was unprecedented. I flew

to New York, checked into the Omni, and visited the crime scenes. The press fol owed me, slipping so many notes under my door, I could barely

open it. The city was terrified. Mike McAlary wrote in his column:

“I met with Robert Graysmith, a former San Francisco newspaper guy. Graysmith spent ten years investigating San Francisco’s Zodiac

serial kil er. The original Zodiac was a much more lethal guy, Son of Zodiac. No one knows more about the original Zodiac than Graysmith.

Son of Zodiac has obviously read Graysmith’s book cover to cover. He is using the tome as a guidebook to murder . . . trying his best to

imitate the original Zodiac’s penmanship. They write in the same poor black lettering. . . . Beware . . . We live in the age of cheap sequels.”

“We have looked at that book,” said Borrel i. “The New York Zodiac kil er probably has too. Investigators assigned to the Zodiac task force

believe the gunman stalking New York City had read and copied parts of Graysmith’s book.” Warren Hinckle in the Examiner said, “Borrel i, who

fol ows Graysmith’s bible as religiously as does his quarry, has ruled him a copy of the original Zodiac.”

A news anchor, her cameraman, and I headed into Central Park in Manhattan. Taking one twisting turn after another, we neared Literary Walk

near 72nd Street on the east side. Nobody would be in Central Park at midnight but the extraordinarily foolish and Zodiac. We discussed the case

on the bench where Parham had been shot. New York Hospital doctors stil had the former Fort Greene resident on a respirator in their trauma unit.

The lights above the band shel cast long shadows across the wooded path, as silent and dark as Lake Herman Road or Blue Rock Springs. I gave

the interview looking over my shoulder. “We dug a round out of that park bench,” Ciravolo told me. “We found a thumbprint on the bottom right-hand

corner of his note. The park victim described a man who looked like [TV weatherman] Al Roker. It was of a guy who had asked for his birthday, not

the shooter. When you press detectives for a composite sketch to please the press, mistakes like that happen. The sketch was wrong and we knew

it. By then it was a citywide case, not just capsulized on the Brooklyn-Queens Border. So that’s when we had forty-nine detectives and went at it the

whole summer. Every twenty-one days when it would fal on a Thursday we’d go out there with a smal army in Manhattan, Queens, and Brooklyn.”

As I left to go to the airport, I saw police searching Central Park, the crisp darkness lit by flashing red lights. A female worker and her friends at

the airport thanked me for coming to New York to help. That alone made the trip worthwhile.

Thursday, July 12, 1990

“Zodiac uses the trains. We’re sure of that,” said the police, formulating plans to shut down the subways and trap him if he struck again. Cops

cuffed a subway fare-beater after they found a city map covered with Zodiac symbols in his pocket. Hundreds of officers anxiously waited for

Zodiac I to strike on his preordained day. “We had in excess of 150-200 bodies,” Ciravolo said, “a mil ion supervisors—the overtime was

astronomical. At one point we had a hot line set up. It looked like a Jerry Lewis Telethon. We had ten cops who were on limited duty—you know,

broken wrist, broken ankle, just sitting there taking phone cal s from the public—in excess of ten thousand telephone tips. Each one was checked

out. When each one was checked out we went through the book again. And guess what? Zodiac went under. He wrote a few notes, taunting us

—‘more games, pigs. I’ve seen you out on Eldridge Lane looking for me, you are not good. You wil not get the Zodiac.’

“He wrote things such as this: ‘This is the Zodiac. The first sign is dead. The Zodiac wil kil the twelve signs in the belt when the Zodiacal light is

seen.’ We were looking at this note for months and were asking what the fuck is the ‘Zody-acal light’? I cal ed NASA and I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr.

Scientist. Is there such thing as the Zody-acal light?’ ‘No,’ he says, ‘but there is the Zo-die-ical light.’

“ ‘What the hel is that?’

“‘Wel , it’s refracted particles of dust coming off refracted sunlight, but you can’t see it in big cities. You can see it down in the Caribbean and on a

clear night right at dusk.’

“‘When do you see the Zodiacal light?’ I asked.

“‘Twice a year. It comes out early in October and it comes out again in March.’13

“So this guy started shooting people in March, then he stopped. We got this October coming up, so it’s going to be interesting to see if he comes

back. He also said, ‘Orion is the one who can stop Zodiac and the seven sister,’ which is Pleiades, which is another constel ation. Out of the four

people he shot, he shot al of them in the torso—never any head shots, and three of the four survived. One guy has a round stil in him. It’s stil too

close to his spine to remove.”

Thursday, August 16, 1990

I returned to New York, staying at Days Inn on 57th Street and wandering the streets in early morning. A garbage strike was in progress. Heaps of

refuse, blurry with flies, mounded each corner. Zodiac victim Darlene Ferrin’s sister, Pam, stepped daintily over the trash, lifting the low hem of her

silky dress. She appeared on the Sally Jesse Raphael Show and told how Zodiac had changed her life. A man, she reported, tried to pul her car

keys from her ignition in front of an Antioch, California, store. He brandished a knife and threatened to abduct her, but she escaped after a struggle.

Local police had been skeptical of her earlier reports of death threats—a note pinned to her front door that read “187” [187 is the California Penal

Code section dealing with homicide], a coffin delivered to her door, a cross planted on her lawn, and teddy bears with knives stuck in them left on

her steps. Antioch Police Sergeant Bob Lowe denied they had dismissed Pam’s previous complaints. “Any and al reports of that nature are always

taken seriously,” he said. Vernon Hockaby of Antioch was more irate. He wasn’t related to Pam, but hundreds of cal ers had phoned his number

during the last year.

After making good on a third of his threats, Zodiac I vanished just as the original had. “We went at it for about nine or ten months,” Ciravolo told

me, “until Chief of Detectives Borrel i disbanded it.” Val ejo Detective Bawart, stil on reserve to help the VPD solve complex homicides, said,

“Zodiac’s success in his kil ing and the success of most serial kil ers are that they have no connection with their victims. Psychopaths like this

usual y outgrow it in their later years and later life.” Was this the case with the New York copycat? Had he outgrown his rage, gone underground?

In the interim, I learned Leigh Al en was going blind.

25

arthur leigh allen

Thursday, October 11, 1990

Allen’s deteriorating vision, a side effect from diabetes mel itus and arteriosclerotic heart disease, had seriously impeded his activities. Though

his kidneys were failing, Leigh ignored his doctor’s advice to curtail excessive fluids and watch his weight. As mental acuity decreased, he

experienced occasional muscle cramps, flank pain, and muscle twitching. His skin took on a slightly yel ow-brownish discoloration. Inside, healthy

as ever, anger stil blazed.

Long after Al en’s release from Atascadero, a staffer, consumed with worry, contacted me. “Is Arthur Leigh Al en stil alive and if so is he stil a

Zodiac suspect?” he asked. Apparently Leigh had told the Atascadero staff he was a Zodiac suspect. “To your knowledge, have there been

subsequent child molestation charges brought against this man? It is recognized in the mental health field that child molesters are notorious

recidivists. The molesters I’ve worked with have been repeat offenders.” Nor, with the passing of years, had the suffering of the victims lessened.

Psychic trauma had especial y been visited on the surviving Blue Rock Springs victim—Mike Mageau [ May-hew], last seen in a Val ejo hospital on

August 19, 1969.

Though his operation had been on July 5, scars on the right side of Mike’s neck and left cheek shone lividly, mapping a bul et’s wandering path.

He was a study in agony—jaw wired shut, left leg encased in a cast to his hip; right arm and hand crippled by bul ets—as he stared at a slug,

floating in a solution in a glass bottle. That slug had been removed from his left thigh. As soon as he could, he disguised himself and fled Val ejo.

“About one and a half years ago,” a male nurse in San Bernardino told me, “I saw Michael Mageau as a patient for multiple medical problems

that appeared to be psychosomatic, probably secondary to the psychological scars he received as a result of his encounter with Zodiac. He freely

volunteered his association with Zodiac and had scars consistent with the described wounds. As I recal he had a run-in with drugs and was a street

person briefly. I met his fiancée, who is a strong woman and seemed to be giving him emotional and physical support. They are probably married

now. He told me that [Lake Berryessa victim] Bryan Hartnel was living in the area and that he had some infrequent contact with him. I find it

interesting that both Zodiac survivors now live in the area where the Zodiac murders began.” Hartnel had described Zodiac as 225-250 pounds.

Mageau’s first description was similar—the man’s build was “beefy, heavyset without being blubbery fat.” He appeared to have “a large face” and

was not wearing glasses. “He weighed 195-200 pounds and was between twenty-six and thirty-six years old. He was wearing a blue short-sleeved

shirt.” That sounded a lot like the prime suspect.

On this twenty-first anniversary of Paul Stine’s murder, Dave Toschi said, “I retired in 1985 without having the pleasure of reading [Zodiac] his

rights. Zodiac was the most baffling murder case in our history.” With coast-to-coast Zodiacs at large, it seemed unthinkable that the original Zodiac

could let such an opportunity go by without commenting on his New York counterpart. Only the most extreme adversity could prevent this prophet of

death from gloating over the proliferation of his obscene word. No letter came. Why?

Tuesday, December 18, 1990

Leigh Allen mentioned the Zodiac imitator to his friends. But he had other things on his mind. I was in Val ejo when, on the morning of his birthday,

he donned a sweater his mother had knitted, buttoned his Navy pea coat, and drove to DMV to apply for a two-year renewal of his Class C driver’s

license. 14 The new license stipulated “RSTP: Corr Lens,” but in his driver’s photo Leigh is not wearing glasses. He cruised the water town in his

VW, final y parking at a golf course. I saw him turn up his col ar against the wind, as he studied Water Town. I knew he was intimate with al its

watery sections and salt flats. Lake Chabot Reservoir sprang from a dammed stream a hundred years ago. Then a storage cistern in Wild Horse

Val ey, twenty-two miles northeast, began pumping water to Fleming Hil reservoir. Today, the Gordon Val ey project and Cache Slough Pumping

Plant slaked Water Town’s endless thirst. His eyes roved across the choppy bay, where the hunt for Zodiac proceeded.

Al en was now undergoing kidney dialysis and suffering from diabetes. He walked with a cane, had a heart condition—possibly a circulation

problem, and suffered from severe arthritis. Zodiac’s withdrawal had been as mystifying as his arrival. When he had appeared twenty years ago,

there real y hadn’t been anything like Zodiac before. He had captured the public’s enduring interest. “Zodiac was one of the early serial kil ers to

acquire publicity,” said Park Dietz of UCLA. “The use of a logo and encrypted messages made him both wel -marketed and of interest to legions of

people who would like to solve the mystery.” So did the astrology angle.

Zodiac buff David Rice did a breakdown of Zodiac’s significant dates, but saw no astronomical pattern. He suggested to me there might be an

astrological pattern, though, and on his computer, analyzed his findings with an Astr-5-Ø, Tropical Zodiac program.

“If Zodiac were using astronomical events such as the Winter, Summer, Spring, and Fal Solar Ingresses,” he explained, “it would seem likely

that he would ‘do his thing’ on the exact day, and not plus or minus 13 days. Not even if he were using the Sidereal Zodiac, which is considered

(with an SVP at 28 Pisces) to have a difference from the Tropical Zodiac of 28 degrees (there’s stil about two degrees to go before the ‘Age

of Aquarius’ replaces the current ‘Age of Pisces’), as it would stil be off. There might be an explanation, however. Statistical analysis on athletes, using the Tropical Zodiac, placed Mars at the Ascendant (rising) and the Midheaven (culminating) more often than chance al ows, at

the oh-five level. Doctors and lawyers have Jupiter in these ‘zones’ instead. Though an astrologer, I’d prefer an astronomical explanation to an

astrological one. The former one can weigh and measure, the latter is al egory and probabilities.”

Like the original Zodiac, New York’s copycat serial kil er had vanished without a trace. I prayed for a resolution to the East Coast mystery. It

would dispel half the nightmare. In history only Jack the Ripper had his copycats—and now, Zodiac did too.

26

zodiac II returns

Though the solution to Zodiac I lay years away, let me tel you how it ended—as it began, in a blaze of bul ets. On Tuesday, March 1, 1994, New

York City police arrested a young man who “wouldn’t hurt a fly,” packing a homemade weapon. They automatical y fingerprinted anyone with a zip

gun because Zodiac I had used one. But the gun didn’t work, so cops sealed the young man’s file with the prints stil inside. He returned to his

Pitkin Avenue neighborhood, where he was known as “The Vampire.” Obsessed with al things military, “The Vampire” col ected martial hardware

and acted on occasion as a police drug informant. By day, he closeted himself in the nearly abandoned East New York apartment building he

shared with his mother and sister and some squatters. He raged against drug users who trafficked the squalid building. By night, he wandered the

streets, his Bible clutched under his arm.

“Your Zodiac, I think, is going to be caught,” I said on Ted Koppel’s Nightline. “I have had that feeling from the very beginning. He has already

been seen by more people than ever saw the original Zodiac.” Jerry Nachman, on the same program, made an interesting point on behalf of the

press. “We don’t create these situations. The Zodiac had shot two or three people before story one appeared. Son of Sam had murdered between

a third to half the number of people he would ever kil before the first Son of Sam story appeared. So, it is not as if it is a chicken and egg thing.

Sometimes these crimes have been unspooling for a while before we ever get notified of them or, indeed, get into them.”

On Monday, August 8, 1994, my phone rang. “There’s a third Zodiac,” Pete Noyes, a Los Angeles television newsman, told me. “A story out of

New York is that another person claiming to be the Zodiac Kil er has written to the Post describing a series of new shootings.”

“Another or the old one back again?” I said. “A third Zodiac—a copycat of a copycat? What do they think?”

“They say they don’t want to say.” He read me the AP report:

“‘This is the Zodiac.’ Those words, in a childlike scrawl, became the trademark greeting of a kil er who fil ed the New York summer of 1990

with dread. Now after years of silence, the Zodiac kil er may be back. In 1990, the Zodiac vowed to kil one person for each of the twelve

astrological signs . . . then abruptly quit. This week [August 1, 1994], the New York Post got a similar note from someone claiming to be the

Zodiac, and detectives are trying to determine whether the letter writer is the kil er or a copycat. The letter writer claims responsibility for five

shootings that police said left at least two people dead between August 10, 1992 and June 11 of this year. Al of the attacks took place in the

general area of the 1990 shooting. . . .”

Kieran Crowley phoned right after Noyes. “It’s four o’clock in New York right now and it’s happening again,” he said, “another Zodiac. He’s shot

five people. Remember four years ago? This Zodiac claims to be the original guy who kil ed al four. Obviously there are these points of agreement

between the letters and the original Zodiac. . . . Do you think it’s possible he’s taken on the persona, might think he’s the real Zodiac?”

“When this imitator came out for the first time,” I said, “my mother suggested I say in the press that this guy is not Zodiac. When I did he stopped.

Who knows, maybe he real y believed he was the San Francisco Zodiac. Or maybe he didn’t mean to kil his victims, only wound them. When Proce

died, he ceased kil ing.”

“It’s obvious to me that he’s read your book. He does a box score. He claims four victims four years ago, five now—a total of nine. The police

confirmed that the guy in this shooting—they got one bal istics match—a .22-caliber—which was like Zodiac.”

“Zodiac used a .22 in his first Northern California murder.”

“Do you think he’s using your book as a Bible? As far as I can tel he is.”

“I feel awful. My purpose in writing the book was to catch Zodiac or get so close that he was stalemated. I think we succeeded. San Francisco’s

Zodiac was effectively checkmated. With publication of his story and al the clues, with enhanced police scrutiny, we had no more murders, no more

letters.”

Few kil ers had copied a novel, duplicating fictional crimes or M.O. in real life. A few instances of fact fol owing fiction: Agatha Christie’s The

Pale Horse inspired a crime. A mass murderer who escaped from an asylum used her book as a guide to commit aconite poisonings. J. D.

Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye has shown up in the hands of a number of madmen—Hinckley, Bardo (who shot actress Rebecca Shafer). Former

Berkeley mathematics professor Ted Kaczynski, the Unabomber, copied the plot and philosophy laid out in Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent,

about a professor who is a bomber. I knew of no non-fiction books inspiring real-life crimes. I mentioned an article on the subject, “A Writer’s

Nightmare,” to Crowley.

“And it’s a writer’s nightmare for you,” said Crowley. “That somebody studied your book—that’s horrible. For you, this is like twice—what the

police don’t know is if it’s the same guy or not. Which is scarier—that it is the same guy who came back or if it’s two different ones?”

“Two people that unbalanced and suggestible?”

“Confidential y,” said Crowley, “we believe it stil may be the guy from four years ago. The descriptions sort of match—I’l get back to you on that.”

Next day, he told me about a new Zodiac cipher in the Post. “If you put a hand mirror on the left side of the symbols you can see how he created

his new alphabet. They look like normal naval flags, but they’re not. I and a former Army cryptographer decoded his message. I’l read it to you . . .

let me give you the exact wording. One of the reasons I was able to crack it open—turns out they’re mirror image naval signal flags [based on a

maritime system of International Flags and Pennants]—almost al of them. We didn’t know that. We did the standard code-breaking stuff. The

symbols were doubled in the horizontal plane, in something known as a ‘looking glass’ alphabet code. It was likely created by placing a smal mirror

on the left side of each naval flag symbol. He says, ‘This is the Zodiac Speaking, I am in control through mastery. Be ready for more. Your’s truly.’

Obviously, there are different points of agreement between the letters of the original Zodiac. . . . The police have confirmed they’ve got one bal istic

match—.22-caliber, which was what Zodiac used. The description is not a black guy but that of a dark-skinned Latino.”

“That’s very different than the original description,” I said. “The new one could stil be Zodiac I I.” Retired NYPD Detectives Al Sheppard and

James Tedaldi suspected this was Zodiac I I—he did not stalk his victims as he had done in 1990, but chose them at random. The 1990 Zodiac

had a pattern of attacking on Thursdays and in increments of twenty-one and when certain star clusters were visible in the sky. The latest Zodiac did

not fol ow any pattern. The old Zodiac aimed for his victims’ torsos, the new aimed for the head. But both admitted there were enough similarities

that it could be the same man.

“August the fifth,” Mike Ciravolo told me, “I get a cal saying, ‘Zodiac shot people. He’s writing notes. It checks out. He’s out there again. What

was incredible about 1990 was [Zodiac] has al four victims’ astrological signs on paper. To this day it is unknown how that happened. What we did

was we developed profiles on the four victims that we had back then. What did they have in common? Did they go to the same drugstore to get

their prescriptions fil ed? Do they go to the same barbershop? Do they have a library card for the same branch? Any common thread that we could

develop. And do you know what? No. There was just nothing in common with the four of them. Are they al on welfare? No, they weren’t. The only

thing they did have in common is that there was something wrong with al of them. The first guy walked with a terrible limp. He had some sort of birth

defect. The second guy was drunk—he was unconscious—passed out on the sidewalk in front of his house. The third guy was a seventy-eight-year-

old man who used to go wandering around in the middle of the night. He had his days and nights mixed up. He was a little senile. The fourth one

was asleep in Central Park on a park bench.”

“He picked the helpless to shoot,” I said.

“But this guy here in 1994 is hitting women as wel as men. This guy’s stabbing. Which is a lot more indicative of your guy out there than our guy.

That’s what gives me the creeps about this. I think the 1990 guy and the 1994 guy is one and the same. Now it’s starting to lean that way . . . they

cal ed me at seven o’clock in the morning and asked me al these questions on television. I had about fifteen minutes to read about it in three

newspapers and go on the air. At that time my gut feeling tel s me it’s not the same guy I investigated in 1990. But now I’ve had a little time to see

that note and go over it. The handwriting isn’t the same, but when you’re dealing with someone who’s so psychotic—his medication could be

changed. He could have just thrown the pen in his other hand. We have two matching thumbprints on those 1990 letters, and you know the New York

City police department has the FACES System—a computerized fingerprint matchup system. The latent-print examiners used to have to do it by

hand. Now if you’ve ever been arrested, your print is in the system. If you get a latent print off a letter you can match it. There’s one detective

assigned to just that—he has the prints from the Zodiac in 1990 and he continuously puts it into the computer. There were over 3600 reports

prepared on the case. Everything went onto computer. If your name came up early on in the investigation, and now here it is four months later,

another detective is interviewing someone and that name comes up. Boom! It would match and you’d be able to cross-reference and report, ‘Hey,

this guy looks interesting. An independent person told us two months ago about a certain person in the Bronx. Now someone in Brooklyn is

mentioning the same name as a possibility. Some bel s would go off.”

“Exactly what they should have done with Zodiac,” I said, thinking of Lynch and Mulanax’s individual reports on Leigh Al en. Neither knew of the

other’s questioning. We stil didn’t know who had been the original tipster who suspected Al en, the man or woman who directed the police to his

door. Once more I flew to New York, wondering if there was something in the original case that might identify Zodiac I . Retired Detective Sergeant

Mike Race, Kieran Crowley, and I were on the Rolanda show. The mix of the cerebral—cops and authors—and the passionate—victims’ mothers

and families—never real y jel s. What can you say after a mother has talked about losing her child? “In his coded message,” Crowley said, “Zodiac

said, ‘I am in control.’ I’d like him to prove it by sending another message, before he hurts anyone else, because I think it’s time for this to move on

to the next phase.” Crowley’s story headlined “MANIAC GOES BY THE BOOK,” appeared in the Post August 9. Under a reproduction of the cover

was the caption: “How-to manual, the real-life crime story that may have inspired Zodiac I .” Crowley wrote:

“The Zodiac kil er may be using a 1986 book about the original San Francisco Zodiac kil er as his guide. Robert Graysmith wrote the best-

sel er “Zodiac” about the hooded kil er who terrorized the Bay Area for years beginning in 1968. . . . Four years ago, Graysmith went through a

similar experience when a New York gunman cal ing himself Zodiac began his shooting spree.”

On August 12, 1994, police concluded that the new communication was from Zodiac I . He had demonstrated “intimate knowledge” of the

assaults—time, place, ages, and genders of the five victims, location of wounds, and caliber of guns (a .22 in four instances and a .380 in a fifth).

Some details matched; not al . One victim had been stabbed, not shot. Patricia Fonte was knifed over a hundred times. “We’re puzzled,” said

Borrel i, “but we’re fairly sure it’s not a hoax.” Psychologist Dr. Joyce Brothers said of Zodiac’s return: “This is somebody who is total y powerless

and who is finding power through publicity. His fantasy is to master the world because he can’t control his own life. He wants to be in control. That is

his fantasy. He probably does not have a family or anyone who loves him.” A Bel evue Hospital forensic psychiatrist, Michael Welner, said, “There is

this sense of being a hunter. He is trying to create intrigue with codes. He wants to be glamorous because he’s a loser . . . there is an element of

sadism about him. I think he’s very interested in getting attention . . . it’s very cowardly.”

Two years would pass. On Tuesday, June 18, 1996, a few minutes past noon, “The Vampire,” distraught his teenage sister was running with a

bad crowd, shotgunned her. A 911 cal —“a female shot in the leg, Pitkin Avenue”—summoned New York paramedics. Moments later, an

ambulance squealed to a stop at the U-shaped front of 2730 Pitkin. Medics piled out, leaving the engine racing. They started for the third-floor

apartment. “The shooter is stil up there,” cautioned a neighbor—a shot whizzed over their heads. “We kissed the concrete just as we heard that first

shot,” said paramedic Chris DeLuca. Lead ripped jagged holes into the ambulance; other shots ricocheted off the sidewalk. Chunks of brick flew.

“Get down! Down flat!” More bul ets, punctuated by bril iant muzzle flashes, hammered from the upper window. At P.S. 159 across the street,

students cried and ducked for cover. Cops, guns drawn, converged on Pitkin Avenue and cordoned off a nine-block area. For the next three and

one-half hours, their bul ets, with machine gun-like rapidity, answered “The Vampire’s.” Bul ets cut from above in a murderous arc, chipping

masonry and pinning down four officers. Cops in helmets and flak jackets wheeled a metal shield toward the building as the Emergency Service

Unit vehicle, armored with bul et-proof gear, moved in to rescue the four men.

Sergeant Joseph Herbert, a fifteen-year police veteran, soft-spoken and neat, negotiated with the shooter from the street below. “I think I wil

surrender,” the shooter shouted, weary of prolonged battle. From the roof police lowered a yel ow flower bucket to the apartment. “Turn over any

weapons,” they ordered. He fil ed the bucket three times—thirteen homemade guns, Saturday night specials, dozens of rounds of ammo, seven

hunting and military-type knives, and a machete. The siege ended shortly after 4:00 P.M. and “The Vampire,” Heriberto “Eddie” Seda, was

arrested. Inside Seda’s room were two ful y constructed pipe bombs and a third under construction. An unexploded bomb matched three recently

left in a Brooklyn parking lot. His library was what they had been told to look for.15 Serial kil ers often read about others to avoid the same pitfal s

that got them caught.

Seda admitted to shooting his half sister in a written confession. At the bottom of the page he drew an inverted cross crowned by three sevens. “It

just jumped out of the page,” Herbert said. “I nearly fel off my chair. It was the handwriting! The t’s the s’s the m’s, the way he underlined certain letters. That, coupled with the symbol of the inverted cross, made me realize this was Zodiac. I immediately recognized it. . . . I had studied it for two

years.” The symbols linked Seda with drawings made six years earlier by Zodiac I , who had left a thumbprint on the lower right corner of his first

letter. Herbert summoned Detective Ronald Alongis, from the NYPD latent-print unit, and asked him to bring a set of prints to headquarters for

comparison. Alongis had memorized the ridges and swirls Zodiac left on two notes.

About 8:30 P.M., he scanned the prints through a magnifying glass. His eyes got bright, then excited. At 1:20 A.M., after six hours of

interrogation, Seda signed a confession to al nine Zodiac attacks, claiming to have been overcome by “urges” to strike randomly. Only by chance

had Zodiac I appeared to know some of his victim’s astrological signs. “I just wanted to increase the fear in the city,” he said.

Zodiac detectives were surprised. “We thought that he lived alone because if he lived with someone, we figured they would have eventual y given

him up.” Bal istics and saliva tests further linked Seda to the Zodiac shootings. He had licked an envelope flap and “Love” postage stamps. Seda

had stopped shooting people after 1994 because he “lost the urge.” On Wednesday, June 24, 1998, a jury deliberated less than a day before

convicting the thirty-year-old high school dropout of three counts of murder and one count of attempted murder. A month later, the New York Zodiac

was sentenced to eighty-three years in prison. “You’re going to die in jail,” said Judge Robert J. Hanophy. “The Zodiac never lied to us,” Ciravolo

concluded. “That’s the saddest thing.” Back in fog-shrouded San Francisco no one suspected a third copycat was yet to come. Zodiac I I’s murders

would be terrifying.

The hunt for the original Zodiac went on. Besides Bel i the attorney, he had mentioned two other people in his letters. One in code, “Robert

Emmett the Hippie,” the other Count Marco Spinel i. Was Zodiac’s letter a hidden message to someone named “Spinel i” and could we find a

“Spinel i” who had a connection to Leigh Al en?

27

the big tip

Friday, December 14, 1990

Ralph Spinelli, lying in a cel on his fiftieth birthday, sweated into the thin mattress. Jim Overstreet, San Jose P.D., had arrested him as a suspect

in at least nine armed robberies of restaurants. Spinel i knew he could be prosecuted as a career criminal. He had been arrested in Oregon in

1972 for a series of armed robberies of restaurants and served two years of a ten-year sentence in a prison there. Facing a thirty-year sentence, he

suggested to Overstreet that he had something to trade. In jail, cigarettes, sex, and secrets were three prized commodities. “The best kind of

informant is a two-time loser forty-five to fifty who knows if he goes up one more time he’s gong to die in the can,” said a detective. “When he turns

to us, he has nowhere else to go—he becomes as zealous as a cop.” The cops had a “twist,” a hammer, on Spinel i and he was “working his beef.”

“I know the real name of Zodiac,” Spinel i said final y. It was his ace.

Spinel i began to talk in hushed tones and rapid cadence. But for al he said, it was just enough to get Overstreet on the hook. Overstreet realized

Spinel i might be inventing a story—a very good chance of that. However, he could not ignore what might be a valid tip. Zodiac was the biggest

case there was. He left a message for retired Detective Bawart and Bawart rang him right back. “Spinel i is currently incarcerated in the Santa

Clara County jail,” advised Overstreet. “He won’t divulge what information he has regarding Zodiac unless some kind of deal is made regarding the

present charges against him.” Bawart sighed. He had heard such claims about Zodiac before. “I’l get back to you,” he replied, and cal ed Conway.

“There was this guy Spinel i living in San Jose,” Bawart told me later, “pul ed a bunch of stickups and they caught him and he said, ‘Get ahold of

Val ejo P.D. I’l tel you al about a case they’re real interested in.’ They cal ed us, and Conway and I went down and interviewed him on his birthday.”

Val ejo Police Captain Roy Conway already knew Spinel i. His name had been prominent in the Val ejo area during the forties, fifties, and sixties.

Connections with organized crime were suspected.

Conway, a Val ejo police officer since 1965, had worked with Mulanax, since retired. He was presently commander of the Investigation Division,

but the night Ferrin was murdered and Mageau terribly wounded, he had been a sergeant and he and Richard Hoffman had been the first

policemen at the scene. Conway personal y verified the authenticity of descriptions Zodiac mailed to the press back in 1969. He believed Zodiac

had committed those shootings. An anonymous phone cal to the Val ejo P.D. had been made from a phone booth near Arthur Leigh Al en’s home

and near where Tucker kept his car.

Conway and Bawart drove to the Santa Clara lockup, checked their guns, and went in to see Spinel i. He was being held on $500,000 bail while

awaiting trial on the charges. The prisoner was anxious. Spinel i knew how much trouble he was in. Though he could go in for what amounted to life,

Spinel i stil refused to budge. He would not name the individual he knew as Zodiac without being offered a deal. “I want al charges against me

dropped,” he insisted.

“Out of the question,” said Bawart.

“We refuse to make any sort of deal like that,” said Conway.

“And just how do you know this person is Zodiac?” asked Bawart.

“He threatened me several days before the kil ing of Paul Stine, the San Francisco cabdriver. He wanted to show me how tough he was. He told

me he was going to San Francisco and kil a cabbie for me,” said Spinel i. “The next day or so a cabdriver was kil ed in San Francisco and the

Zodiac took credit for it.” A police report confirmed Spinel i and Al en had had fights in the past.

After a long discussion, Spinel i agreed to give Zodiac’s true name to his lawyer, Craig Kennedy, a deputy public defender of Santa Clara

County. Throughout the remainder of the month, several meetings were held between Kennedy and his immediate boss, Bryan Schechmeister. The

upshot was that no further information would be divulged without a definite deal given to their client. This Conway and Bawart stil refused to do.

They could play hardbal too. It would be interesting to see who blinked first.

Thursday, January 31, 1991

Conway received a cal from Kennedy. “I can give you the name that Spinel i has,” he said. The other side had caved.

Conway waited silently, although he already thought he knew the answer.

“It’s Leigh Al en. Arthur Leigh Al en.”

Conway let out a slow breath. He already knew al about Lee Al en. He got Bawart on the phone immediately. “LEE” was in the Zodiac cipher. It

was the name Al en had worn on his smock at Ace Hardware. Conway contacted Inspector Armstrong in San Francisco. “Yes,” Armstrong said,

“one of the primary suspects back in the early 1970s was Arthur Leigh Al en.” He also verified that Al en’s name had never been published in any

media to his knowledge. The only persons knowing his name were law enforcement people and only those involved in the actual Zodiac

investigation, or someone Al en might have bragged to such as medical personnel at Atascadero and some coworkers at an auto parts store in

Sonoma.

“Arthur Leigh Al en and Spinel i were acquaintances way back when,” Bawart told me later, “and he [Al en] approached him and told him he

wanted to be an enforcer for him. The guy [Spinel i] owned a topless bar. He admitted he was the Zodiac, said Spinel i, and said, ‘To show you, I’m

going to go to San Francisco and kil a guy.’ That was shortly before the Stine kil ing. Then he supposedly came back and said, ‘I’m responsible for

the Stine kil ing.’ I know this guy Spinel i fairly wel from his criminal past. I didn’t know whether to believe him or not.”

Spinel i might have invented his story and been trying to win favor. Even if what he said was true, it was not solid supporting evidence that would

hold up in court. It was fruit from a tainted tree. But how had Spinel i known to come up with the name Leigh Al en in the first place?

Wednesday, February 6, 1991

Conway and Bawart drove to the State Department of Justice, Sacramento Homicide Unit, to see Agent Fred Shirisago. This branch was

currently the repository for al the Zodiac cases in the multitude of jurisdictions where the kil er had struck. A constant refrain from amateur sleuths

regarding the state DOJ was that some at the top level were not always responsive to their information and theories. “They don’t always take my

information seriously,” one told me. “Further one guy claimed that the Riverside kil ing invalidated my material and he had proof Zodiac did not kil

Cheri Jo Bates. He claimed the information provided by Pam, Darlene’s sister, was not valid as it was too old. The handprinting I provided by my

expert was that ‘it looked similar,’ but after a kil ing in Martinez, they said it was not Zodiac’s. Yet he refused to al ow the other expert, Mr. Morril , a

chance to examine said handprinting.”

This was not Toschi’s approach. “Just let people know you appreciate getting their clues on how to catch Zodiac,” he told me. “I always

acknowledge receipt of a person’s letter, especial y if it appears to have some substance or is sincere. I never know when I’l get a letter that wil

make or break the case.” Shirisago gave Conway al the reports pertaining to the investigation of Arthur Leigh Al en, records that demonstrated

San Francisco detectives, specifical y Armstrong and Toschi, had conducted the primary investigation on Al en. They spoke with Armstrong, then

Conway contacted Mel Nicolai, now retired. Nicolai agreed with Armstrong that the media had never revealed the name of Lee Al en as a suspect

in the Zodiac investigation. Bawart fol owed the local papers devotedly. He too knew Al en’s name had never been linked publicly with Zodiac.

Spinel i had to have had personal contact with Lee Al en or with a close friend of his. In no other way could he have come up with the name.

“Were there any reasons for Spinel i to lie about the information?” I asked Bawart. “A grudge? A lighter sentence of some sort?”

“Al en had gotten in a fight with Spinel i,” he told me. “Showed up at his house and kicked in the door and beat him up. And yes, he provided the

information in exchange for a lighter sentence.”

Through Sacramento, Conway requested the FBI Director’s aid, Teletyping the fol owing:

“The latent fingerprint section is requested to provide Sacramento with photographs of al latent fingerprints developed during the Zodiac

investigation, Latent Case No A-10042. The latent fingerprint section is further requested to search the latent fingerprints developed in the

Zodiac case through the Automated Identification System and the Automated Latent Systems Model and National Unidentified Latent File.

Sacramento is not aware of the requested search as previously being conducted. The photographs of latent prints on file with the Identification

Division are being sought at the request of the Val ejo California Police Department, who intends to run the prints, search through the

California Department of Justice Automated Latent Prints System [ALPS].”

Compared against every suspect in the Zodiac case, prisoners and military personnel, there was no match. How had Zodiac done it?

Thursday, February 7, 1991

Bawart contacted Larry Ankron, a psychologist for VICAP at Quantico. Ankron knew al about Zodiac. Bawart told him al Armstrong, Toschi, and

Mulanax had learned back in 1971, then gave him the information that Spinel i had provided—the name of Arthur Leigh Al en. The bureau, as it

turned out, already had a file (their largest single file in the Zodiac case) on this individual. In Ankron’s estimation, Zodiac got as much pleasure

from taunting the police and reliving his murders through souvenirs he kept as from the violent acts themselves. “My studies,” he said, “show that

persons who commit these types of crimes many times keep souvenirs or trophies from these criminal acts. They wil take some type of article from

their victims such as identification, pieces of clothing, and so on. This is so they can keep these in a hidden place and relive the incident many

times over. They wil keep journals and newspaper clippings of the crimes themselves. Those who keep these souvenirs have ingenious hiding

places within their residences such as false wal s, hidden safes, and so on. Many times these individuals wil have a storage place at another

location where they keep their souvenirs.”

Possibly Zodiac’s trophies were underwater at a site such as Lake Berryessa or in the wal s of a trailer. Ankron believed the kil ings were stil

going on, or had gone on until recently. After al , Zodiac said he wasn’t going to write anymore and would make his kil ings appear as accidents.

“The only reason I can think of that the murders had stopped,” he said, “is that the man responsible had moved away [although the Zodiac crimes

committed elsewhere would be readily identifiable because of his wel -known M.O.]. He might have died. Or the police had come very close to

apprehending him.” Many who had seen Zodiac or been part of Leigh Al en’s alibi had died mysteriously. A caretaker’s daughter saw Zodiac

speeding away from Blue Rock Springs, and died several years after in a car accident. A landlady who could have provided Al en with an alibi

perished from a heart attack. Mr. Wil iam White, a neighbor [whose son joined the Val ejo force], had seen Al en return home on the day of the Lake

Berryessa murder, and died shortly afterward. Frank Gasser, the raccoon hunter who had peered in the white Impala on Lake Herman Road the

night of the murders, perished in a freak accident, dying suddenly two years later when he struck his head on a coffee table.

“You know,” Bawart told me, “when you investigate so many cases you get to be jaded to the degree that you have so many coincidences you just

don’t believe in coincidences after a while. Where there’s smoke there’s fire.” He visited Ace Hardware, where Al en had once worked, and

contacted Leigh’s coworker George Hieb. An ex-city employee, Hieb had worked at the Corporation Yard for many years. In his retirement he was

working at Ace Hardware.

“Do you know Arthur Leigh Al en?” asked Bawart.

“I know him quite wel ,” said Hieb. “I visit his home almost on a weekly basis.” Though Leigh’s mother had died, he stil kept to his basement

bedroom, though he could have control of the entire house. Hieb too had seen Al en’s guns. “A number of revolvers—I think they’re .22-caliber, and

at least one semiautomatic pistol, but I don’t know the caliber.” Because Al en had been arrested by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department for

molesting a smal boy, the suspect was a felon. Consequently, he was not al owed by law to own any of the weapons Hieb had seen. But in the

decade that Hieb had known Al en, he had never discussed the Zodiac case with him. That was puzzling. Leigh had discussed it with others, even

led people to think in that particular direction. Bawart cautioned Hieb not to mention the visit, then re-interviewed a number of people who had

information about Al en. As much current information about the suspect as possible had to be gathered before they confronted him.

Near the detached garage on the northeast side of 32 Fresno Street sat a broken-down blue “General Motors-type” auto. According to Hieb’s

information, Al en owned an older black G.M. vehicle. In the driveway were an older-model white Mercedes-Benz and light-blue Volkswagen

Karmann Ghia. Al en possessed a white Buick, and Darlene Ferrin had been fol owed by an American-made white sedan. A silver or ice-blue ’66

Chevy with California plates had been seen at Lake Berryessa the day of the attack.

To get the lay of the land, Bawart drove over to 1545 Broadway, where Al en kept a boat and trailer. The location was a single-story residence on

the west side of Broadway. To the north of the building stood a detached double-car garage packed with household goods. There were storage

areas—places where Al en might squirrel away items—a large lean-to-type storage shed forty feet long and twenty feet deep, and a second

storage area at the rear. George got out. Behind the garage, wind whipped grass in a vacant field. The scent of the Bay was in the air. In the center

of the field stretched a twenty-two-foot-long blue and white sailboat on a trailer, partial y draped by a blue tarp. Bawart surreptitiously lifted the tarp

and saw a California license number, NE3725. The boat had sleeping quarters on board, which would al ow a person to stay at sea for many days

at a time. Bawart also observed an open sailboat some ten feet long. “It looked more like a rowboat,” he said. Bawart jotted down that license

number too—9127F. Both were registered to Leigh. His mother had bought him the boats, spoiling him just as his sister-in-law had said. “Al en’s

been unemployed and living on general assistance for some time,” Conway had told him. “He goes diving and races Hobie Cat sailboats.” Bawart

decided that in addition to a search warrant for 32 Fresno, the police should at least search the sailboat. But the evidence they sought might be

sunken somewhere off the coast, beneath blue lake waters, or under the turgid waters of the Delta.

Tuesday, February 12, 1991

When Conway filed an affidavit for a search warrant, he was looking for evidence kept at the Fresno Street home that might show that Al en had

committed a felony. Possibly, they were already too late to find physical evidence. However, an explanation why the murders had stopped seemed

revealed. Al en was now legal y blind. “He was a very il man,” Conway said, “he was fifty-one or fifty-two. . . . He was extremely il and he’d had that

il ness for some time. Even though he could stil get around he was not very mobile, and there was a lot of focus on him as a suspect. Being a

suspect, being il , and losing interest—al adds up to the explanation as to why.” The why in this case was why Zodiac ceased kil ing and writing.

“We figured he wasn’t a danger to anyone,” George Bawart told me.

On Attachment IV, Conway listed the items they were searching for. Any .22-caliber semiautomatic pistols or any .22-caliber ammo, live or

expended, that may have been cycled through an automatic pistol and could be linked to the death of the Lake Herman Road victims, Betty Lou

Jensen and David Faraday. Any personal effects linked to victims Jensen and Farraday, Darlene Ferrin or Michael Mageau, Cecelia Shepard or

Brian Hartnel . They were also seeking the black Wing Walker-type boots, size 10½ R, Zodiac wore at Lake Berryessa during the attack there. The

upper portion of these shoes was manufactured by the Weinbrenner Shoe Company, the “SUPERWEAR” soles by the Avon Company of Avon,

Massachusetts. Both the Air Force and Navy issued them. Authorities were specifical y looking for any portions existing of Paul Stine’s gray-and-

white-striped sports shirt. In al likelihood it would be stained with blood. Stine’s wal et and I.D. and Yel ow Cab’s keys had also been taken by

Zodiac on Cherry Street that Columbus Day. Serial kil ers had a predilection for keeping souvenirs of their crimes so that they might relive the

moment.

Conway and Bawart needed any firearm that might show evidence of having had a flashlight attached to it; any 9-mm automatic pistols or 9-mm

automatic ammunition, live or expended, that may have been fired from a 9-mm pistol. They would try to link this to the murder of Paul Stine. They

listed any knives a foot long with a one-inch blade having rivets in the handle and tape around the handle, and a black executioner’s hood which

covered Zodiac’s head and hung down over his shoulders almost to his waist and was sleeveless. A circle and cross were painted white across the

chest. Conway desired any diaries or journals that Al en might have kept that linked him with Zodiac or the investigation to catch him. Any item that

had the Zodiac’s symbol of a crossed circle on it. He made one last request in his appeal: “Your Affiant asks that after the service of this search

warrant that the Search Warrant Affidavit and Return of Service be sealed by the court. The reason this request is made is that the Zodiac case has

had national publicity and has been one of the few cases that has so inflamed the public that it would serve no purpose for the news media to get

information from this affidavit if no charges are filed. In the other vein, if charges are filed, the publicity from this affidavit would tend to make it

difficult to have a fair trial.”

Police had come to believe that Zodiac was an unsophisticated kil er who contrary to former beliefs did not stalk his victims—just came across

them in lovers’ lanes. But the kil er was very familiar with Val ejo and Berryessa and the surrounding area, and victims had complained of being

stalked before their deaths.

I also thought sadly of Al en’s lost promise—at one time he could have been an Olympic diver. I recal ed his yearbook picture and photos of him

from junior high school and the 1950s when he was a lifeguard at The Plunge. A clipping portrayed a very slim young man, 180 pounds, about to

leap from a diving board. Leigh had been fit and handsome, looking eerily like the first composite sketch of Zodiac. In the time between the murder

of Paul Stine and his first interview with Toschi and Mulanax, Al en had gained so much weight, his face had become so owl-like, he was compared

to rotund Burl Ives the folksinger—but Al en was stil relatively young and Ives had been an old man. As it was, these days Al en was just getting by

on his $500-a-month disability checks.

Wednesday, February 13, 1991

Municipal Judge F. Paul Dacey, Jr., Val ejo-Benicia, granted a search warrant (#1970) for Al en’s home at 32 Fresno Street and the boat stored

at 1545 Broadway.

Thursday, February 14, 1991

Conway and his men served the warrant—rapped at the door and stood expectantly in the brisk morning air. The door opened and an army of

cops entered. After al these years, at last they would final y see what was in that dank tomb of a basement.

28

the search

Thursday, February 14, 1991

“I’m a nice guy,” said Al en.

“What if I can prove you’re a mean guy?” said Conway.

“If you had something on me, you’d charge me,” Al en said placidly. He leaned on his cane. His eyes, heavily lidded, shone a lustrous brown

beneath a massive brow—squirrel’s eyes. Leigh’s dog, Sobie, was at his feet. Conway pul ed out a chair and conducted the interview upstairs

where Leigh’s parents, Bernice and Ethan, had lived. Scattered al about him, he saw the dusty antiques and mementos of long-ago gentility.

Presently, a young woman was renting this upper floor while Leigh exiled himself to the basement. Leigh, however, kept some of his clothes,

including shoes, in the upstairs back bedroom. There was a record player in the upstairs dining room and downstairs bedroom, and many records

and accessories. He had a Sharp TV and a Sharp video recorder. He had a second video camera, lenses, a black video convertible recorder and

stereo adaptor, and many, many tapes. There was a lot of pet equipment.

As he probed, Conway learned little things—Leigh was a gourmet cook. His sausage-making equipment was kept on a high shelf in his

bedroom. A hard-bound sausage book and supplies (spices, casings, etc.) were in the laundry room pantry. The shelves held numerous cook-

books. He often printed out recipes for his friends, and enjoyed purposely misspel ing words on on these recipe cards. “We confirmed this through

his brother and other relatives, that he did these misspel ings on purpose,” Conway told me later. “It wasn’t by accident. He’d write recipes, for

example, and he’d spel ‘eggs’—instead of ‘eggs,’ he’d spel it ‘aigs.’ And that was intentional, just to get a chuckle out of people who would read it.

He did that consistently, doing that with al kinds of things.”

As they discussed his high intel igence, Al en became flippant. “Oh, no!” he said with a laugh. “I’m not gifted.” Later, in a television interview on

KTVU-TV, he described himself exactly that way. “I am gifted.” “I don’t booze anymore,” he said, and admitted his high degree of mechanical ability.

“I go to excess with anything.”

Conway and Bawart descended into Al en’s dark and dreary basement. “It was almost museum-like,” said a detective. If it were a museum, then

they might ferret out relics of Zodiac’s past. The detective’s notes, in longhand, stated: “Very dusty + cluttered. Books stamped w/S’s name. Dust

everywhere.” There was an Amana freezer and refrigerator, Maytag washer and dryer, and camping and fishing gear. Conway’s men unearthed

four boxes of videotapes, a box of audio reel tapes, and one cassette recorder in the basement. They played a few seconds of each of the tapes,

then exchanged stunned looks. They climbed the stairs and sat down and played a tape for Al en. Screams of pain fil ed the room. After the

recorded cries ceased, Conway snapped the machine off. There was a long pause.

“That’s me,” Leigh said.

“Doing what?”

“Spanking a young boy.”

“What?”

“A young boy who was feigning pain. I find it sexual y stimulating,” he said without embarrassment. “I admit to being a sexual deviant. I do get

sexual pleasure, cruel pleasure, from sadistic pornography.” He noticed the investigators staring at him. “Wel , there’s a lot of remorse for ya,” he

said.

The same kind of screams were on other tapes—the cries of yet unknown victims? It was difficult to tel if al were kids, though that in itself was

criminal enough. So infatuated with children was Al en that he seemed unable to stay away from them even though it might mean being sent back to

Atascadero.

“If I was Zodiac,” he said emotional y, “I’d want to get it off my chest. Zodiac would be judged crazy. . . . Zodiac doesn’t like to kil . I’d rather be

dead than go to Atascadero. I can’t be there. I hated the lack of freedom at Atascadero—the crazy people. They play mind games with you there.”

The search for the smoking gun continued. Among the cobwebbed and yel owed clippings in the basement, police ferreted out a column by

Superior Court Judge Thomas N. Healy that Leigh had snipped shortly after his release from Atascadero. Judge Healy’s “Insanity Defense,” an

update of the Criminal Insanity Plea as a defense, had run in the Vallejo Independent Press on January 10, 1979. Healy had cited People v. Drew

as a redefinition of the legal concept of madness. The M’Naghten Rule, introduced in England in 1843, imposes a legal distinction for judging legal

insanity—requires either that an offender not know what he was doing at the time he committed a crime, or not know it was wrong or was under a

delusion. Obviously, such a defense figured into any strategy Al en would use if ever tried and convicted as Zodiac. New York’s Son of Sam, David

Berkowitz, sentenced to 315 years at Attica, afterward admitted he had faked his insanity. The searchers discovered miscel aneous papers and

news clips about Zodiac. Among them were several copies of 1982 editions of the Times-Herald and the San Francisco Chronicle that contained

Zodiac stories. Detectives seized two copies of the Vallejo Times-Herald dated June, 3, 1982, and a Chronicle from June 6 of that same year.

Conway observed that though Leigh did a lot of talking, he real y never said anything. “There’s so many lies I caught him in,” said Conway, “his

denying things didn’t have any relevance anymore. The last letter that’s attributed to the Zodiac was a couple of months after he got out of the

Atascadero State Hospital. There were no letters whatsoever during the time he was in Atascadero State Hospital.”

Leigh denied any involvement in the Zodiac murders, but readily admitted that Sergeant Lynch had questioned him in early October of 1969. “I

had planned to go to Berryessa on that date,” he said, “but I changed my mind and went to the ocean instead.” He said nothing more about the

neighbor who had witnessed him returning home the day of the stabbings. Nor did he mention the neighbor’s death by “cerebral thrombosis—

massive” seventeen days later. According to Conway, Leigh was “very amiable, calm, and cooperative throughout the interview.” But detectives

brought up a mountain of weapons from the basement. “Get a load of this,” one said as they unearthed a Ruger .22 revolver with six live rounds. A

.22 revolver. A Ruger .44 Blackhawk and five rounds. A Colt .32 automatic and seven rounds. A Remington .22 short-caliber rifle, a Stevens model

835 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun, and a Winchester Model 50 20-gauge automatic shotgun. Winchester Super, and miscel aneous ammunition

for .32-, .22-, .44-, and .30-caliber guns. A .22 automatic clip with three rounds. A Marlin .22 rifle with a scope. An Inland .30-caliber rifle. Since

Al en was an ex-felon, possession of firearms was il egal.

Then came a bigger find—Captain Conway’s men discovered four pipe bombs, a primer cord, and seven impact devices (Railway Torpedo).

They ferreted out one can of black powder, partial y ful , and some Euroarms .44-caliber black powder, #13357 variety. They retrieved the fol owing:

two safety fuses (green, two rol s each, 98½ feet) and two rol s of orange safety fuses, nine non-electric blasting caps, two one-inch galvanized

pipes with one end cap, five pipe thread compounds, six pipe vises.

Inside a cardboard box they located bottles of potassium nitrate, green safety fuse, two bottles of sulfur, two glass bottles of black material, and

miscel aneous fireworks. Years later, I would find myself one day on the chil y slopes of Lincoln, Montana, at the Unabomber’s tiny cabin. Shortly

after Kaczynski’s arrest, police recovered items from the cabin identical with Al en’s basement chemicals and firing devices. They even unearthed

a box containing fireworks.

“I never left bombs in my basement,” Leigh maintained.

“Wel , we found some,” said Conway.

“I didn’t even know they were there.”

“Listen,” said Conway. “We have your fingerprints on the pipe bombs under your house.”

“No, you don’t,” he said with a smile. “An ex-con left them there nine, ten years ago. He’s been dead for years.”

Conway was later asked, “Did you in fact find fingerprints?”

“Let me answer that this way,” he said. “Al en first denied having any knowledge whatsoever of any bombs existing in his basement, and when we

told him of his fingerprints on the bombs—which there wasn’t, by the way, then he had an explanation of how he was cleaning up the basement and

moved them from one spot to another. That’s the kind of stuff we went through with him al the time.” Al en said that the bombs had been stored

there ten years ago, which would have been 1981, a dozen years after Zodiac bragged about a death machine in his cel ar. Investigators rooted out

a Zippo lighter with “D. E. Brandon” engraved on it. Brandon apparently was the name of the ex-convict who had al egedly left the bombs, and he

was very much alive. The FBI later spoke with the ex-con. He denied “having left several bombs in a friend’s basement years ago.”

Next they showed Al en a piece of yel ow, lined paper. It contained a menu for making bombs. Who could forget that Zodiac, on November 9,

1969, had claimed the “death machine” waited in his basement:

Take one bag of ammonium nitrate

fertilizer & 1 gal of stove oil &

dump a few bags of gravel on

top & then set the shit off

& wil positivly ventalate any

thing that should be in the way

of the blast.

The death machine is al ready

made. I would have sent you

pictures but you would nasty

enough to trace them back to

developer & then to me, so I

shal describe my masterpiece

to you. Tke nice part of it is

al the parts can be bought on

the open market with no quest

ions asked.

1 bat. pow clock—wil run for

approx 1 year

1 photoelectric switch

2 copper leaf springs

26V car bat

1 flash light bulb and reflector

1 mirror

2 18" cardboard tubes black with

shoe polish inside and oute

the system checks out from one

end to the other in my

tests. What you do not know

is whether the death machine

is at the sight or whether

it is being stored in my

basement for future use.

“I’ve never seen that piece of paper before,” Al en said. “I’ve never seen these documents before.” Conway added the yel ow paper to his bounty.

During most of the questioning Leigh was evasive, leaning on his cane and smiling. And he was wearing a Zodiac Sea Wolf Watch #26894—

another version of the one he had worn at the refinery twenty long years ago. Conway bagged it next and put it with the yel ow paper. They took

away one cardboard box wrapped in a brown plastic bag with “Mrs. E. W. Al en” printed on a label. Then investigators discovered a letter from the

Department of Justice signed by Jim Silver saying that Leigh was not the Zodiac kil er.

Bawart and Conway knew Al en had forged this letter. “Jim Silver told me how Al en was working in the print shop at Atascadero, that was one of

his jobs,” said Bawart. “What a devious mind. We found a letter that indicated it was from Investigator Silver at the DOJ. It said Al en had passed

the poly exam and should not be considered as a suspect in the Zodiac case. Al en maintained that the letter was authentic. Subsequently, he

admitted that he had printed this letter while working in the print shop at Atascadero. We also found the master for this letter. The forged letter was

taken in our search of Al en’s home and not returned.”

They dug up one Sears electric and one portable Royal manual typewriter . In 1966, Zodiac had mailed the weakest of many carbon copies,

making a match to a specific machine doubtful. Riverside police knew the make, however—a Royal portable. The letter Morril believed Zodiac

typed in Riverside had been done on just such a typewriter. However, since Conway did not believe Zodiac had been involved in the Bates murder,

it held no particular interest for him. They rooted out a smal flashlight—Zodiac had said that he taped a penlight to the barrel of his gun to give him

an electronic gun sight. They ferreted out a hunting knife with a handmade sheath and rivets—at Lake Berryessa Zodiac had worn a hunting knife in

a sheaf studded with rivets.

Friday, February 15, 1991

On the second day of the search, police spaded up the yard, rooted through an old garden, and searched the garage at the rear. There they found

a Hobie Cat catamaran and its trailer, a Therome gas gril , a stainless-steel rotisserie, power tools, spray equipment, Porta-Power (which Leigh

cal ed the jaws of life). Al en remained cool and col ected. If the cat was not out of the bag before, it certainly was now. Neighbors could hardly

overlook the massive police presence and the reason they were there. The press could not be far behind. Detectives searched every book on

Leigh’s shelves along the cel ar wal , shaking the pages to see what fluttered out. They were mostly boating and aviation publications and books.

The detectives rummaged through his personal belongings, records, and journals, looking for a secret diary or photographs.

“An explanation for why someone like Zodiac could be at the murder site for only a short time and yet have details,” Dr. Lunde told me, “one way

is that a person takes photographs and studies them at their leisure when they get home. In that way they would be able to give detailed

descriptions of clothing and yet get away from the murder scene fast.” At one time a suspect in the Zodiac case who worked for the police had

pilfered photos of some of the bodies. Kemper, at his trial, prided himself on his meticulous detail, remembering names, ages, description of

clothing, bodies, and locations, almost as if he had a fixation to recal specifics. Like Vacher the Ripper, once they apprehended him for one kil ing,

he confessed to al the others in an effort to dismay the police, taking loving care in his detailed descriptions.

Bawart got a building inspector, who looked around and was satisfied there was nothing hidden. Sometime after 1969 when Cheney visited,

Al en had built a kitchenette in the basement that could have concealed items. If he built that, he could have just as easily built compartments. Al en

was known to hide things in that house. Unknown to the police, when Ron and Leigh were younger, they used to make their own home brew and

hide it under the house. Cheney explained that there was an area under the main living area where you could bend down and walk in there and it

provided hiding places.

In the end police found no evidence in the yard, garage, or basement tying Leigh Al en to Zodiac. They went over to 1545 Broadway and

searched the boat on its trailer. Again, they discovered nothing. “I found al the formulas,” Bawart said of the basement search, “exactly the same as

the formulas Zodiac said he was going to mix up . . . fertilizer bombs—formulas for ammonia nitrate and stove-oil bombs—and al that. I expected

to find more, quite frankly, but I didn’t. There real y wasn’t a smoking gun.” Conway took the most interesting items into his custody, among them

“mail-order catalog pages regarding bombs, booby traps, and guns.” Zodiac’s November 9, 1969, letter had indicated that his kil ing tools were

bought through mail order. Natural y, Al en wasn’t wearing his Zodiac watch as he waved good-bye because Conway had taken it with him. That

Swiss watch, manufactured by a company dating back to 1882, was a key to the case. Others thought so too.

A seaman, Kevin Moore, wrote me from Saudi Arabia: “A few months back, I saw an advertisement for Zodiac watches in a local store. This in

my mind is too much of a coincidence, especial y the fact that their logo is exactly like Zodiac’s! I had never heard of the watch until I saw this ad,

and that in itself is a clue because I don’t think it is that common of a watch.” A man fol owing Sandy Betts, a cocktail waitress at the Coronado Inn,

where Darlene Ferrin liked to dance, had worn such an unusual watch. “Zodiac,” she told me, “got his name from the club near Sacramento cal ed

Zodiac and then found the watch. Have you seen the case the Zodiac watch comes in? The sign is the [crossed circle] and it’s in a red satin case. I

found it in a window of some used store in Concord, California, about 1975.”

But the police search had not been completely unfruitful. Detectives had learned more about their suspect. They deduced from a clipping that if

Al en was ever put on trial as Zodiac, he intended to use an insanity defense. After they left, Leigh wrote to friends that he expected to be arrested

any day and returned to Atascadero. Police intended to use Leigh’s anxiety about Atascadero to their advantage. Now Conway and Bawart knew

Arthur Leigh Al en dreaded prison more than the police.

Thursday, February 28, 1991

Police prepared with the FBI for a second interview with Al en. The FBI had done an analysis of the Valentine’s Day search and questioning. In

their next discourse with Leigh one of the detectives would be assigned to push certain buttons. The hammer was to be “Al en’s possession of

bombs.” Mike Nail, District Attorney of Solano County, filed a motion to be certain that information contained within the search affidavit and return

be sealed. He and Deputy District Attorney Harry S. Kinnicut wrote that:

“The people hereby move pursuant to Evidence Code sections 1040-1041 and People V Sanchez (1972) 24 Cal. App. 3rd 664, 678 to seal

portions of the affidavit for the search warrant herein. These portions contain official information and disclosure is against the public interest.

Evidence Code Sections 1040-1041 provide that the District Attorney may assert a privilege to refuse to disclose the identity of informers and

official information in the interest of justice.”

Judge Dacey ordered that portions of the affidavit be blacked out and sealed until further notice, though state law cal ed for disclosure to the

public of any search warrant within ten days after they are issued. However, they had not reckoned on the doggedness of the press. The name of

the primary Zodiac suspect was no longer a closely guarded secret. The neighbors’ jaws were moving. Soon, Al en’s name and face would appear

in the papers and on television.

Wednesday, April 17, 1991

An FBI memo noted that Val ejo had resurrected the Zodiac homicide investigation: “Advised that they are currently conducting a background on a

possible suspect ARTHUR LEIGH ALLEN. Val ejo Police have requested assistance in preparing an interview strategy for ALLEN.” An FBI special

agent had already met with Conway and Bawart on February 28 and March 20, 1991, “in order to discuss specifics of their investigation, and

obtain relevant documents.”

Tuesday, May 21, 1991

Allen had friends in the south, had known them during the time he was incarcerated at Atascadero near their home. Now he wrote them. “His

latest letter,” one of them told me later, “states that the police have a new witness and that his place was searched again. He was expecting the

police to pick him up anytime. This was only a month or so ago.”

Al en gave his first newspaper interview to the Times-Herald’s Jackie Ginley.

“On Valentine’s Day,” the fifty-eight-year-old suspect said, “Val ejo police knocked on my door with a search warrant in hand. These guys tore the

whole damn place apart. I phoned them asking when I was going to get my stuff back, and they phoned two weeks later and said there’s some new

damning evidence. They said they decided to search my house twenty years after the Santa Rosa search of my trailer.

“It’s al because they got a false tip from a man who is facing thirty years in prison on an armed robbery charge. He phoned down from Tahoe and

said we had a conversation in 1969, and I’d told him that I’d go down to San Francisco and shoot a cabbie. He’s a punk and a hood. I’ve never

talked to him in my life.”

“It should be mentioned,” said Bawart, “that Ralph Spinel i owned a restaurant in the Lake Tahoe area in the early 1980s. It is apparent that Al en

must have kept track of Spinel i as we never told him Spinel i had any connection with Lake Tahoe.” A probable Zodiac victim had vanished from

Lake Tahoe in 1970.

“This crap has haunted me for the last twenty-two years,” raged Al en. “The police asked me to take a lie-detector test despite the fact that I

passed one in the 1970s. I took a ten-hour lie-detector test and I passed the goddamn thing. So they tel me, ‘Wel , you’re a sociopath, and you can

cheat on lie-detector tests.’ The Zodiac kil er is thought to be a sociopath, someone who has no conscience and takes sexual delight in kil ing

people, especial y women. I’m considering getting in touch with Melvin Bel i, the San Francisco attorney. I’ve been thinking about it, but then again,

this has always blown over when they don’t find anything.”

Of al the attorneys in the world, Al en mentioned the one that Zodiac had phoned, written, and offered to surrender to—Melvin Bel i. Bel i and

Zodiac went way back. On October 23, 1969, Bel i checked with his answering service. His maid had left a message with them that Zodiac had

cal ed the previous night while the attorney had been at the International Film Festival. Bel i had gotten in too late to hear of the two cal s Zodiac

made directly to his housekeeper. The gist was that Zodiac wanted to meet with Bel i at his home. “Bel i knows where he can meet if it’s

prearranged,” the cal er said. While Bel i had been away in Africa, he had gotten three cal s, two of them long distance. He waited al day in vain for

the opportunity to set up a secret meeting. Worst of al , Bel i feared Zodiac might be someone who knew him. An invisible man, obsessed with the

high-profile and flamboyant attorney, had in a moment of crisis given him a clue of the first order to his true identity. To learn of that we have to step

back in time, to October 22, 1969, and turbulent, terrifying days.

29

belli

Wednesday, October 22, 1969

“Being a celebrity,” said Bel i, “brought me more than my share of crazy cases (that didn’t pay me a dime). Take, for example, the long-distance

TV romance between me and the notorious Zodiac kil er (who may stil be at large or, more likely, on ice in a prison where his psychopathology lies

mainly dormant).”

At 2:00 A.M., eleven days after Zodiac shot cabdriver Paul Stine, a man phoned the Oakland P.D. “This is the Zodiac speaking....” he said,

demanding that either Bel i or F. Lee Bailey appear on Jim Dunbar’s KGO-TV talk show, A.M. He had tried to cal the show a few weeks earlier,

when both lawyers had appeared that morning, but couldn’t get through. It was tel ing that both men were criminal defense attorneys. “I’l contact

them,” the cop said. The San Francisco police rang producer Bil Heral and he cal ed Bel i and Dunbar immediately, arranging to start the show a

half hour earlier than usual. A KGO news bul etin was drafted: “Al eged ‘Zodiac Kil er’ pleads for help in telephone cal s to ‘A.M.’ Program with Jim

Dunbar.” At home we al watched, waiting for Zodiac to cal , waiting to hear the sound of his voice.

“When I emerged from my penthouse on Telegraph Hil ,” Bel i recal ed, “I found the place surrounded by cops, even the garage was ful of cops.

They escorted me down to KGO. There, I also found police everywhere, even in the high, dark aeries of the TV studio, where I could see the glint of

rifles at the ready.” Bel i carried on thirteen conversations that morning. One did not go over the air, a hesitant, drifting voice on the line at 7:10 that

was abruptly disconnected. That first cal er was frozen out by another, cal ing himself Zodiac, who kept the line tied up over the next two hours. Bel i,

though, requested a less ominous sounding name than Zodiac. “Sam,” offered the cal er. After exchanging a few words, the boyish sounding Sam,

complaining of blackouts and headaches, hung up, then cal ed back. Bel i thought this one of “those rare cases where one man is acutely aware of

two persons living inside his skin, one of them an outlaw who can’t help kil ing.” Sam said he wanted to talk to Bel i because he didn’t want to be

hurt. “My head aches,” he cried. “I’m so sick. I’m having one of my headaches.” Then he gave a little scream and said, “I’m going to kil them. I’m

going to kil al those kids!” He hung up and cal ed back, suggesting they meet at 10:30 A.M. at the top of the Fairmont Hotel. Sam threatened to

jump if anyone but Bel i showed up. Bel i suggested Old St. Mary’s in Chinatown. They final y agreed on St. Vincent de Paul’s Thrift Shop at 6726

Mission Street in Daly City. A rummage sale was being held there later that morning. Bel i set off, crouched on the floor of a police car al the way.

Dunbar recal ed the scene at the Thrift Shop. During that frightening experience he saw sharpshooters on the roof and submachine guns hidden

under priests’ habits. Dunbar admitted he was scared. “I had a young family and car payments to make,” he said. He envisioned being caught in a

hail of lead. Later, he came to think the entire event may have been a publicity stunt. Meanwhile, the cop who had taken Zodiac’s 2:00 A.M. cal had

been watching the show. He was certain he had spoken to the real Zodiac and that Sam’s voice was not the same. Bel i waited forty-five minutes,

but Zodiac didn’t show up. “I don’t wonder why,” remembered Bel i. “An army of police from San Francisco and Daly City was there. The cops had

been monitoring Dunbar’s line, and certainly weren’t going to let this opportunity to catch the Zodiac and vindicate themselves before the public ... I

had already made a deal in advance with the S.F. District Attorney, John Jay Ferdon, not to press for the death penalty if the Zodiac turned himself

in. I figured that wouldn’t be the end of it, however. The Zodiac, judging from his taunting notes to the police and the press, wanted public attention. I

was sure he’d cal again. He did.”

Thursday, December 18, 1969

Zodiac called the attorney’s home, but got his housekeeper nstead.16 She explained that the white-maned attorney was in Munich, Germany, for a

conference of military trial lawyers. “I can’t wait,” said the cal er, who had identified himself as Zodiac. “Today’s my birthday. I’ve got to kil !” He hung

up abruptly.

“On December 18, 1969,” Bel i recal ed, “the Zodiac mailed me a brief note wishing me a happy Christmas. I went off on safari to Africa. But

while I was there, the Zodiac, according to my housekeeper, phoned me several [more] times.”

Saturday, December 20, 1969

Two days after the cal , exactly a year after the first Northern California murders, Zodiac’s letter containing a square of Stine’s bloody shirt arrived

at Bel i’s home. Unopened, it was forwarded down to his business office to be opened by his secretary. It was addressed “Mr. Melvin M. Bel i 1228

Mtgy San Fran Calif.” Neatly folded inside of the four-by-seven-inch white envelope was a portion of Stine’s blood-blackened shirt and a message

in felt-tip pen. A photocopy of the message was hand-carried by a legal associate to Bel i, Room #293, the Bayershoff Hotel. Bel i opened it with

unsteady fingers and read:

“Dear Melvin This is the Zodiac speaking I wish you a happy Christmass. The one thing I ask of you is this, please help me. I cannot reach

out for help because of this thing in me won’t let me. I am finding it extreamly dificult to hold it in check I am afraid I wil loose control again and

take my nineth & posibly tenth victom. Please help me I am drownding. At the moment the children are safe from the bomb because it is so

massive to dig in & the triger mech requires much work to get it adjusted just right. But if I hold back too long from no nine I wil loose complet

al controol of my self & set the bomb up.”

“Please help me I can not remain in control for much longer,” Zodiac concluded, paraphrasing Wil iam Heirens, the 1940s “Lipstick Kil er of

Chicago.” Heirens, a sexual sadist, in a heartrending cry for help, had scrawled on a mirror in lipstick: “For heavens Sake catch me Before I kil

more I cannot control myself.”

It appeared Zodiac was being sarcastic in quoting Heirens, but Bel i thought otherwise. He considered the letter heartfelt. “I believe he wants to

stop kil ing,” he said. “I have careful y studied his letter . . . and I feel it was written at a time when he calmly and rational y was considering the future.

He knows eventual y he wil be apprehended and that unless he gets proper legal representation, he wil most probably be sentenced to die in the

gas chamber. That is why he is crying out for help. . . . Why has he come to me? He wants to be saved from the gas chamber. . . . I think we can do

something for him. . . . We might get this guy and save some lives—including his. Maybe we could convince him he would get some treatment and

that he would not be executed.” Bel i offered to bring along a “priest, a doctor, or a psychiatrist” and meet with Zodiac in “the San Marine area or in

Nevada.”

Bel i ful y anticipated Zodiac, who had gotten along famously with his housekeeper on the phone, “to be sitting in the front room with the

housekeeper, waiting for him, getting on very wel .” He went on to Naples to defend a Navy doctor charged with misappropriation of military

property. “I’d like to finish this case in Naples,” said Bel i, “but if I get an urgent cal about Zodiac I wil go back to California at once. I’l catch the first plane back if that is what he wants. I think we wil have another communication from Zodiac soon.” After finishing a delicious dinner of green ravioli,

Bel i phoned Avery in a transatlantic cal . “It’s mighty cold in Naples,” he said. “I have the nagging feeling that Zodiac might be someone who knows

me.” Bel i returned to California, saying, “My maid said she was very agitated to see me. She knows his voice.”

Toschi and Armstrong rushed to Bel i’s to discuss the new letter. Bel i, silk handkerchief in his breast pocket, French cuffs, silver watch chain on

his vest, beamed expansively. “Bel i was expecting us, natural y,” Toschi recal ed, “and he said, ‘I’m going to have company, but don’t worry about it.

They know I’m assisting the police department.’ So we asked him, ‘Would you mind stepping away from your guests?’ We told the man and woman

at the table, ‘We’d like to talk with Mr. Bel i for about ten or fifteen minutes and he told us it’s OK. It’s about the Zodiac case.’ She says, ‘Oh, yes,

yes. Melvin’s told us al about it.’ Not only were his dinner guests rapt with attention, but I could tel Bel i was loving every moment. He was always on

stage and always the star, even in court. I recal ed how the jury and even the judge would turn their heads whenever he entered.”

“The police stayed on the case,” said Bel i. “They felt the Zodiac may indeed have kil ed more persons than they’d original y believed, including

one young woman in Riverside, California, in 1966 and another woman in the San Bernardino area in 1967. And then, in 1971, they had a lead that

took them right to Riverside University’s law school.”

Sunday, June 8, 1971

Belli’s next real-life brush with Zodiac occurred in Riverside, where he attempted to strengthen Zodiac’s connection between the Bay Area and

Southern California. “Dean Charles Ashman phoned me,” said Bel i, “to say the cops were coming into the school, undercover, to check out one of

his law students, a kid who had once threatened a girl he knew and told her he was the Zodiac.”

Bel i knew handwriting comparisons had been inconclusive. Under the guise of delivering a lecture, Bel i hoped the boy, sitting in the second row,

might ask a question. In that way, he could tel if his voice matched Zodiac’s. Every person crowded around the student was an undercover cop.

After the speech the student leaped up and rushed to shake “The Great One’s” hand. “You don’t know how much I admire you, Mr. Bel i,” he said.

Bel i knew immediately it wasn’t the same voice he had heard and decided to settle the matter. “Hey, kid, are you the Zodiac kil er?” he snapped.

The kid seemed stunned. “What do you mean, sir?” “Are you the Zodiac kil er?” said Bel i. “I hear you used to cal yourself Zodiac.” The cops

moved in, anxious to hear the kid’s answer. “No,” he said. “I didn’t kil anybody.” “I believed him,” Bel i said later. “So did the cops.” As for Sam, I

later found him. He was not Zodiac, simply a troubled young man cal ing from a mental hospital.

A valuable clue lay in Zodiac’s long-distance relationship with Bel i. At one point, though, the kil er seemed to have soured on him.

“If you don’t want me to have this blast,” Zodiac wrote April 29, 1970, “you must do two things. 1 Tel every one about the bus bomb with al

the details. 2 I would like to see some nice Zodiac butons [sic] wandering about town. Every one else has these buttons like . . . melvin eats

blubber, etc. Wel it would cheer me up considerbly if I saw a lot of people wearing my buton. Please no nasty ones like melvin’s Thank you.”

Zodiac seemed irritated at Melvin Bel i. But why? Recal that on Thursday, December 18, 1969, Zodiac rang the attorney’s housekeeper and

remarked that today was his birthday. Two days later, December 20, a letter from Zodiac arrived at Bel i’s office. The FBI quoted that conversation

in report 9-49911-88:

VIA TELETYPE ENCIPHERED JAN 14 1970 2:14 PM URGENT “ZODIAC.” EXTORTION. RE: SAN FRANCISCO AIRTEL. DECEMBER

TWENTY-NINE LAST. ON INSTANT DATE, INSPECTOR ARMSTRONG HOMICIDE DETAIL . . . CONFIDENTIALLY ADVISED THAT

UNSUB, WHO IDENTIFIED HIMSELF AS “ZODIAC,” TELEPHONICALLY CONTACTED BELLI’S RESIDENCE IN EFFORT TO CONTACT

BELLI. UNSUB WAS ADVISED BELLI IN EUROPE AND STATED, “I CAN’T WAIT. TODAY’S MY BIRTHDAY.” SUTEL. ARMED AND

DANGEROUS. END NSM FBI WASH DC.

Keep in mind that Al en had been questioned by Lynch two months before this cal and been let go. Not until his interrogation at the refinery twenty

months later would he be a viable suspect. Zodiac had felt comfortable in giving his actual birthday—December 18.

December 18 was Arthur Leigh Allen’s birthday.

30

media starr

Wednesday, May 22, 1991

The Val ejo Times-Herald headlined: “Signs Point to Val ejo Man; Investigation into Bizarre Zodiac Murders Goes On.”

“VALLEJO—Val ejo police seized pipe bombs, an underwater Zodiac watch and other items earlier this year from the house of a Val ejo

man who was a prime suspect in the stil -unsolved 1969-70 Zodiac kil ings. No charges have been filed against Al en for possession of the

explosives, which he said belonged to an ex-convict who is now dead. And the police investigation remains a mystery. In 1971 San Francisco

police targeted Al en as the prime suspect in at least six unsolved California murders and two attempted kil ings in the 1960s. The kil er was

cal ed Zodiac because of the cryptic messages he loaded with astrological symbols and sent to the news media and police investigators

during the kil ing spree.

“A series of cryptic letters from the Zodiac came to a three-year halt after Al en’s Santa Rosa trailer was searched, Robert Graysmith notes

in his 1986 book ‘Zodiac.’ Similarly, in 1975, when Al en was committed to an institution on a child molesting conviction, Zodiac’s

correspondence ceased for two years until his release. The linked murders of hitchhikers around Santa Rosa also came to a halt, Graysmith

notes. Val ejo police have refused to confirm or deny any motive for reopening the investigation.”

“Do I expect an imminent arrest in regards to Zodiac?” said Val ejo Police Chief Gerald Galvin. “No, I do not. It’s an ongoing and sensitive

investigation.”

“Al en looked very good,” Toschi told the press. “We searched a Santa Rosa trailer where he lived part-time in 1972. But an analysis of his

fingerprints did not match partial prints found on a Zodiac victim’s cab in 1969. We could not find enough evidence on which to convict Al en. I can’t

discuss why Al en was dismissed as a suspect.”

Wednesday, May 29, 1991

“Let me tell you what’s happened here,” Pete Noyes told me. “Apparently this suspect [Al en] had a series of meetings with a psychologist in

Val ejo. The psychologist was afraid this guy might kil him. And relayed this information on to a friend and that’s where it al stands now. The

psychologist feared for his life. He works for some institute up there and he gave al this information. The information is out there right now. These

people are trying to sel me the information down here in L.A.”

“Don’t pay a penny,” I cautioned.

“They’ve got a series of tapes and al that,” he concluded.

“Tapes?”

Saturday, June 1, 1991

The same individuals tried to sel the tapes to Unsolved Mysteries and were turned down. But Noyes told me, “The cops are very interested. The

story is there. There was some concern that an analyst should not reveal statements made during private sessions.”

“I think that under the law,” I said, “if a person is a danger to society, an analyst can turn session tapes over.”

“The psychiatrist’s brother is a San Francisco cop and they decided to solve the murder on their own,” said Noyes. “They went and staked out

Al en’s home about eight or nine months ago. A woman went in posing as a real-estate agent. He got wise to her and started screaming and yel ing

at her and chased her out of the house. He got the license number of her car. It was registered to her mother. Two days later, there was a death

threat made on her mother.

“The psychiatrist treated Al en in the late 1970s as a condition of his release. They have al this information. What they said to me is that this guy

told them more than anyone knows who’s not wel versed in the case. The guys who have been staking out his house got al this information from the

shrink. I just did a check to see if the informant is not a criminal or anything. He’s a fifty-three-year-old man with no criminal record.”

I didn’t correct him. “What’s your next step?” I asked.

“I want to listen to those tapes.” So did I, I thought.

“Are you going to pay the guy?” I asked. I never trusted the validity of information that was purchased.

“I’m not going to pay him anything.” He cal ed back soon after. “Wel , I’ve got Val ejo P.D. coming in here. They’re real excited. They say they’re

real close to solving the case.”

I spoke with Jackie Ginley and the Val ejo P.D. because I had gotten a number of cal s from NBC and CBS television about Zodiac concerning

“some tapes.” “Do you think they do this periodical y, cal up with a hook on the story and try and sel it?” Jackie asked, referring to the tapes for

sale. “I’m getting some cal s here from people who knew Mr. Al en back in high school. A lot of people. But you know how it is working on a daily

paper, there’s not much time to devote to something like that.”

Tuesday, June 11, 1991

Bawart and Conway studied Mulanax’s files from 1971, then went and talked to some of the same people he had. “A lot of what the informants

were tel ing Conway and Bawart in the early nineties,” a source told me, “they didn’t tel Mulanax. Maybe they were afraid back then to come

forward, but now in 1991 they’re not so afraid anymore and just want to get the guy.”

“Captain Conway and I re-interviewed Phil Tucker,” Bawart told me. “Tucker worked for GVRD. He wasn’t real y a friend of Al en’s. He was an

associate, as many other people were [who were] involved in any kind of athletics in that period of the time. This interview was in the infancy of

when I was doing background work on Al en.”

Bawart’s seven-page report, Circumstances Which Indicate Arthur Leigh Allen Is, In Fact, The Zodiac Killer, would grow to thirty items. 17

“During our interview Phil Tucker was unable to remember that Arthur Leigh Al en had told him that he [had] special [electronic gun] sights for

shooting in the dark. He did, however, indicate that Al en told him he was proficient in shooting and proficient in shooting in the dark. Arthur Leigh

Al en had told him he had read a book . . . about hunting people with a bow and arrow.”

Tucker recal ed, “Al en was fascinated with the concept of stalking people rather than game. He indicated a number of times that it would be

great sport to hunt people as they had intel igence. We were on our way to the beach to go scuba diving when he started discussing hunting trips

and ended up talking about hunting people with bows and arrows. I felt he wanted my reaction to these statements. I told him I would never consider

hunting people. He tried to make it seem like this was an idea for a book he was going to write. I got the idea that he was real y saying, ‘Is this

something you’d like to do with me?’ I just ignored him. I think he told me the name of the book he had read.”

“Was the name of the book The Most Dangerous Game?” asked Bawart.

“I don’t think so.” Possibly Al en had mentioned not a book, but a 1945 film, A Game of Death, a remake of The Most Dangerous Game. “This

conversation took place prior to September of 1966 as that’s the month and year I married my first wife. That is why I recal the time easily. I did not

see Al en to any great degree, nor go out on hunting and fishing trips with him, after my marriage.”

“Do you know Donald Cheney?” asked Bawart. Stalking people at night with a gun had been part of the conversation Cheney said Al en had with

him New Year’s Day, 1969. Zodiac had also al uded to hunting people in his cryptogram.

“I do not,” said Tucker.

“Why didn’t you give this information to Toschi and Mulanax in 1971?”

“I only answered their questions. They did not ask me so I didn’t tel them. I was not asked about any fantasies Al en may have related to me.”

Tucker also indicated that during the span of their conversation, he saw Al en had a Zodiac brand watch with a Zodiac symbol. Tucker also

repeated that he had seen Al en write with both hands. “He uses both hands equal y wel when handprinting, but his handprinting is not real good.”

Tucker also mentioned that Al en had an interest in codes, and repeated that he had seen a handwritten Zodiac-type cryptogram at Al en’s house.

“This was prior to any cryptograms being published in the newspaper,” he said. “Al en was the kind of fel ow who loved to try and outsmart the other

guy.”

Tucker related, as he had for Mulanax and Toschi, that in 1969, he owned an older brown beat-up Corvair. Al en had driven this Corvair, but

Tucker could not specifical y indicate whether Al en drove this Corvair on July 4, 1969. Mike Mageau had described an older brown vehicle, “similar

to a 1963 Corvair, older and bigger, old plates,” as being the kil er’s vehicle.

Thursday, July 25, 1991

Now Allen became more than a name in the police files—he was the subject of the nightly news. “My first occasion to meet Arthur Leigh Al en was

in July of 1991,” reporter Rita Wil iams recal ed. “We had gotten wind that Captain Conway and his folks had served a search warrant back on

Valentine’s Day of that year and it was about to be unsealed. We first talked to the captain.”

“Why,” Wil iams asked Conway, “haven’t there been any charges brought against Al en when you found pipe bombs in his residence?”

“I’m not going to comment on an ongoing investigation,” replied Conway.

“Do you think you are close to getting the case solved . . . any closer than you were twenty years ago?”

“Honestly, I don’t think so,” he concluded.

“Then,” recal ed Wil iams “just on a lark, my cameraman and I went to Al en’s to see what we might get. It was late one evening. It was summer

and stil light outside, but beginning to get dark. My cameraman and I walked up to his door, and Nick sort of hid in the bush while I knocked on

Al en’s door. Al en was not clothed. He had on his bathrobe and yel ed out the window, ‘Just a moment.’ Final y he came to the door. When I told him

what I was doing, he surprised me by saying I could come in.”

Wil iams had interviewed both the “Night Stalker” and the “Trailside Kil er.” “I was alone in their jail cel s,” she recal ed, “but of al the people I’ve

ever interviewed, none had ever given me chil s like Arthur Leigh Al en. That was the thing that got me. He had this demeanor about him. He was

just so big and so kind of apelike—just scary. It’s hard to describe, but you could see the strength. And that some of things he was accused of

doing, you could see he could, in fact, accomplish. He was the kind of man that, even though he was very sick—at that time he was on kidney

dialysis and had high blood pressure, was taking al sorts of medication—he was stil a frightening presence.

“When he had agreed to my request for an interview, I paused. I had second thoughts. He had not seen my photographer some distance away,

and I was not going into that house alone. Final y, the photographer was al owed to enter too. At first Al en told us we couldn’t take any pictures. He

just wanted to see what we were doing there. But over the course of the next hour and a half, we sat down and had a discussion with him.

“He had that sort of barrel chest, huge shoulders. He wasn’t al that heavy, because he was on dialysis then. Even though he was sick, everything

about him was ominous. He had on a housecoat and combat boots—big heavy boots—‘clomp, clomp, clomp!’ Then later, he changed clothes in

the midst of the interview.” Al en donned a transparent blue sport shirt, vertical y ridged with two filigreed designs and unbuttoned to show his broad

chest. His herringbone pants were old-fashioned, pleated and a grayish brown. On his right wrist a Band-Aid covered a needle mark made that

morning.

Wil iams, blond, attractive, and long-legged, was dressed in a short red jacket over a black tailored suit, accented by gold jewelry. They made an

odd couple as Al en led her through a tangled, disorderly garden. A chain-link fence reinforced with wood and wire ran along the perimeter. Al en

pointed out where the police had retrieved bombs from beneath the house. “Al en talked about how the police had robbed him of stuff,” recal ed

Wil iams, “harassed him and taken things he had never gotten back—sentimental stuff from his mother. He was quite upset.” A hot wind rose

against the pearl-gray sky.

They descended into the dusty basement room. It was warmer there. Wil iams sat with her back to a rugged homemade bookshelf of unfinished

wood. She studied the items on the wal . Was that a Boy Scout felt band with every badge they awarded? Was it Al en’s? A local child’s? Dust

covered an audio device—sounding machinery used in diving; a few diving, swimming, and spear-fishing trophies lined a shelf. Various

photographic supplies were above her head. A Dustbuster (covered with dust) hung from the wal . On the floor a gal on container with a handle sat

next to a smal table. On that table, captured in the glow of a swivel lamp, lay a clutter of electronic equipment—a stereo, a reel-to-reel tape

recorder, video games, a VCR, audio cassettes, and a black-and-white phone. A copy of Zodiac was under one of the audio cassettes. Near a

clock sat an almost empty stein of beer though Al en was not supposed to drink. There was a glass ashtray, though Al en did not smoke. An empty

dinner plate had been tucked under one shelf. She returned her focus to Al en. Police had taken away many items; none of the things Wil iams was

most interested in were present—Zodiac watch, guns, bombs, clippings.

As they spoke, Al en sat rigidly upright, hands folded in his lap, like a reprimanded student, and perched on the edge of what Wil iams took to be

a rumpled couch covered with a blue blanket and two white pil ows. Only later she realized, “That was where he slept.” His bald head was framed by

tan curtains painted with a design of bonsai trees and a blue sea stretching beyond. Al en’s elderly tan dog lay against his left hip, striking out with

his hind leg occasional y.

“I’ve lived in this house since I was eight,” said Al en. “My mother died three years ago and ever since I’ve lived here—alone—in this room. I

began taking kidney dialysis in April of 1991. First two times a week, then three times. I blew up like a blimp. My weight shot up to maybe 280

pounds. Final y, I was taking ten injections of insulin a day. Eventual y I returned to my present weight of 220 pounds.”

Wil iams told me later, “Though he was an obviously il man, Al en was stil a powerful, frightening presence. In his prime he would have been

terrifying. I had read the book and I knew some things to ask. I started out by acting as if I knew nothing about the case, and getting more specific

during the interview, and just let him just talk. He said it was al circumstantial evidence, that there was never anything to pin him to be the kil er, or,

in fact, Captain Conway and the Val ejo police would have arrested him and charged him. He talked about some pipe bombs found under his

house.”

“I didn’t know the bombs were there,” Al en explained. “An ex-con friend, now dead, asked me to store some things more than a decade ago.

They must be his. They told me my fingerprints were on the bombs. I don’t believe that. I wouldn’t be sitting here if they were and there’s real y no

way they could get on there. . . . I think there probably is a Zodiac stil out there and he’s just laughing himself to death.”

“Al en lived with his mother,” Wil iams said. “He never married. He was arrested once for molesting a smal boy and served time in Atascadero.

He broke down and choked up on that. ‘I realize now how horrible that was,’ he said, ‘and what an impact I may have had on that child. I’m not the

kind of person to hurt anyone.’

“I asked for a response to the fel ow [Cheney] who had gone to authorities about his remarks about hunting people—but first I quoted Zodiac—‘I

like kil ing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than kil ing wild game in the forest because man is the most dangerous animal of al to

kil . . . . ’

“Al en tel s me that he read that story, ‘The Most Dangerous Game,’ back when he was in the eleventh grade, and it had such an impact on him

that he then was shooting jackrabbits and that was the only thing he could ever kil , and that he indeed had not said that recently. ‘Wel , he built this

into something much, much grander,’ said Al en, ‘and remembered other conversations that we didn’t have and decided, wel , I must be the Zodiac.

That was something that we talked about back when we were in high school together and he’s mistaken. Everybody’s trying to get publicity. In fact I

had never said that.’ Al en never went to high school with Cheney, and did not meet him until 1962.

“Al en has al sorts of explanations for everything,” Rita recal ed. “Three or four times throughout the interview, he mentioned that he had never

read Zodiac, yet he would mention things that are in that book that he would not have known simply from interviews that Captain Conway and others

have done with him. And then he would start back and say, ‘Wait a minute. No! I’ve never read that book. I heard that he said that.’ And he took

great liberties with the truth there and that was not true. [ Zodiac is visible under papers on his desk in the filmed interview.]

“And I used the summation that was in the book—about Al en’s mother being very domineering and that he was not the favored one in the family,

that his brother, who looked more like his mother’s side of the family, was the favored son, and that Leigh had been under the dominance of his

mother al his life. Very crass—[Al en] said several things about bodily functions of his dog and other things, I think more for shock value and to see

how I would respond. But certainly throughout the interview, he denied that he was the Zodiac. He said in fact that he was another victim of the

Zodiac because he was a victim of more than twenty years of police harassment for being an innocent man.

“‘They’ve offered me many opportunities,’ he said, ‘the most recent last Valentine’s Day, to confess because then I’d be at peace with myself.

Wel , you don’t get peace with yourself by confessing a lie. And this is what it would have been. . . . The little kid who lives next door, fifth grade,

they’ve they’re studying the Constitution and she got ticked off. “Haven’t they ever heard of innocent until proven guilty?” she told me. Wel , bless her

. . . They haven’t arrested me because they can’t prove a thing, ’ concluded Al en, his voice quavering dramatical y. ‘I’m not the damn Zodiac.

Excuse . . . excuse me.’ He lowered his head and seemed to weep. ‘Twenty-two years of this . . .’

“Having done this for almost twenty-five years of interviewing al sorts of kil ers, you just kind of get feelings. I can tel you my cameraman, as we

got in the car that night, turned to me and said, ‘Gosh, I think we just interviewed the Zodiac.’ He was so convinced.”

Wil iams’s interview ran that night: “For more than two decades,” said anchor Dennis Richmond on the Ten O’clock News, “police have

suspected a Val ejo man of the unsolved Zodiac serial kil ings. Tonight we’l hear from that man. It’s been more than two decades now since the

infamous Zodiac shocked the Bay Area and the nation. Police are stil working to solve those crimes. On Monday, authorities in Val ejo wil unseal

the results of one bit of that investigation. The search of the house of a man who’s been cal ed the number-one Zodiac suspect. Now for the first

time that man has told his side of the story in a television interview. He spoke with us on condition that we not show his face.” Al en’s face was

electronical y concealed and shown in silhouette to mask his true features. It had to make viewers even more curious.

“Is this man the notorious kil er known as the Zodiac?” asked Rita Wil iams. “Or he is a victim of more than two decades of police harassment?

His name is Arthur Al en. He’s fifty-eight now, diabetic, and had just come back from kidney dialysis when talked with him at his Val ejo home last

night. Back in the late 1960s, when Zodiac terrorized California, Al en was in his late thirties, sixty pounds heavier, strong, a biology graduate

student. And in this book, considered the definitive study on the Zodiac [shows the book Zodiac], Arthur Al en, known fictional y in the book as Bob

Starr, is considered the investigators’ number-one suspect. . . .

“One widely quoted letter from Zodiac said he likes kil ing people because it’s much more fun than kil ing wild game, because man is the most

dangerous animal of al . And in the early seventies, a friend of Al en’s went to police, tel ing them Al en had told him virtual y the same thing just

before the kil ings began,” said Wil iams. “From then on Al en was a suspect. In 1971, police searched two cars and a trailer he was living in in

Santa Rosa. But for some reason they never searched the Val ejo house he shared with his mother until her death three years ago. ‘Every time, I

thought it was laid to rest, it would come screaming back,’ said Al en on camera. ‘The last time was St. Valentine’s Day. Happy Valentine’s Day!’

“Armed with a search warrant, police spent two days in February going through the house and garage. They dug up part of the yard, took Al en’s

Zodiac diver’s watch, which he says his mother gave him, and pul ed pipe bombs out from under the house. Al en took a lie-detector test back in the

seventies while doing time for molesting a nine-year-old boy. He says he passed it, but authorities told him he was a sociopath and could cheat.

Stil , he’s never been charged with any of the Zodiac crimes and he says he’s lost jobs, friends, even medical care now, because police imply he’s

a kil er.”

The filmed interview ended with Al en col apsing and sobbing. Rita Wil iams told me later, “However, he didn’t real y cry. In looking at the tape, he

kind of turned it on and turned it off. When Al en lifted his head his eyes were dry. I definitely felt he was pretending.”

Allen next showed up on KPIX, Channel 5, the local CBS affiliate.

“I’m not the Zodiac. I’ve never kil ed anyone,” he said. “They have me questioning myself. I search my memory for blanks—blank spaces—there

are none. I was first questioned by police in late 1969. The cop said that someone thought I might be the Zodiac kil er and reported me. At the end

of the interview he said, ‘Wel , Zodiac had curly hair and you obviously don’t.’ So that was it.

“I’ve been questioned at least five times over the last twenty years. I thought it would stop after a ten-hour lie-detector test I took and passed in

1975. I once got a letter from the Department of Justice certifying that I am not Zodiac. The letter said I was no longer considered by the state to be

a suspect in the Zodiac murders. I can’t show it to you now. The Val ejo police seized it when they raided my house in their latest attempt to prove I

am the Zodiac kil er. The only way I can clear myself is for the real Zodiac to confess—if he’s stil alive. Al I can do is suppose on that. The other

way I can get peace for myself is when they find me dead and gone. I admit a large number of coincidences point to me.”

Al en later told Harold Huffman, “They missed a few things—like the silencer I had hidden in my socks in the dresser.”

Examiner reporter Lance Jackson rang me: “I heard about Ralph Spinel i, a career criminal, picked up somewhere around San Jose,” he told

me. “He got picked up and he’s been charged with nine robberies. And so he starts singing—Arthur Al en’s the Zodiac. He’s looking at a long term,

so maybe he was singing to try and get himself out of jail. Of course, the cops said now he’s backing off and he’s not sure he going to talk. Did the

cops cal you? They told me [last week] they were trying to get in touch with you.”

“What do they want?”

“The Val ejo cops told me they were going to be getting in touch with you. They brought this guy back who used to be there . . . Barlow? [He

meant George Bawart.] He’s going to be coming in a few days a week and working with Conway. They want to see you because they’re trying to

dig into it a little seriously again.”

“That’s good. If they come up with suspects none of us have ever heard of, that’s al right too. It doesn’t matter to me as long as they do it.”

“Right. Let’s get it done.”

For Zodiac’s favorite paper, the Chronicle, Lance Wil iams interviewed the perennial suspect. “I’m a disabled former schoolteacher,” said Al en.

“I was a teacher in the San Luis Obispo School District for a total of ten years, and spent seventeen years as a student. I once served three years in

a state mental hospital for molesting a child. And I used to wear a ‘Zodiac’-brand skin diver’s watch. I’ve passed every evidentiary test the cops

have thrown at me. I passed a polygraph. One policeman said, ‘You’re a sociopath—you can cheat a lie-detector test.’ Another said I’m a genius. . .

. I feel like I’m being messed over. The Justice Department wrote me a letter absolving me of guilt.

“As for the bombs and guns, they’re the property of a friend I met in the mental hospital years ago. This damned thing has been haunting me for

twenty-two years. If I was prone to suicide, I’d have already done it. . . . The only thing in my favor is, I’ve never kil ed anyone. Since I was targeted as

a Zodiac suspect in 1971, I’ve been fingerprinted, interrogated, made to give handwriting samples, and subjected to a ten-hour-long Justice

Department lie-detector test. No way in hel could I go out and kil innocent teenyboppers—no way. But with them, I’m guilty until I’m proven innocent,

and I figure the case wil be around until I die. I did commit one crime, that was child molesting,” he concluded. “I deluded myself into thinking that I

wasn’t hurting anyone, but I realize now that isn’t true . . . and I’ve paid for it.”

Al en told his friends and neighbors the police were hounding him unjustly. Some of them stuck with him. But onlookers would come into the

neighborhood and yel obscenities at him in the house.

Thursday, August 1, 1991

Allen told the Fairfield Daily Republic that he had consulted with Mel Bel i about retaining him as defense council. Bel i had not spoken with Al en.

That afternoon, Judge Dacy, after five months of secrecy, unsealed a search warrant that contained only partial information. The return affidavit

offered precious little details about what police confiscated from Al en’s house. Court Administrator Nancy Piano later blamed the lack of

information on a clerical error. She said clerks did not know that the search warrant findings also were required to be made public.

Wednesday, August 7, 1991

“Over a Dozen Weapons Seized at Home of Local Zodiac Suspect,” headlined the Times-Herald.

“VALLEJO: Police seized more than a dozen weapons ranging from pipe bombs to a 20-gauge automatic shotgun from the Fresno Street

home of Arthur Leigh Al en, a retired Val ejo man who is once again being investigated in connection with the stil unsolved 1969-70 Zodiac

kil ings.”

“I was amazed at how brazen Al en was,” Bawart told me after watching Al en on television. “It’s like he loved the attention al around him.”

“And in his mind, he became the victim,” I said.

“Oh, he did. He craved sympathy. He wanted to get some kind of stay-away order from the Val ejo P.D. and other departments, a restraining

order. And yet he was giving interviews.”

Why had no further action been taken against Al en? Police turned up a cache of pipe bombs and guns, pornography, and tapes of children

being spanked. They had been looking for a manual typewriter linked to Zodiac correspondence and a 12-inch knife with rivets used in the Lake

Berryessa stabbings. They uncovered a Royal portable typewriter, clips of news articles about the Zodiac, and “a hunting knife with sheath and

rivets.” No one could explain the department’s reticence. “It’s unlikely charges wil be pressed against [Leigh Al en] in connection with the

mysterious kil ings,” said District Attorney Mike Nail. “I real y suspect that nothing’s going to come of it.”

Why wasn’t Al en arrested? “The reason they didn’t take further action after the 1991 search,” Toschi said, “is that they knew he was terminal.

That was the excuse. He was close to death when they found these items. Some officer said, ‘He’s terminal. It wouldn’t have meant anything.’ You

can believe that or not believe it.”

“District attorneys want to be fairly sure of a successful prosecution when they charge anyone with anything,” Conway said, “and the most difficult

and controversial part of our suspect or any other suspect that’s ever existed, we’ve never been able to reconcile the handwriting. It’s a very

specific, unique handwriting. George and I have a theory about how to reconcile it, but getting a district attorney to buy that theory is—if we get past

the handwriting, then everything else is fairly simple.”

Zodiac might be perverse enough to want to be captured; he left clues in his letters. However, experts thought differently. “No serial kil er wants to

get caught,” said Vernon Geberth, author of Practical Homicide Investigation, “because then he loses the control and power that he has.”

Friction developed between the old-guard Zodiac detectives and new investigators. “Have I ever spoken to Conway?” said Toschi. “I never heard

of the man. I first saw his name when Al en’s place was searched and he was quoted al over the place. And this real y annoyed some at SFPD.

‘You never heard of him,’ a detective told me. ‘Armstrong never heard of him. And he talks too much. He keeps cal ing us every other week.’ They’re

a little disenchanted, a little hesitant to trust Val ejo at this point because when Val ejo searched Al en’s home they found enough evidence in the

basement and where he lived that they should have charged him.”

“I find it kind of amazing,” said Bawart, “that the guys in San Francisco would in any way be upset with Conway. Conway has a raspy personality. I

got along good enough because I knew him. I was his boss at one point. Sometimes it was difficult for me to tolerate the way he said things, but I

knew it was Conway’s way of doing things and so I discounted it. He easily grates on people. But! But he was the only guy that was authorizing any

kind of investigation. He was the only guy getting any kind of money coming out of the city coffers to handle anything on the Zodiac case. Now that

something comes up that may turn the tables one way or the other, al of a sudden for a few to bad-mouth Conway in any way is a big mistake.”

Now an event, unintentional y humorous and tragic at the same time, relegated departmental feuding to the back burner. At the end of June,

longtime criminal defense attorney Wil iam Steadman Beeman had presented a theory to retired Judge Bil Jensen. “I know who Zodiac is,” he told

the judge and, without giving a name, laid out his reasons why. Jensen was unconvinced. Al the judge could learn was that the suspect was

deceased and may have been a former client of Beeman’s. Beeman also refused to share his suspect’s name with D.A. Nail. The D.A’s office

cal ed Jensen shortly after his meeting to learn the specifics of their conversation. They spoke with Darlene Ferrin’s sister, Pam, to see if she had

any ideas about who it could be. She said she suspected Beeman had discovered new evidence in confidential files obtained from an ex-client

through probate.

Beemen didn’t share his knowledge with Captain Conway and the Val ejo police either. “He didn’t present any information,” said Conway. “He

wants to save it for the news conference.” Within months Beeman would cal a press conference to reveal what he knew. The press, including Paul

Avery, and police officials had been invited. The announcement would be made in Val ejo on Hal oween.

“Before he had that Hal oween Day press conference,” recal ed Bawart, “Beeman got hold of me and said, ‘I’m going to do this exposé. I know al

this stuff. I want you to investigate this.’ So I went down and met him at his office. ‘Do you have any documentation?’ I asked. ‘Wel , no I haven’t done

any of that,’ he said.” Handprinting samples provided by Beeman had not matched those of Zodiac. But so far nobody’s handprinting had, and

probably nobody’s ever would. I stil believed that Zodiac might have been a different personality when he wrote his letters. No matter, we al had to

wait until Hal oween to hear what Beeman had to say.

31

jack zodiac

Thursday, October 31, 1991

Tears welled up in Val ejo lawyer Wil iam Steadman Beeman’s eyes. One tear coursed down a broad cheek, dampening his starched white

col ar. Shyly, the seventy-one-year-old man brushed a lock of straight dark hair from his glasses and peered over a podium crowded with

microphones. Beeman, succeeding beyond his dreams, had attracted a multitude. Television cameras glinted in the light and cables snaked at his

feet. He saw Chronicle reporter Paul Avery entering the Solano County Fairgrounds, and consulted his watch. They were a little late getting started.

He had scheduled the press conference for 10:30 A.M. and spent almost $600 to stage the meeting, not including the cost of mailing invitations to

reporters and investigators. He had a lot riding on this event. He let them stew a bit longer. After al , he was ready to reveal who Zodiac was—just

about the biggest story there was.

“There is no apparent motive behind the timing of the announcement,” said reporter Jackie Ginley, “but it dovetails with a Val ejo police

investigation of Arthur Leigh Al en, a Val ejo man who was once a prime suspect in the stil unsolved 1969-70 kil ings.” Since Tuesday Ginley had

worn out her dialing finger trying to reach Al en for comment on what Beeman might say. Was Beeman, like Spinel i, about to name Al en as the

Zodiac?

For almost an hour Beeman presented the verification that led to his conjecture. “There are at least 101 points of circumstantial evidence,” he

said. “I have a real problem with revealing the identity of this person. I had to do a lot of soul-searching.” Beeman began to build to his revelation,

describing his suspect variously as “a recluse,” and “a woman-hater.” He was “so disordered that he could not hold down a job,” said the attorney.

“He could not even face a woman in the unemployment office without flying into a rage. ‘Women are subhumans,’ he told me. ‘They cannot think

logical y and they act on emotions,’ he said. He had done occasional work for me and sometimes repaired television sets. He particularly hated

Yel ow Cab drivers,”

Just before noon the big moment arrived. Beeman held up Jack the Zodiac, a two-part paperback book he had published under the pen name

“Doctor O. Henry Jiggelance.” Volume One of the set opened with the warning: “This story is entirely fictional.” Light began to dawn in the eyes of

the assembled throng.

“‘Jack the Zodiac,’ was my own brother.”

Jack Beeman, a long-haired, dignified sixty-six-year-old, had died in Phoenix seven years earlier. “Jack the Zodiac,” Beeman said, “came close

to kil ing me. If he hadn’t been drunk, and I hadn’t moved like a mongoose, he would have.” In spite of the acrimony between them, Beeman had

represented Jack in minor run-ins with the law. He also believed that his brother had been responsible for the 1983 death of a Val ejo prostitute.

Beeman pointed out that Jack misspel ed the same words as Zodiac. “He used the same phrasing as that in the letters,” he said.

The audience was not persuaded.

“I feel you’re sincere in this,” said Avery. “It’s a pretty heavy trip to be laying on your brother, but you’ve offered nothing more than circumstantial

evidence.”

“I wouldn’t be wrong in saying there are one hundred people who have cal ed with the same kind of generalities,” Bawart later said. “We look into

everything, but I’m not going to pay $58 for his book [the cost for the privately printed two-volume set].” Besides, Bawart had no time for reading

unless he did it on a plane—he had just gotten a lead connecting Arthur Leigh Al en with Zodiac. That lead would take him to the other side of the

world.

32

the german hippie

“When I retired they kept me on the case—you know that,” Bawart told me, “and anytime anybody would cal , ‘My brother or brother-in-law’s the

Zodiac,’ they cal ed me in. However, the department was total y satisfied that Arthur Leigh Al en is the Zodiac. I used to use Zodiac like a Bible,

because I could never keep al the dates straight. I’d use your book to figure out when stuff real y happened.”

“I always thought that would be the best value that such a book could have,” I said.

“There was a guy that was a friend of Al en’s from high school and col ege. His name was Robert Emmett Rodifer.”

“Robert Emmett?” I said. That was the name anagramists had deduced from the garbled last symbols of Zodiac’s three-part 1969 cipher—

ROBET EMET THE HIPIE or “Robert Emmett the Hippie.” Emmet was an Irish patriot who had been hanged. A statue of him stood in Golden Gate

Park in front of Morrison Planetarium—a room ful of stars and the hal of biology—Al en’s passions. Al en’s father, Ethan, was named after Ethan

Al en, an American patriot who had been hanged. Robert Emmett had been born in 1803, Al en’s father in 1903. “And was Robert Emmett a

hippie?” I asked.

“He was a hippie-type. Rodifer was a guy Al en knew at Poly where he went to col ege in Southern California and stretching back to the time of

the earliest murder. Robert Emmett had also been manager of the Val ejo High swim team. Later he became a hippie attending the University of

California at Berkeley and at U.S.F. Apparently there was some real y bad blood between the two. I found Rodifer, but it wasn’t any great sleuth

work on my part. Because of the search of Al en’s house, Leigh’s name came out in the press. A woman in Val ejo saw it. She had gone to school

with Arthur Leigh Al en, bought your book, and read the portion where it says [in the last line of the deciphered 340-symbol code of November 8,

1969], ‘My name is Robert Emmett the Hippie.’ And she said, ‘My goodness, I know Robert Emmett. Emmy Lou—Robert Emmett Rodifer. She got

a hold of me.”

“They cal ed him Emmy Lou?”

“I don’t know why. Talented. Rodifer was a real outgoing guy. In fact he was a mime and he played on The Ed Sullivan Show and al that kind of

stuff. Arthur Leigh Al en actual y hated the guy. Maybe it was because Al en was an introvert and this guy was an extrovert, although they were

friends—let’s say, had been friends.

“We tracked the guy down. We found out about Rodifer through his classmate. We thought he might be working in concert with Arthur Leigh Al en.

He was now living in Germany. Rodifer was around children al the time at the base where he worked. Jim Lang went with me. He was the chief

deputy of the district attorney. Ironical y, Jim Lang spent twenty years with the LAPD, the last portion of which was working homicide. He retired, but

he was stil a young enough man that he went to law school and got a law degree. He was the district attorney of a county up north. He came down

here and worked initial y in the public defender’s office, then transferred over to the D.A.’s office for a number of years. Youthful-appearing, a real

smart mind, and he knows the homicide business too because he worked in it. In any event he wrote al these letters of rogatory, and it started in

August of 1991.”

“This seems to be a very important time,” I said. “Everything coming together.”

“Right. It took a hel of a long time. We ended up in Germany in the dead of winter in February 1992. It was kind of a fun trip. We actual y spent

two weeks over there. One week we were actual y working. One week we were touring. We made some very good friends. The captain in charge of

the homicide division in Heilbraun, Germany, and his wife turned out to be good friends. They’ve been out here visiting us and we’ve got a big

motor yacht and we took them out on the Delta. We had a great time with them.

“Basical y, what happened in Germany was this—in order to speak with Rodifer, we had to go through letters of rogatory, which is requests of the

German government to come over and interview a person within their country. Even though this guy was an American citizen living on an American

base, we stil had to go through the German laws. I brought my own copy of your book, Zodiac, and a second copy. My German aide read English

and asked for one of the copies. The magistrate, who under German law determines whether it is permissible for U.S. officers to speak with

Rodifer, al owed it after some deliberation. Then he looked over my copy of your book and asked if he could have it. Of course I gave it to him. We

met with the police in Heilbraun and explained the whole situation, and they felt they had enough to write a search warrant for Rodifer’s place, which

they ultimately did. We went there with about half a dozen German policemen, al of which were in plain clothes. They did a real thorough search of

his place. We didn’t find anything connected with the Zodiac. I found a bunch of kid stuff. They kinda thought it might be important, but I wasn’t sure

of that either.”

Bawart theorized Rodifer might have been aiding Al en. “I didn’t know if there were actual y two kil ers, but there might have been two individuals

who got their jol ies doing this. We couldn’t talk to him at the time of search, although he did talk to me quite a bit. He volunteered to. Rodifer was a

smal man, five six at most. Kind of a bubbly kind of guy. He had been a number of places. He worked with the Department of Defense and he ran

their Dependents’ Activities Program. If you’re a sergeant or something and you’re going to be overseas long enough, you get to bring your family

over. The families sometimes don’t relate to the new country, so the Army has community centers and he ran those community centers where your

kids could go there and learn to wrestle and play basketbal and shoot pool and just have different functions. It was so kids could occupy their time

while in a foreign country. He had been doing it a long time. He was in Japan. In fact he was married while in Japan. I was never able to locate his

ex-wife.

“We had to ultimately go before a German judge. We served the papers on him, and a day or two later we went to the courthouse and al the

questioning [of Rodifer] was done before this judge. It was an extensive questioning and he was under oath and he had to answer truthful y. I don’t

know how much that means. He gave us a story about him knowing Al en. He was never real close friends with him. ‘I was real y popular in school

and Leigh was not,’ he told me. ‘He was jealous of me.’ There was apparently some animosity between him and Al en because of this. Then after

that he volunteered to talk to me at length, and I jammed him pretty good. In fact he had a German-appointed attorney who got upset with me. I tend

to believe him. I came back and I interviewed a lot of classmates who were in that era when they were together—junior col ege. We interviewed

them and I’m satisfied that ‘Robert Emmett the Hippie’ is a guy that Arthur Leigh Al en didn’t like.”

“Did you get handwriting samples from Rodifer?”

“It was one of the things we went to talk to Rodifer about. We got samples of Rodifer’s handwriting from the Department of the Army, where he

was fil ing out requests to go here, there, and everywhere. There was both printed and cursive matter on it. He wouldn’t be disguising his

handwriting to fil out an application. We had our guy who was doing al our handwriting analysis, Cunningham from San Francisco, and he looked

at it, compared it to the Zodiac letters, and said, ‘No, he didn’t write these.’”

“Where was Rodifer in 1968 and 1969? Al those Zodiac letters then had had local postmarks on them.”

“He was out of the country, I think. Oh, wait a minute. He was going to school in Berkeley.”

“How about 1974-1977?” That had been the period when no Zodiac letters had been received.

“He was out of the country, but I don’t want to say that for sure.”

“Did Rodifer have a lie-detector test as wel ?”

“No,” said George, “Germany doesn’t al ow it. And as for Rodifer, he was not useful to testify.”

The detectives retooled and began once more looking for evidence. If they were to interview Al en again they would need some expert guidance

from the FBI. When Toschi had gotten in trouble, Al en had said to his P.O., “Now he’l know what it feels like.” Toschi had this to say about him:

“Al en had a great resentment anyway, but after al that public humiliation—now he’s real y going to start hating cops.”

Tuesday, February 4, 1992

The media storm blew over and Leigh went on with his life. His good friend, Harold Huffman, one of the first to offer solace after last year’s search,

visited to check on his health. “When he and Leigh made contact again,” his wife, Kay, told me, “they agreed to never talk about what he went to

Atascadero for. If Leigh was going to speak about any of his perverted feelings or what had led him to do it, Harold could not be his friend. Those

were the rules that were laid down. Harold said, ‘I can deal with Leigh al right, but I do not want to know the particulars and I don’t ever want to talk

about it.’ Leigh tried to discuss it a few times. He made a couple overtures, but was met with silence. When my husband said ‘no,’ people listened.

The Leigh that Harold knew was not necessarily the Leigh I knew. When my son Rob got a little older he said, ‘Mom, did you know Dad took me out

with the Zodiac?’ I said, ‘Dad took you out with Leigh?’ He said, ‘Yeah, Mom.’”

Harold and Leigh went on day trips, shooting and diving around the North Bay. Though lame and legal y blind, Leigh could stil shoot accurately. In

the water he was almost his old self. Harold told his son how Leigh had recently visited the coast to dive for abalone. A party of frog-men, decked

out in expensive gear, were taking lessons. Before they could dive, Leigh appeared in his trunks, knife clinched between his teeth, and plunged into

the surf. “In a few minutes,” Rob recal ed, “he returned with the legal limit suctioned onto his large bel y. He loved to gloat in the surprise of

bewildered spectators. He shined when the spotlight was on him.” While Leigh even drove on occasion, he let Huffman take the wheel, only

forbidding him to drive them near Blue Rock Springs or Lake Herman Road. “If the cops are tailing me, they might use it against me,” he said.

“They’l go, ‘What were you doing cruising Blue Rock Springs with your friend?’ I don’t want to see you hassled.”

Leigh was very familiar with Lake Herman Road. Once, he and Kay were driving around the outskirts of Val ejo when they stumbled on a bleeding

man by the road. It was a scene much like the Lake Herman Road attack. “In 1956, Leigh and I were coming back on American Canyon Road,” Kay

elaborated, “and saw a man standing outside his little car pul ed off the side of the road. He was waving his arms. We got out. He and his wife had

been drinking a lot of wine out of a jug and some kids had come along and asked him for a match. When they rol ed down the window, the kids

pul ed him out, cal ed him a wino, and beat him up. So Leigh took the jug and he threw it far as he could out into the field. I never figured out how

come I agreed to this—when you’re young you do dumb things—I sat in the car with the doors locked with these two little people while he went and

hunted for a highway patrolman. He drove up on Highway 40 and did al sorts of loops and il egal things before he final y attracted the attention of

the Highway Patrol. They fol owed him back down to where we were parked.”

33

zodiac

For the last two years Toschi had been chief of security for the posh Pan-Pacific Hotel at 500 Post Street. As director of twenty-four-hour security

he conducted discreet surveil ance of the VIP’s floor and coordinated with their security people—grueling work. “Many times computer companies

asked me to meet with their own corporate security manager . . . do a walk-around of the hotel and the rooms where equipment is going to be,”

Toschi said. “Times people would cal me and I would be so tense and exhausted—missing luggage and missing items from rooms.” And yet,

around each bend in the hotel’s labyrinth of corridors, Toschi’s nemesis stil lurked. A stone’s throw away Zodiac had flagged down Stine’s cab that

long-ago Columbus Day. Toschi recal ed the legions of Zodiac suspects. Had there ever been a greater mystery? The legend grew. A new

generation became obsessed.

As if he had never vanished, Zodiac turned up later as fodder for television dramas. One day location directors for the Nash Bridges television

program arrived unexpectedly from Hol ywood and checked into the Pan-Pacific. As Toschi inspected their five rooms, one asked him, “Are you

familiar with the Zodiac kil er story? That’s our next project.” He laughed, knowing how many years he had spent hunting Zodiac. “What was it like to

be on the hunt for a serial kil er?” they asked, and so he told them. When Toschi saw the completed show, he said, “At least they didn’t make me a

nut. I even got to save the life of Nash Bridges [Don Johnson] through the character of his former mentor. The plot is that Bridges hears his mentor

in homicide, Dale Cutter, a retired inspector, is having family problems. After many years, he goes hunting for Zodiac again. The drama ends with

the real Zodiac stil alive and making a cal to Bridges.”

Unsolved Mysteries would profile Zodiac, and the Fox Network program Millennium filmed an episode in which the hero (Frank Black)

approaches Zodiac’s trailer through the brush in Santa Rosa. The climax occurs in a theater like the Avenue. In the darkened movie house Black

comes upon Zodiac—gun pointed, one foot advanced, the square-cornered black hood with the crossed circle in stark contrast—the drawing of

him in costume come to life. The figure, through, is a dummy that al ows Zodiac to escape as effectively as the actual Zodiac had.

Wednesday, March 4, 1992

Detectives had not yet given up on Leigh. Weary manhunters, realizing they were up against a wily and clever opponent, thought they had

overlooked some clue. Painstakingly, they scrutinized items seized from the suspect’s house, sought out the FBI for strategy. The bureau’s

thousand-page Zodiac file mentioned only Arthur Leigh Al en in detail, his dossier accounting for ten percent of the file. Agents studied periodicals

recovered from Leigh’s basement, especial y an article on Dave Eastman, the “Bird Man of Eaton,” that had seized the suspect’s interest. The FBI

ferreted out a second article on Eastman in The Irregular, a New Hampshire free periodical dated April 19, 1989. Of what import to Leigh Al en

was Eastman, a former helicopter pilot and birdhouse builder? Leigh was a flyer (that association alone might have sparked his interest), but it

made more sense if he had hidden something in a wilderness birdhouse. They noted that Eastman wore glasses like those in the Zodiac wanted

circular. Detectives fine-combed their bounty again. Perhaps they already had that clue, but did it lie there unrecognized on a table heaped with

other recovered articles?

“As an experienced homicide investigator,” retired Detective Baker remarked, “I recognize that, for purposes of search warrants and for

determining the validity of suspects’ admissions/confessions, the existence of such items would not be made public. However, unless the mention

of specific items was somehow redacted/deleted from the publicized versions of the warrants to search Al en’s residence, this may not be the case

(items not named with any specificity in the warrant may not be seized). This would lead me to believe that any souvenirs he may have col ected

may be more esoteric or abstract than would otherwise be recognized by the investigators. Then again . . . perhaps the investigators of that period

may have lacked the present-day sophistication to have recognized the absence of such items from the scenes.”

But what was there? A pile of recipe cards that had words humorously misspel ed, a slip of yel ow paper and a Zodiac Sea Wolf Watch the

detectives had expected to find. They anticipated clippings on Zodiac; they were there. A serial kil er who craved publicity would be compel ed to

keep cuttings of his newspaper appearances. He not only had videotapes of news programs mentioning Zodiac, but had retained a copy of the

return of service of a search warrant Toschi had handed him in 1972. Al en had smiled then, as if he knew a joke that the police did not.

I thought of Lynch’s anonymous tip in 1969. Without that tip, Leigh would not have been a suspect until he spoke freely to the three detectives at

the oil refinery. He seemed to want to interact with the police, and enjoyed it when he was final y a suspect. What if Leigh had turned himself in? If

not, who had been the tipster?

“I probably hadn’t seen Leigh in twenty-five or thirty years,” Kay Huffman told me later. “I hadn’t kept in touch. I knew he had been down in

Atascadero and I knew what for. And that blew me away because I had had no inkling of anything like that. Harold and Leigh had gone to an air

show and he brought him home here. There was this little old man. I don’t know what happened to the young vigorous person I knew, but he wasn’t

there anymore. Now the diabetes had made him look terrible and aged. I was devastated for days afterward. I couldn’t believe it was the same

person.

“My dad was very il too and so I’d go up to Val ejo to visit him. I usual y did that about every other weekend and if Leigh was in, I’d stop by and

visit him a little bit. The first time I stopped by, he wanted to tel me about how he had burglar-proofed the house ’cause there had been a break-in.

Then he wanted to know if I wanted to see the guns and knives he kept in the basement room his mother built for him. We used to cal it ‘The

Dungeon.’ I looked at him and said, ‘That isn’t what I came to see. I came to see you.’ And he says, ‘You don’t want to talk about my guns?’ ‘No, I

don’t want to talk about them and I don’t want to see them ever.’”

Monday, March 23, 1992

An FBI special agent met with Conway while Bawart was fol owing up leads. On Monday morning Conway advised the agent they were reinitiating

the Zodiac serial murder investigation. “This was because of information concerning a possible suspect—Arthur Leigh Al en,” the S.A. wrote of the

meeting.

“Conway and Bawart were interested in designing an interview strategy for ALLEN should it become necessary to confront him,” said the

submitted FBI report [252B-SF-9447]. He stated he “met on two separate occasions with Conway and Bawart. . . . These two meetings lasted

a total of approximately ten hours. These investigators were interested in an interview strategy for a possible suspect ARTHUR LEIGH ALLEN.

However, they indicated they had a considerable amount of investigation to conduct prior to contacting ALLEN.” The memo mentioned the

1991 search and indicated VPD had subsequently interviewed him again twice. On al occasions, ALLEN was “calm and cooperative,” but

denied any involvement. This case was left pending because the Val ejo police indicated that they wanted additional assistance in their

investigation as information developed. Therefore this case was left open until 3/23/92, when Bawart was contacted to provide a status report

on the case. Because of SA caseload during the last year with priority matters . . . no regular memos have been placed in the [Al en] file explaining the reason to have the case remain open.”

Tuesday, March 24, 1992

As Bawart and Conway prepared “Report, Case #243145,” they discovered more circumstances that indicated Arthur Leigh Al en was in fact the

Zodiac kil er. “They got a lot of stuff that Mulanax did, then went and talked to some of the same people,” I was told. “A lot of what the informants

were tel ing Conway and Bawart in the early nineties they didn’t tel Mulanax. Maybe they were afraid back then to come forward, but now in 1992

they’re not so afraid anymore. They just wanted to nail Zodiac.”

Conway had advised the bureau that there “were two additional interviews to be conducted with people who had known the suspect for a long

time . . . with a man who had known Al en at the time of the kil ings [Cheney].” Once these interviews were conducted, Conway indicated, he and

Bawart “wil present a ful review of the case to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office for an opinion regarding possible prosecution for

ALLEN. If the D.A. refuses to fil charges against ALLEN, Val ejo Police Department wil close its investigation on the ‘ZODIAC’ case.”

Bawart located Cheney. “When George Bawart tracked me down,” Cheney told me, “he contacted me by telephone, I talked to him. Then they

had me come down to be interviewed by them in Val ejo. They flew me down to Sacramento, and George met me at the airport and drove me to

Val ejo. We spent a couple of hours together with Roy Conway. What I had told Armstrong (and the other detectives) I told them. They recorded

everything I said, and they pumped me for everything I could give them.

“Al en loved to outsmart the other guy, I told them. In a 1967 conversation Leigh asked me how to alter his appearance. We discussed theatrical

makeup and what you could accomplish with it. I wasn’t curious why he was asking me this. It wasn’t unusual to talk about something like makeup.”

By the time Al en became a known suspect, he had already altered his appearance to an astonishing degree by burying his athletic physique in fat.

“With Leigh,” said Cheney, “you just get into conversations about ‘What if this’ and ‘What if that.’ It was just more of knowledge for knowledge’s

sake. Leigh was always interested in al kinds of things. And I was too. Leigh enjoyed misleading people. He liked to trick people or influence them

into things that they otherwise wouldn’t do.”

“In January 1969 Al en had a conversation with Donald Cheney, a friend of his,” wrote Bawart in his report. “He guised this conversation as

though he were going to write a novel. Al en indicated to Cheney that he would cal himself Zodiac and use the Zodiac watch symbol as his symbol.

That he would kil people in lovers’ lanes by using a weapon with a flashlight attached to it for sighting at night, that he would write letters to the

police to confuse and taunt them and sign them as the Zodiac. Al en stated he would get women to stop on the freeway indicating they had some

problems with the tires, he would loosen their lug nuts so their tire would later fal off and he could take them captive.”

Bawart arranged for Cheney to be polygraphed back in Washington State. “Bawart gave me a polygraph in his presence,” Cheney told me. “It

was so short I couldn’t believe it. A month later, I went and took another one in the same police station in Kennewick, South Central Washington,

one of the tri-cities here where I live, but without Bawart being present. I gathered that in the first they didn’t have the right test questions. They flew a

technician from Seattle over here to run the polygraph. It was a little on the dul side except for feeling some stress. They hooked me up so they

could measure my respiration and blood pressure. It seemed to me there might be four to five responses—the number of needles on the paper.

“They asked questions that required yes-or-no answers. He told me to just answer in a calm and monotone way, no emotion. In the second test—

I’l tel you why they gave me two tests. In the second test, when we had gone through al the questions—they start off with ‘What’s your name,’ then

they ask the questions about the case. Then when I thought he was finished with that, he kept asking me more questions. It didn’t seem to matter

what the answers were, but the questions were mainly rephrasing of things. I tripped up and made a misstatement. It wasn’t a lie. I wasn’t

intentional y making a misstatement, but I just said something I didn’t intend to say. Al the needles made a jump, flopped around. Then he was

satisfied. That was what he wanted. I guess that they were looking for something that would gauge.” It turned out, as Bawart told me later, “Cheney

was tel ing the truth.”

The biggest obstacle stil was that Al en’s handprinting did not match the Zodiac’s. ‘The experts explained that the only explanation for this would

be if ALLEN would have been able to develop a ‘false handwriting, ’” Bawart wrote. Al en had once asked Cheney if books on how to disguise

handwriting existed, and later studied books on fake handwriting. The FBI noted: “Val ejo has requested no further assistance on this case, and it is

therefore recommended that this case be closed at this time.”

At Bawart’s workplace, a cabinet shop, he was mul ing over a possibility that had intrigued him for years—one that might explain everything.

There might be two Zodiacs working as master and slave. That theory had been one of the reasons George had tracked down Al en’s friend Robert

Emmett. “I conjectured that there might be two Zodiacs, partners working together,” he told me later. “After that trip to Germany and seeing the man,

I came to believe there was only one. As for Donald Lee Cheney, he’s now a retired mechanical engineer in Washington. Panzarel a is wealthy, has

sold his stock, and become owner of RKO Pictures Film Library. I even went down to interview him. Panzarel a was just a regular guy, but he had al

this money.”

As for Ralph Spinel i, the other known tipster, he had reportedly been incarcerated 290 miles north of San Francisco on the Oregon border. Al en,

after the Stine murder, had kicked in his door and beaten him a second time.

Wednesday, August 26, 1992

On a nice August afternoon about 3:00 P.M., George Bawart was working in his garage, the smel of new lumber and sawdust sweet in his lungs. A

street cop phoned him at home and Bawart hustled to the phone. It had a special attachment for his hearing disability and made voices extra loud.

“The cop was kind of a joker,” Bawart recal ed.

“Are you stil investigating Arthur Leigh Al en as the Zodiac?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Bawart said. “Arthur Al en.”

“Wel , I’m in his house and he’s laying on the floor.”

“What’s he doing laying on the floor?”

“Wel , he’s dead and he’s lying here with a great big bump on his forehead.”

George listened careful y to the rest.

He put the phone down. The room seemed to swim. They had waited too long. He steadied himself. Had someone, perhaps Zodiac’s partner or

someone after revenge, gotten Zodiac before they could?

34

zodiac

Wednesday, August 26, 1992

“A street cop got detailed there,” Bawart told me. “Al en wasn’t answering his door. He had a girl living upstairs. When they didn’t hear from him for

a long time, Al en’s upstairs boarder found his body. The cops went there. They opened the door, got in the house, and there’s Al en lying face down

on the floor. I rushed over. I had to make sure he died of natural causes. His name has been published. He’s been showing up on TV. He’s been

granting interviews and drawing al sorts of attention to himself. The Ferrin family had cal ed me a number of times and said, ‘Do you real y think he

did it?’ I told them, ‘Yeah.’ And the Ferrin family can be kind of goofy. I thought, ‘Jesus, did one of them do something?’ So I went on down there and

he was in fact dead.”

Bawart stood in the dim basement, his intent face lit by the glow of Leigh’s new computer. He steadied himself, looking thoughtful y at the big

man in the bathrobe on the cold floor. The professional side of the detective took hold. Bawart began assessing the facts. He recal ed Al en’s words

from television: “About the only way the heat wil stop is if I die, that wil cure it for me or if Zodiac himself confesses. . . . They haven’t arrested me . .

. because they can’t prove a thing.”

“He had fal en face down,” Bawart told me. “I rol ed him over. He had a little injury to his head that I was at first a little bit concerned with. He had

been bleeding. Usual y when you have a heart attack, if you die right away you don’t bleed anymore. So I got the coroner and the medical

examiner.”

Thus, the prime suspect, with a lump on his head, his bathrobe open, lay with newspapers about Zodiac spread about him. In addition to

clippings about the case, Al en possessed everything the experts had expected Zodiac to have—an arsenal of guns, bombs, a portable typewriter,

a knife scabbard with rivets. . . . I recal ed when Rita Wil iams had interviewed Al en the previous year, he had been dressed as he was today—in a

flimsy bathrobe and rubber boots. He had attempted to shock her, waving his arms and shouting that the police had persecuted him. Bawart

walked to the humming Epson Equity 1 computer. “The thing that interested me,” he said, “is that when I got there there was a bunch of computer

discs out on the table and they said ‘Zodiac’ on them and stuff like that.”

Floppy discs were scattered by the printer. Bawart ejected a disc stil in the machine. It was labeled “Zodiac.” What was on the discs and in the

computer and what was the significance of those particular Zodiac newspapers? Apparently the computers had been added since the last search

—an Avstar computer, an Epson Equity 1 computer, and al accessories. Then Bawart spied a videotape marked with the letter “Z” lying on a

bookshelf at the east wal . Bawart was excited over the tape. They would need a warrant to view that. As soon as they could, they played it. Al the

video showed was Al en mooning the police, cursing them, and complaining about the case—nothing incriminating.

For some time Bawart had known Al en had been il —suffering from diabetes, heart troubles, severe arthritis, and kidney failure. So the end was

not only expected, but might be easily explained. The detective consulted the coroner, and he established the facts of death: “Found August 26,

1992 at 3:10 P.M. Immediate cause of death: Arteriosclerotic Heart Disease. Other significant Conditions Contributing to Death But Not Related to

Cause Given: Diabetes Mel itus, Cardiomegaly, heart disease heart disease.” And the bump? “The coroner determined,” said Bawart, “that when

Al en hit the floor he banged his head.”

D.A. Mike Nail had already scheduled a meeting on Arthur Leigh Al en sometime earlier. With the death, the parley would stil proceed. “About a

week before we went to meet with him, Arthur Leigh Al en dropped dead. So that at this meeting, this D.A., being kind of a half-assed comedian,

said, ‘We’ve got good news and bad news. We’re not going to file on Shawn Melton’—they didn’t want to spend the money on that—‘but I’m going

to file on Arthur Leigh Al en.’ He was natural y joking because he knew he couldn’t file on a dead man.

“The good news is that I’m going to indict Arthur Leigh Al en as the Zodiac. The bad news is that he’s dead.” “Mike Nail,” George told me later,

“had political aspirations as a superior court judge [which he realized]. I’ve known Mike Nail my entire career. He started out as a rookie D.A.

straight out of law school. He and I didn’t socialize together, but we would joke and stuff. He probably would not have filed on Al en, to be honest with

you, because he was going for a judgeship and would not in any way want that to be compromised. The gist of it is we were going to file on him and

he promptly died on us. The problem was the district attorney didn’t want to file on a dead guy. But they won’t one hundred percent clear it.

“When we were getting ready to charge Al en with the case. I compiled a list so we could go to the district attorney’s office. When Jim Lang and

Conway and I met with Mike Nail. We were doing two things that day—there was a kind of infamous case from our county; a kid named Jeremy

Stoner, a six-year-old, was abducted and ultimately found dead in the Delta. The responsible on that was a guy named Shawn Melton.

“Melton’s father at one time al uded to the fact that Melton wrote letters to the newspaper [like Zodiac] and his terminology was somewhat similar

to the Zodiac. Somebody came out with this harebrained idea that he was the Zodiac. But he wasn’t, I can assure you of that! We were meeting

with Nail, at that time, to see if he would refile on Shawn Melton. There had been two trials on him and there had been two hung juries. We were

also meeting at the same time to see if he would file on Arthur Leigh Al en.

“Those thirty points were made to give to him to have something firm in his hand rather than us tel ing him each and every point. That report was

actual y made to present to the district attorney’s office, but wasn’t intended to be part of the case file per se. I don’t remember al thirty of them.

Some of them, when you’re putting together something like that, I didn’t intend for it to end up in the case file. It was more of a working file. One or

two or three of those points a defense attorney could pick up on and real y hammer because there was some supposition where I real y didn’t have

a lot of background to back them up. But the meat of the thing I could back up.”

Thursday, August 27, 1992

Conway signed an affidavit for a search warrant. “As you know,” Bawart told me, “I wrote another search warrant and searched his house again

even though he was dead. There was a computer system and the videotape. The purpose of the search warrant was to view that tape and,

according to the affidavit, determine if it contained evidence related to the so-cal ed Zodiac kil ings.”

Val ejo police descended to the lower apartment at 32 Fresno Street—as dark, dank, and museumlike as it had been the previous year. In the

Epson printer was Al en’s partial y completed “Polygraph Agreement” for the Val ejo police. Conway took possession of numerous videotapes and

five containers of discs and manuals for the printer stacked there. Near the computer lay an index of computer discs labeled “Polygon” and a yel ow

disc catalogue with discs labled “Plolams” [Al en’s intentional misspel ing of “Programs”]. They discovered a “Fruit Juice Recipe” bomb formula and

a box with blank notepaper. Strips of paper were covered with math. A last wil and instructions for the computer were on the east wal bookshelf.

The wil and instructions read:

“Being sound in mind, if not in body, I hereby put to paper my last wil and testament. I wil update this document as conditions warrant, so

this computer version wil always be the last and most current wil and testament. In cases of printed copies, the date on the copy wil determine

whether it is the most recent version of the wil . Al pages must be signed and dated by me, as wel as the end of the last page.

“First and foremost I wish to have it known that, due to whatever circumstances, I enter a vegetative state, that al life support systems be

disconnected and whatever of my body organs that can be used to help others be utilized for that purpose upon my death.

“The procedure for obtaining the most recent version of this wil is as fol ows:” The detectives fol owed the procedure laid out—they turned on the

monitor screen (the bottom rol er on the lower right side of the monitor casing). They inserted the MS-DOS working copy.

“Diskettes are located in the yel ow-loose-leaf binder next to the printer into the top slot of the computer,” Al en had instructed. “This is known

as the ‘A’ drive. With the elephant log on the top right toward you until it clicks. Push the ‘push’ button in so it clicks also. Push the power button

in so the red light goes on. Insert the DATA disk into the lower slot (the ‘B’ drive) until it clicks, then push the ‘Push’ in as wel . Now press the

‘enter’ key on the keyboard. A smal light wil appear on the ‘A’ drive and the computer wil hum. Some printing wil cycle onto the screen. When

a request for the date or time appears, press the ‘entry’ key a couple times until the ‘A Prompt’ (A>) sign appears.”

The instructions entailed seven complex maneuvers in detail to access the most current wil : “I bestow upon my good friend, Harold Huffman, the

duties of executor of this Wil and Power-Of-Attorney. . . .” the document began. Al en left his Epson Equity 1 computer, al accessories, “porgrams”

(as Leigh spel ed it in his last wil ), and related literature to his tenant. Leigh concluded on a sad note and more lies.

“As for my Brother, Ronald Al en . . . I was very deeply hurt by the total lack of support by his whole family during my recent conflict with the

law. I stil love my brother very much, which made the hurt al the deeper. I was hurt (but not surprised at al ) when my sister-in-law took pains to

phone me several times to tel me they were so broke that I couldn’t expect any financial help from them at al . Then they went right out and

bought 3 Hondas, including a brand new Accord. Some poverty case! Stil , if there is anything he wants for himself after al the above is sorted

through, he is welcome to it. He’l be getting the house anyway, which should be worth a couple bucks.”

Leigh had four more cars, including a Corvair. He wanted his dentist to get his Rol s, but Ron got that. The cops studied a letter to the Val ejo

police on the computer. “In the letter,” Bawart told me, “were references to letters he was gonna write about how he was gonna sue us for this, that,

and the other.”

“The return to the warrant says you found a knife and a knife scabbard with rivets,” I said to Bawart.

“I don’t remember the scabbard at al ,” he said. “I think we just took it because it had a knife. It wasn’t anything real y earth-shattering. As for the

Royal typewriter we found, that pertained to the Riverside murder and I had discounted Zodiac for that.” So had Conway. Riverside detectives were

able to I.D. the typewriter used by the kil er as a portable Royal typewriter, Elite type, Canterbury-shaded, such as found in Al en’s basement. Morril

had ruled that Zodiac wrote the handwritten Riverside letters mailed, but if he typed the confession letters too, then Al en’s typewriter might stil offer

a clue. I doubted it. The typewritten letters had been distant carbon copies.

“I got about four or five phone cal s when Al en died,” said Toschi glumly. “San Francisco was kind of curious why Val ejo didn’t just close the

case. They told an inspector that the Val ejo district attorney chose not to close the case because Al en was terminal y il and was expected to die

within two weeks. They had already scheduled a conference to discuss that decision in the next month after his death, so they went ahead and had

it.”

Saturday, August 29, 1992

The day before, a Val ejo police property report on Al en had been filed in the municipal court clerk’s office. Now that the press realized who had

died, they ran with the story. Erin Hal issy reported in the San Francisco Chronicle:

“Man Once Suspected in Zodiac Case Dies—A man once suspected of being the Zodiac kil er, who taunted police and terrorized Northern

California with threats of murder, died Wednesday in Val ejo of a heart attack at the age of 58.

“In 1971, attention focused on Arthur Leigh Al en when relatives and friends told police that he was acting erratical y and that they feared he

might be the sadistic slayer who kil ed at least six people and perhaps as many as 37 between 1966 and 1974. In his book “Zodiac,” former

Chronicle editorial cartoonist Robert Graysmith described Al en under a fictitious name as the “the gut-feeling choice of most detectives” for

the Zodiac kil er. . . . Al en had reportedly told some people that he was the Zodiac kil er.”

Thursday, September 3, 1992

“In the mid-1970s Al en was convicted of child-molesting charges and sentenced to prison,” Conway said publicly. “Last year, we searched

Al en’s home in Val ejo as a part of a fol ow-up investigation into the unsolved case. We found some writings, some pipe bombs, some il egal

weapons. None of it was sufficient to make an arrest for him being the Zodiac. . . . It is stil an ongoing criminal investigation. His death has not

changed that. I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation. I don’t have any reason to believe that Al en’s death was a suicide and there has been no

preliminary evidence that foul play was involved.”

In San Francisco, Dave MacHalhatton, KPIX-TV anchor, bannered the suspect’s death on the evening news. He and his wife, Bonnie, had

conducted the first hour-long show on Zodiac with me back in 1986. “Al en died this week,” he said, “leaving behind the unanswered question, ‘Was

he real y the Zodiac?’” Tomas Roman reported that “the only thing the police are certain of is that their case remains unsolved. His death has little

effect on the ongoing investigation into the man known as the Zodiac, the man who taunted police by claiming to have kil ed as many as thirty-seven

people. . . . But even after an extensive search, police stil did not charge Al en . . . with any crime linking him with the Zodiac kil ings.”

“I am not the Zodiac,” Al en had told KPIX. “I have never kil ed anyone. They have me questioning myself. . . . The only way I could clear myself is

for the real Zodiac to confess—if he’s stil alive. . . . Al I can do is suppose on that. The only way I can get peace for myself is when I am final y dead

and gone.”

Al Toschi could say was, “Mr. Al en was a very, very good suspect. We looked into Mr. Al en very closely.” The FBI, on noting the death, said in a

report, “The San Francisco case is closed at this time.”

“This retired cop who was working on the case told me he’s out of work now,” Pete Noyes told me. “They found a lot of computer discs in Al en’s

house. They went in there and picked up a lot of stuff. The psychologist, Thomas Rykoff, apparently has some deal going with a guy down here to

write a book. I don’t know if that’s ethical or not. Rykoff interviewed him at Atascadero.”

Bob Woolridge, a good friend at Time-Life, cal ed for an update on Zodiac. “Inspector Toschi cal ed me at home for a chat,” he said. “I’ve been

tracking down al this stuff that’s been going on in Val ejo. McCochran at the Vallejo Times-Herald has told me that the police apparently found a

videotape after their second search warrant of Mr. Al en’s house. I don’t know what any of this means and I don’t think Val ejo police are talking. I’m

going to try and speak to Captain Conway at Val ejo a little later this afternoon. I hope he’l give me a hint at least. But if I hear anything I’l certainly

let you know.”

As soon as police could, they played the videotape. Al it showed was Al en mooning the police, cursing them, and complaining about the case.

Authorities hinted more was on the tape, but “nothing incriminating.” Though Leigh had specified close friend Harold Huffman to be executor of his

estate, the task fel to Ron Al en who “sort of took over.” Karen “took first dibs on al his stuff, not Ron,” a friend claimed. “Huffman only met her after

Leigh’s death, but quickly took a disliking to her. I’ve read how Ron cooperated with the police, helped gather some information. I got the feeling

that Ron knew his brother was involved in this type of activity. They have people in the media who have tracked them down. Ron’s a hard guy to

reach. Usual y, his wife won’t let him near the phone. I thought, since the guy died suddenly, maybe he left something behind. Maybe he did. I

thought, a good chance they found something in that house.”

Leigh Al en was not embalmed. Though he was cremated, samples of his brain fluid were ordered preserved. It might al ow future DNA testing.

Leigh’s ashes were to be scattered off the coast near San Rafael. The Vallejo Times-Herald headline a week after Al en’s death said:

“SUSPECT’S DEATH WON’T HALT ZODIAC INVESTIGATION.” Death would not stop an investigation into the truth. We owed it to the victims to

assemble the missing pieces. I could not stop. None of us could.

Friday, October 2, 1992

Darlene’s sister, Pam, claimed that she had confronted Al en before he died and, after his death, was in his home. In his bathroom she claimed

she had observed “a weird sexual device held with suction cups to the side of the tub.”

“Of course, I’m not actively working on the case anymore,” said Bawart. “I used to get al those letters, and since Arthur Leigh Al en died, nothing

happens on it anymore. Someday down the road we ought to put our heads together. I’ve got every file that Fred Shirisago had. And al our files and

al the original stuff on Zodiac. I’ve got it up in my attic along with a bunch of stuff of Al en’s. It might be interesting to go over it someday down the

road if you ever write a sequel. What was real y interesting is if you read this report—from then-Sergeant Lynch, in the center of another report on a

regular piece of paper—I don’t think there are more than a hundred words in it. He talks about 1969 just after the Berryessa kil ings going and

interviewing Arthur Leigh Al en as to his whereabouts at the time of the kil ing. Arthur Leigh Al en makes the statement about . . .”

“About the chickens? Two chickens . . .” I said.

“Yeah! And he was going to Berryessa on the day the kil ings took place, but he changed his mind and went to Salt Point. This was in 1969,

before Toschi and Armstrong had even looked at him. I hadn’t read that until I got reinvolved in it in early 1992. So I go back and Lynch is stil alive.

He has since died. I go ask him, ‘John, you don’t say in the report why you’re going talking to Arthur Leigh Al en. What prompted you to pick out this

guy? You don’t say—and he couldn’t remember. Somebody—somehow, his name came up in 1969 just after the Berryessa kil ing.

“Usual y—I’d write a report and say, ‘Pursuant to John Doe tel ing me that Arthur Leigh Al en fit the description and claimed he was going to

Berryessa on that day, I went by to talk to him.’ Then at least I’d have John Doe to go back to and talk to later on. I’d ask him, ‘Why did you accuse

this guy?’ Of course your book came out much before I went and talked to Lynch. When I talked to him, he had quit drinking. But he wasn’t in the

best of health. He just couldn’t remember.

“John Lynch was a prince of a guy. He was a very honest, straightforward guy, but he had a hel of a booze problem. When John would get off duty

—it was spooky—he lived in an old house in an old section of town. It wasn’t real y a Victorian. It was sort of a Tudor. If you had to go by and talk to

him about something, he never would answer the phone. You go by and you knock and he’d come to the door and there were no lights on and it was

musty. He would always talk to you on the front porch. He’d be drunk from the time he got off duty to the time eight hours before he was to come on

duty.

“My guess was this: Al en told a family member or friend he was going to Berryessa. Later that unknown person read of the murders. Al en must

have said something or been acting erratical y enough for them to tip the police. My money is on a family member.” Would we ever discover who

that early tipster had been?

“From our last two conversations, I’m truly amazed at your background information on Zodiac,” said Toschi. “Some of the information you have on

Arthur Leigh Al en in the Riverside area real y got my attention, and I wish that the Riverside P.D. had given me the fact that Al en was actual y

known around their town. It would have given me a stronger case to discuss with our D.A. and the other detectives working on the Zodiac case.”

Sunday, May 15, 1994

“There is one specific detective [Harvey Hines] who has since retired from a very smal police department,” Conway explained, “who is absolutely

convinced that he solved the Zodiac case and it happens to be a guy who has a lengthy criminal history and he’s living in Tahoe. Again there is no

fingerprint match, no handwriting matches, there’s nothing more than a whole bunch of coincidences.”

The Chronicle ran a two-part story about Hines’s suspect in its This World section. The article upset Toschi. “It was cheap journalism,” he told

me. “I wouldn’t even cal it journalism. I remember talking to Hines in the seventies, and he was very strange then. He had tunnel vision. He wouldn’t

even listen to other suspects and keep an open mind. Hines has had twenty years to find out where his guy was on the dates of the murders. It

should be easy to prove one way or the other. Paul Avery cal ed me, and he too was upset.”

“Conway is equal y certain that the Zodiac is someone else,” reported the Chronicle. “I’l tel you what I told Harvey [Hines],” said Captain Conway

of the Val ejo Police Department. “He’s wasting his life barking up the wrong tree. [His suspect] is not the Zodiac. I can’t tel you how much time I’ve

given Harvey over the years, but he has nothing of any evidentiary value. I believe as I always have that the Zodiac was Arthur Leigh Al en. If I could

show Harvey what evidence we have on Al en today, he would get off this kick immediately. Unfortunately, I can’t do that for legal reasons.” Added

Conway about suspect Al en, who died in 1992, “If Al en were alive today, we would file charges against him as the Zodiac. Unfortunately, we ran

out of time making a case against him and he died.”

35

the conference

Monday, April 26, 1993

“The subject today is the Zodiac kil er,” Judge George T. Choppelas said solemnly. A gray-haired, whip-smart Municipal Court magistrate, he

looked like Fred Astaire, and kept as trim with regular workouts on his rowing machine. The perplexing case fascinated the judge, and he had

cal ed a special discussion on Zodiac to rethink the case and satisfy his own curiosity. The meeting convened at a San Francisco State auditorium

at 1:30 P.M. in front of a large audience. Choppelas, acting as moderator, introduced Rita Wil iams, KTVU-TV newsperson. “She interviewed the

person, the one suspect,” he said, “that Val ejo and San Francisco investigators and Robert Graysmith, former political cartoonist turned author,

and others believe to have been the Zodiac kil er.”

Choppelas then recounted Cheney’s story of Al en’s vow (a year before there was a Zodiac) to tie a flashlight to his gun barrel, shoot couples in

the woods, and write taunting letters signed Zodiac to the police. He explained how Al en was in the Riverside Col ege area when Bates was

stabbed, and how Darlene Ferrin was stalked by a friend named “Leigh.” He told how there were no letters from Zodiac while Al en was confined at

Atascadero and how the Santa Rosa murders ceased during that time. Captain Roy Conway, immediately on the scene of the Ferrin murder in

1969, had been associated with the case ever since. “I was a patrol sergeant that evening and I was dispatched to a place that was in a remote

part of Val ejo on July 4, 1969. Both victims were stil alive at the time. The male survived, the female died. I tried to talk to her and talk to him both.

She was unable to speak or do anything, and had been shot with multiple gunshot wounds. The passenger in the car had been shot multiple times

and he has survived. He’s stil alive to this day.

“Because I was a patrol sergeant at the time, I was not initial y assigned as the investigator on the crime. It was not til several years later when I

got promoted to captain that I was given responsibility for the case. The primary investigator who’s been working on this case the longest of al law

enforcement personnel that’s ever been involved is Detective George Bawart, who’s sitting over there in the corner.” George stood and waved.

“What we’ve done over the years—every time there’s any kind of media attention given to the Zodiac case, there’s al kinds of information that flows

into [the] police department, or departments, and other departments and [the] California Department of Justice. There’s al kinds of people cal ing

up who say I know who the Zodiac is.”

Conway pointed out what he considered some of the misinformation about Zodiac. I didn’t agree with al of it. “It’s not intentional,” he said. “One

of the pieces of misinformation is the Riverside homicide. I’m here to official y tel you that the Riverside Police Department never believed that

Zodiac was involved. We have since more than satisfied ourselves that Zodiac had nothing whatsoever to do with the Riverside kil ing.” Riverside

thought their local suspect had committed the homicide. But a handwriting examination had already proven Zodiac wrote letters to the Riverside

press claiming responsibility for Bates’s murder.

Captain Conway played his case conservatively, focusing unequivocal y only on those cases where it was absolutely certain that Zodiac had

been involved. “There are only three of them in that category. The reason we know the three are unequivocal y the Zodiac is because he gives

physical evidence or verbal evidence that only the kil er would know.” He pointed to the Paul Stine cab kil ing as most striking—Zodiac had swiped

a portion of Stine’s shirt, enclosing fragments with his correspondence. “In our case [the Blue Rock Springs murder] Zodiac went to a pay telephone

right after the homicide. In fact, I would have had to have passed him because it’s a long road out to where this homicide occurred. I probably

passed him, although we went to great lengths to try and time everything. The people who discovered the people who were shot took a long time to

get to a telephone—probably more than a half hour passed before we even got a phone cal .

“Shortly after [12:40 A.M.], a male voice cal ed from a pay telephone, which we subsequently located [traced to Joe’s Union Station at Tuolumne

and Springs Road by 12:47 A.M.], tel ing that he just committed this homicide and how he did it and some other details to cause us to know this

was real y the guy who did it. One of the examples of misinformation is that we had no recording devices in the police department in those days.

There was in fact no recording of that phone cal .” Former Val ejo Patrolman Steve Baldino disagreed. On Now It Can Be Told, with Geraldo

Rivera, on July 14, 1992, he had said, “I heard the tape—the dispatcher let me hear it. I believe it was the next night. Apparently the tape is no

longer here, but it did in fact exist, because I did hear it.” Nancy Slover, the police operator, had heard it too.

“The other homicide we know positively for sure,” continued Conway, “is the Lake Berryessa homicide. Again the kil er gave some very pertinent

information that only he would know. There’s only three. The other kil ing, on Lake Herman Road, happened [seven months] before the Zodiac

kil ing. We had some very good suspects in that case, and Detective Bawart and I are satisfied that the Zodiac didn’t real y do that case, although

we don’t have unequivocal proof on that.

“The other interesting thing about the Zodiac case is that there are several people who have become obsessed with solving the case. We have

had several in our own department. There are private citizens who became obsessed with the case and have convinced themselves they have

absolutely solved it. They are very absolute about it. Neither one of the suspects that they have are our suspect.

“Al three have written lengthy documentation about it. One is an attorney in our city who claims his brother, his dead brother, is the Zodiac [Jack

Beeman]. Another used mathematics to prove it. In his mind he is absolutely convinced he’s solved the Zodiac case. He thinks it’s a col ege

professor at Boston University who now works for the University of California at Berkeley. If you talk to that man and give him any time, he is

absolutely, unequivocal y convinced. He says its mathematical y impossible for anybody to be the Zodiac except [his] suspect.

“We have two other individuals, both in law enforcement. One of them is now retired just recently . . . he’s been working on it twenty years and

he’s absolutely convinced he knows who the Zodiac is. And his Zodiac is living in Tahoe. Then we have another person in another state agency that

worked on the Zodiac for years. He happened to be on duty. He stopped and did a field interrogation of a person he believes to this day is the

Zodiac. So everyone of these people, if you talk to them, independent of anything else, you would say he must be right. It’s only logical that he’s

right.

“One of the major reasons that the Zodiac case has not actual y been solved to the point of somebody being actual y arrested and tried is that law

enforcement didn’t do a very good job of coordinating information. . . . One of the most tel ing points in Mr. Graysmith’s book—he asks the question

why the search warrant wasn’t served at two locations, and only one location—and that was twenty years ago that happened. If they had served a

search warrant at the right location at that time, they probably would have solved the Zodiac case. But they didn’t.

“Twenty years later, Detective Bawart and I served that search warrant! And we did that a couple years ago. We found a lot of information that

caused us to believe we were on the right track, but that person subsequently died and we don’t have any legal mechanism to say we’ve solved the

case because we can’t bring the suspect to trial. He’s referred to in Robert Graysmith’s book as ‘Robert Hal Starr.’ His actual name is Arthur Leigh

Al en.

“He’s worked in Val ejo al his life. At the time [1971-72] San Francisco Police Department developed information that we subsequently

backtracked and gone over every piece of it. That information would have al owed them to serve a search warrant on his primary residence in

Val ejo, but at that point of time he was living part-time in a little trailer in Santa Rosa. And so they served the warrant on his little trailer in Santa

Rosa instead of his home in Val ejo. I’m fairly convinced that if they had served the search warrant on that home in Val ejo, they would have found

the actual smoking gun, but that didn’t happen. It’s primarily because they were working on their own and made no effort to coordinate information

with our agency.”

“There’s a lot of instances that occurred in this case that happened in one area and the other area didn’t know about it,” added Bawart. “Those

are the kind of errors in the case the various police departments made. Roy and I, in hindsight, taking al this stuff down twenty years later, put it al

together and made us seem like we’re real smart, but we’re not. We had the benefit of al those reports.”

The judge asked me how I came to write the book. “The way I got interested in this,” I said, “I was political cartoonist for the Chronicle and every

day you try to do a cartoon that’s going to make a change in the world. I looked at the Zodiac case and thought, ‘Here’s a guy no one seems to be

able to catch. If I go around the state and put together as many facts as I can and put a book out there, somebody’s going to solve this.’ It’s pretty

much what I decided to do, and I did over a ten-year period. At the end of that time I had a book of considerable length. An editor and I spent

another three years taking out five hundred pages. Maybe we took the real suspect out. It’s possible, but not likely. We did place Mr. Al en as a

student at Riverside and in that library the night Cheri Jo Bates was slain. Perhaps, as Captain Conway believes, Riverside wasn’t a Zodiac kil ing,

but of al the 2,500 suspects in the case, Al en was the only one at the scene.”

Conway discussed the prints in Stine’s cab.

“Hundreds of people can be in a cab. There was emergency medical personnel at the scene, other officials at the scene. Nobody took any

elimination prints at the time. They have a whole drawer ful of fingerprints that came out of that cab, and it’s an extremely arduous task and most of

them are partial. I assure you the primary suspects have been checked. There’s no fingerprint matches anywhere. . . . Ken Moses, one of the best

print men in the state and SFPD has one of the best computer systems in the state. They certainly would have run that bloody print long ago had it

worked out, but they didn’t preserve the crime scene wel enough, any of the prints, particularly the bloody print of the man believed to be

responsible. There were ambulance people there, there were other cops there. They are saying, how come this print doesn’t match up to the

analyzer? It could have been the guy driving the ambulance got some of Paul Stine’s blood on his hands and then touched it and that’s the way of

the bloody print.

“Incidental y, Al en wore size 10½ shoes, and that’s the size of the Wing Walker shoe print found at Lake Berryessa,” I said. I summarized the

pattern of the murders: “They usual y happened by a body of water on a weekend and usual y involved a young couple who were enjoying al the

things Zodiac did not enjoy—intimate, loving relationships.”

“We interviewed everyone in this case,” said Conway. “We interviewed Kathleen Johns. I’m at kind of at a loss as how to explain it, but I don’t

believe what she described even happened, let alone that the Zodiac did it.” “Johns is the only one I thought was a little iffy,” I said. “As years go by,

I’ve come to believe more and more that the man who kidnapped her wasn’t Zodiac.”

“The only thing I put any stock in is a thing that I know for a fact,” said Conway. “Al this business about the phases of the moons and al these

cryptograms in reality didn’t have to do with anything. It was a way for the Zodiac to play with people’s minds for his own perverse satisfaction.

Those cryptograms, as it turned out, had no meaning.” The ciphers did, however, explain his motive and revealed the clue of The Most Dangerous

Game, which led to his family and friends turning Al en in.”

We discussed my conversations with Al en. “It may have been because of the child molesting,” I said, “but when you work in the arts you get a

kind of intuitive sense about things, and literal y my spine got chil s when I was around him. There was something about him very wrong. I often used

to go in and buy things—he worked in a hardware store—just a very scary guy, but highly intel igent. He had a degree in botany and biology.”

“Biology,” said Wil iams. “He said he didn’t quite get his master’s degree—he didn’t finish his thesis; he had finished the course work for a

master’s. His bachelor’s degree was in elementary education. And he said his I.Q. was—I wrote it down—in the 130s. ‘Certainly no genius,’ he

said, ‘but I am intel igent.’”

“He cal ed himself gifted,” said Conway. “That’s the terminology he used.”

“Real y,” said Wil iams. “‘My mind,’ he said ‘I believe is 136.’ I asked him about the cryptograms. ‘I was in the Navy,’ he said, ‘and what I did there

was chipping paint and then I was a third-class radioman. That certainly doesn’t make me an expert on cryptograms.”

We began naming his skil s. “Scuba diver, marksman . . . airplane pilot,” said Wil iams. “He knew explosive devices, cryptography, meteorology,”

I said, “charts (naval and pilot) and compass, writing, drafting, and graphics [his father was not only a Navy officer but a draughtsman]. Chemistry

[he was a chemist], guns [he col ected them], disguise and sewing [he was a Navy sailmaker]. He not only typed, but had the same kind of portable

typewriter the Riverside letters were written on.” “Phil Tucker,” said Bawart, “had given us the information that as a child Al en had been forced to

write with his right hand though he was natural y left-handed.”

“Sailor, pilot,” continued Conway. “In fact, he had some trophies for Hobie Cat. He was also a swimmer. The other thing he did, he was quite an

avid cook. His living quarters were, as Rita could tel you, in the basement of his parents’ house. And every part of this little room was covered with

books from floor to ceiling. He was very wel read and could converse on any topic you could think of.”

“I heard Zodiac could quote Gilbert and Sul ivan by heart,” said the judge. “Could any of this be applied to Al en?”

“Absolutely,” said Conway. “We confirmed his interest in Gilbert and Sul ivan through his brother and other relatives. They also confirmed that he

purposely misspel ed words. It wasn’t by accident. He’d write recipes for example and he’d spel ‘eggs,’ instead of ‘e-g-g-s,’ he’d spel it ‘a-i-g-s.’

And that was intentional just to get a chuckle out of people who would read it. He did that consistently with al kinds of things.” I recal ed that Al en in

al his interviews referred to Zodiac as “The” Zodiac, just as the kil er did in his letters.

“The most difficult part of this case is the handwriting issue,” continued Conway. “There are at least two or three people in the area of handwriting

analysis, and the one thing they say about the Zodiac letters is that they are consistent from the very first letter to the very last letter. Al the letters

and words, handwriting is an absolute match. It’s one person who did those letters. That’s not an issue. The interesting thing, to go back to the

Riverside case, there’s only one piece of evidence that Zodiac had any thing to do with the Riverside kil ing, and that’s the kil er scratched some

writing onto a desktop. The actual letter he sent that describes al the things that he said he did in this homicide is al typed. There was no

handwriting or printing of any kind. The name signed on the bottom of the letter was ‘Enterprise.’” Conway was in error here: The letter had been

addressed to the Riverside Press-Enterprise. And Zodiac had also handprinted three Riverside letters.

“But the scratching on the desk of which a photo was taken, as Sherwood Morril said, that matches the Zodiac letters. Since then George and I

have gone to every expert there is and they unequivocal y without hesitation say, he was wrong, these are not a match to the Zodiac handwriting.

That, plus the fact that the Riverside police already have a suspect. From their point of view their case was solved. This so-cal ed genius that wrote

this other book with al the mathematical equations, his whole premise—everything is built on the mathematics starting with the Riverside Case.

When I tel him the Riverside case didn’t have anything to do with it, his theory goes out the window. It didn’t shake him. He stil believes otherwise.”

We al had our blind spots. Captain Conway was convinced that Al en had never been in the Navy in spite of his claims of having been “a paint-

scraper.” Various women and their daughters Al en had known over the years spoke of his time in the U.S. Navy. Reports showed the same. Leigh

admitted to being “less than honorably discharged” and he had gone to col ege on the G.I. Bil . The Navy connection was unshakable. His father’s

twenty-five years in the Navy alone would enable Leigh to make periodic visits to Treasure Island, work at Travis AFB, and buy Wing Walkers at a

base exchange.

“Judge,” said Wil iams, “I’d like to ask a few questions of the other panelists that I’ve wanted the answers to. If indeed Arthur Leigh Al en were the

Zodiac, I think both of you have indicated in the past that whoever was the Zodiac would someday prior to his death leave some message behind to

let everyone know he was the Zodiac. If he was Al en, can you tel me why you think he didn’t and why the kil ings stopped when they did?” I thought

to myself, he might not have left any message because he died suddenly of a heart attack, one so sudden he bumped his head. “From my point of

view,” said Conway, “he did leave that message. One of Zodiac’s letters talked about finding bombs in his basement. Wel , in fact there were

bombs in the basement of that house when we did the search warrant—there were pipe bombs. The other half of it is that he does leave that

message by things that are in his basement and at the same time denying everything. There’s so many lies I caught him in, his denying things that

didn’t have any relevance anymore. There was no letters whatsoever during the time he was in Atascadero state hospital. The last letter he ever

wrote says, ‘I am back.’

“There’s several reasons why the kil ings stopped—this is from discussions with the FBI experts. There’s a very famous FBI group back in

Quantico, Virginia, that studies serial kil ers. My father used to be an avid deer hunter when he was a young man in his twenties and thirties. About

twenty years ago he quit deer hunting and I asked him why he quit. It’s not interesting to me anymore[, he said]. That explanation is real y simplistic,

but that’s probably the explanation for Al en if he was Zodiac.

“The other thing is that he was a very il man—he was fifty-eight when he died. He was extremely il and knew he was dying and he’d had that

il ness for some time. Even though he could stil get around he was not very mobile and there was a lot of focus on him as a suspect. Being a

suspect, being il , and losing interest—al adds up to the explanation as to why.”

“Did you find fingerprints?” Wil iams asked Conway. “Al en says in the interview that police told him during the interview process with the Val ejo

police that you have fingerprints on the pipe bombs under his house. He of course says it was some ex-con that had left them there before. He

didn’t even know they were there. Did in fact you find fingerprints?”

“Let me answer that this way—he first denied having any knowledge whatsoever of any bombs existing in his basement, and when we told him of

his fingerprints on the bombs—which there wasn’t, by the way. Then he had an explanation of how he was cleaning up the basement and moved

them from one spot to another. That’s the kind of stuff we went through with him al the time.”

George Bawart spoke from the audience. “You have to understand that back in the sixties law enforcement was doing a pretty good job. They

weren’t real y communicating with each other—they didn’t have computers.”

“Getting back to the fingerprints [on the cab], every single [Zodiac] suspect that ever existed,” said Conway, “has been checked against those

fingerprints and no one has matched. The other problem is that the Zodiac bragged in his letter how he wouldn’t leave fingerprints anyway.”

“Can I ask the captain and Robert, in your mind, who is the Zodiac kil er?” said Wil iams.

“George, how do we answer that?” said Conway.

“Who is?” said Rita.

“I find,” said Bawart, “so many coincidences that point one direction, I feel it is no longer a coincidence, and I feel there are so many areas that

point directly at Arthur Leigh Al en that I feel he is a viable suspect and in al probability the Zodiac.”

“Robert?” said Wil iams.

“That’s my opinion too,” I answered cautiously. Al en had died al too recently. “Al I can say is that of al the people who were ever brought to me—

I conferred with Dave Toschi, he showed me files and files and files—Al en is the best I’ve seen. Zodiac could be some anonymous person who

lives in the woods and has never been printed, but as far as I can tel , Al en is the best suspect they’ve come up with.”

“First of al there’s nothing wrong with circumstantial evidence,” said Conway, “if you understand what circumstantial evidence is—leaving a

fingerprint at the scene of a crime and denying you did the crime, circumstantial y we prove that you did do the crime because of the fingerprints at

the crime scene.”

Rita Wil iams took out a letter Al en had mailed her. He’d scrawled a “Z” in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope. A similar “Z” had been

written at the bottom of the 1967 Riverside letter. The postmark: “July 30, 1991 Oakland.” He had dated the letter inside August 1. The typed letter

began: “Dear Rita: Please pardon the informality, but I consider you a friend.”

“So I guess I’m a friend of the Zodiac,” said Wil iams, “if indeed he is the Zodiac. He just goes on to say that he appreciated the interview and he

had a knot in his stomach and goes on and on with compliments. He says ‘professionality’—interesting that he made up a word. ‘I wonder if that

word’s in the dictionary,’ he says. Certainly, he’s the kind of person who would have a dictionary there and wouldn’t use that word unless he real y

checked. I’m afraid I never answered the man.”

That night some of the conference was briefly reported on KTVU: “Everything about the Zodiac is serious, giving the number of people he kil ed

seemingly at random . . . perhaps as many as fifty. Who was the Zodiac?” Rita Wil iams asked. “This is the Val ejo man many investigators

consider to be the notorious Zodiac kil er, and is the first time his picture has been revealed. His name is Arthur Leigh Al en.” As archival film ran,

Wil iams asked Al en: “Are you the Zodiac kil er?” “There would be nothing farther from my mind,” he said. “I am certainly, most certainly, not the

Zodiac kil er.”

“But at San Francisco State University this afternoon,” continued Wil iams, “I was on a panel with people considered authorities on the Zodiac

case and for the first time publicly they said this. Al en seems to be the best suspect they’ve come up with,” she reported, quoting me. “There are so

many areas,” Bawart was seen saying, “that point directly at Arthur Leigh Al en that he is a viable suspect and in al probability the Zodiac.”

“But investigators never charged Al en with any of the kil ings connected with the Zodiac,” said Wil iams, “and last August Al en died. I interviewed

him a year earlier. He was fifty-eight then, a diabetic and on kidney dialysis. But back in the later sixties, when the clever kil er known as Zodiac

terrorized California, Al en was in his late thirties, sixty pounds heavier, strong, and a biology graduate student. Police considered him a suspect

almost from the beginning.

“The Zodiac kil er taunted authorities and the media, sending complex letters and ciphers,” Wil iams summed up. “Today Val ejo police

investigators said they never charged Al en because they couldn’t explain discrepancies in the Zodiac handwriting. Al en sent me this handwritten

and typed letter after our interview.”

Wil iams’s 1991 interview, rerun that night, showed Al en col apsing and sobbing. What Rita Wil iams had observed stuck in my mind. “However,”

she said, “he didn’t real y cry. In looking at the tape, he kind of turned it on and turned it off. When Al en lifted his head his eyes were dry. I definitely

felt he was pretending.” “There are so many lies I caught him in, his denying things didn’t have any relevance anymore,” said Conway. Al en lied

even when there was no reason to.

Friday, February 14, 1997

Six years had rushed by since the Valentine’s Day search of Al en’s home. Toschi rang me, sounding buoyant. “I’ve gotten cal s throughout

yesterday evening and today,” he said. “Something is up. One of the inspectors, Rich Adkins, just inherited the Zodiac case. When a friend of mine

was captain of investigations, he said that Rich real y wanted to talk to me because he had gone through the files and just was a little curious about

some things. He and his partner, a guy named Vince Repetto, paid me a visit Tuesday. I had some time, about a half hour, to talk to them about

Zodiac.

“Vince told me he’s never gone through everything that had been sent to Sacramento. He said, ‘For some reason everything wasn’t brought

back.’ They only had two boxes. That disappointed me. Sacramento should have returned everything that Armstrong and I accumulated.

Remember, when they decided to bring everything up to Sacramento years ago, I felt that they had made a very, very serious mistake. I was

extremely upset. A case of this caliber, known worldwide, and the work that Bil and I did on it (I have poor handwriting, but as I got older and more

experienced I took better notes)—to do this, to shuffle it around in a cardboard box—you’re going to lose something. Someone is going to put

something in his pocket. You have to want to solve the darn thing! You have to!

“I hope they know where the rest of the files are in Sacramento and who’s got them. Repetto and Adkins said this morning they were going to go

up to Sacramento and have a look. What fascinated this Rich Adkins is that it is stil a mystery—that the case is stil active and that so many people

are aware of it. So many other people have kil ed more people than Zodiac. Adkins asked why was there so much interest al these years later. I

told him, ‘It’s a mystery—because of the letters, the ciphers, the codes. It’s taunting, it’s “Catch me if you can,” and “I’m crack-proof.”

“Rich asked me if I had ever spoken to Conway. When Al en died, he was quoted al over the place. Now they tel me he told Adkins he was going

to retire in December.”

“Conway’s just very enthusiastic,” I said. “Some of his ideas are very good—such as paring the case down to its essentials.”

“San Francisco was puzzled why Val ejo didn’t simply close the case and this is what Inspectors Adkins and Repetto want to do,” said Toschi.

“What Rich Adkins asked of me is that if you—who are extremely knowledgeable—would be wil ing to talk with them. They’re two pretty good guys. I

said, ‘Graysmith is one of the most honorable men I’ve ever met in my life. I think he would want to talk to you.’ Adkins said, ‘After al this time, we

want to close it and we think we can.’ They want to give Armstrong and I credit. ‘What we want to prove,’ Adkins told me, ‘if it wasn’t for you taking

the initiative when Al en’s brother cal ed and going to Val ejo and talking to Al en’s sister-in-law and brother . . . you guys made the case and did

more work on Al en than any of the other jurisdictions who were closer to him.’”

“The one thing Val ejo can’t understand is why John Lynch and Les Lundblad were on this guy so early in the case,” I said. “Why? And this was

long before the informants, Cheney and Panzarel a.”

“We never got that,” said Toschi sadly.

“What brought them to Al en? Two guys in independent police agencies both go right to Al en’s front door. There’s a little tiny piece missing.

Lynch went out and talked to Al en after Blue Rock Springs and Lake Berryessa. And of course they have that knife story—‘I’ve been kil ing two

chickens.... ’”

“Yes. Adkins and Repetto even asked me if we could put Al en in Southern California. My memory was weak at that point, but I know you found

some leads. The brother went and searched the basement of Al en’s house himself, and he found cryptography books. I told this to Adkins on

Tuesday and it blew him away.”

That night I opened more mail from Zodiac buffs. “Look under the stamps and the envelope flaps for saliva and attempt a DNA test on it,” Michael

Hennessy suggested. “Also check the letter that had a bloody cross drawn on it for DNA. Check the skin and hair fragments that victim Cheri Jo

Bates had under her fingernails when found.” DNA, obtained from a variety of biological sources—blood, hair, semen, and saliva—had final y

entered the Zodiac case, as I was about to find out.

Saturday, February 15, 1997

I called Repetto at 9:00 A.M. and he wanted to meet right away. “I’m going to be getting on the road here and heading toward the city,” he told me.

“I’l cal my partner on the cel phone and I’l cal you back with a time we could meet, say around ten-twenty, ten-thirty this morning.” We set the place

for the Mirabel e Cafe on Ninth Avenue, the site of the former Owl and Monkey Cafe, where I did al my writing.

I sat at my regular table in the front window and watched a light-rail car glide by. I recognized the two inspectors immediately as they crawled from

their car and entered the cafe. Adkins, tal , broad-shouldered, and energetic, had a bruise on his left cheek from a fight he had just had with a

suspect. Vince Repetto, older and more world-weary than his partner, squeezed into a chair. I soon wished they had canceled the meeting.

Something had changed in the last hour.

The previous day Adkins and Repetto had gotten DNA results. Genetic markers on a Zodiac letter (they wouldn’t say which one) had matched

Al en’s DNA! However, a cal to Repetto after our conversation revealed a second run had showed no match. “I heard this bit of news just before I

picked up Rich,” he said.

Zodiac, with his knowledge of chemistry, even in the late sixties and early seventies, would hardly have been so foolish as to lick an envelope or

stamp. While no such thing as DQ-Alpha DNA18 testing existed back then, blood and saliva typing procedures did. In 1976, Dr. Richard Wal er

drew up the testing procedures and serology guidelines for secretor samples for the state crime lab in Santa Rosa. Genetic markers, a series of

complex, energy-releasing molecules and enzymes present within the fluids of each individual’s body, could be lifted from stains. They could be

analyzed by various high-tech serological tests. ABO testing involved long-lasting, stable molecules, and PGM testing dealt with more perishable

enzymes. Secretor samples found in ABO existed in saliva, semen, and blood.

Could the DNA false positive have come from a close relation? Had Al en had his mother lick the envelope for him? If so, under what pretext? Or

had we been wrong al along? Toschi, Mulanax, Lundblad, Adkins, and Repetto and al the rest had believed that Zodiac was Arthur Al en. So did I.

But Al en did not match the handwriting, did not lick the letter they had tested, and had passed a lie-detector test, albeit in a drugged state. What

could be the answer? I thought back to the possibility of two Zodiacs working as partners, an idea that Bawart had considered. Now I had the

unpleasant task of tel ing Toschi about the meeting. He was crestfal en.

“Tuesday,” said Toschi, “they told me they were about a month away from hearing anything positive. I feel sorry for them. They were obviously

positive in what was going on. Now one phone cal that says no, it deflates you. It’s a step backward.”

“I remember Al en lamenting in 1975,” I said, “that he hoped Zodiac would write a letter while he was at Atascadero to prove he wasn’t Zodiac. If

a confederate was writing the letters for him, why wouldn’t he do so? The results of that DNA test is something I didn’t see coming.” I looked at my

phone. From 1986 through 1991 I had gotten a steady stream of breathing and hang-up cal s. They had stopped with Al en’s death. I almost missed

them.

Sunday, February 16, 1997

“I spoke with Inspector Repetto,” I told Bawart.

“I know him,” Bawart said. “Vince runs his own private security outfit. They had him assigned to this thing after Deasy. Deasy was handling it for

the longest time out of the Pawn Detail. Then they turned it over to this Vince. Of course, he had his other cases to work within SFPD.”

“SFPD got DNA results two days ago.” I said. “And it came up it could be Al en. But by the time they got back to me—less than an hour, they had

gotten a second report that said the sample didn’t match Zodiac. Can you think of anyone who might have written the letters for Al en?”

“You know, we even compared Cheney’s handwriting,” said Bawart. “And Sandy Panzarel a and Ron Al en, a pretty straitlaced guy.”

“Robert Emmett was teaching school in Germany when the letters stopped. I’m thinking they might want to test his DNA.”

“This is something that Conway had pressed for before he retired,” said Bawart. “As for the samples on Al en, I don’t know where San Francisco

would have gotten them. I have the Val ejo coroner holding that stuff and he’s supposed to notify me if and when they get a request from San

Francisco. I haven’t heard anything. Maybe Al en had his dog licking his stamps. . . .”

“No, it was human DNA,” I said. I mentioned Andrew Todd Walker,19 the third important suspect in the case.

“I don’t dislike Walker,” said Bawart. “I just don’t think there’s enough definitive information on him to make it real y viable. These guys [a Naval

Intel igence officer and two CHP officers] pursue it as a hobby and that’s wonderful. They apparently have gone to the expense of stealing some of

his silverware. They paid for a DNA check, at least they told me they did. They have Walker’s DNA. You know, I’l bet you Walker and I bet you this

guy that Harvey Hines likes—I bet you both of them, just to get everything off their backs, would submit to a DNA test.”

“Wel , sure. I sat down with Morril in the seventies. He studied some of Leigh’s printing I got from Ace Hardware. It’s looks fine—the three-stroke

k, al the rest. If they’re going to run a genetic test, then they should at least do al of the suspects.”

“I just wish that back in ’71-’72 Toschi and Armstrong would have fol owed up further. I wish they’d searched the home. I talked to Prouty, who was

a handwriting analyst who worked at DOJ that worked under Morril . And Prouty said he was losing it toward the end. I looked at that [desktop

printing] stuff and I couldn’t make it [as Zodiac writing]. He died shortly after his retirement. I’m not sure Repetto or Adkins have ever viewed any of

my reports . . . but nobody’s pounding on their door. Stine’s family isn’t there every day saying what are you doing about the death of my husband,

son, or whatever. And the same thing happens in Val ejo. The Ferrin family’s not pounding on the door. It’s the old adage—the squeaky wheel gets

the oil. I don’t blame Vince at al . He’s probably got a half-dozen cases where people are pounding on his door.”

Al in al it had been a stunning development. Lieutenant Tom Bruton, SFPD homicide investigator, cal ed me. He had inherited the Zodiac case,

an heirloom passed down from generation to generation. Bruton wondered if I could provide some originals of the missing letters.

“Wel , what do you have missing?” I asked.

“The three-part-cipher letter,” he replied. That would have been the first Zodiac letter San Francisco had received.

“I have FBI reproductions of that. Would that do?”

“No. We thought maybe the original had been passed on to you. Kathleen Johns said that she received a second Zodiac Hal oween card and

mailed it on to you. Do you have that?”

“No. She means Paul Avery. However, you’re welcome to anything I have. I want to see this thing solved.” We spoke for a while longer, and then I

thought to ask a favor of my own. “I’ve been thinking about that DNA test done on Al en and I have two questions.”

“Go ahead.”

“First, where did they get a sample of Al en’s genetic material? He was buried in 1992.”

“We got it from the Val ejo coroner. They kept a sample of brain fluid or a brain fragment that they’d kept refrigerated.”

“That clears that up.”

“And the second point?”

“Which letter did they test?” I had in mind one of the early letters that contained squares of Paul Stine’s shirt. That bloodstained swatch would

authenticate the sender as Zodiac.

“We used the 1978 letter,” he said.

“The forgery?”

Once, I had believed in that letter. But in 1978 one thing had troubled me. “Excluding Zodiac’s greeting cards, desktop, and car door, his

handprinted communications have al been written on 7½-inch-by-10-inch bond in letter-sized envelopes. The 1978 letter was on 8½-inch-by- 11-

inch bond in a legal-sized envelope.” I knew now that not only was the 1978 letter a fake, but the SFPD knew it.

“What are the chances of a second test using one of the older letters?” I asked.

Bruton said nothing.

I cal ed Toschi. He asked incredulously why they didn’t test a letter that contained a swatch of Stine’s shirt. “Since they wanted to know if I had any

original letters,” I said, “I suspect they’ve either misplaced some or they’ve been stolen. The truth is, there’s not enough DNA on the remaining

letters for them to evaluate. They had tested for saliva in 1969-71 and found none. Only the 1978 fake had enough cel s for a test.” The SFPD later

prepared a chart of available Zodiac DNA:

“Zodiac letters and envelopes for 10/13/69, ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 11/8/69 Card: ‘Sorry I haven’t written’

Pen dripping, ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 12/20/69, Contained piece of cloth from Stine’s shirt (per keel),

ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 4/20/70 ‘My name is . . . ’ (Cipher), ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW

CELLS. 4/28/70, Card: (Sorry to hear . . . ) ‘Blast . . . Buttons . . . ’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS. 6/26/70 Handwritten

note & map: ‘I shot a man with a .38 . . . ’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—FEW CELLS.”

The lab found some cel s in these communications:

“Handwritten note: 7/24/70 ‘Woman & baby in car . . . ’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—CELLS FOUND. 7/26/70 ’I wil torture my

13 slaves waiting in paradice,’ ENVELOPE PROCESSED FOR DNA—CELLS FOUND. 1/29/74 ‘saw the Exorcist,’ ENVELOPE

PROCESSED FOR DNA—CELLS FOUND.”

Among the lost and unprocessed by the lab were these:

The 11/9/69 handwritten note: “This is the Zodiac Speaking,—LOCATION OF ENVELOPE UNK.” Also apparently missing were the original

three letters and ciphers of 7/31/69, the letter of 8/7/69, the 10/27/70 Hal oween Card, the 3/13/71 “Blue Meanies” letter to Times, the 3/22/71

postcard, “Sought Victim 12,” the 5/8/74 note signed “a citizen” and the 7/8/74 “Red Phantom” letter.

The report concluded with the tested letter: “4/24/78 Handwritten note ‘that city pig Toschi . . . ’ DNA SAMPLE OBTAINED/ NOT AUTHENTIC

ZODIAC LETTER.”

Arthur Leigh Al en had not been ruled out as the Zodiac after al . Soon after Zodiac returned from the grave.

36

zodiac III

Sunday, March 16, 1997

After Zodiac II, no one ever expected Zodiac’s murders to be emulated again. A Zodiac copycat had been horrific—a third Zodiac, inconceivable.

But for a third time the kil er’s undying persona reached out to bring death, this time some three thousand miles away. Kobe, a wel -to-do suburb

270 miles west of Tokyo. Kobe lay complacent in its relative safety, almost as murder-free as the rest of Japan. Hammer attacks against two girls

in the neighborhood on February 10 had rocked the community from its slumber. Today, Ayaka Yamashita, a ten-year-old, was bludgeoned and

kil ed by stab wounds to the head. Less than an hour later, a nine-year-old was stabbed and nearly bled to death.

Saturday, May 24, 1997

On a stormy morning, rain beaded on a plastic bag left at the green iron front gate of Kobe’s Tomogaoka Junior High. Though a light fog had

formed on the underside of the bag nearest the pavement, a human head was visible inside. A pitiful lock of black hair splayed and fanned out

against the plastic. A schoolboy’s clouded face peered out. Only moments before, neighbors had glimpsed a stout man staggering under the

weight of two black garbage bags as he rushed down a narrow street. “He was about forty years old,” they told police summoned to the junior high.

The victim’s head had been severed at the jawline with a hacksaw and sharp knife. The kil er had gouged his eyes out and stuffed a message in his

mouth. Written in red ink, the words ran with rain. Zodiac’s crossed-circle symbol was starkly legible. The kil er was strong and had used only his

right hand to strangle the boy. A search for the rest of the body began. The corpse, discovered in the wooded area of a fenced-in television

transmission station, had been undressed, then redressed. The victim was Jun Hase, a mental y chal enged eleven-year-old last seen three days

ago. Just after lunchtime, he had set out to visit his grandfather. Now neighbors recal ed a suspicious vehicle had been parked near the boy’s

home.

“JAPAN KILLER MAY IMITATE ‘ZODIAC’” read the Associated Press headline. “Note on beheaded boy similar to those of infamous Bay Area

murderer decades ago . . . a cross-like symbol found on notes left by the Kobe Kil er.” The murder and contents of the kil er’s message shocked the

Japanese people as no crime in memory. Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto pleaded with police to capture the kil er as soon as possible. “So this

is the beginning of the game,” read the letter. “I desperately want to see people die. Nothing makes me more excited than kil ing. Stupid police,

stop me if you can. It’s great fun for me to kil people.”

The message was hardly more than a rephrasing of Zodiac’s: “I like kil ing people because it is so much fun. It is more fun than kil ing wild game

in the forest. . . .” Several English words in the communication had apparently been misspel ed on purpose. A black-bound translation of my book

on the Zodiac slayings had been published in Japan two years earlier. Perhaps the kil er had identified with Zodiac’s obsession with the Mikado.

I heard banging at my front gate. A team of newsmen from Japan International Network were there to speak with me. Masahiro Kimura offered

plane tickets to me. “We want you to come to Japan to look over the crime scene.” Though I had lived in Tokyo for six years, I saw no way I could

help. Instead we drove to Julius Kahn Playground, the last place Zodiac had been seen. Kimura showed me copies of the letters. We ended the

day riding in a taxi along the same route as Stine had taken, an unsettling trip for the Yel ow Cab driver who was eavesdropping. Kimura said

neighborhood watches in Kobe had been organized.

In Japan hundreds of police cordoned off the school site. Teachers stationed stress-guidance counselors at local schools and children left for

school with electronic alarms inside their backpacks. The kil er had threatened to take revenge on the “compulsory education system.” The tragedy

in Japan brought back horrible memories of how armed guards had been stationed on Bay Area school buses when Zodiac had threatened:

“School children make nice targets, I think I shal wipe out a school bus some morning. Just shoot out the front tire & then pick off the kiddies

as they come bouncing out.”

Thursday, June 5, 1997

The Japanese Zodiac’s rambling, partial y incoherent 1,400-word letter was published. In handwriting that matched the message stuffed inside

the head, Zodiac I I took responsibility for the schoolboy’s murder. He threatened to kil “vegetables,” a word police took to be the writer’s

disparaging term for people. “From now on, if you misread my name or spoil my mood I wil kil three vegetables a week,” he wrote. The original

Zodiac had threatened to kil if he did not see his name in the papers. “If you think I can only kil children you are greatly mistaken.” It was signed

Seito Sakakibara [Apostle Sake Devil Rose]. Zodiac II claimed this was his real name.

Like Zodiac, Devil Rose had presented a name by which he wanted to be known. Like Zodiac, it infuriated him when the press misinterpreted his

words. They had taken “oni-bara” (“devil’s rose”) on the note as a coded message. Amateur sleuths also noted a chil ing connection between the

beheaded child, Zodiac, and The Exorcist. In January 1974, Zodiac had mentioned the wildly popular movie. Nine years later Wil iam Petter Blatty,

author-producer of The Exorcist, wrote a sequel, Legion. In uncorrected proofs, Blatty named the vil ain Zodiac. In a film, Exorcist III, he was cal ed the “Gemini Kil er.” Gemini decapitated a twelve-year-old boy just as the Tomogaoka Junior High kil er had.

Neighbors in Kobe noticed that a local fifteen-year-old boy had recently turned “a bit gloomy.” The physical y smal ninth-grade student, eldest of

three sons in a middle-class family, was kil ing and mutilating pigeons and cats in the neighborhood. The boy had beaten a friend for tel ing on him

to schoolmates. The same classmates tipped police he kil ed two kittens.

Saturday, June 28, 1997

Police raided the boy’s home, seizing horror videos, a knife, and “a book about the San Francisco kil ings” in his room. In his journal the youth

wrote of a god, “Bamoidooki,” and cal ed his attacks “sacred experiments.” They dredged a hacksaw from a close-by pond and arrested him for

beheading his neighbor and classmate, Jun Hase. He confessed he had also bludgeoned a ten-year-old and attacked three other girls, two with a

hammer the previous February and March. Under Japanese law the boy was not identified because of his age. Convicted on October 18 of attacks

on al five children (two of whom died), he was sentenced to a juvenile prison to be treated for mental il ness until he turned twenty-six.

Sunday, October 19, 1997

They finally located Stine’s lost bloody shirt in the Bryant Street property room. It had been checked out, listed as a miscel aneous item, and

abandoned in a cardboard box in the official coroner’s office—a blunder probably indicative of past performance. The SFPD had recently tossed

out evidence in the Charles Ng serial kil ings. They thought the case had been completed, but after decades Ng was just coming to trial. Bawart

feared the San Francisco investigation of the Stine murder had been “very sloppy.” “For instance,” he told me, “the names of the fire crew [at Cherry

and Washington] were not taken to eliminate them as donors to the bloody print.” Toschi reassured me, “The cab had already been taken away by

the time the fire crew arrived.”

37

arthur leigh allen

Sunday, October 11, 1998

The first words out of Toschi’s mouth were bitter as ashes: “I got up this morning and the first thing I realized was that it’s been thirty years since it al began.” San Francisco celebrated Fleet Week. Jets buzzed downtown skyscrapers. Outside the Golden Gate, a Navy plane, guided by an

angled crossed circle—a huge Zodiac symbol—coasted featherlike onto a carrier’s deck. Frustrated detectives from San Francisco, Val ejo, Napa

County, and Solano County had gathered, possibly for the final time, to discuss Zodiac. The last of the original Zodiac trackers, Ken Narlow, had

retired in 1987. “I have a place on the coast where I attack the salmon and abalone,” he said. “I needed something to occupy my time besides

golfing and fishing so I took the job of transportation director for our local Catholic high school.” And Zodiac? “I’d like to think that if we had some of

the technology in those days that we have today, we’d be a lot closer to this guy,”

“The old Zodiac—that thing wil never die,” said another. When Toschi spoke to Avery, Avery said, “That’s history, that’s al in the past, Dave.”

“That kinda saddened me a bit,” Toschi told me, “because for me it was the case of a career.”

Sunday, August 29, 1999

“It always surprised me that Ken Narlow knew hardly anything about Al en,” Tom Voigt, who ran a Web page on Zodiac, told me. “I brought him

the Bawart Report on the reasons why Al en is the Zodiac and copies of Mulanax’s report. We went over to his house and he started reading it. He

was not impressed with how the report looked—the first thing he said was, ‘It’s not on official letterhead, but the content makes up for the way it’s

presented.’ He read a bit more. He turned red, and was swearing quite a bit by the time he finished. He was very angry. ‘If even a couple of these

things are true,’ he said, ‘then Al en’s the Zodiac!’

“Narlow was upset because he hadn’t known anything about this when it was going on. He had been invited to the search in 1972, but couldn’t go

because he had a hernia operation. He was relying on Mulanax, Armstrong, and Toschi to clue him in. He’s real y angry because he’s reading al

this for the first time and knew nothing of the facts in the report. At that point he started trying to track down Bil Armstrong. He was tough to find, but

Narlow eventual y talked to him. They had a long conversation. Armstrong had put it al behind him. When Armstrong quit, he real y quit. He didn’t

realize that Al en had ever been searched again. He didn’t know that Al en had died. Basical y, it was just like he was living in a cave.”

“As far as I could tel ,” Voigt told me, “the Val ejo police had put al their Zodiac records on microfilm and destroyed the originals. Mel Nicolai told

me—we talked in May—he told me they placed Al en in Riverside and they know for a fact he was there. He wasn’t a student and he didn’t work

there. At the time Bates was murdered he was a schoolteacher at Val ey Springs Elementary School in Calaveras County, and every weekend

Al en would go to Riverside. Drive al the way down to Riverside because he was a member of this racing club.”

Tuesday, October 19, 1999

“I decided last week I was going to retire,” Toschi told me. “I wasn’t feeling too good—I was kind of dragging. I was working an average of ten

hours a day. I’m sixty-eight now. I’m stil doing a little security and body-guard work at Temple Emmanuel since around 1987. I was doing a lot of

things and it was beginning to take its tol . I’m going to do a little P.I. work. I’ve had my license since ’86. You’ve got to have your weapon, state

firearms certificate, a book test. Because of my background they’l waive the firing test. ‘I think you stil know how to shoot,’ they said. I had my

‘CCW,’ carrying concealed weapon, from the chief, which made me legal.”

As I spoke with Toschi, it had occurred to me I had interviewed many of the witnesses the police had not, seen files long since destroyed. I knew

facts they did not. Perhaps the case against Arthur Leigh Al en could stil be made. I tried out some of the new intel igence on Toschi.

“Did you know,” I asked him, “that Al en had his trailer repaneled just before you searched it in 1972? Who knows what was hidden in those

wal s? He had another trailer by Bodega Bay. No wonder you didn’t find anything. Then Zodiac signed his murder of the San Francisco cabbie.”

“How is that?” asked Toschi.

“Stine, undeniably a Zodiac victim, did not fit the pattern of attacks against couples, though he qualified by being a student. He may have been

chosen for another reason. Stine did not die at a water-related site, though his original destination had been Third Avenue and Lake. After Al en

told Spinel i he was going to San Francisco to kil a taxi driver he chose a specific cabbie and specific destination. Paul Stine’s middle name was

‘Lee,’ and his birthday, December 18, the same as Leigh Al en’s. Yel ow Cab dispatcher LeRoy Sweet gave Stine his last scheduled trip

destination at 9:45 P.M.—to 500 Ninth Avenue, Apartment #1—an apartment complex, the Allen Arms. Tom Voigt pointed that out to me. Zodiac

had given us his first name, ‘Lee,’ his birth date, ‘December 18,’ and his last name, ‘Al en.’20 But how Zodiac knew Stine’s birth date and middle

name and how he snared that specific cab, I can’t imagine. Did this mean he knew Stine? Additional y an ‘Arthur Al en, student, ’ was renting an

unfurnished apartment at 320 2nd Avenue, only four and a half blocks from the murder site.”

Stine began pushing his hack at 8:45 P.M., his only completed fare—from Pier 64 to the Air Terminal. His incomplete way-bil read Washington

and Maple Streets in Presidio Heights. “He never arrived at the 9th Avenue location,” said Sweet. “At 9:58 P.M. I assigned the ‘no-go’ dispatch to

another cab.” Responding officers at Washington and Cherry discovered the cab meter stil running, indicating Stine had picked up a fare en route.

At exactly 10:46 P.M. the meter read $6.28.”21 That enabled Armstrong and Toschi to backtrack to where Zodiac had gotten into the cab—Geary

and Mason. Witnesses observed Zodiac wiping down the left-side doors of the cab prior to his escaping, leading Toschi to believe that this was the

side from which he entered downtown.

Stine, who drove a motorcycle, had been sel ing insurance to pay his way through SF State. Could he have previously met Zodiac as an

insurance client or at a motorcycle club? Zodiac shot Stine from the backseat,then entered the right front door. Three teenaged witnesses across

the street observed Stine being “jostled” by Zodiac who was “seated in the right front seat at the time.” Stine general y kept his cab fares and tip

money in his pocket and would separate it at the end of his shift. His wife, Claudia, said he had only $3 to $4 of his own money when he left home

for work. Zodiac took Stine’s wal et (where he kept al his registration papers) and some keys to the cab. Was Zodiac looking for something that

would link him to his victim?

“If Stine was taking his cab out to the Richmond [District],” theorized Toschi, “Zodiac may have flagged him down and said, ‘I want to go to

Washington and Maple.’ Stine might have said, ‘That’s almost in the same area. I can do two at once. I can drop you off and get over to Ninth

Avenue in five minutes. I’ve got a guy jumping in the front seat. I can take you and handle the other one. I get two fares for one.’” Toschi had

suspected Al en was left-handed, but never been able to prove it.

“In his last wil ,” I said, “Leigh requested that a Clear Lake friend, Mark, receive ‘my left-handed scissors and al my archery equipment.’ So, he

was ambidextrous after al , as you suspected. Eyewitnesses confirmed that Leigh wore unique Wing Walker shoes the same size as Zodiac’s. He

fits Zodiac’s physical description in every way—six-foot height and over two hundred and thirty pounds. The lumbering walk. Leigh, by his own

words, placed himself at the Berryessa and Riverside scenes. He had the technical knowledge to write codes, diagram and build bombs, and the

skil to shoot various weapons. He and Zodiac share the same birthday. He misspel ed the same words as Zodiac on his menu cards. And what

about Don Cheney? When he took a lie detector test, he passed. His comments in 1971 about Al en saying he wanted to hunt people and cal

himself the Zodiac were true.”

“That doesn’t surprise me at al ,” said Toschi.

“Now Phil Tucker says Al en told him the same things. Leigh confessed he was Zodiac to a variety of people—a Sonoma Auto Parts employee;

Spinel i, of course. Police referred to the criminal as ‘Zodiac.’ However, Zodiac referred to himself as ‘ The Zodiac.’ Al en, in his taped interviews

with television crews, always said ‘ The Zodiac.’ On his analyst’s tapes Al en reportedly sobbed and admitted he was ‘ The Zodiac.’ He claimed he

spoke for Zodiac, and explained the origin of the Zodiac ciphers as having originated at Atascadero.”

“How do you discount remarks like that?” said Toschi. “Al en was a very sick, disturbed, and dangerous man—a frightening person. It was

unfortunate that the Val ejo P.D. didn’t charge him even though they knew he was Zodiac. It would have put closure on the darn thing. It would have

brought relief to those who survived. And made a lot of peace officers happy. The case is closed. That’s al I wanted to do was close the case. Tap

him on the shoulder and say, ‘Let me advise you of your Miranda rights,’ and then handcuff him. To this day, I stil say Leigh Al en was ‘my man.’

Guys would tease me and I’d say, ‘I think the case wil be solved someday.’ I think it is solved. If you’re comfortable on what you’ve done on this one,

then I would go with it.”

Could I find eyewitnesses placing Al en at the scene of the murders? Only two Zodiac crimes offered that potential. I began to re-examine them in

depth, including al that I had recently learned. I commenced with the stabbings at Lake Berryessa on September 27, 1969, on a lovely Saturday

afternoon.

38

the city at the bottom of the lake

As Bryan Hartnell and Cecelia Shepard had over thirty years earlier, I went by way of Pope Val ey, rushing past old stone wineries and hot

springs until I reached the twisting shoreline and inlets of Lake Berryessa. At this tree-shaded resort east of Napa, Zodiac had become Count

Zaroff at his hunt—stalking his victims in the twilight. Riverside had a connection to this attack too. After two years at Angwin Col ege, Cecelia was

transferring to U.C. Riverside to study music. She had just driven up from San Bernardino with her friend Dalora Lee. They planned to drive back

the next day. I got a permit from Park Headquarters and turned left to drive two miles along the meandering shoreline of oak-studded groves and

coves. Twenty-five miles long, several miles wide, Berryessa was man-made. It had been created with the construction of Monticel o Dam in 1957.

In September the surface of the clear blue lake is warm. Two hundred and seventy-five feet below the temperature plunges to a frigid 40 degrees.

At the bottom schools of black bass swarm among the ruins of a town sacrificed for the dam. Somewhere in those submerged houses, where only

a scuba diver could go, Zodiac might have hidden trophies.

The clearing where Bryan and Cecelia had been attacked by Zodiac on September 27, 1969, lay 510 yards from the parking lot on a promontory

of the lake’s west shoreline. Behind burbled Smittle Creek. Beyond, sun flashed off placid water near an island. The wind lifted dust, blowing it

among the groves and stretch of deserted shoreline. Shrubbery covering the bank isolated it even more. A sign nailed to an oak read: “Dangerous

Area—no open fires or firearms.” I heard, as Zodiac must have, the stil ness of the forest, the wind sweeping solemnly across stretches of deserted

lake, and the bite of Wing Walker boots in the sand. The kil er had imprinted deep tracks al around the Karmann Ghia. Aerial police photos shot

from a fixed wing aircraft eerily marked his path, each step covered over with a little cardboard box. As I studied the secluded lake, I realized I had

underestimated how few people were visiting Lake Berryessa that terrible day. There had been virtual y no one around. Zodiac had to have been

seen without his hood.

Here’s who was at the lake: Bryan Hartnel and Cecelia Shepard (the victims), Park Rangers Dennis Land and Sergeant Wil iam White (both in a

patrol car three miles away when the cal came in), Ronald Henry Fong of San Francisco and his son on the lake fishing (who saw the couple and

rowed for help), Archie and Beth White at Rancho Monticel o (who arrived at the crime scene with White and Fong by boat, Land drove to scene

from park Headquarters), Cindy, a waitress, a patron at Moskowite Corners, and a father and two young boys across the lake shooting BB-guns.

They were al removed from the scene. At the scene were Dr. Clifton Rayfield and his son, David, three PUC col ege girls, and a stocky man who

walked oddly.

Original y I had discounted a description of a heavyset man at the lake because he had dark hair and Zodiac did not. That had been reinforced

two weeks later when Officer Fouke described Zodiac as blondish, balding, and “graying in back.” An anonymous typewritten letter 22 on Eaton

bond (like the Zodiac letters) sent to the Chronicle and bearing an FDR stamp read:

“Dear Sir: With the popularity of hair pieces today it would be a logical masquerade to remove whatever was the usual hair style if the

Zodiac kil er intended to strike. It would be normal to resume the hairstyle he usual y appeared in for daily appearances. To il ustrate my point, I

have cut the hair styling from the picture of the victim [Cecelia Shepard], and superimposed it on the composite. . . . Anything to help. I would as

soon remain anonymous.”

Had Zodiac as far back as 1970 been tel ing us (as he mentioned a Zodiac watch) that he had worn a wig at Berryessa? Now I recal ed Hartnel

had gotten a sense of that before he was stabbed. “I remember a kind of greasy forehead,” he told me. “The attacker had sweaty dark brown hair—

which showed through dark glasses covering eyelets in the hood. And it’s not impossible the guy was wearing a wig.” If Zodiac had been the dark-

haired man, then eyewitnesses had seen him without his hood, had observed events preceding the crime.

Three col ege seniors, al twenty-one years old, saw Zodiac unmasked. They attended the same col ege as Bryan and Cecelia—Pacific Union

Col ege at Angwin. The Seventh-day Adventist campus perched loftily atop an extinct volcano, Mt. Howel , about eight miles from St. Helena. They

had traveled the same route as Bryan and Cecelia, coming into Berryessa from Angwin via Pope Val ey and Knox Val ey Road. At 2:55 P.M., they

pul ed into a parking spot two miles north of the A&W at Sugar Loaf. Before they could exit, another car, a Chevrolet, “silver or ice-blue in color,” a

1966 two-door, ful -size sedan, slid alongside. As the driver pul ed past them, they saw the auto’s California plates. The stranger then backed up

until his rear bumper was paral el and off to the side of their car. Zodiac had performed a similar maneuver at Blue Rock Springs. The man sat

there, his head down as if reading. The girls got the impression he wasn’t.

“We had pul ed in at a gas station and this man pul ed up beside us,” Lorna,23 one of the students, told me. “He was scooted way down, his eyes

just kind of looking over at us—watching us. And he fol owed us to the parking place back maybe a hundred feet where we parked and walked

down to the water’s edge.” At 3:00 P.M. the trio had walked to the lake shore and settled under the oak-studded cover. Half an hour later, they were

in their swimsuits sunbathing when they noticed the stranger again—smoking cigarettes and watching them. Twenty minutes later he was stil there,

his T-shirt hanging out at the rear of his trousers.

“And within a few minutes he was in the trees watching us,” said Lorna. “My two girlfriends didn’t pay any attention. ‘I’m not going to look at him,’

they said. ‘He’s just a creep.’ But I watched him a lot, and over a period of almost an hour he watched us from various trees. He was between us

and the car so we couldn’t leave. He was not distinctive, just an average, normal plain person, other than he gave us the creeps. And he obviously

fol owed us and obviously watched us. I remember his face as being square, al sides symmetrical. I don’t remember him at al being pudgy, just

compact . . . stocky, solid. The minute you mentioned the suspect was a swimmer, that felt so right about his body type. I wouldn’t say he had a limp,

but he favored one leg when he walked. He was clean-cut, nice-looking, and wearing dark-blue pants, pleated like suit pants, and a black

sweatshirt with short sleeves, knitted at the ends.” Fouke had seen Zodiac wearing brown pleated pants.

The women estimated the man to be six feet to six feet two inches tal and between 200 and 230 pounds. Hartnel thought Zodiac weighed

between 225 and 250 pounds. “I don’t know how tal Zodiac was,” he told me, “maybe . . . six feet, somewhere in there. I’m a pretty poor judge of

height because of my own height. . . . He was a sloppy dresser.” Al en, then thirty-five, stood six feet and weighed between 200 and 230 pounds. “I

would say older than thirty-five—middle thirties,” Lorna said. “He was clean-cut and had hair that was too perfect.”

“You mentioned his shirttail was hanging out,” I said, “and I realized how inconsistent that was with neatly parted hair.”

“I know,” Lorna replied, “and it was exactly parted and combed and probably was a wig in such a breezy place. Other than in the gas station, I

don’t remember any other people up there. I think the only reason we were safe is that we faced a marina. There was no activity, but there were

mobile homes and boats at least parked there. We felt like there were people around, but I don’t think we saw people. There were none on the

beach. We were the only ones—none on the parking area. None on the road.”

At 3:50 P.M., the women looked up. The stranger was gone. When they didn’t see him again, they waited almost forty minutes to be sure it was

safe. “At one point he disappeared and at that point we made a run for the car,” Lorna told me. “When we got to the car, Bryan and Cece’s car was

parked behind ours. They were directly around the corner from us probably within three hundred yards. Later we were in one little cove and they

were right around the corner. We didn’t know it at the time, but their car was parked right by ours. Cecelia and I were maybe four or five rooms

apart [at PUC] on the same dorm floor. She was our floor monitor. We weren’t close friends but I knew her wel . She was a singer and I worked in

that department. She was incredible and the tiniest, most fragile person.”

When Ken Narlow and Deputy Land later asked the women to provide details, they were “very sure and positive of what they had seen.” “Al three

said they could identify the man if they saw him again,” said Narlow. “However, only [Lorna, the principal witness] felt confident enough to work with

an Ident-a-kit artist. This particular sketch was drawn with the assistance of the three young girls who had seen this particular individual in a car

acting suspiciously, but this wasn’t near the scene of the crime. To the best of my recol ection, it was probably four or five hours prior to the actual

crime.”

“It was a terrifying experience for me,” Lorna said. “At Cece’s funeral, the FBI had me outside with them thinking he might show up. When I was

interviewed by the police and the FBI, it was with the understanding no one ever knew who I was. It was probably irrational, but I had a lot of fear

about this man knowing who I was and trying to find me. I think at the time, because my description was so different, the police had a tendency to

discount what I had to say. It’s so coincidental that we were right there and this happened right there. What are the chances someone else would

have fol owed us that day?”

Amazingly, after March 1971, before Leigh Al en became a suspect, no policeman ever spoke with Lorna or showed her photos of suspects.

Thirty-one years later she was stil frightened. I provided her with photos of Leigh Al en. After first consulting with the Napa P.D., she insisted on

consulting her attorney before giving me her evaluation. I waited.

Moskowite Corners General Store stood across from Pearce’s Chevron Service near the lake. At noon the day of the stabbings, a round-faced

man rushed into the cafe and asked anxiously for directions on the “fastest way out of the area.” A patron eating lunch found him suspicious,

fol owed him out, and watched him drive off in an ice-blue Chevy. He matched Lorna’s description of the man watching her and her friends

sunbathing. In 1974 the patron spoke with police and “tentatively” identified a middle-aged suspect as the man leaving the cafe. Within two weeks,

the witness was kil ed in an explosion.

“We have better witnesses,” Narlow had told me, “people who had seen the suspect closer to the scene of the crime both geographical y and

time-wise than that sketch there, but it could easily have been the guy. We have evidence that about a quarter mile down the road, about forty-five

minutes earlier, Zodiac was seen without his mask by a doctor and his young son.” Dr. Clifton Rayfield, an ophthalmologist, and his son, David, had

parked their car four-fifths of a mile further up the road from Hartnel ’s Karmann Ghia and toward Oak Shores Park and Rancho Monticel o.

“Rayfield reported to me,” continued Narlow, “that at approximately 6:30 P.M. he and his son had parked their vehicle north of Park Headquarters . .

. in the general area of the crime scene and walked down toward the beach. While en route Rayfield observed a WMA described as five feet ten

inches, heavy build, wearing dark trousers and a long-sleeved dark shirt with red coloring.”

David Rayfield had seen Zodiac unmasked. Thirty-two years had passed since anyone had asked him about the man he had seen. I tracked him

down.

“How many people would you say were up at the lake that day?” I began.

“There were like zero,” Rayfield said. “There was no one up there—it was real y desolate. I walked al around and was shooting my gun, a .22 with

a scope. That’s why my dad and I went to the lake, because I could shoot my gun and not be bothered, wouldn’t be scaring or hurting anyone. My

dad never saw him. He was fishing down at the lake. I saw Zodiac at a distance of about one hundred yards, so I wouldn’t be able to comment on

his face. He was walking along the hil side about halfway between the road and the lake. But I remember him as being a stockier person. He wasn’t

nimble when he was walking. And when he turned to walk away he wasn’t like a smooth, athletic person. To me he seemed a little overweight and

on the clumsier side. Not having fol owed the story or ever having been re-interviewed by the police, I didn’t realize Zodiac came upon us just before

he stabbed the young couple. I sort of assumed I saw him making his getaway. I’l tel you one thing, he didn’t like the fact I was carrying a gun. He

turns and looks at me and my gun (which with its scope was pretty intimidating) for probably five, six seconds, and then turned and went up the hil

up in a southerly direction. I said to myself, ‘That was funny. This guy wasn’t carrying a fishing pole. There’s no camping equipment. There’s no gun.

What’s he doing out here?’”

“What you’re tel ing me fits the prime suspect. Everybody remarked how he lumbered, how clumsy he was. The reason his friends thought this

was so interesting is that Arthur Leigh Al en was gorgeous in the water. When he’d go up to the diving board and waddle out, people would say,

‘Oh, my God, he’s so ungainly.’ The minute he was in the air or in the water he was fine. But on land everyone commented on how awkward he

was.”

“That’s what jumped out at me about the picture you sent of him walking. . . . He has the same body language of the guy I was watching from a

distance. While I’m not sure I was close enough to say that much about his face, this is the same-size guy that I saw. I remember thinking that guy is

not a smal guy. His body type matches what police said at that time—two hundred pounds or more. He was pretty big and built, but he didn’t move

like he was a real coordinated, smooth-walking guy. He didn’t move up the side of the hil easily.”

“I can’t understand with the limited number of witnesses who had seen Zodiac, the police didn’t come back and speak with you at every

opportunity,” I said.

“I can’t either,” said Rayfield. “It continues to shock me. I came to think what I saw at the lake wasn’t related or they would have been al over me.

They never came back or cal ed me. I said, ‘Jesus. What’s going on that they would never want to talk to me again? It must not have been the guy. It

must not have fit the scenario for them that he would have been there.’

“It’s funny you should mention the composite sketches. ’Cause I saw the sketches with the hair on them and I didn’t remember black hair, neatly

trimmed hair, on the man I saw.”

“What did you see?”

“I didn’t remember him having a ful head of hair. The suspect in the driver’s license you sent would have been only thirty-six at the time, so of

course he wouldn’t be bald.” Rayfield was tel ing me Zodiac was almost bald. Since he was wearing the same clothes as the man Lorna had seen,

it meant he had taken off his wig. “Leigh Al en was almost bald at that age,” I told him. “He shaved the sides of his head close.”

“Wow,” said Rayfield. “In retrospect, how could the man I saw not be Zodiac? I can’t believe the case was never solved and police had al those

leads.”

Zodiac had written, “I shal not tel you what my descise consists of when I kil .” Zodiac’s disguise consisted of hairpieces:

October 30, 1966—a false beard on a stocky man at Riverside Library.

February, 1969—“curly, wavy dark brown hair.”

July 4, 1969—“combed hair up in a kind of pompadour, short curly, light brown hair.” Second description: “light brown hair in a military crew

cut.”

September 27, 1969—three girls see stocky man wearing an obvious wig, “dark straight hair parted neatly.” Rayfield sees him soon after,

remarks he’s so young to be bald. Hartnel saw “dark brown sweaty hair” through the eyelets of Zodiac’s hood. “. . . it’s not impossible the guy

was wearing a wig.”

October 11, 1969—“reddish or blond crew cut” and “short, curly light brown hair in Military-type crew cut.” In the 1960s, crew-cut wigs were

available for military men with long hair who did not want to cut their hair short. Long hair was then fashionable.

“The kid had a .22 rifle,” Narlow summed up, “and Zodiac came down within one hundred yards of them across an inlet. The kid saw the guy over

there and he was wearing the blue windbreaker jacket. But evidently this wasn’t what he was looking for because it was a father-and-son deal. So

the kil er went a quarter mile up this road, went back up to the road, and evidently came down the road this way and saw this single car parked

here, and then pul ed in behind it. Rayfield and his son both stated that they had not observed a vehicle parked in the area of their car, and had only

noticed the subject at a distance of approximately one hundred yards. Rayfield did report that there was a man with two young boys in the area

shooting BB guns, but didn’t know whether or not they saw the subject.

“I think their time was off a little bit ’cause I think Rayfield actual y saw the Zodiac kil er just prior to him going south four-fifths of a mile to where

Shephard and Hartnel had their car parked. It sure looks like he stumbled on them and had not fol owed them. I’m convinced that Zodiac was just

stalking any singular parked cars along the route. And that’s why he stopped when he saw Rayfield’s car there. When he saw the father and son

and they saw him, he decided to go back up to his car. Then he drove down the road a little ways and saw the white Karmann Ghia. Then he came

down here and saw a boy and a girl laying on this blanket under this oak tree, and this is what his game was, to kil the boy and the girl. This is why

he struck here and not further up the road.”

When I talked with Bryan Hartnel in the 1970s he had already gone through considerable anguish trying to recal al he could about Zodiac.

“When Zodiac left he must have thought we were dead,” said Hartnel . “I was extremely fortunate to survive. I quit breathing! I just froze! What I

heard was him walk away in a non-hurried fashion. And then after that there’s a little dead spot I don’t remember. In fact I don’t think I went out, but

there is a slight haze in my memory. There was no way I could hear his car starting. It’s real y some distance to the road up there. You’re going to

get some white noise that may blur that out. But I remember starting to get untied and moving around. I had a ways to walk. It’s not impossible that

first time I blacked out or something. Al I had made it up to was the jeep trail when I saw a [pickup] coming. The toughest part was yet to go, but the

way I was going, I would have made it [to Knoxvil e Road].

“Now while I was in the hospital a couple of weeks,” he said, “it was basical y to confirm I was al right, and in fact was. The stab wounds I

received missed al the organs. Obviously they hit my lungs, and I needed some time for the lungs to heal up, and I had some scarring. But that’s

nothing. A surgeon deciding he was going to make seven or eight holes in my back couldn’t have done it better. The guy I probably liked least in the

whole mess was that psychiatrist Narlow got. He had an idea that I should do some hypnotism. That was such an abortion. I told him, ‘I don’t know if

I’m going to be able to do this. My church [Seventh-day Adventist] has kind of a taboo on those kind of things. I’m wil ing to give it a try, but I think it’s

going to take more than a slam-bam, thank you, ma’am, to get me to go under. I think I’m fairly suggestible, but I don’t think this is going to work.’ He

does his thing and I said, ‘I’m not under.’ ‘Don’t argue,’ he says, ‘just answer these questions,’ and had me run through it.

“One question he asked me answer was describe the arm. ‘Do you want to experience it or see it on a television screen?’ I’m looking and I’m

seeing a man with bare arms, but there was no question that guy was wearing a jacket. OK, I’m looking and I’m seeing bare arms. . . . ‘Tel me

about the bare arms.’ ‘Wel , they are fairly heavily haired.’ [Al en was not.] He thinks this is great shit. But the guy had a jacket on. I could be way out

of line and I was hypnotized and real y seeing it, but you know one of the early things I screwed them up on is that I had this guy as being real y fat. I

said either the guy was moderately heavy and wearing a windbreaker, or he was skinny and wearing a lined jacket . . . kind of a cotton poplin, crew

col ar, and gathered around the sleeves, ordinary garden-variety short jacket. How much he weighed depended on whether that was lined or

unlined. If I went through al that kind of cerebration over a jacket, I know he didn’t have bare arms.”

That evening I spoke to Toschi. After the stabbings, Zodiac had come down from the 440-foot elevation fast. A Val ejo police officer told me that

another policeman had ticketed Al en speeding down from Lake Berryessa the day of the stabbing. On the seat of his car lay a bloody knife. Leigh

caught the officer’s gaze and said, “I used that to kil a couple of chickens.”

“Remember that on September 27, 1969, Al en was supposed to be going to Lake Berryessa,” I said, “and had a bloody knife in his

possession?” I read Toschi part of an FBI report:

“Conway indicated to the FBI that ‘a surviving victim of the ZODIAC series of murders had positively identified ALLEN as the ZODIAC kil er.’

Lake Berryessa victim Bryan Hartnel thought Al en’s voice and build were compatible with Zodiac’s.”

“I was never told that,” said Toschi. “To this day I’ve never heard any detective tel me that.”

“First Hartnel went into Sonoma Auto Parts, to hear Al en’s voice,” George Bawart explained. “DOJ was working on it. This guy Jim Silver, the

investigator for the DOJ, had him go in, make a purchase, and have him listen to Al en’s voice.” Hartnel looked at him and told Silver, ‘He could

have been. There is nothing about what I saw or heard that would rule him out as the kil er. His physical size, mannerisms, and voice are the same

as the person who stabbed Cecelia and wounded me.’”

Zodiac’s voice to Hartnel was “some type of drawl, but not a Southern drawl . . . [it] sounded uneducated, moderate in sound, not high or low

pitched.” Others had heard Zodiac’s voice. Napa Officer David Slaight thought the “barely audible” cal er sounded in his “early twenties.” Val ejo

switchboard operator Nancy Slover heard an “even but consistent, soft but forceful” voice with no trace of accent. It sounded “mature, deepened

and became taunting toward the end.” Al these voices were Zodiac—were there several Zodiacs or did he have multiple personalities?

Friday, June 23, 2000

I continued to wait for Lorna, who was undergoing considerable anguish over the photos I had given her. Could Arthur Leigh Al en be placed on

the day of the murder at Lake Berryessa within yards of the crime scene at a destination he had announced to friends? Final y, at 10:00 A.M., Lorna

cal ed to give me her answer.

“When I looked at the older man,” she said, “my instant sort of response was fear by looking at his eyes, but I couldn’t say I recognized the face.

“When I look at the young version, in the picture in the 1950s, that is exactly the way I remember the man looking that we saw at Berryessa. Even

to the point that I never saw him ful y face on, but a little in profile, and that’s how the photo was taken. So if I had seen this photo back then I would

have said—absolutely!”

Thus, Leigh Al en, wearing a wig, could be placed at the crime scene the day of the stabbings. “I do not always look the same,” Zodiac had said.

He had spoken the truth.

“Leigh told me he was at Lake Berryessa the day of the murder, hanging around hunting for squirrels,” Leigh’s friend, Jim, told me. “He told me

he was there flat out. No question about it. And he had gone to an area of Berryessa with trees, but kind of open and remote. It wasn’t a high-

visibility area, so that nobody would have seen him up there in that area of Berryessa. He would have been al alone. He did say it was the same

day the kids were attacked. And he said that if anyone had seen him they would have seen he was off in a different area of the lake and had left

before before it happened.” He later wrote Jim that he recognized Hartnel when he came into the parts store and “disappeared in the back of the

store where cops were waiting. Hel , if I once got tired of al this crap and said I was the one, there’d be no way I could prove I wasn’t.”

Sunday, December 10, 2000

After leaving the Chronicle, Paul Avery wrote for the Sacramento Bee, then returned to San Francisco to report for the Examiner until his retirement in August 1994. For years he had suffered with emphysema and heart problems. Ironical y, the reporter had fal en il at the same time as

Leigh Al en. He often visited the M&M, a famous Mission Street newspaper watering hole, dragging his oxygen tank with him. “The image that I’l

keep forever,” Examiner Editor Phil Bronstein said, “is of Paul, police radio attached to one ear, cigarette in his hand, oxygen supply hooked up to

his nose, arm around my shoulder, sharing the scandalous details of the latest story he’d broken.” This morning on Orcas Island, Washington, Paul

had died at age sixty-six at the West Sound home of the grandfather of his wife, Margo St. James. He had died without unlocking the riddle of

Zodiac. But for many years the reporter had been divorced from his biggest story, and by 1980, when I visited him in Sacramento, he had forgotten

most of the details.

Harold Huffman died on June 19, 2001. “Leigh would write Harold from Atascadero,” Kay Huffman told me, “and include letters that were stamped

and addressed and ask Harold to mail them on. I never figured out why if he could mail out to Harold why he couldn’t mail out to other people. I

never saw the insides of them. Actual y, I found one while I was going through some of Harold’s stuff. Harold never forwarded it on. Whether he ever

sent the others on or not I have no idea. It sounds like something my husband might not have done. I never opened that letter. I figured if Harold

wasn’t going to forward it, it wasn’t something I wanted to see either.” In Harold’s opinion, the contents of those letters were harmless. One of the

unforwarded letters was a request for aviation charts and addressed to the Distribution Division (C-44), National Ocean Survey in Washington,

D.C.

“I get awful y lonely when I am ignored,” Zodiac had written. If “obsession” best described Zodiac’s hunters, “lonely” was a word that Zodiac had

made his own. In that loneliness, the shape of Zodiac’s crimes unfolded like fireworks in the copper-colored sky above Val ejo. The secret lay with

Darlene Ferrin on that long-ago July Fourth. Her murder held the secret of Zodiac’s identity. Zodiac had known Darlene, known her wel , and more

importantly, she had known him in his true identity and without the concealment of that hideous black veil.

39

unmasked

Saturday, December 30, 2000

“I spoke with Don Cheney,” Zodiac buff Tom Voigt told me. “Cheney, as you recal , had fingered Leigh Al en as Zodiac in 1971. He was up in

Washington when I suggested we meet. He was wil ing to drive down here to Portland to the Hood River, which is about an hour from me, but four

hours from him. We met at the Hood River Inn, which is right on the Columbia River. We had a whole section to ourselves. It was a beautiful view of

the Columbia and he sat facing it. He was very relaxed and a nice pleasant guy, probably six feet tal .”

“Was Leigh homosexual,” Voigt asked Cheney, “or did he have an interest in women? Was there ever a girl he real y liked?”

Cheney thought. “In the time that I knew Leigh,” he said, “there was only one female that Leigh ever mentioned and she was a waitress.”

“Was this in Val ejo?” Voigt asked.

“Yeah.”

“Where did she work?”

“At a pancake house. I don’t remember her name or anything, and it was the only time Leigh ever mentioned her. We went to an International

House of Pancakes, right around the corner from Leigh’s house. We had dinner there after a hunting trip in 1967. I was stil living in Concord then.

Leigh pointed out the waitress, a girl with brown hair. She was pretty and she was young. Leigh liked her.”

“If you saw a picture of that girl would you recognize her?” said Voigt, his interest up.

“Naw, it’s been too long,” Cheney told him.

“I don’t know if Al en ever went to Terry’s,” Voigt said with a laugh. “Al en liked IHOP, I don’t know about Terry’s. Why would you go to Terry’s when

you’ve got an IHOP just around the corner?”

Cheney told me the same thing. “The IHOP was close to the house there,” Cheney said, “a couple blocks away at the bottom of Fresno Street.

Leigh and I made a right turn on Tennessee. We were going someplace for an outing when we saw the girl there. Leigh indicated he was interested

in her. ‘What do you think of that waitress?’ he asked. ‘I think I might be able to make some headway with her.’ But nothing ever happened with it. It

was a girl of very similar appearance to Darlene Ferrin. She could have been the girl that he pointed out at the IHOP, but I couldn’t say from my

memory that it was the same girl. This happened in 1967.”

Cheney could have said that the waitress was Darlene and that the restaurant was Terry’s Waffle Shop at Magazine Street and Interstate 80.

That Darlene had waitressed at Terry’s from April 24, 1968, until her murder on July 4, 1969, was wel publicized. But I knew Cheney had told the

truth because of something he did not know.

After Darlene filed for divorce from her first husband, Jim Phil ips, she spent six months in Reno, making four round trips to maintain residency.

She returned to Val ejo in 1967 to work with her friend, Steven Kee, at the International House of Pancakes on Tennessee Street at the foot of

Fresno. Darlene had been the woman Leigh pointed out to Cheney. He had even gotten the year right. Dean Ferrin had been the cook at the IHOP

and eventual y he and Darlene were married and she began to work at Terry’s. “Why do I meet al the sick ones first?” she had written Dean from

Reno.

“Darlene and I first met in ’65 at the phone company in San Francisco,” said Bobbie Oxnam, Darlene’s friend and coworker at Terry’s. “Six girls

came into the phone company together. Three of us lived in an apartment house and three of the others lived in the residence quad just next door . .

. some strong ties built there. Whenever I would have some of the group up, Darlene always had the invitation to come over. And so a lot of times

when we talked, we were talking about the other girls. Unless she was real y down or real y depressed, Darlene seldom talked about her personal

problems. She had to be especial y down to burden you with her own problems.

“She worked at the phone company about nine months, then her and Jim, her first husband, took off to the Virgin Islands. Then when they got

back they got hold of Mel and I for a place to stay. They stayed with us two or three weeks. One of the reasons why we kicked them out of the

apartment was because Jim had a smal handgun and we didn’t want that. That’s when we told them to get out; otherwise they would have stayed

with us longer while she was looking for work.”

“Darlene’s first husband had a .22-caliber handgun while in Val ejo,” Sergeant Mulanax told me. “Because a .22-caliber semiautomatic had been

used in the two murders out on Lake Herman Road, I went looking for him. I picked him up in Santa Cruz [February 2, 1970] and checked it out

then.”

“Jim was into horoscopes,” continued Oxnam. “I was scared of him and he scared Darlene. This guy who brought her a silver purse and belt from

Mexico was down there while Jim was. I was always under the impression that Jim bought it and sent it up to her through this guy. I moved back to

Val ejo. By this time she and Jim had split and she was going with Dean. It was sweet. She’d buy twenty-five chocolate mints for Dean, put them

under her pil ow, and forget about them. She was always there to listen to you, but would make a statement every once in a while that she was

terrified of ‘this guy.’ She would never go into any sort of depth. If you questioned her she would clam up, but I know Darlene was afraid of someone.

She never verbalized precisely what made her afraid. He had something on her, but what he had I don’t know. I have a feeling it was connected with

the Virgin Islands, but that’s just a hunch. From some of Darlene’s conversations, Jim and her got into trouble while they were in the Virgin Islands

skin diving for shel s.” It was rumored they had seen a murder there.

In 1966 Dean Ferrin had moved to a back apartment of Vern’s Bar at 560 Wal ace Street. After he and Darlene married, she moved there too.

Their daughter, Deena Lynn, was born January 24, 1969. Just over a month before Deena’s birth, David Faraday and Betty Lou Jensen had been

shot out on remote Lake Herman Road. The next day Darlene told her coworker Bobbie Ramos, “This is scary. I knew the two kids who were kil ed

on Lake Herman Road. The girl more so. I’m not going up there again.” Darlene told her baby-sitter the same thing: “That was real y spooky. I knew

that girl who was kil ed on Lake Herman Road. I’m not going out there anymore.”

“It al started after her baby was born,” said Oxnam. “I mean, we talked about her fears a couple of times. Darlene was scared of somebody, had

been for quite some time . . . she would make a statement every once in a while that she was having trouble. I think a lot of us know the man she

was afraid of, but can’t place him. Darlene was the type of person who had a lot of friends and was friendly toward anyone. That was one of the

problems between her and Jim. Every week there was somebody new, a new friend. They’d be her friend for a week, but after that wouldn’t be the

topic of our conversation. People were her whole interest in life. She real y enjoyed mixing and just being around people.”

“What about this the guy in a white Chevy who had been bothering her at Terry’s?” I asked. “According to one of Darlene’s baby-sitters, she had

complained of a stocky man coming to the restaurant early in the morning to talk to her.”

“Yeah, that’s true,” Oxnam said, then added surprisingly, “You know, in al the years since her murder the police never talked to me.”

In February and March 1969, Darlene’s baby-sitter, Karen, observed a man in a white car staking out their ground-floor apartment. Around 10:00

P.M. the man lit a cigarette or momentarily turned on the interior light, and she got a glimpse of his face: “He was heavyset, middle-aged, and very

round-faced,” Karen said. “His hair had a curl to it. I told Darlene about it when she got home. ‘I guess he’s back checking up on me again,’ Darlene

told me. ‘I heard he was back from out of state. He doesn’t want anyone to know what I saw him do. I saw him murder someone.’ Dee [Darlene’s

nickname] sometime during this conversation mentioned the man’s name, and that first name was very short, three or four letters. His second name

was just slightly longer. A common name. Dee appeared to be genuinely frightened of this individual, and mentioned that he had been checking up

on her at Terry’s Restaurant. . . .” Karen was so upset she quit in May.

A strange man left packages for Darlene at her home—a silver belt and purse from Mexico, a flower-print fabric, and a package the size and

shape of a bundle of money. “About the time I took that package from him that looked like money to me,” reported Darlene’s sister, Pam, “Darlene

started paying me for baby-sitting in ten-dol ar and twenty-dol ar bil s. Before that she was giving me quarters, her tip money.” Darlene’s sister,

Linda, described the man who brought Dee presents from Tijuana—“large forehead and close-cropped hair”—like Leigh Al en’s. Leigh and his

chums had made a trip to Mexico about that time, feasting on lobster on the beach. Around the same period, a man Darlene referred to

interchangeably as “Robbie” and “Lee” moved from his residence near Hogan High, about two blocks from Darlene’s friend Mike Mageau’s home,

to directly across from the Ferrins’ home.

“About the beginning of June 1969,” Bobbie Ramos said, “Darlene told me of a man in a white car watching her.” I asked about her “new friends.”

“Darlene’s new friends were Mike Mageau and a man in a Mercury Cougar named Robbie or Lee. I never spoke to him, but I definitely know how

he looks. He drove Darlene over and she had her laundry with her.” However, Bobbie recal ed a slender and much younger man than Zodiac, with

black hair and horn-rimmed glasses.

Evelyn Olson, another Terry’s waitress, said a man named “Lee” had “some kind of hold on Dee [Darlene’s pet name].” Linda Del Buono,

Darlene’s sister, also named Darlene’s closest friends for me: “They were Sue Gilmore [Dean Ferrin’s cousin],” she said. “Bobbie, a blond down at

Terry’s, and this guy named Lee who used to bring gifts to her from Mexico. Darlene met this Lee by Franklin School at a laundromat. He told her

he lived above the laundromat. I wonder if that’s when she got her laundry stolen—uniforms, baby’s diapers, everything.” Leigh Al en, who also

spel ed his name “Lee,” worked part-time at the Franklin School as a janitor.

Though Dean saw no change in Darlene’s demeanor, her friends did. “Darlene became more nervous than ever. She rarely smiled now,” they

said. They attributed her weight loss to diet pil s. “I seen a change in my sister the last four months before she died,” said Pam. “Very nervous,

losing weight. I don’t think it was drugs. She was just frightened of this guy who was constantly fol owing her.”

“Towards the end, that last year, we weren’t that close,” said Carmela Leigh, Dean’s boss at Caesar’s Palace Restaurant and his landlord. “She

had a whole new group of friends—never mentioned names—she was just never around. We’d have barbecues and everything and Dean, who

everybody just real y liked, he’d come over for the barbecue and we’d say, ‘Where’s Darlene?’ and he’d say, ‘She went to the laundromat about

4:00,’ and this would be about 9:00. She’d go to the laundromat, and five hours later he’d be at the party by himself and he just didn’t know

anything.”

On May 9, 1969, Darlene purchased a new house at 1300 Virginia Street, and reported that a former neighbor was watching her. Darlene

organized a painting party and invited a few of the many policemen she knew from Terry’s. “Lots of the cops knew her,” Sergeant Lynch told me.

“They used to stop in at the coffee shop out there. She worked the 3:00 A.M. late shift on weekends, and she’d get off work and run off to San

Francisco. She used to like to take off her shoes and stockings and run through the surf, and this is at four in the morning. She dated al kinds of

guys. She was a goer.”

“Among [Darlene’s] companions were men,” the Times-Herald’s Gene Silverman later wrote, “men who were not necessarily her husband. Dean

Ferrin was reportedly unconcerned. He considered her association with male friends just an aspect of her being young and lively.” “You got to

understand how cops operate, especial y back in those days,” Detective Bawart added. “If you’re working the swing shift, the graveyard shift, and a

new waitress came on, it would be a contest to see who could get in her shorts first. That’s the way cops were back then. There were a lot of cops

pursuing her. She was a pretty loose gal, Darlene was.”

“Darlene had a rep as being pretty fast and loose,” Mulanax elaborated. “She was dating a lot of different guys. Certainly during the time she was

working as a waitress out at Terry’s. Prior to Terry’s I have no knowledge of Darlene dating. Before her death she saw three Val ejo cops, one ‘a

drive-in Romeo’ and another a deputy in the sheriff’s office. According to our reports, Blue Rock Springs was Darlene’s favorite hangout to take her

boyfriends. So regardless of who she was with, that’s where she would go.” And yet she had turned down the lonely older man in the white car. How

must he have felt?

Saturday, May 24, was the day of the painting party. “How many people showed up at the party?” I asked Linda. “There were about fifteen. The

party lasted a long time.” “Who was there?” “The Mageau boys. Steven Kee. They were there. Steve went directly into the Navy after graduating

from Hogan High in 1965. His friendship with Darlene goes back to about 1963, I think. He was worried about Dee during her year-long absence

and was stationed on the U.S.S. Rook. He was very shy. I recal he had a little red car at one time and a green Olds pickup. He was also very

jealous of Dee, you’ve got to keep that in mind. He moved to San Diego just after the Lake Herman murders, and so was not there for her.” I was

more interested whether he had seen someone bothering Darlene at IHOP.

“George was there.” Linda continued. “I know Howard was there.” “Howard ‘Buzz’ Gordon?” “Yeah.” “How about women?” “Only one or two.” “How

about Baldino?” “Steve? Yeah.” Another Val ejo cop. Val ejo Policeman Richard Hoffman, though on the guest list, had not attended. Among the

other guests were: Jay Eisen (a San Francisco friend of Darlene’s); Rick Crabtree; Darlene’s female friend Sydney; Linda, Darlene’s sister; Pam,

Darlene’s younger sister; Ron Al en; and a stocky man in a business suit and tie.

“Darlene cal ed me and told me to come over to the party,” her sister Linda said, “and Darlene was scared to death. She didn’t expect for this

man to show up. I got there at one in the afternoon. He showed up when I was on my way over. He was the only one dressed neat. Everyone else

had old jeans on and was painting the house that she had just put a down payment on. . . . And so the police assumed that this was Bil Leigh, who

was Dean’s boss, and they just left it at that. But it was ‘Lee,’ and it was not his last name. I never spoke to him, but I definitely know how he looks . .

. and Darlene was scared to death. This guy at the painting party was the Zodiac. I know Zodiac is the person I saw at the party. The way she was

acting. This guy had no business being at her house.

“Dee got into something and she was afraid and wanted to back out of it. And she begged me, ‘Linda, don’t go near him. Just don’t talk to him.’

He was overweight . . . this guy scaring the heck out of her. I mean, she couldn’t eat. I noticed how much weight she had lost. When something was

bothering her she couldn’t hide it. She wasn’t smiling. . . . She begged me, ‘Just go, Linda, just go.’ She asked me to leave ’cause she didn’t want

him to know any part of the family.

“The way she acted made me fix this man’s face in my mind. I can see him sitting there in the chair. There were stil fourteen people left at the

party when I left, and more coming. I wish I would have stayed. I do believe that she got into something and was afraid and she didn’t know how to

go about getting out of. I think she did want to get out, and the Zodiac said, ‘Wel , we’l just do away with her’cause she’l probably go to the police.’

He was also the one at Terry’s. When I walked into Terry’s this one particular day with my dad, this man was sitting there and he was constantly

watching Dee al the time. And as I walked in he held the paper up above him’cause he noticed me. Later somebody [a tal , lean, black-haired man]

shot four holes in the ceiling at Terry’s.”

After Linda left the painting party, Darlene’s younger sister, Pam, arrived. She also noticed the man in the suit. “He was so out of place,” Pam told

me. “He was a pretty wel -dressed guy. Yeah, very wel -dressed, an older man. I saw him only the one time. He never did get out of that chair.

Everybody was a little scared of him being at the party and a little nervous because he was there. . . . This guy was asking about her at work, prying

into her finances . . . he is the same man who was sitting at the bar, the counter, this was the same man that was asking me questions. He was

asking me about her little girl and what was her relationship with her husband, Dean. ‘What did she do with her tips?’ he asked. ‘She real y got her

head together.’ ‘I understand Dean never wants to watch the baby.’

“The stranger had a short common nickname—Lee. It was ‘Lee,’ L-E-E, not ‘Leigh,’ and it wasn’t his last name. There was this guy at the party

who I think is Zodiac. The same guy who was at the party was the one who delivered a package to the doorstep of Wal ace Street one day that I

was baby-sitting. I saw him at the door and took a package from him. He told me under no circumstance was I to look in that package. He was the

same man I remembered seeing leave a package on the doorstep at Wal ace Street.”

“And the age of the man at Terry’s harassing Darlene—”

“I would say between thirty-five and thirty-eight.” She estimated him to be almost six feet tal . “I can picture this man. . . . I remember seeing him at

the door and I remember seeing him at the painting party and he liked to talk to me because I was a pretty honest person. Dee got upset with me

because she thought I was tel ing him too much. ‘Wel , he would ask me something so I answered.’ Dee said, ‘Pam, I’m going to stop asking you to

my parties if you don’t stop talking to him. There are some things I don’t want people to know about me.’ I said, ‘I thought you were dating this guy

the way he talks.’” Ron Al en’s name had been on the guest list for Darlene’s painting party. After Cheney moved to Southern California in 1969,

Leigh’s brother and sister-in-law paid him a visit.

“Ron and Karen were at my house for dinner,” Cheney told me. “This was before my purchase of my new house [at 1842 Berkeley Avenue]. We

were sitting around the kitchen table chatting, and Karen told us about Leigh going to a painting party in his suit. Ron and his brother were at the

party and Leigh was dressed in a suit and tie. Karen was using that as an example of him being unadjusted to social things. She was ragging him

on that. She was a little afraid of her brother-in-law because she recognized he was not squared away with the world at al . With her education in

social work she had been exposed to such things, and I don’t think Ron had.”

Two Lees were crossing paths in Darlene’s life. “Robbie” or “Lee” (she apparently cal ed him by both names) lived close enough to see into

Darlene’s house on Wal ace Street. Thus, he had no reason to park out front to watch her. That had to be a second “Lee.” I asked Mulanax about

him. “Assuming that Zodiac is one of Darlene’s new friends, did you ever put together a list of her new acquaintances? Did you come across a

Robbie?” “The people interviewed were her family basical y and her coworkers,” he answered. “There are numerous people there she was

associated with, but whether they were her new friends, I don’t know.”

On June 29, 1969, Darlene confided to her friend Bobbie Ramos, at a county fair, that “Lee” was the name of a man who had lived across the

street from her. A Terry’s waitress had also observed a man in a white car, its vertical gril bars blacked out like a Mustang, fol owing Darlene. She

had jotted down his license number, and this enabled me to track the car down. The vehicle was a 1968 white hardtop Cougar Mercury coupe (only

hardtops were made until 1969). I was disappointed. That car could not have been the one Zodiac used at Lake Berryessa. His worn tire tracks

showed two different-size tires and a width between the wheels of 57 inches. The Cougar had the widest wheelbase around—111 to 123 inches. Its

wheelbase width was closer to the white four-door hardtop 1959-60 Chevy Impala seen at the murder site on Lake Herman Road. Coincidental y,

the Cougar’s owner had traded in a 1960 Impala sedan in April 1969 for the Mercury.

Only one apartment building, 553, stood on Wal ace Street. After a long search, I found and interviewed the Cougar’s registered owner, a Robbie

Lee Moncure, who had once lived at the Wal ace Street apartment house and worked at Kresge’s and Mare Island Naval Station. In 1971, he had

moved to Fresno, California, and in April 1977, sold and junked the Cougar. However, he was black-haired, too thin (165 pounds), and too young

(twenty-five at the time of the murders) to be Zodiac. My hope was that if he had been watching Darlene, he might have seen the older man named

“Lee” who was watching her.

“We were real close . . . friends,” Robbie told me, “and that was it! She didn’t share the names of her friends with anybody. Each was sort of

separate. I didn’t pry. . . . I was just into her. These little games she played with different people were like you could see on TV or in a movie. A

series that was going on and on. Darlene was petite. Ful of devilment. She was on Wal ace Street and flying a kite one night. But I remember that

she cal ed me another night from the Coronado Inn to come out and pick her up. She didn’t trust this guy—an older man. The guy I saw was stocky.

At the time I wasn’t paying too much attention to him because she told me she wanted to come home right away.” Robbie could recal no more.

A year after this encounter, a Val ejo resident, Marie Anstey, vanished from the Coronado Inn parking lot on Friday the thirteenth. Anstey,

bludgeoned, then drowned, had not been sexual y molested and was found near water—like the Santa Rosa victims. I believed Robbie Lee had

seen Zodiac unmasked.

Leigh Al en could be linked to Darlene through the painting party and her friends who knew of a shadowy figure named “Lee.” Could he now be

connected to Darlene on the night of her murder? I had sought Lynch’s advice. He was not total y unaware that a man named “Lee” might be

Zodiac. He had searched out tips on a variety of men with the middle name Lee. One owned a .22-caliber gun, a .45, and a 9-mm gun. “There was

a guy here who thinks he’s Zodiac, a local nut,” said Lynch. “He’s been in and out of Napa. In fact I knew him. I didn’t think I knew him when I got that

tip by letter from out of state by his ex-wife. He was a sadistic two-hundred-pounder, six feet tal , with a fetish for leather. He told his wife, ‘You wil

be my slave in the hereafter, ’ a phrase similar to Zodiac’s ‘slaves in the afterlife’ remark. You can’t real y pin anything down with those guys. None

of them wil ever talk to you.”

“Who tipped you to Leigh Al en as Zodiac?” I asked the last time we spoke. “Was the informant anonymous?”

“I think the information came through the local sheriff’s office . . . Les Lundblad, he’s dead now. I think the information came through him. Yeah,

everything was coming second-hand. You could never talk to anyone directly.”

“You talked to Darlene’s sister, Linda, in San Jose.”

“I did talk to her—many times.”

“Did you ever speak to this ‘Lee’ from the painting party?”

“No.”

“They dug a perfect bul et out of the car,” I said, “one that wasn’t smashed. It probably went through the fleshy part of Darlene’s body and had just

enough momentum to penetrate the upholstery. That copper-coated ammo was pretty new. It had only been out for six months. Did you ever get a

lead on that?”

“No,” said Lynch. “I admit I don’t know much about guns. A guy on Skyline Boulevard south of San Francisco was firing his gun and he had that

kind of ammo. I had that guy in, trying to find out out how he got that. Nothing came of it. I never thought that Zodiac chased Darlene and Mike to

Blue Rock Springs. I believe that guy just came upon them at random. He was just out there to shoot somebody and he found them.” I disagreed

with that. Zodiac had to have stalked them to some degree. At last I came to that fatal Fourth of July.

“It was an exceptional y hot Fourth,” Bobbie Oxnam told me. “Everyone was down by the waterfront.” The sky was fil ed with a spectacular display

of pyrotechnics. The staccato pop-pop-pop of firecrackers was like gunfire. The smel of gunpowder was in the air. Earlier in the day Darlene had

her hood up by a bowling al ey when she had an altercation with a man driving a white van. He was later described to police as thirty years old, six

feet tal , 180 to 185 pounds, with hair “the color of champagne combed straight back.”

“Darlene was al excited when she came into Caesar’s that evening,” Carmela Leigh told me. Caesar’s stood at 1576 Vervais Street, near Elmer

Cave School, where Leigh Al en worked. “Al I knew was she was going to get to ride on a boat in the parade. When Darlene left at 7:00 P.M., she

said, ‘I’m going to have a party,’ and wanted me to come. I said, ‘Yeah, OK, OK,’ but she knew I wouldn’t be there.”

Darlene and her sister, Christina, went out to Mare Island for a ride on a decorated and lighted boat, the General French Genora. Leigh Al en’s

boat reportedly was also in Val ejo’s Traditional Boat Parade on the channel. “A friend of hers had a boat,” Mulanax told me. “There were two guys

on a boat and two guys flying that Darlene knew.” At 10:00 P.M., after the Mare Island parade, Darlene and Christina stopped by Caesar’s again.

Darlene had planned a smal party at her house after the restaurant closed. Fifteen minutes later she cal ed her sitters and learned Bobbie Ramos

wanted to talk to her. At 10:30 P.M. Darlene and Christina arrived at Terry’s, and Darlene went inside to talk to several waitresses. “Darlene did not

speak to anyone other than some of the girls who work at Terry’s before she took me home,” Christina recal ed.

But outside the restaurant Darlene had a second confrontation. She argued with a man in his “thirties or forties” in a blue car with out-of-state

plates. Earlier in the evening, Deputy Ben Vil areal had seen a blue 1967 Ford sedan sitting out at Blue Rock Springs. Christina (the “most stable

and honest member of Darlene’s family”) said she “sensed a tension in the air and in the conversations.” Darlene came away “very upset.” She

asked Darlene, “What’s going on?” “Don’t worry about it,” Darlene answered, “you’l read about it tomorrow in the papers.” Only a day or two before,

Darlene had told her the same thing. “Real y, something big is gonna happen. . . . I can’t tel you yet, but it’s going to be this week.” Christina later

mentioned the out-of-state car, the stranger, and her sister’s odd remarks—none of which appear in the final VPD report—to a detective:

“DEE and CHRISTINA went to Terry’s Restaurant where DEE talked with several waitresses and, outside the restaurant, talked to a man

(nfi) parked outside in a blue car with out-of-state plates (nfi). CHRISTINA claims to have sensed a tension in the air and in the conversations

and reportedly asked DEE what was going on to which DEE al egedly replied, “Don’t worry about it—you’l read about it tomorrow in the

papers.” Her description of the car was later modified in a notation made by Lt. Jim Husted in the left margin: The car was “1) al white. 2)

larger than Dee’s Corvair. 3) Older than Dee’s Corvair (1963).”

Pam also confirmed the argument in Terry’s parking lot. “Al I know was when she came back to the car,” she told me, “the story I got was that he

wanted to take her out. She didn’t want to go out with him because she was married . . . he was between thirty-five and thirty-eight years old.” One

argument had been in daylight; the other an hour and a half before the shooting at Blue Rock Springs. Investigators had confused the nighttime

argument with a morning confrontation. Just like Robbie and Lee, they were two different things at two different times. At 10:45 P.M. Darlene

dropped Christina off at the family Val ejo home. The sitters, Janet Lynn Rhodes and Pamela Kay, were anxious to go. They had been sitting since

early afternoon. Janet Lynn had sat for Darlene only that Fourth of July. The girls told Darlene “an older-sounding man” had been cal ing her

repeatedly. Darlene changed from her patriotic jumpsuit of red, white, and blue stars. Quickly, she donned blue shoes and a white-and-blue flower-

patterned slack dress, a pattern Zodiac would later describe.

“Dee knew the teenagers kil ed out on Lake Herman Road,” Janet Lynn confirmed to me. “She had said that. ‘He’s back from out of state. I once

saw him kil somebody.’” Later, from his hospital bed, a heavily sedated Mike Mageau told police what happened next.

“Dee came [via Georgia Street east] to MAGEAU’S home at 864 Beech-wood [west of Hogan High where Betty Lou Jensen had attended],”

read the official statement. “At approximately 11:30 P.M. . . . and picked him up in her car. Since both were hungry, he said, they headed down

Springs Road and went toward Val ejo. However, at approximately Mr. Ed’s Restaurant, Dee said she wanted to talk with him about

something.”

An eerie paral el here—Betty Lou and David had stopped at Mr. Ed’s Drive-In too just before being shot. The teenagers had visited Sharon, a

friend, on Brentwood Avenue at 8:20 P.M., and remained until 9:00 P.M. At 10:30 their Christmas concert was over and they went from there to Mr.

Ed’s, then Lake Herman Road. Mr. Ed’s phone number was later found scrawled on a photo envelope in Darlene’s purse along with the words

“hacked,” “stuck,” “testified,” and “seen.” Had Zodiac, December 20, 1968, mistaken Betty Lou for Darlene? Betty Lou Jensen bore an uncanny

resemblance to Darlene Ferrin at age seventeen (I had two photos of them at the same age). The odds of Zodiac happening upon two women who

could be twins in pitch blackness and in widely separated, remote areas were incalculable—unless he trailed them. On several occasions Betty

Lou had cautioned her older sister, Melody, to close the blinds. On occasion, their mother found the gate leading to the side of the house open and

tracks in the garden.

Did Zodiac mistake the teenagers for Darlene and her friend Steven Kee, whose parents lived on Cottonwood one street over from Jensen’s

friend, Sharon? Did he trail them to Mr. Ed’s, Darlene’s hangout? Or was Betty Lou’s murder meant as a warning to Darlene, who claimed to know

her?

“They turned around and at his suggestion,” continued Mageau’s report, “drove east on Springs Road to Blue Rock Springs where they

could talk.”

“The minute they drove off, Mike told Dee they were being fol owed,” Linda said. “Just that phrase, ‘We’re being fol owed.’”

“How did you hear that?” I asked.

“I heard that through Sergeant Lynch and Sergeant Mulanax. Darlene started just going down any side streets and this car just kept fol owing

them. . . . I don’t know what made her go toward Blue Rock Springs.” Linda had also spoken to Mike in the hospital after Zodiac shot him, and I was

anxious to hear what else she had learned.

“They knew they were being fol owed?” I asked her.

“Yes.”

“And Darlene thought it was someone named Lee.”

“Yeah.”

“She did say that?”

“Yes.”

“Did the police understand that Zodiac’s name was supposed to be Lee?”

“I don’t think so, but Mike knows who Zodiac is. He does.”

Pam agreed. “Zodiac knew Darlene,” she told me, “because he cal ed her by name . . . she was known by ‘Dee’ and he called her ‘Dee.’”

“He did this when he shot her?”

“Uh-huh.”

“And this is something Mike told you.”

“And this is something Mike told me in the hospital.” His acute tongue injury had prevented him from providing a description to police for two

days.

“One unconfirmed source states that MAGEAU claimed they were fol owed from the time they left his house by a similar suspect car.”

Was this true? Sue Ayers, a legal secretary and friend, talked to Mike in the hospital. “Dee and the shooter,” he told her, “had an argument at

Terry’s on July 4. They drove away and the man fol owed them to Blue Rock Springs where the argument continued and shooting fol owed.” The

daughter of the caretaker at Blue Rock Springs reportedly witnessed the argument in the lot, and seconds before shots rang out told her father

there was going to be trouble. Mike’s offical statements continued the story:

“After five minutes there,” MAGEAU said, a car [reportedly a 1958-59 brown Ford Falcon with old California plates] pul ed in from Springs

Road, the driver turned off his lights and pul ed around to the left of their car (east of their car) some six to eight feet from Dee’s car. The car

remained there for about one minute.

Mike said he asked Dee if she knew who it is and she stated, “Oh, never mind. Don’t worry about it.” Mageau said he did not know if this meant

she knew who it was or not. The car left after one minute at terrific speed, hurtling toward Val ejo on Springs Road, and they were left alone in the

darkened lot overlooking the golf course. About five minutes later the man returned. He parked on the passenger side and to the rear of their car,

headlights stil on. A man came up to them carrying a flashlight with a handle on it. Were Darlene and Mike fol owed to Blue Rock Springs? I asked

Mulanax. “I wouldn’t have that feeling because my thought is these Zodiac kil ings are not planned,” he said. “They’re opportunity things. That’s my

feeling.”

“But Zodiac did describe what Darlene was wearing and it was pretty dark.”

“He was also shining a heavy big flashlight in there too.”

“That’s true.”

“It’s a flashlight that has a handle on it like you’d use in a boat. The kind that floats.”

“MAGEAU said they thought it was the Police and they started to get some identification out of their purse/wal ets when suddenly the man

started shooting. MAGEAU said it sounded like the gun had a silencer on it.”

This was a fact never reported, something only Zodiac would know. In 1991, after the search of his home, Leigh Al en told a friend, “They missed

a few things—like the silencer I had hidden in my socks in the dresser.” Had Zodiac turned away, not to reload, but to instal a silencer? Darlene,

Mike, and the stranger had already attracted the attention of George R. Bryant, twenty-two, a Selby Smelter employee and son of the Blue Rock

Springs caretaker. “The groundskeeper’s son saw three people arguing,” Mulanax told me. “Bryant was in a two-story house looking out the window

and trying to get some shut-eye. Fifteen minutes later, he heard gunshots.” Bryant was some eight hundred feet from the lot lying on his stomach

when he heard “one shot, a short interval, another shot, a pause, then rapid fire.” Final y he heard “a tire screeching as a car left the scene.” Bryant’s

recal of the number of shots was insufficient. Zodiac fired a total of seven shots.

“After firing repeatedly the man turned to walk back to his car, but MAGEAU believes he cried out and the man returned and fired two more

shots at him & twice more at Dee.”

Mageau, wounded in his neck, left leg, and right arm, was thrashing his legs when Zodiac fired a second time. “Mike got the door open,” Lynch

told me, “and fel out of the car, and the only time he even looked at the guy was when the guy got back into his car and he opened the door and he

got a clear profile view of him. You know, where some people kind of comb their hair up in a kind of pompadour and then back.” Mike described

Zodiac as having “a large face, thirty years old, with short curly light-brown hair worn in a military-style brush cut. As for his build, he was beefy,

heavyset without being blubbery fat, 195-200 pounds and had a slight potbel y.”

Sergeant Richard Hoffman, responding to the crime scene, took up the story from there. “I was working juvenile division as a plainclothesman in

a plain car when the cal came out that night,” he told me. “It was dark at Blue Rock Springs, elms swaying in the wind, the wild cries of strutting

peacocks roaming the grounds coming to my ears. Roy Conway and I had been the first officers to reach Blue Rock Springs [four miles from

downtown Val ejo and two miles from the site of the earlier Lake Herman murders]. Mike Mageau had original y been in the backseat, but I found

him outside on the ground on his back. His eyes were wide and he lifted his arms upward as if imploring me for help. When he opened his mouth to

cal for aid, blood gurgled out. CPR had just come in, and the doctor removed Darlene’s sweater and began applying pressure to her chest. With

each downward pressure the little tag on her bra fluttered as air exited the bul et hole. The M.E. took this probe and put it in each of Mike’s wounds

—he was staring upward and ful y conscious—feeling every bit of it.”

Lynch and his partner, Ed Rust, arrived next. “Mike was lying at the rear of the car, said Lynch, “and she was stil behind the wheel. I remember

she was trying to say something, and I put my ear over her like this to try to understand, but I just couldn’t.” “First came firecrackers, then gunshots,”

Rust added. “One patrol got there before us—around midnight. It took us ten to fifteen minutes to get there. She died at 12:26 A.M. She kept trying

to talk, but we couldn’t distinguish anything. In fact, we sent one of the officers with her in case she could say something. I think it was Dick Hoffman.

He was the patrol officer who was there first. Mike said he thought it was a police officer come up to check. He pul ed up behind them at sort of an

off line from their car. He said that he had been parked in the same place before, and Darlene had a police officer that came up the same way [a

cutoff technique] and shined a light just the same. It had happened before that way, and he had the impression it was a police officer when he first

came up. Mike got out after the guy left, pushed out the right side of the two-door car. He said he had climbed over the seat trying to get away. The

guy shot him several times. This was the only avenue he had was to get in the backseat.”

“Shortly after, the ambulance arrived,” Lynch said, “and I helped the driver take her out of the car. Then Dick Hoffman fol owed the ambulance to

the emergency hospital.”

“We took Mike up to the Queen of the Val ey Hospital,” concluded Rust, “Lynch and I saw that out front of the hospital they’ve got a little monument

. . . it’s got a zodiac sign on it.”

When she was shot, Darlene had been reaching for her quilt-pattern leather drawstring purse on the rear floorboard. It was as if she was getting

identification out for the police. With the photo envelope inside her purse was a notebook with two names, “VAUGHN” and “LEIGH,” underlined. I

consulted Darlene’s three personal directories and, under M, found the fol owing entry crossed out: “MT. Shasta SK. Bowl Inc. (NRT) (VAUGHN)

Area Code 916/ Mt. Shasta Ski Bowl NR 1.” Leigh was not listed. Police dismissed it as the name of Dean Ferrin’s employer, Bil Leigh.

The time of the murder concerned Darlene’s sitters. “What time did they say she was murdered,” Janet Lynn said, “12:05 P.M.? [Darlene was

shot at 12:00 A.M.] Because that was a big discrepancy. At one point we figured that she couldn’t have had time to even get to that parking lot. We

kept tel ing the police that she didn’t leave the house until then . . . ’cause we were watching some program that doesn’t come on until almost

midnight and she hadn’t even left the house yet. And then they are tel ing us she was murdered like five minutes later, when how could she get out to

Blue Rock Springs in five minutes? And we kept tel ing this police officer [Lynch]. That was the biggest thing I never liked about that was the time

discrepancy. It was right before midnight and you just can’t get out there that quick. And we did mention that time thing again to them. I do

remember them asking us to come in. They didn’t even write it down.”

“I was at Berryessa that day [of her murder],” Steven Kee told me. “I was to meet her that night, but when I got home I learned that Dee was kil ed.”

Why had Mike rushed out and left al the lights in his house burning, the television blaring, and front door standing wide open? In the aftermath

investigators asked themselves other questions:

“Why was Mike wearing three pairs of pants and three sweaters? What about the al eged argument in Terry’s restaurant parking lot shortly

before the shooting and then being fol owed by the same man to Blue Rock Springs where argument continued and ended in shooting? Other

Questions: Did Mageau not, in fact, know the man who committed the attacks. Did he witness Darlene arguing with a middle-aged man either

at the crime scene and/or earlier that evening at Terry’s . . . ‘There was an argument between occupants of DV’s car and another individual at

Blue Rock Springs parking lot minutes before her murder.’ DV argued with likely Suspect in presence of SV several hours before her murder.

(SOURCE: SV [Mageau] as related to family friend.)”

At Blue Rock Springs that night, Officer Hoffman admitted he feared the kil er might return again any minute and shoot him too. But at 12:40 A.M.

Zodiac was busy elsewhere. He was cal ing switchboard operator Nancy Slover, VPD, from Joe’s Union Station (which closed at 8:25 P.M.) at

Tuolumne and Springs Road to report what he thought was a double murder. “They were shot with a 9-mil imeter Luger. I also kil ed those kids last

year.” This booth was two thousand feet to the south from Leigh’s house.

At 1:30 A.M., fifty minutes later, four phone cal s were placed through the operator from a booth at Broadway and Nebraska. This booth was three

thousand feet northwest from Al en’s home. One cal was to Dean Ferrin’s parents, Arthur and Mildred. They heard “only deep breathing . . . no one

said anything, we were certain someone was on the line.” The Dean Ferrin household got two phone cal s. The sitter answered and heard only

“breathing or wind blowing.” Next a cal was placed to Dean’s brother, Gordon (who was in Thailand). Zodiac must have known Darlene in order to

place these cal s to her in-laws. News of the shooting and who the victims were had not yet been either on the radio or in the papers.

When I made a map of Al en’s neighborhood I saw how close he was to al the Val ejo victims and how close they were to each other. Zodiac

victim Mike Mageau’s house was four and a half blocks from the home of another victim, Betty Lou Jensen. Since the murders, Criminal

Geographical Targeting has become a valuable police tool. Geographical Profiling is based on the theory of criminals’ spatial behavior. Criminals

strike close to home just as the average person chooses stores where he shops daily. They operate close to areas they are familiar with and have

previously scouted. A murderer has a tendency to hunt prey in identifiable areas and the impulse to disguise his home location. Thus, the sites of

his crimes tend to radiate on al sides of the offender, like a spider in his web.

As Zodiac roared away from the Blue Rock Springs lot, he would have reached a fork in the road. Narrow Lake Herman Road to his left offered

no place to hide until he reached Benicia. Columbus Parkway (Leigh’s brother lived at the midpoint on Columbus Parkway) to his right led back into

Val ejo, but offered the possibility of police cars coming at him on Springs Road. To avoid being trapped, I believe Zodiac took a smal road, just off

Columbus Parkway, so hidden I had to make an abrupt turn to reach the road. It led me in a dead straight line into the heart of Val ejo. At the end of

twenty-four blocks I arrived at a familiar doorstep—the home of Arthur Leigh Al en.

As far as finding Zodiac’s weapons and hood—the opportunity had long passed. One reason Zodiac used a new weapon each time was that he

was discarding them as he went. Surely, after each of the il -starred searches in different counties, he had destroyed his hidden souvenirs. But as

Detective Baker had reasoned, the things he had taken might stil be in plain sight, having a symbolic significance to Zodiac alone.

The Napa Sentinel’s Harry V. Martin long afterward speculated:

“Darlene knew a terrible secret . . . because of that secret she was murdered—not randomly, but deliberately . . . planned and executed by a

person she knew very wel , a person who bought her gifts, a person who visited her place of employment and even her home.”

Carmela Leigh, pregnant and due three days after Darlene’s murder, was so afraid she had a peephole put in her door. “We didn’t know if this

guy was going to get rid of her husband, her friends,” she told me. “We didn’t know if it was one of her goofy friends. It’s too bad they never found

him. We were al afraid for a long time. We didn’t know whether this person knew Dee—that’s what everybody thought because she knew so many

people. Then we thought Dee knew something about a narcotics bust or something, and the person who kil ed her knew she knew and got her

before it al came out. And then we thought maybe she knew she was going to be murdered, and maybe some of the people in the occult, you know,

they’l sacrifice their life or something.

“Then we thought maybe she knew. Maybe she did. Maybe she knew the guy was going to kil Mike and that’s why she wasn’t scared. From what

Mike said in the paper, she wasn’t a bit nervous.”

“There was the hint of drugs at the paint party—drug dealings there,” said Cheney. The sitters disagreed. “There were no signs of drugs in the

house,” they told me. “There’s no indication of drugs in any of the police reports,” said Mulanax. “Some of the people that she associated with were,

I think, involved in drugs, but there’s nothing in any of the reports that I have that would indicate that she herself was a user.” “I’ve had investigators

come out every year,” said Bobbie Ramos, “to see if I’ve thought of anything. They’d ask if she was sel ing drugs. Did she make more tips than

you? Sure she did. I might have made twenty, she might have made thirty-five. They were kind of maybe saying she sold drugs. . . . I’m not saying

she didn’t smoke pot or anything. Smoking and sel ing is different.”

“She might have taken marijuana once in a while,” Bobbie Oxnam told me, ‘but sel ing was strictly taboo to her. The implications that were put

into the paper after she was murdered real y made a lot of us mad. People forget the good about Darlene. She was not a tramp. She was no angel,

but she was not a tramp either.”

Sergeant Lynch and his partner Rust later interviewed Linda at 400 Brandon Avenue in San Jose. As with many of Darlene’s friends, she had

been difficult to find after the Blue Rock Springs shooting. “And they talked to me for over seven hours,” Linda told me. “Lynch thought there were

drugs involved. He gave me a typed list and he said, ‘Any names that look familiar to you, circle them.’ Of course I circled al the names I’ve

mentioned to you as being at the painting party.”

“Was Lee’s name on there?” I asked her. “Yes, there was another name on the list spel ed different—‘Leigh.’ I circled the ones that Darlene knew.

And when I had circled this particular name they wanted, they go ‘mm-huh,’ as if they had already made up their minds. When I had circled the one,

they said, ‘That’s enough.’” Linda had circled the name of a middle-aged, round-faced local man who resembled Leigh Al en. And it was at this

moment that the police went wrong. Lynch had yet to interview Leigh Al en.

“Then I helped the police prepare a composite of the man at the party,” Linda told me, “a middle-aged man with a peculiar stare, a cold stare. I

sat there with the police and the artist did the drawing from my directions. I kept asking for them to show me photos, but they never did. When the

drawing was done, Lynch asked, ‘Do you think she’s ready?’ I say, ‘Ready for what?’ And they open up this black real thin binder. It had cel ophane

on it and it was another composite drawing. The only thing I had different from it was the chin. It just blew me away.”

This was a sketch prepared from Mageau’s description from his hospital bed. He had seen Zodiac’s profile clearly when he shot him, and was

able to speak in two days after the shooting. Officer Baldino said it was “probably the same individual” who had been frequenting Terry’s, a man he

had picked out of “a social situation.”

“Steve Baldino picked out a guy he saw at the restaurant,” Linda told me. “Steve was pretty shook up over al this. He knew the family and he

used to come by. I sat in the cop car one time and he let me feel his club, touch a gun. He was a real y good cop and when Dee died he kind of

went overboard. I think he might have made a mistake.” The man Baldino eyebal ed at an A.A. meeting admitted to visiting Terry’s, but he was not

the man at the painting party. Lynch had the right picture, but the wrong name. Zodiac must have felt invulnerable after this. He had grown

increasingly bolder.

“But you know,” Linda continued, “I think Zodiac wears makeup, and has got to be from Val ejo’cause he knows how to get away. The strange

thing is everyone left Val ejo [Mike and his brother, Steven Kee, Robbie Lee, Linda herself, Christina, Darlene’s younger sister]. I would think if the

guy was from San Francisco they’d stay. They’d be a lot safer in Val ejo. But they al left the city and got effectively lost.”

Linda’s composite did some good. It was accurate enough for Cheney to later recognize it as his friend, Arthur Leigh Al en.

“Of course I’ve never doubted that Zodiac was Leigh,” Cheney told me. “And I’ve always been astonished that they never tripped him up. I couldn’t

believe it. I kept waiting for something to turn up, to read that Zodiac was arrested. Nothing happened. I believe that the Lake Herman Road and

Lake Berryessa were just window dressing, but he kil ed Darlene Ferrin on purpose.

“When I final y read your book, Zodiac, and I had purposely not done so until now in order not to affect my recal , I got an idea. Darlene was

certainly not a lovers’ lane random kil ing. I think Darlene was kil ed on purpose. I suspect she was the target and he threw the others in for

confusion. There was the business about Darlene saw him kil somebody, or he just may have wanted to close her mouth. Darlene may have been

blackmailing him.”

George Bawart, at the Zodiac conference, stated he believed Al en to be Zodiac. Captain Roy Conway said in a published interview: “I believe

as I always have, that the Zodiac kil er was Arthur Leigh Al en.” I asked Toschi the same question. “There is no doubt in my mind,” he concluded,

“that Arthur Leigh Al en was, in fact, the Zodiac.” I had written the same in 1977 (when we had an army of suspects) because Al en had offered to

help catch himself.

I recal ed the Zodiac Conference and a question Rita Wil iams had asked: “If Arthur Leigh Al en was the Zodiac, why didn’t he leave some

message behind to let everyone know he was the Zodiac? If he was Al en, can you tel me why you think he didn’t?” I remembered that when police

showed Al en bomb plans on lined yel ow paper with a menu for making bombs, he said, “I’ve never seen that piece of paper before. . . . I’ve never

seen these documents before.” And yet it was in his own handwriting.

“Did he leave some message behind to let everyone know he was the Zodiac?” repeated Conway thoughtful y. “Al en does leave a message by

things that are in his basement and at the same time denying everything. From my point of view, he did leave that message. One of [Zodiac’s]

letters talked about finding bombs in his basement. Wel , in fact, there were bombs in the basement of that house when we did the search warrant

—there were pipe bombs. He talked about a particular way of making the pipe bombs, and we found handwriting evidence of him having written

that formula that he denied even making. Ultimately, the only handwriting match we have is to him in his writings of Zodiac’s bomb-making formula.

So in his own way he did, as far as I’m concerned, leave that message.”

Conway had indicated to the FBI that he and Bawart would present a ful review of the case to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office for an

opinion regarding possible prosecution for Leigh Al en. “If the D.A. refuses to fil charges against ALLEN,” he wrote, “the Val ejo Police Department

wil close its investigation on the ‘ZODIAC’ case.”

“Once these interviews have been conducted,” the FBI wrote in 1992, “Conway indicated that he and Bawart wil present a ful review of the case

to the Sonoma County District Attorney’s Office for an opinion regarding possible prosecution for ALLEN. If the D.A. refuses to fil charges against

ALLEN, Val ejo Police Department wil close its investigation on the ‘ZODIAC’ case. Val ejo has requested no further assistance on this case, and

it is therefore recommended that this case be closed at this time.” The FBI, on noting the death of Arthur Leigh Al en, said in a final report, “The San

Francisco case is closed at this time. . . . Val ejo has requested no further assistance on this case, and it is therefore recommended that this case

be closed at this time. . . .”

But who was that first tipster, the one who alerted Lynch so many times in 1969? “I got that tip by letter,” Lynch told me without thinking the last

time I saw him. In the absence of that anonymous tip, Al en wouldn’t have been a suspect until 1971. The Val ejo P.D. suspected that Al en’s own

brother or sister-in-law had turned him into the police as a Zodiac suspect. They did later on. “Lynch told me he was tipped to Al en more than once,

maybe three times, by some woman,” I told Toschi. “She was cal ing up and tipping him. So I’m thinking it’s possibly the sister-in-law.”

“You’re reading my mind,” said Toschi. “I’m thinking it’s Karen too.”

If Al en had not died, the saga of Zodiac would have had a different ending.

On Tuesday, March 24, 1992, upon his return from Germany and shortly before Leigh Al en’s death, George Bawart conducted an important

interview.

“What I’m referring to is where I am final y able to recontact victim Mike Mageau,” he told me, “and I show him a six-photo spread. It included

Harvey Hines’s suspect. I had a picture of Arthur Leigh Al en in there; the rest were not INS, NIS, and CHP officers, they were just fil ers. My wife Jan

was down in L.A. at the time for a company she was working for. I had to meet with Mike Mageau at some point in time, so I dovetailed this when

she was down there for a week. I visited with her while I was there, stayed at the same hotel room, and saved the city some money. Now this is

some twenty years after the Blue Rock Springs thing, so I’m not real hyped up about meeting Michael Mageau and showing him this photo spread.

I’m tel you how much credence I took to it—normal y if I went down to an airport, I’d get ahold of airport security. They’d give me an office and I’d sit

there and talk to the witness and show ’em a photo spread. I thought so little of this, thinking I was going to be there about ten minutes, that I just

located him and found a smal corner of the airport.

“There were people mil ing around and everything, but it was fairly quiet. And that’s why I showed him this lineup.’Cause I just knew that he’d look

at this lineup and say, ‘There’s nobody in there that I recognize. ’ Wel , I pul ed this lineup out and they were driver’s license pictures from 1967 or

’68. Anyway, they were from the era when Zodiac started. They were of Arthur Leigh Al en and of ‘Larry Kane’ and fil ers, al fat-faced people. And

these were the old-style photos. They were black and white. You got them from DMV in those days. These were blown up larger than a regular

license picture. A regular license picture is about maybe an inch and a half square. These were maybe two inches or three inches square. They

were not huge pictures, but they were fairly large pictures.

“I give Mageau the lineup admonishment, ‘Just because I’m showing you pictures, you don’t have to identify anyone as the responsible, he may

not be in here—blah, blah, blah.’ So I hand him them.

“He looks at them for twenty, thirty seconds. Points to Arthur Leigh Al en and says, ‘That’s the man! That’s the man who shot me at Blue Rock

Springs!’

“I was absolutely flabbergasted that he picked out Arthur Leigh Al en. I didn’t expect him to pick out anybody at al !”

epilogue

Dave Toschi is now with North Star Security Services as a vice-president and member of the board. Retired detective lieutenant Mike Ciravolo, a

chief investigator on New York’s Zodiac case, now runs a private investigation company in suburban New York City. He left the department when

Zodiac I first vanished, arguing that the Zodiac Task Force should not be abandoned. He helped train Detective Sergeant Joe Herbert who

recognized the hand of Zodiac I in Seda’s handwriting. Bryan Hartnel , married and the father of two sons, is a probate lawyer in Southern

California.

“The Santa Rosa murders were never solved,” Sergeant Steve Brown, Sonoma Sheriff’s Department, told me. “In fact, we’re working them pretty

hard right now. One was never found, but of the six that were found I only have evidence on one of the girls, Kim Wendy Al en. What I’m stil trying to

do is find the rest of the evidence. We’re clearing out the archival evidence that’s out at our Juvenile Hal facility. These old cases are tough

because who knows where the evidence goes. Hopeful y, I’m going to find some more. I especial y want to find the rope used to strangle Kim

Wendy that they submitted to the FBI. They tested this rope in every possible way and there was nothing special about it. It was a nylon regular rope

that you could buy anywhere.”

On the Presidio, where Zodiac was last seen and nurse Donna Lass once worked, ten-story Letterman Hospital and its five-story annex remain

only as desolate hulks. The hol owed-out concrete buildings wil be demolished and replaced by a digital movie production campus, Lucasfilm’s

Industrial Light & Magic. Sandy Panzarel a sold Science Dynamics. With that money he purchased the RKO-Radio Pictures film library which he

later sold to Ted Turner. “It was a tough decision,” Panzarel a told me, “to give up a library which not only included Citizen Kane, and other beloved

films, but The Most Dangerous Game.” The movie-obsessed Zodiac would have appreciated the irony.

appendices

Return to Search Warrant Served on Arthur Leigh Al en, February 14, 1991. The fol owing personal property was taken from 32 Fresno Street, City

of Val ejo, Solano County, California.

1. Four pipe bombs.

2. One primer Cord.

3. Seven Impact devices Railway Torpedo.

4. Two Safety fuses, green, two rol s ea. 98½’.

5. Two rol s of safety fuses (orange).

6. One cardboard box w/Mrs. E. W. Al en on label.

7. Two Vallejo Times-Heralds dated 060382.

8. Two San Francisco Chronicles dated 060182.

9. Two glass bottles of black material.

10. Nine Non-electric blasting caps.

11. Two 1"galvanized pipes with one end cap.

12. Five pipe thread compounds.

13. Six pipe vises.

14. One cardboard box with fireworks, safety fuse (green), bottles of potassium nitrate, two bottles of sulfur, miscel aneous fireworks.

15. Brown plastic bag covering Item #6.

16. One can of black powder partial y ful .

17. Euroarms .44-caliber black powder #13357.

18. Ruger .22 revolver #85655 and six live rounds.

19. .22 Revolver #N31025.

20. Ruger .44 Blackhawk #8155788 and five rounds.

21. Colt .32 auto #216374 and seven rounds.

22. Winchester, Super and miscel aneous ammo for .32, .22, .44, and .30-caliber.

23. .22 automatic clip with three rounds.

24. Zodiac Sea Wolf Watch #26894.

25. Miscel aneous papers and news clips “Zodiac.”

26. Marlin .22 rifle with scope #24373783.

27. Inland .30-caliber rifle #5044680.

28. Sears electric typewriter.

29. Royal manual typewriter.

30. Cut letter from DOJ and miscel aneous news clips.

31. Zippo lighter engraved “D. E. Brandon.”

32. Smal flashlight.

33. Hunting knife with sheath and rivets.

34. Four boxes of videotapes, one box audio reel tapes, one cassette recorder.

35. Remington .22 short caliber rifle.

36. Stevens Model 835 12-gauge double-barrel shotgun.

37. Winchester Model 50 20-gauge automatic shotgun.

Arthur Leigh Allen’s Trailers, Cars, and Boats

Universal trailer (off wheels), license, AP 6354, parked at the Sunset Trailer Park, 2963 Santa Rosa Avenue. Slot A-7. Owned since 1970.

Trailer ME8636, special construction. Registered 10/31/79.

Trailer GS8803, special construction camper, 12/31/75.

A Trailer in Bodega Bay.

A Trailer rumored to be parked in a neighbor’s tract of deep woods.

Car #1. DXW 186, 1962 VW Karmann Ghia, registered 7/18/80. An exact duplicate of Bryan Hartnel ’s car at Lake Berryessa 9/69.

Car #2. MLZ 057, 1965 Buick sedan, Gray Skylark, registered 4/20/80.

Car #3. XAM 469 tan station wagon.

Car #4. 1964 dark Ford. On the night of the July Fourth murder, a deputy had seen a blue 1967 Ford Sedan in the Blue Rock Springs parking lot

earlier in the evening.

A two-seat Austin Healey.

A white Buick.

A white 1965 Mercedes, 220SB.

LDH 974, 1958 Ford sedan.

Al en had use of Tucker’s 1965-66 brown Corvair. Whether or not he used it without permission on July 4, 1969 is not known.

Smal blue and white Sailboat: a twenty-two-foot-long sailboat on a trailer, partial y draped by a blue tarp. California license number, NE3725.

Open sailboat ten feet long. CF 9127 FD license. Sticker #HI07782. Fuel Unknown.

The Bawart Report

Val ejo Detective George Bawart’s confidential 1992 thirty-point report was prepared, not as part of the official Zodiac case file, but as an

introductory outline for Val ejo District Attorney Mike Nail to facilitate his decision whether or not to arrest the prime suspect. Cheney had used

Al en’s dismissal from teaching and his subsequent move home as a date to place the conversation in his room. He knew that he moved from the

Bay Area to his new Southern California job on New Year’s Day. That was in fact, January 1, 1969. In later conversations Cheney corrected this. I

have left the inaccurate date, 1968, in Bawart’s report. Leigh’s conversation with Cheney stil predated the creation of the Zodiac persona and his

M.O. by eight months. The report read as fol ows:

Circumstances Which Indicate Arthur Leigh Allen is, in Fact, the Zodiac Killer.

1. In 1966, Riverside, California, Cheri Jo BATES, WF, is stabbed to death. The Riverside Police Department received a typed letter

from the kil er. On this letter, the kil er identified himself as “Enterprise” [actual y, this was to direct the letter to a Riverside newspaper of that

name]. The brand of typewriter used in this letter has been identified as Royal with an elite type. An older Royal typewriter with elite type was

found during the service of the search warrant at ALLEN’s residence on 02/91.

2. In December of 1967, ALLEN was given a Zodiac brand watch as a Christmas present from his mother. The company symbol for their

Zodiac watches is exactly the same symbol as later adapted by the Zodiac Kil er. This watch was taken during the service of a search warrant

in February of 1991.

3. In January 1968, ALLEN had a conversation with Donald CHENEY, a friend of his. ALLEN guised this conversation as though he was

going to write a novel. ALLEN indicated to CHENEY that he would cal himself “Zodiac” and use the Zodiac watch symbol as his symbol. That

he would kil people in lovers’ lanes by using a weapon with a flashlight attached to it for sighting at night. That he would write letters to the

police to confuse them and taunt them and sign them as the Zodiac using the Zodiac watch symbol. ALLEN stated he would get women to stop

on the freeway indicating they had some problems with their tires, and that he would loosen the lug nuts so their tire would later fal off, and he

could take them captive. ALLEN told CHENEY that he would shoot children as they got off school buses.

4. On July 4, 1969, Darlene FERRIN was kil ed, and Michael MAGEAU shot numerous times at Blue Rock Springs, Val ejo. On July 31,

1969, a letter was received by the Vallejo Times-Herald describing the kil ing and shooting incident at Blue Rock Springs, signed only with the

symbol of the Zodiac watch. August 7, 1969, a letter was received, wherein, an individual identified himself as Zodiac indicating many facts

about the shooting in Val ejo. He indicated he sighted with a flashlight attached to his gun. The letter was signed with the Zodiac watch

company’s symbol.

5. In early October 1969, Sergeant Lynch of the Val ejo Police Department interviewed ALLEN as to his whereabouts on 092769 (the

date of the Napa County Sheriff’s Department kil ing at Lake Berryessa). ALLEN said that he had planned to go to Berryessa on that date but

had changed his mind and had gone to the ocean instead. This same conversation was confirmed by Captain [Roy] CONWAY and myself

during the service of the search warrant on 02/91.

6. In 1969, a Philip TUCKER of the Greater Val ejo Recreation District indicated that ALLEN, who was a close friend of his, often talked

about the Zodiac case. TUCKER indicated that ALLEN had previously talked about shooting with special sights for shooting in the dark.

TUCKER indicated that he saw the Zodiac symbol at ALLEN’s house and also some type of cryptograms.

7. A Zodiac letter received by newspapers dated 101369 al uded to “shoot the little darlings as they came bouncing off the bus.” Almost

the same verbiage given to CHENEY in 1968.

8. A Zodiac letter dated 110969 described making his bomb for blowing up buses by using ammonia nitrate, stove oil, and gravel. A

formula in ALLEN’s handwriting was found during the service of the search warrant at Al en’s residence on 02/91, as wel as completed pipe

bombs.

9. A Zodiac letter dated 110969 stated, “You don’t know if the bomb is at the site or stored in my basement for future use.” During the

service of the search warrant of ALLEN’s residence on 02/91, pipe bombs were found in ALLEN’s basement, as wel as formulas for

ammonia nitrate and stove oil bombs.

10. A Zodiac letter dated 110969. It indicated that the kil ing tools were bought through mail order. During the service of the search

warrant at ALLEN’s residence on 02/91, mail order catalog pages were found regarding bombs, booby traps, and guns.

11. On 032370, Kathleen JOHNS was stopped by an individual flashing his headlights. This individual indicated that her tire was loose.

He, in fact, loosened the lug nuts on her tire causing her tire to fal off, and then took her in his vehicle for quite some time. A letter sent to the

news media on 072770 by the Zodiac claimed he was responsible for this incident. This is almost exactly the same as told to CHENEY in

1969.

12. During this conversation with CHENEY in 1968, ALLEN asked CHENEY how to disguise his handwriting, and he would wear makeup

to change his appearance. Note—The Zodiac handprinting has never been matched to that [of] ALLEN. This could explain this match not

being made. This premise has been discussed at length with Terry Pascoe, Questioned Document Examiner, DOJ retired. He original y

worked on some of the Zodiac letters. He agrees that a person with high intel igence could study the methods used to examine handwriting

and fool a document examiner.

13. During the conversation with CHENEY, ALLEN indicated he would have fun hunting people.

14. ALLEN told CHENEY that he would send letters to the police to confuse and antagonize them.

15. ALLEN told CHENEY that he would attach a flashlight to a weapon for sighting in the dark. This is referred [to] by the Zodiac in a letter

he sent to the news media on 080769.

16. Shoe prints found at Lake Berryessa by the Napa County Sheriff’s Department belonging to the kil er are size 10½. ALLEN wears

shoes size 10½.

17. The description of the kil er in Val ejo at Blue Rock Springs and in Napa County Sheriff’s Department jurisdiction at Lake Berryessa is

a heavyset white male with a potbel y. ALLEN is a white male, heavyset with a potbel y.

18. Letters received from the Zodiac by the media had what appeared to be intentional y misspel ed words. ALLEN intentional y misspel s

words. One example would be in documents found during the search warrant of 02/91, ALLEN spel ed the word eggs “aigs.” This intentional

misspel ing of words was confirmed by his brother Ron ALLEN who says that Leigh ALLEN did that to be funny.

19. ALLEN denied any knowledge about making bombs and denied ever making any formulas for making bombs. ALLEN’s handwriting

has been matched to the formulas found for making bombs during the search warrant of 02/91.

20. ALLEN was reported to the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department on 092374 as having molested a boy in that city. He was arrested

in late September or early October 1974. The last letter received from the Zodiac in this time frame was 070874. ALLEN was released from

Atascadero State Prison in September 1977. No Zodiac letters were received while ALLEN was in Atascadero Prison.

21. In 1969, Ralph SPINELLI had a conversation with ALLEN. ALLEN admitted he was the Zodiac. ALLEN claimed he would do a kil ing

in San Francisco to prove that he was the Zodiac kil er. On October 11, 1969, Paul STINE, a cabdriver in the City of San Francisco, was shot

to death. This shooting differs from the July 4, 1969, kil ing in Val ejo, and the September 27, 1969, kil ing in Napa County inasmuch as those

were both men and women in secluded areas. On 101469, a letter from the Zodiac took credit for the STINE kil ing and sent part of STINE’s

shirt to the newspaper.

22. In May of 1991, ALLEN gave an interview to the Vallejo Times-Herald . In that interview he indicated a “Man from Lake Tahoe” had

recently given Val ejo Police Department information regarding him (ALLEN). It should be noted that SPINELLI owned a restaurant in the Lake

Tahoe Area in the early 1980s. It is apparent that ALLEN must have kept track of SPINELLI as he was never told by us that SPINELLI had any

connection with Lake Tahoe.

23. Reference Item #6 in this list of circumstances—On 061191, Captain Conway and I re-interviewed Phil TUCKER. The excerpts from

Item #6 were from a 1971 interview by Detective Dave TOSCHI of the San Francisco Police Department. During our interview Phil TUCKER

was unable to remember that Arthur Leigh ALLEN had told him that he had special sights for shooting in the dark. He did, however, indicate

that Arthur Leigh ALLEN told him he was proficient in shooting and proficient in shooting in the dark.

Most significant new information revealed by Phil TUCKER was the fol owing: The book [Al en had mentioned] was about hunting people

with a bow and arrow. ALLEN was fascinated with this. He indicated a number of times that it would be more sport to hunt people as they had

intel igence. This conversation took place while ALLEN and TUCKER were discussing hunting trips while [en route] to the ocean to go diving.

ALLEN was fascinated with the concept of stalking people rather than game. TUCKER indicated that he felt that ALLEN wanted TUCKER’s

reaction to these statements. TUCKER told ALLEN that he would never consider hunting people. TUCKER indicated he thinks ALLEN told him

the name of the book he had read. After some time I asked TUCKER if the name of the story was “The Most Dangerous Game,” and TUCKER

said he did not think that was the name of the book. TUCKER indicated that this conversation took place prior to September of 1966 as that is

the month and year he married his first wife, and he did not see ALLEN to any great degree, nor go out on hunting and fishing trips with him

after his marriage.

It should be noted this is almost exactly the same as part of the conversation he had with Donald CHENEY on January of 1968 and almost

exactly the same as al uded to by the Zodiac in his letters to the press, as wel as in his cryptogram. TUCKER was asked if he knew Donald

CHENEY, and he advised he did not.

TUCKER was asked why he did not give this information to TOSCHI and MULANAX in 1971. He indicated he only answered their questions

and was not asked about any fantasies ALLEN may have related to him.

TUCKER also indicated that during the span of this conversation, Arthur Leigh ALLEN had a Zodiac brand watch with a Zodiac symbol

which consisted of a circle with lines horizontal y and vertical y through it.

TUCKER also indicated that he has seen Arthur Leigh ALLEN write with both hands, and that he uses both hands equal y wel when

handwriting. TUCKER describes his handwriting as not real good.

TUCKER also indicated that ALLEN had an interest in codes, and that he had seen a handwritten Zodiac-type cryptogram at ALLEN’s

house prior to any cryptograms being published in the newspaper. TUCKER also indicated that ALLEN loved to try and outsmart the other guy.

TUCKER indicates that in 1969, he owned an older brown Corvair that was beat up, and that ALLEN had driven this Corvair. He could not

specifical y indicate whether ALLEN drove this Corvair on July 4, 1969. It should be noted that witnesses at the kil ing at Blue Rock Springs on

July 4, 1969, described an older brown vehicle, possibly a Corvair, as being the responsible vehicle.

24. In the mid-1970s D.O.J. Investigator SILVER accompanied by Bryan HARTNELL, the victim in the Napa Sheriff’s Department Zodiac

Case, went to a hardware store where ALLEN was working. HARTNELL was directed to make a purchase from ALLEN. HARTNELL then

informed SILVER that ALLEN’s physical size and voice were the same as the person who had kil ed his girlfriend and badly wounded him,

HARTNELL, in Napa. HARTNELL did not see the face of the responsible [assailant] in this incident as he was wearing a hood.

25. While Arthur Leigh ALLEN was incarcerated at Atascadero State Prison, D.O.J. Investigator SILVER had a polygraph examination

given to ALLEN by D.O.J. Polygraph Examiner Sam LISTER. Sam LISTER indicated that ALLEN had passed this polygraph test, and he felt

he was not, in fact, the Zodiac kil er.

We had our polygraph examiner JOHNSON examine the charts used by LISTER on ALLEN. JOHNSON indicated that after examining the

charts, it was his opinion that ALLEN was on some type of drugs while he was taking the polygraph for LISTER, and that it was also his opinion

that ALLEN did not pass the polygraph examination, and that it was inconclusive. It should be noted that Atascadero is a mental hospital, and

many of the inmates are on different types of tranquilizers.

26. During the search warrant in February of 1991 at ALLEN’s residence, a letter was located that indicated it was from Investigator

SILVER at the Department of Justice. This letter was to “Whom It May Concern” and indicated that ALLEN had passed the polygraph

examination, and law enforcement should no longer consider him as a suspect in the Zodiac kil ings. Also found was the master for making this

letter. ALLEN subsequently admitted that he had printed this letter while working in the print shop at Atascadero Hospital. However, ALLEN

maintained that this letter was authentic.

Contacts with SILVER indicated that the signature on the letter was authentic, but it was not D.O.J. letterhead, and he would never write such

a letter. SILVER did indicate that he had written letters to ALLEN to obtain his permission to do a polygraphic examination, and this may have

been where his signature was found and used in this bogus letter.

27. In mid-1992, Michael MAGEAU, the victim in the Zodiac kil ing in Val ejo, wherein Darlene FERRIN died, and he was badly wounded,

made a positive identification from a photo lineup comprised of driver’s license photos, one of which was Arthur Leigh ALLEN’s picture from a

1968 driver’s license, that ALLEN was the responsible who shot him on July 4, 1969, at Blue Rock Springs.

28. One of the cryptograms sent by the Zodiac had a line on it that indicated, “My name is,” and it was a different cryptogram at this

location. This cryptogram was final y broken, and it was determined to read, “Robert Emmett, the Hippie.” No one was able to locate “Robert

Emmett, the Hippie.” In August of 1992, information was developed that ALLEN was an associate with the manager of the swimming team at

Val ejo High School whose name was Robert Emmett RODIFER, and this person later became a hippie attending University of California,

Berkeley, and U.S.F. in San Francisco.

Robert Emmett RODIFER was located in Germany. He confirmed that he did, in fact, know Arthur Leigh ALLEN although he indicated they

were never friends. RODIFER indicated that he was very popular when in school, and that Arthur Leigh ALLEN was not, and there was

apparently some animosity between him and ALLEN because of this. He was given the information about “Robert Emmett, the Hippie,” and

the only explanation he could have was that ALLEN was jealous of him, RODIFER.

29. Information was developed that when Arthur Leigh ALLEN was born, and as a youngster, he was left-handed, and that he was forced

to write with his right hand by his parents. Thus, he became ambidextrous. ALLEN steadfastly denied this [ability], indicating he was only able

to write with his right hand. However, his brother indicated that, in fact, Arthur Leigh ALLEN could write with either hand. Also, we interviewed

Arthur Leigh ALLEN’s best friend, Glen RINEHART, who was very defensive of ALLEN, but confirmed that ALLEN was able to write with his

left hand.

The handwriting of the Zodiac kil er has never been matched to the handwriting of Arthur Leigh ALLEN. Our handwriting expert,

CUNNINGHAM, confirms that if ALLEN had the ability to write with his left hand, that this could explain the inability to match the handwriting to

Arthur Leigh ALLEN.

30. In August of 1992, Arthur Leigh ALLEN was found dead in his residence of a heart attack. A search warrant served at ALLEN’s

residence revealed more bomb formulas, and a videotape of al the TV interviews related to the Zodiac. Also, a letter that was to be opened

upon his death indicating that he was not, in fact, the Zodiac, and that he had been persecuted by the Val ejo Police Department.

The Zodiac Letters

ZODIAC’S RIVERSIDE, CALIFORNIA WRITINGS

1. November 29, 1966 (Tuesday). Two typewritten carbon copies of a “confession” letter sent to the press and Riverside police. Zodiac

typed on a sandwich of Teletype paper and carbon paper and mailed the faintest, the fourth and fifth impressions. The original typed top page

was never sent. He entitled the letter “THE CONFESSION By————” and typed at the bottom: “CC CHIEF OF POLICE, ENTERPRISE.” The

confession had the same mocking tone Zodiac used in a later letter he began “My Name is———.” The threat of more kil ings to come is also

Zodiac-like. Both envelopes were addressed in heavy-felt type printing to the “Homicide Detail, Riverside” and the “Daily Enterprise,

Riverside, California.” He flagged them “ATTN; CRIME.” The two letters had no postage, only the stamped reminder: ALWAYS USE ZIP

CODE. Postmark: RIVERSIDE CALIF. NOV 29 PM 1966.

2. April 30, 1967 (Sunday). Zodiac’s handwritten letter on 8½-by-11-inch lined three-hole note paper and envelope in pencil to the

Riverside Press-Enterprise. Note the “Z” at the bottom of the letter (the FBI agreed that this was a “Z” and not a numeral “2” and double postage—two four-cent Lincoln stamps, on the envelope and lack of postmark. “Bates had to die . . .” FBI Specimens Q66 and Q67. SFPD

Item #16. Includes the three letters and envelopes postmarked April 30, 1967.

3. April 30, 1967. Zodiac’s letter in pencil to the Riverside Police Department. Two four-cent Lincoln stamps, on the envelope and lack of

postmark. “Bates had to die . . .” FBI Specimens Qc68 and Q69.

4. Zodiac’s letter in pencil to Joseph Bates, April 30, 1967. Two four-cent Lincoln stamps, on the envelope and lack of postmark. “Bates

had to die . . .”

5. Circa January 1967. Desktop poem, found in the Riverside City Col ege Library around the same time as Letters 1, 2, and 3, but

probably written three and a half months earlier, then stored in an unused basement. It was discovered by a janitor. Bal point pen, “Sick of

Living . . .” Photocopy of ten line poem of crude free verse. The message was written on plywood board study desktop with a bal point pen.

Four fingerprints and three partial palm prints (Latent Case #73096) on the top remained unidentified. They did not match the three local

suspects that Riverside P.D. had under investigation. This poem measured a mere five inches deep by three-and-one-half inches wide, no

bigger than a file card. Zodiac sent cards through the mail of the same size. By writing so tiny, Zodiac was able to further disguise his handprinting.

The FBI Lab, working only from photos and photocopies, reported that “Portions of the material, particularly the three Riverside letters, may

have been disguised or deliberately distorted . . . the handprinting examination of these letters was inconclusive. However consistent

handprinting characteristics were noted the Q85-Qc100 letters which indicate that one person may have prepared al of the letters including the

Riverside letters and the message found on the desktop in the Riverside case.”

ZODIAC’S NORTHERN CALIFORNIA WRITINGS

1. July 31, 1969 (Thursday). Zodiac’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle contains one-third of a cipher. “This is the murderer . . . brand

name is Western.” Page Two of Zodiac’s blue felt-tip pen letter to the Chronicle , July 31, 1969 is on back. Paper is so thin that overleaf shows

through. The letter we received at the Chronicle measured 7⅛-inches-by- 10½-inches. Letters mailed to the Examiner and Times-Herald measured different sizes and indicated the kil er was using remaindered paper bought in lots. One-third of Zodiac’s three-part cipher enclosed

in his letter. Envelope, slip of cipher, envelope flap and both pages of Zodiac’s letter fingerprinted. Police mistakenly marked photocopy sent

to FBI as cipher to the “Examiner.”

1A. August 10, 1969 (Sunday). Typewritten envelope addressed “Sergeant Lynch, Val ejo Police Department Val ejo, California.

Accompanying damaged white three-inch-by-five-inch card (the same size card used later) bearing typewritten note, “Dear Sergeant Lynch I

hope the enclosed key . . .” Sheet of paper bearing handprinted letters and symbols beginning “A-G-S-(backwards) L . . .” No indented writing

found. Postmark: San Francisco Calif. 3A PM 10 AUG 1969.

1B. Salinas schoolteacher Donald Gene Harden’s original worksheets for decoding the first part of Zodiac’s three part cipher sent to Bay

Area’s papers on July 31, 1969.

2. July 31, 1969 (Thursday). Letter to San Francisco Examiner, contains one-third of a cipher which measured 71/16-inches-by-10⅜-

inches. Envelope postmarked “SAN FRANCISCO, CALIF PM 31 JULY 1969,” bearing handprinted address “S.F. EXAMINER San Fran,

Calif.” On flap are the large, scrawled words: “PLEASE RUSH TO EDITOR.” First page of handprinted letter: “Dear Editor This is the murderer

of the two teenagers . . .” Back of letter begins: “Here is part of a cipher . . .”

3. July 31, 1969 Zodiac’s letter to the Vallejo Times-Herald. “I am the kil er . . . print this.” Police exhibit includes front and back of envelope, one-third of a Zodiac cipher measuring 71/16-inches-by-107/16-inches, a letter measuring 7⅛-inches-by-109/16-inches and photo of

the cipher after being fingerprinted. Police in marking exhibit confused the partial cipher with one sent to the Chronicle on the same day. On

August 2, police fumed the letter with Ninhydrin, a chemical that develops prints, but causes the handprinting to run and blur. Of the three ciphers mailed July 31, 1969 and marked QC 32, the FBI wrote, “The ciphers are hand drawn and not normal handprinting. For these reasons

not definitely determined whether specimens submitted and others in this case written by one person. However, al threatening letters may be

one writer.”

4. Page Two of Zodiac’s three-page letter to the Vallejo Times-Herald, August 1969. First use of name Zodiac. “In answer to your asking

for more details.” Police date this letter as August 7, 1969. It may have been sent on the first or second of August as an article in the Examiner

reproduces it on August 4, 1969 and “buries it” on Page Four. Zodiac never wrote the Examiner again. “If Zodiac mailed the first three letters

on July 31, 1969 and they were published August 1 he wrote that second letter because the cop asked for more details. “It looks like he

jumped right on it,” police said.

4A. September 27, 1969 (Saturday). Writing on Bryan Hartnel ’s Volkswagen Karmann Ghia car door at Lake Berryessa,. It can be seen in

crime scene picture in the photograph section and close-up in Zodiac. The printing on Hartnel ’s locked car (white with a black vinyl top white

Oregon license, #4U2040) as described by Deputy Dave Col ins on 9/29/69: “At the top of the door panel and to the center was a circle and an

even sided cross, running completely through the circle on al four sides. Below the circle and the cross which is described as a cross hair

symbol the word ‘Val ejo.’ Below the word ‘Val ejo,’ the date ‘12/20/68.’ Below that date ‘7/4/69.’ Below that word ‘Sept. 27, 69-6:30.’ Below

that in printing ‘by knife.’ This was written in black ink that appeared to be put on with a felt pen.”

5. October 13, 1969 (Monday). Front and back of the envelope to Zodiac’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle . . . about the Stine

kil ing. Envelope contained a bloody square of Paul Stine’s gray and white shirt. In custody of the SFPD Lab, #1 and FBI Q85. Postmark: PM

13 OCT. 1969 1B.

6. November 8, 1969 (Saturday). Front and back of the envelope to Zodiac’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, Envelope contained a

340-symbol cipher and a greeting card (“Sorry I haven’t written . . .”) with a dripping fountain pen from the Gibson Company with dripping pen.

SFPD Lab #2. Includes square of Stine’s shirt. Postmark: PM 8 NOV. 1969 4A.

7. November 9, 1969 (Sunday). Seven page letter, “Change my way of col ecting . . .” SFPD Lab #2. FBI Specimen Q86. No postmark.

7A. December 7, 1969 (Sunday). Copycat letter addressed to “San Francisco Chronicle,” postmarked Fairfield. “I wil kil again . . . I wil turn

my self in O K.” FBI marked documents Qc34 and Qc35. “Some of the threatening letters in this case, particularly Qc34 and Qc35, contain

some distortion and were not written as freely as other threatening letters in this matter,” reported the FBI lab.

8. December 20, 1969 (Saturday), “Dear Melvin . . . Help me . . . can not remain in control much longer . . . Happy Christmass . . .

[Zodiac’s way of spel ing Christmas].” Marked FBI Specimen Qc43 (envelope) and Qc44 (letter). Piece of Stine’s shirt per keel. Location of

envelope unknown. SFPD Lab #3, FBI Specimen Q87. Postmark: PM 20 Dec. 1069 no mark, CA. at bottom center.

8A. December 3, 1968 (Tuesday). Analysis of bank robbery note to Sutter branch of Wel s-Fargo Bank in San Francisco to see if matched

Zodiac’s printing. It did not. “This is a Bank Robbery if you dont do as I say I wil shot.”

9. April 20, 1970 (Monday). “My name is . . .” and bomb diagram. Zodiac’s envelope, front and back, to the San Francisco Chronicle.

SFPD Lab #4. FBI #Qc45 and Q88. Postmark: AM 20 APR. 1970 4A.

10. April 28, 1970 (Tuesday). Front of overposted Zodiac’s envelope to the San Francisco Chronicle. Man on dragon greeting card.

“Enjoy the blast . . . buttons . . .” SFPD Lab #5, FBI Q89. Postmark: H. P.M.

11. June 26, 1970 (Friday). Single-stamped Zodiac envelope. Postmarked San Francisco, California “1A 26 JUN AM 1979,” to the San

Francisco Chronicle. Enclosed, a torn portion of a Phil ips 66 road map (FBI Specimen Qc51 and Q90). Darlene Ferrin’s first husband was

named Phil ips. With a single line of crypto. Phil ips 66 road map had symbols indicating Contra Costa County and specifical y Mount Diablo,

aka “Satan’s Mountain.” The kil er now claimed twelve victims. The back of Zodiac’s map has never been reproduced in print and contains a

visual clue linking the kil er to his earliest murder near Santa Barbara. Envelope to Zodiac’s letter of June 26, 1970 which contained the threat

“to punish them if they did not comply by anilating a ful school buss.” SFPD Lab #6. Postmark: AM JUNE 1970 1A.

12. July 24, 1970 (Friday). Envelope, Zodiac’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, a mention of kidnapped woman and baby, a

reference to Kathleen Johns and her infant. SFPD Lab #7. Marked Qc53 and Q91 by FBI. Postmark: PM 24 JUL. 1970 6B.

13. July 26, 1970 (Sunday). “Got a little list . . .” The rarest of al Zodiac letters—never reproduced, never seen outside police

headquarters. I was fortunate to see it when it arrived at the Chronicle in 1970. Zodiac paraphrased Gilbert and Sul ivan’s The Mikado in his

letter (FBI Specimens Qc54 and Qc55). Envelope marked Qc52 by FBI. Only Zodiac’s lengthy letter of November 9, 1969 contained more

clues. SFPD Lab #8, FBI Q92. FBI document photocopy Qc55 began “As some day it may hapen that a victom must be found . . .” Qc56

began “This is the Zodiac speaking Being that you wil not wear . . .” The FBI lab noted that “Some of the photocopies [provided to them by

SFPD] including Qc52-Qc56, are not sufficiently clear to permit detailed handprinting comparisons. However, characteristics indicate that al

of the threatening letters, including Qc52-Qc56, were probably prepared by one person.” The Lab further suggested, “The reference to bil iard

players in Qc56 may have been taken from a song sung by the Mikado in Act I . . . . No code or cipher material was found in Specimens Qc52

through Qc56. Postmark: PM 26 JUL. 1970 no mark.

14. October 5, 1970 (Monday). A three-by-five-inch card addressed to “Paul Averly”—“Pace isn’t any slower . . .” Front of Zodiac’s

montage postcard to the San Francisco Chronicle. The card is general y regarded as a fake, but Zodiac’s Los Angeles letter of March 15,

1971 also uses the phrase “Crackproof.” The three-by-five-inch card (with thirteen punch holes symbolizing victims) contains a bloody cross. It

is not human blood. Don Cheney said, “Leigh had a three-hole punch,” but Zodiac used a single-holed punch. Toschi advised me that the cross

under the numeral 13 was made of thin red paper pasted on the postcard as was other printing. Back of Zodiac’s montage postcard to the

San Francisco Chronicle, Monday, October 5, 1970. Postmark: PM 5 OCT. 1970 1A. It was published on October 6, the one year anniversary

of Lynch’s interview with Arthur Leigh Al en.

14A. October 17, 1970 (Saturday). Copycat letter postmarked “BERKELEY, CA 17 OCT PM 1970.” Bearing message cut out of newspapers

or other publications beginning “Mon, Oct 12, 1970 . . . the Zodiac is going to . . .”

15. October 27, 1970 (Tuesday). “Your secret pal . . .” Contained a threatening twenty-five cent (Gibson Greetings) Hal oween card to Paul

Avery, claiming fourteen victims. The brush lettering spel ing “Averly” is the same as on a March 23, 1971 postcard. Zodiac’s postcard, hole-

punched like the October 5, 1970 card, was done with brush lettering. Zodiac demonstrated art skil s and practice with a brush. He misspel s

the reporter’s name here and on a the October 5, 1970 card as “Averly,” a common Zodiac touch. SFPD Lab #9. FBI Specimens Qc60-Qc6s

and Q93. Postmark: PM 27 OCT. 1970 6B.

16. March 13, 1971 (Saturday). Postmarked Pleasanton 94566, to Los Angeles Times. “Blue Meanies . . .” SFPD Lab #10 FBI

Specimen Qc94. Originals in possession of the Los Angeles Police Department. Postmark: PM 13 MAR. 1071 Pleasanton 94566.

17. March 22, 1971 (Monday). Zodiac’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle, Four-cent postcard. “Peek through the pines . . .” Cut out

and pasted letters, holes punched. One reader, Mike Hopkins, studied the lone punch hole in the upper right-hand corner of the card. “It’s at

approximately the 11:00 position,” he explained. “When the card is oriented so the words ‘Sierra Club’ are upright, there is the suggestion of a

face in the foliage. Did Zodiac sketch himself into the picture and is that what he meant by ‘peek through the pines’?” The author obtained the

original elaborate brochure which Zodiac used to manufacture the postcard and studied it inch by inch. The kil er had added no additional

artwork to the pen and ink landscape. Postmark: Canceled Lincoln stamp in which the president is shown in left profile and mourning, which is

another indication that someone in Zodiac’s life had recently died.

18. January 29, 1974 (Tuesday). Zodiac’s letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. Exorcist Letter. SFPD Lab #14. FBI file #Qc62 and

Qc63. “Qc59-Qc61 being forward to Cryptography Section for evaluation,” reported the lab, “you wil be advised on the results.” Postmark: AM

29 JAN. 1974 940. Three contact palm edge prints were found in 2001 which did not match Al en’s palm print.

18A. Copycat card and envelope marked “SLA” to Chronicle, postmarked 14 February, 1974. SFPD Lab #11.

18B. Copycat postcard marked May 6, 1974. SFPD Lab #12.

19. May 8, 1974 (Wednesday). Zodiac’s letter from Alameda to the San Francisco Chronicle. Badlands Letter, signed “A Citizen.”

Postmark: 8 MAY 1974 Alameda County.

20. July 8, 1974 (Monday). Zodiac’s “Red Phantom” to the San Francisco Chronicle from San Rafael. SFPD Lab #13, FBI Specimen

Q97. Postmark: PM 8 JUL. 1974 San Rafael 1B.

21. April 24, 1978 (Monday). Hoax Zodiac letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. “I am back with you . . .” San Francisco Police notation:

“DNA SAMPLE OBTAINED/NOT AUTHENTIC ZODIAC LETTER.” SFPD Lab #15, FBI Specimen Q99. Postmark: PM 24 APR. 1978 8B.

ZODIAC COPYCAT LETTERS

22.October 29, 1987 (Wednesday). A Zodiac copycat, probably the true author of the April 1978 letter (21), writes the Vallejo Times-

Herald . “Dear Editor This is the Zodiac speaking I am crack proof. Tel herb caen that I am stil here. I have always been here. Tel the blue

pigs . . .”

23. June 19, 1990 (Tuesday). Anne Murray, a reporter with the New York Post received a letter from Zodiac I . “They faxed me a copy,”

Ciravolo told me. “It’s our guy—it’s obviously the same handwriting— claiming responsibility for three prior shootings. He says he shot a man

with a cane in the street on March 8.”

24. June 21, 1990 (Thursday). “In the letter I left,” Zodiac I said later, “I used the phrase I read from the encyclopedia. It was to throw you off

the track. . . . I just wanted to increase the fear.”

25. June 25, 1990 (Monday). Zodiac I wrote, “Only Orion [The Hunter] can stop Zodiac and the Seven Sister. No more games, pigs.”

26. August 5, 1994 (Saturday). Mike Ciravolo told me, “I get a cal saying ‘Zodiac shot people. He’s writing notes [and codes].’ It checks

out. He’s out there again.”

27. May 24, 1997 (Saturday). “So this is the beginning of the game,” read the letter from Japan’s Zodiac I I. “I desperately want to see

people die. Nothing makes me more excited than kil ing. Stupid police, stop me if you can. It’s great fun for me to kil people.”

28. June 5, 1997 (Thursday). The Japanese Zodiac’s rambling 1,400-word letter is published and signed Seito Sakakibara [Apostle

Sake Devil Rose]. Zodiac I I claimed this was his real name.

Books, Films, Radio, and Television Shows That Inspired Zodiac

“The Most Dangerous Game,” printed in Variety and published by Minton Balch & Company in 1924, won the O. Henry Memorial Award for that

year. Richard Connel ’s short story has been included in numerous adventure anthologies over the years.

The Most Dangerous Game. In 1932 RKO-Radio Pictures, Inc. filmed a 63-minute-long black and white film version of “The Most Dangerous

Game” with executive producer David O. Selznick, producer Merian C. Cooper, and directors Ernest B. Schoedsack and Irving Pichel (dialogue

director). Screenwriter was James Ashmore Creelman. The film starred Joel McCrea (Bob Rainsford), Fay Wray (Eve Trowbridge), Leslie Banks

(Count Zaroff), Robert Armstrong (Martin Trowbridge), Noble Johnson, Steve Clemento, and Dutch Hernian. Max Steiner, music. RKO Production

#602.

In 1945 RKO re-made The Most Dangerous Game as A Game of Death directed by Robert Wise and starring John Loder and Audrey Long.

Edgar Barrier played General Kreigner. The fol owing year, Johnny Allegro used elements of Connel ’s story. Nina Foch and George Raft. George

MacCready emulated our old friend Count Zaroff as a sportsman kil er, who liked to claim his victims with bow and arrow.

In 1956 came the third retel ing of Connel ’s yarn. Bob Waterfield, former L.A. Rams quarterback, produced the film. United Artist’s Run for the Sun

starred Richard Widmark, Trevor Howard, and Jane Greer as a magazine editor who goes to Mexico to ferret out a reclusive novelist. Rather than

an island, this time the action was set on a jungle plantation. Widmark and Greer crash-land on the estate of a Nazi war criminal who hunts wayward

travelers with a pack of bloodhounds. Long after the film was completed, Greer learned she had been exposed to a rare virus contracted during the

grueling waterfal and swamp scenes, Coxsaci B, that lay dormant in her body for years. Only a heart operation in the 1960s saved her life.

In 1961, Robert Reed starred in Bloodlust—another variation. Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey was filmed five years later. The Perverse Countess was released in 1973, Slave Girls from Beyond Infinity in 1988, and Deadly Game in 1991—al versions of The Most Dangerous Game.

Follow Me Quietly. Directed by Richard Fleischer, RKO. Starring Wil iam Lundigan, Dorothy Patrick, and Edwin Max as “The Judge.” 1949, 59

minutes. “The Judge” is a Zodiac-like character who carries on a deadly chess match with a police inspector.

Charlie Chan at Treasure Island. The 1939 20th Century-Fox film. Directed by Norman Foster and John Larkin. Original Story and Screenplay by

John Larkin. Based on the character Charlie Chan, created by Earl Derr Biggers. Sidney Toler, Cesar Romero, Pauline Moore (Eve Cairo), Victor

Sen Yung (Number Two son, Jimmy Chan), Douglas Fowley (Pete Lewis, San Francisco Chronicle crime reporter), June Gale (Myra Rhadini,

Rhadini’s wife and a professional knife-thrower), Douglass Dumbril e (Thomas Gregory, an insurance investigator), Sal y Blane (Stel a Essex), Bil ie

Seward (Bessie Sibley), Wal y Vernon (Elmer), Donald MacBride (Chief Kilvaine), Charles Halton (Redley), Trevor Bardette (the treacherous Dr.

Zodiac’s Turkish servant), Gerald Mohr (voice of Dr. Zodiac), Louis Jean Heydt (Paul Essex). 72 minutes. Al the magic props from this film were

later re-used in A-Haunting We Will Go (Fox, 1944), a Laurel and Hardy comedy.

The Boston Strangler, the first docudrama about a real-life serial kil er, starred Tony Curtis, 1968.

No Way to Treat a Lady. A psychotic kil er, Christopher Gil (Rod Steiger) disguises himself as a policeman, a woman, and a priest. He chooses to

play a cat-and-mouse game with a police detective, Morris Brummel (George Segal). The kil er cal s him after each crime, leaves clues in taunting

letters, and draws his mother’s lips on his victims’ foreheads. The cop and kil er both have mother complexes. Detective Brummel says to the kil er

of his victims, “But they al had lipstick, didn’t they? The very shape of your dear mother’s lips. The very lips on al those portraits out in your lobby.”

Zodiac conceivably took ideas from this 1968 movie in which Steiger portrayed what has been cal ed “the perfect fictional serial kil er . . . intel igent

and egotistical who never changes his pattern until suitable motivation is provided.”

The Exorcist. Wil iam Peter Blatty’s book and 1973 film, influenced Zodiac as shown in his written critique of the movie on January 29, 1974 in

which he deemed the film “the best saterical comidy” he had ever seen. Perhaps demonic possession as a factor in serial kil ings intrigued the

Cipher Slayer.

Badlands, a movie based on the Charlie Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate 1950s murder spree, aroused Zodiac to write the Chronicle again on

May 8, 1974 to express his “consternation concerning your poor taste” by running ads for the film.

“The Most Dangerous Game” appeared on the radio on Suspense on September 23, 1943, as the most famous audio adaptation of Connel ’s

short story. The fifty-eighth episode of the series, the program starred Orson Wel es and Keenan Wynn. Jacques A. Finke wrote the script for

producer-director Wil iam Spier. The radio show was stil sustaining (without a sponsor) and had just moved from Saturday nights to Thursday the

month before.

On February 1, 1945, Finke’s script was used for a second Suspense broadcast, but this time starred J. Carrol Naish and Joseph Cotten. Two

years after that Les Crutchfield adapted “The Most Dangerous Game” as a half-hour show for producer-director Norman Macdonnel ’s Escape, on

October 1, 1947, starring Paul Frees and Hans Conried. Escape had begun its irregular run on CBS radio in July.

A 1950s Alfred Hitchcock Presents starring Myron McCormick and adapted from a story by Wil iam C. Morrison—featured a young man with a

flashlight taped to his rifle. “Just shoot for the dark spot in the light and you wil hit your target,” he said—exactly as Zodiac wrote. Hunting smal

game at night, he chanced upon two lovers—result: accidental murder and the man’s imprisonment. His vengeful father says at the conclusion, eyes

glittering: “The excitement of a manhunt—the most dangerous game.”

The Man Who Never Was, starring Robert Lansing and featuring the crossed-circle symbol. This ABC television show debuted Wednesday,

September 7, 1966.

Films and Television Shows That Zodiac Inspired

Zodiac, a minimum-budget, 84-minute color film in which Zodiac is highly fictionalized. The film features a penlight on a gun barrel and lovers’ lane

murders. Shown exclusively at the RKO Golden Gate Theater at Golden Gate Avenue and Taylor Street for a single week. Police staked it out in

case Zodiac should attend and fil out a card explaining, in twenty-five words or less, why they believed Zodiac kil ed. The person who answered

best would win a free Kawasaki 350cc motorcycle. One review: “A movie disguised as a warning sneaked into the Golden Gate this week . . . the

print is flawed, but this is expected to be improved. Less easily remedied is the script and its dialogue . . . the picture ends limply, despite a few

remarks in the narrative that Zodiac may be the man behind you in the theatre.” The cast includes Hal Reed, Bob Jones, Ray Lynch, and Tom

Pittman. Produced and directed by Tom Hanson, with a screenplay by Ray Cantrel and Manny Cardoza. The film was advertised in the Chronicle

with the lines, “Who is he . . . what is he . . . when is he going to strike again??” and “Zodiac says . . . ‘I Lay Awake Nights Thinking of My Next

Victim.’”

Dirty Harry. While Zodiac was low-budget, Don Siegel’s 1971 Dirty Harry was shot in Technicolor Panavision and starred Clint Eastwood as an Inspector Toschi-type searching for a ski-masked sniper named “Scorpio” (Andy Robinson) who signs himself with a crossed-circle symbol. Like

The Most Dangerous Game, Scorpio fired a 30-.06 rifle with a sniper scope such as Zaroff used in the movie. Interestingly, Scorpio wore the

military shoes worn by Zodiac. In Dirty Harry police used the personal column of the Chronicle to communicate with him. I suspect that the real

Zodiac also used the paper’s personal column to communicate with a confederate or instil fear in people who suspected him. “Dirty” Harry tracks

the serial kil er through the underbrush of Mt. Davidson and corners him near Golden Gate Park at Kezar Stadium close to Stanyan and Haight

Streets, not far from Paul Stine’s house. Faithful to the facts, the movie diverges in making Zodiac’s threat to kidnap a school bus fil ed with children

a reality. Written by Harry Julian Fink, R. M. Fink, and Dean Reisner, photographed by Bruce Surtees. First choices for the role were Frank Sinatra

(an injured tendon in his hand made it painful to hold a gun) and Paul Newman (who objected to its politics and suggested Clint Eastwood). The

name of Eric Zelms, Fouke’s partner the night Zodiac escaped into the Presidio, is shown on a memorial plaque to San Francisco police officers.

Zelms died in the line of duty in 1970.

Lured, directed by Douglas Sirk, a “lost” film from 1947. Black and White, 105 minutes and starring Lucil e Bal , George Sanders, Boris Karloff, and

Charles Coburn. Produced by James Nasser with screenplay by Leo Rosten. This film concerned a serial kil er preying on young women in London.

The January Man, starring Kevin Kline.

Exorcist III: Legion. The “Gemini Kil er” is based on Zodiac.

Millennium. This Fox Network series featured a realistic drama about Zodiac. The scene where Agent Frank Black approached Zodiac’s trailer is

especial y authentic as is the climax in the darkened theater where Agent Black is fooled by a statue of Zodiac in costume.

Nash Bridges. featured an “Inspector Toschi” character and an encounter with Zodiac. At the conclusion, Bridges (Don Johnson) implies that

Zodiac wil return.

A 1974 Lou Grant episode, starring Ed Asner featured a police inspector obsessed with a Zodiac-type serial kil er, the Judge, who has apparently

returned and is writing letters to press and police again. Inspired by fake Zodiac letter of April 1978.

The Limbic Region with Edward James Olmos, and to a lesser degree, Copycat with Sigourney Weaver, The Mean Season with Kurt Russel ,

and Seven with Brad Pitt.

Factual Television Programs on Zodiac

Rolanda Show. “The New York and San Francisco Zodiac.” Tuesday, September 6, 1994.

Hard Copy. “Zodiac [Hines’s suspect].” May 10, 1994.

America’s Most Wanted. “America Fights Back: The Zodiac Kil er.” Saturday, November 14, 1998.

Sally Jesse Raphael. “Zodiac.” Taped on Thursday, August 16, 1990.

Unsolved Mysteries. “The Zodiac Kil er. (Episode #2324.)

Crimes of the Century. “Zodiac.” Syndicated program.

The History Channel. “Zodiac.” Taped 1999.

The Learning Channel. “Case Reopened.” A 1999 episode with host Lawrence Block.

Zodiac’s Inspiration from Light Opera, Cartoons, and Comics

Gilbert and Sul ivan’s The Mikado.

The Yellow Submarine. Zodiac mentioned the “Blue Meannies,” a reference to the music-hating “Blue Meanies” who terrorized the Beatles in the

1968 cartoon feature. The submarine aspect made sense. Since Zodiac was obsessed with water and Al en was a skin diver, al of his souvenirs

might be hidden in watertight containers underwater. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band referred to the kil er’s loneliness.

Mad magazine: Zodiac adapted the “fold-ins” on the back cover to conceal messages in one of his letters; Mad #170’s parody of The Exorcist,

“The Ecchorcist,” written by Larry Siegel and drawn by Mort Drucker. The lampoon appeared in the October 1974 issue (published in August),

cover captioned, “If the Devil Makes You Do It,” and showing Alfred E. Newman costumed as Satan.

Whiz Comics #2 [#1]. A mention of the “Death Machine.” “This, my friend, is the life machine. With it I can restore the dead to life. But first I must kil you, so—the death machine!” says a mad chemist, a dead ringer for Count Zaroff. “I place these cyanide pil s in the cup. When the door is closed

they wil drop into the bucket of sulfuric acid, forming a deadly gas.”

The Dick Tracy comic strip ran daily in the Chronicle. Zodiac was a longtime reader of the strip since he recal ed various Tracy’s tips to avoid

leaving prints and other clues. On August 17, 1969, Chester Gould’s story line introduced the Zodiac Gang, a group of astrological kil ers who

drowned an astrology columnist. Their leader, Scorpio, had an astrological symbol of Scorpio tattooed across his face. Light-haired and round-

faced, he closely resembled both Al en and Mageau’s description of Zodiac at Blue Rock Springs.

Visual Inspirations for Zodiac

The Most Dangerous Game. Count Zaroff’s costume.

Ku Klux Klan hoods and black robes of Klan officials.

Black Mass Symbols and hoods used by Anton Le Vey’s Church of Satan.

A cattle brand used on Fred Harmon’s Pagosa Springs, Colorado ranch.

Carrying a cocked bow and rifle, Zodiac resembled not only Zaroff, but the hooded kil er, a staple of painter H. L. Parkhurst’s forties Spicy Mystery

pulp covers one of which showed a nighttime scene with a powerful hooded kil er firing a .45 at his pursuers and clutching a struggling woman

under his arm. Is that how Zodiac visualized himself? >

The cross within a circle was the mark of Cain, the kil er- teth in ancient Hebrew. The word tav stood for the righteous.

The cross-haired symbol is found in ancient American Indian carvings in the Nevada caves.

sources

Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement Files, Interviews

A special Confidential Report: UNSOLVED FEMALE HOMICIDES, An Analysis of a Series of Related Murders in California and Western

America, California Department of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement Organized Crime & Criminal Intel igence Branch, February 1975.

Special Report: ZODIAC HOMICIDES. Confidential. California Department of Justice, Division of Law Enforcement / Bureau of Investigation,

1971. 1972 corrected edition. The author also studied the rough draft of this report as corrections were being made by the detectives involved.

Dr. Murray S. Miron of the Syracuse Research Institute, Confidential FBI psycholinguistics report, working from Zodiac letters, May 31, 1977.

Federal Bureau of Investigation File Number 2528-SF-94447-1. The complete 900-page FBI file on Zodiac. One hundred pages of the file are on

Arthur Leigh Al en.

FBI report 9-49911-88 (January 14, 1970). Quotes conversation between Bel i’s housekeeper and Zodiac, December 18, 1969.

FBI report, December 31, 1969, noted Bel i letter “not been written as freely as the other threatening letters in this matter.” Enciphered Airtel,

12/29/69.

FBI file #32-27195, Latent Case #73096.

FBI Lab, May 19, 1978. Questioned Documents Q85 through Q99. Riverside letters, including the desktop, studied separately in photographic form

and labeled Qc100.

FBI report 252B-SF-9447, March 23, 1992.

Officer Donald Foulk’s SFPD Intra-Departmental Memorandum, November 12, 1969.

Napa County Sheriff’s Office, Case #105907.

Bawart and Conway Report, Case #243145.

Detective George Bawart of Val ejo P.D. A seven page report to the FBI, Case #243145. “Circumstances Which Indicate Arthur Leigh Al en Is, in

Fact, the Zodiac Kil er,” 1992.

Al en Search Warrant #1970, 22 pages, by Roy Conway, dated February 13, 1991.

Return to Al en Search Warrant, filed February 21, 1991 by Roy Conway. Return lists 37 items recovered including pipe bombs, fuses, guns, and

rifles.

Inspector Wil iam Armstrong, Affidavit for Search Warrant, Santa Rosa, 6 pages, September 14, 1972, 12:00 P.M.

Jack Mulanax Officer’s Reports, July 28, 1971, August 3, 1971, August 9-12, 1971, personal interviews with the author.

Mulanax and Wil iam Garlington: July 29, 1971: Exemplars for Arthur Leigh Al en, report from A. L. Coffey, Chief of the Bureau.

Manhattan Beach Police Department: “Information: Possible Zodiac Suspect,” July 19, 1971, Chief Charles W. Crumly.

Riverside Report, October 20, 1969.

John Lynch, Val ejo P.D. Report on Arthur Leigh Al en, 4:05 P.M. October 6, 1969.

SFPD Report. Two pages: Suspected Zodiac Correspondence and DNA Testing.

San Francisco Police Department, Val ejo Police Department, Napa Sheriff’s Department, Benicia Police Department, Val ejo Sheriff’s

Department, Santa Rosa Police Department, and Riverside Police Department incident reports and files. Included in these reports are bal istics

and crime lab results, autopsy reports, fingerprint comparisons, and suspect files.

Personal Interviews by author with Val ejo Detective George Bawart, Detective Sergeant John Lynch, Detective Jack Mulanax, Captain Ken Narlow

of Napa Sheriff’s Department, Homicide Inspector David Toschi (Toschi’s interviews ran to almost three hundred hours over a thirty-year period),

Detective Wil iam Baker, Lieutenant Tom Bruton, and Inspectors Vince Repetto and Rich Adkins. Police investigators’ personal case notes and

reports, including rough drafts of local and state reports.

Psychiatric studies of Arthur Leigh Al en.

Unpublished crime scene photographs and maps.

Unreproduced Zodiac letters and potential y authentic typewritten letters from the kil er. Photos of the kil er’s shoes, watch, and actual samples of

the prime suspect’s handprinting. Al newspaper and television accounts of the Zodiac case, including computer files and unpublished stories.

Various stories, internal memos, and unpublished notes for stories including personal observations by reporter Paul Avery to the author between

1969-1976.

Cablegrams and reports by phone from Melvin Bel i from Rome and Munich, December 1969.

San Francisco State Zodiac Conference: Attended by author, Captain Roy Conway, Detective George Bawart, and Rita Wil iams. Author worked

from his handwritten record of the meeting and a tape recording that he made. Fol ow-up questions were asked of Conway, Bawart, and Wil iams

after the meeting, and in the weeks fol owing. Additional detailed interviews with Wil iams by phone and in person were conducted by the author in

2000 and 2001.

The original tip letters received at the San Francisco Chronicle 1969-1983.

Letters and phone cal s from readers to the author 1969-2001.

Employment records, phone logs, and academic files of some suspects.

Hypnotic interviews conducted with witnesses and suspects.

Suspect’s letters from Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminal y Insane.

California Department of Motor Vehicles and some insurance records.

CI&I Handwriting reports and numerous interviews with the State Questioned Documents chief.

Discarded files on the case.

Xerox photocopies made from the originals of al of the Zodiac letters.

Interviews with Donald Lee Cheney, January, February, May 2001.

Interview with Sandy Panzarel a. The ful story of Cheney and Panzarel a’s tip to police is also enclosed in the 1991-92 requests for search warrants

for Al en’s home. These court documents are now on file at the County Courthouse.

January 29, 1981, interview with Darlene’s close friend, Bobbie Ramos.

Interview with Linda Del Buono on November 8, 1980, January 29, 1981.

Bobbie Oxnam, a close friend of Darlene’s, interview, June 15, 1981.

Interview with Mary Pilker, Donna Lass’s sister, April 7, 2001, July 7, 2001.

South Lake Tahoe Police File, Case #70-6436-Donna Lass, RN.

Douglas County Sheriff File, Case #70-3120-Donna Lass, RN.

Sonoma County Probation File No. 62892, Court No. 7588-C.

Technical advice: Dave Toschi, Mary Ontano, Wendy Manning.

Penny Donaly, Sonoma County Coroner’s Office.

Santa Rosa Sergeant Steve Brown, August 2001.

Newspapers and Periodicals

Blum, Walter. “Zodiac.” San Francisco Examiner, November, 1968.

Clark, Mark. “Dangerous Games.” Scarlet Street Magazine, No. 27, April 1998, pp. 33-37.

Dorn, Norman K. “Putting the Right Sound into Silent Movies.” San Francisco Chronicle, January 4, 1972.

Ginley, Jacqueline. “Local Attorney Claims to Know Zodiac.” Vallejo Times-Herald, October 30, 1991, p. A-1.

Hackler, Timothy. “Can We Blame It on the Moon?” San Francisco Examiner, December 13, 1978, p. 24.

Hedger, Matthew. “Was the Zodiac Kil er a Local Teacher?” Calaveras County Ledger Dispatch, June 2, 2001.

Holt, Tim. “The Men Who Stalk the Zodiac Kil er.” San Francisco Magazine , April 1974, pp. 34-36.

Jennings, Duffy. “Step by Step with Two Detectives.” San Francisco Chronicle, April 1, 1974, p. 4.

Lieber, Dr. Arnold L. “The Lunar Effect and Dade County.” Report cul ed by Dr. Arnold from Florida Homicide Records, 1955-70.

Lyons, Corey. “Zodiac.” Contra Costa Times, December 3, 2000.

Martin, Harry V. “Zodiac.” Napa Sentinel, December 17, 1991.

McCockran, Robert. “Suspect’s Death Won’t Halt Zodiac Investigation.” Vallejo Times-Herald, September 3, 1992.

O’Flaherty, Terrence. “The Police: Reel vs. Real.” San Francisco Chronicle , August 21, 1975, p. 46.

Peterson, Dave. “Zodiac Link to Santa Barbara Murders.” Vallejo News-Chronicle , 1969.

Starr, Kevin. “The City’s Supercop.” San Francisco Examiner, August 13, 1977, p. 11.

Silverman, Gene. “Zodiac.” Vallejo Times-Herald, “January 19, 1986, p. 1.

Stark, John. “The Man We Loved to Hate.” San Francisco Examiner, January 20, 1980, Scene Section, p. 1.

Stienstra, Tom. “Zodiac.” San Francisco Examiner, March 17, 2000.

Weir, Tom. “The Cop Who Hunts Zodiac.” Oakland Tribune, July 13, 1976.

Zel erbach, Merla. “My Fair City.” San Francisco Chronicle, September 11, 1968.

Sources for the New York Zodiac [Zodiac II]

Associated Press. “Attacks by ‘Zodiac’ Gunman Linked to Book.” July 1, 1990.

Celona, Larry, and Bowles, Pete. “Shooter Foils ‘Zodiac’ Author’s Intent.” New York Newsday, June 24, 1990, p. 1.

Bunch, Wil iam, and Gordy, Mol y. “Trying to Chart a Gunman’s Moves.” Newsday, June 22, 1990.

Crowley, Kieran. “Breaks Zodiac Code.” New York Post, August 8, 1994, p. 5.

Crowley, Kieran. Sleep My Little Dead. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997.

Frankel, Bruce. “Zodiac Kil er Stalks NYC.” USA Today, June 27, 1990, p. 3A.

George, Tara, Breen, Virginia, and Mooney, Mark. “He’s Nailed.” New York Daily News, June 19, 1996.

Lyons, Richard D. “Zodiac Detectives Turn to Computers and Stars.” New York Times, June 28, 1990.

Marzul i, John. “Zodiac Knew Signs of Victims.” New York Daily News, p. 3.

McNamara, Joseph. “New York Zodiac Copies S.F. Kil er.” New York Daily News, June 24, 1990.

McNamara, Joseph. “Frisco Kil er Unrelated to Stalker.” San Francisco Examiner, June 24, 1990, p. 43.

McNamara, Joseph. “Zodiac Fires on 4th Man.” New York Daily News, June 22, 1990, p. 7.

McAlary, Mike. “Cop’s Net for Maniac.” New York Daily News, June 28, 1990, p. 34.

McAlary, Mike. “Fol owing the Stars.” New York Daily News, June 24, 1990, p. 2.

McQuil an, Alice, Marzul i, John, and Siemaszko, Corky. “Gunman Admits Serial Shootings.” AP, June 19, 1996, p. 30.

Mil er, Alan. “Kil er May Be Copycat.” USA Today, June 27, 1990, p. 5A.

“Zodiac I —the New York Gunman.” New York Times, June 23, 1990.

“Zodiac.” New York Times, August 13, 1994.

Rashbaum, Wil iam K. “Confession of Murderous Terror Spree.” UPI, June 20, 1996, p. 34. Source for first-person confession of Zodiac I .

Shain, Michael. “Subway Trap for Zodiac.” New York Daily News. July 12, 1990, p. 5.

Smith, Greg B. “Son of Zodiac Creates Climate of Fear in New York.” San Francisco Examiner, July 2, 1990, p. A-6.

Weiss, Murry. “He Warned Police Before First Attack.” New York Post, June 22, 1990, p. 5.

selected references

Bel i, Melvin, and Kaiser, Robert Blair. My Life on Trial. New York: Wil iam Morrow & Co., Inc., 1976.

Douglas, John, and Olshaker, Mark. The Cases That Haunt Us. New York: Scribner, 2000.

Fal is, Greg. A Murder. New York: M. Evans and Company, Inc., 1999.

Gardner, Earle Stanley. The Court of Last Resort Handbook. Privately published.

Gil iam, Harold. San Francisco Bay. Garden City, New York: Doubleday & Company, 1957.

Goldner, Orvil e, and Turner, George E. The Making of King Kong. Bal antine Books, New York, 1975.

Hanke, Ken. Charlie Chan at the Movies. McFarland & Co. Inc.

Huffman, Rob. “Camping with the Zodiac.” 1997, 2000.

Kessler, Robert. The FBI. New York: Pocket Books, 1993.

Lunde, Donald T., M.D. Murder and Madness. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1979.

Time-Life, editors. Serial Killers. Alexandria, Virginia: Time-Life Books, 1992.

Zinman, David. Saturday Afternoon at the Bijou. New York: Arlington House, 1973.

Map of Val ejo Showing Prime Suspect’s Close Proximity to the Victims, Witnesses and Crime Scenes.

index

Abduction and abduction attempts

Adkins, Rich

Alioto, Mayor Joe

Allen, Arthur Leigh:

ambidexterity

and animals. See also Animal torture

arrests

prior

in Santa Rosa, Sept. 27, 1974

in Vallejo, Jan. 23, 1975

background information . See also Cheney, Donald Lee

birthday

clothing worn by

computer files

connection with victims’ names n.

cross-examination of Aug. 4, 1971

death and cremation

education and degrees . See also California Polytechnic State University; Sonoma State

College

finances

First Aid certification

fondness for rhymes

gait

health

I.Q.

left-handedness

link to Zodiac

in the Bawart Report

the big tip

positive identification by Mageau

in the media

Fairfield Daily Republic interview

KPIX interview

KTVU interview

San Francisco Chronicle interview

Vallejo Times-Herald interview

voice

parole. See also Pelle, Bruce R.

physical description

as police groupie

polygraph test

in prison. See Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane

questioning by San Francisco P.D.

questioning by Vallejo P.D.

relationship with brother

relationship with father

Allen, Arthur Leigh ( cont. )

relationship with mother

Santa Rosa trailer

sexuality. See also Child molestation

six reasons for hating the police

special skills

trailers owned by. See Trailers

Vallejo home

will

Allen, Bernice (mother)

Allen, Ethan Warren (father)

Allen, Karen (sister-in-law)

Allen, Kim Wendy

Allen, Ronald Gene (brother):

apologizing for Arthur’s child molestation

on Cheney

choking incident

college

cooperation with police

decision to go to the police

and Ferrin

in Leigh’s will

personality

trip to Mexico

Alongis, Ronald

A. M.

Ambidexterity, of suspects

Amos, Richard

“Andrews,”

Animal torture

Ankron, Larry

Anstey, Marie

Antioch Police Department

“Armchair,”

Armstrong, Bill. See also San Francisco Police Department

during Allen cross-examination

investigation

of the Allen home

and Belli

interview with Cheney and Panzarella

interview with family

search of Santa Rosa property

work with Mulanax

link for “similars,”

retirement

transfer from Homicide

Arson

Ashman, Charles

Astrology:

Allen’s sign

horoscopes

symbols used in

syzygy

and timing of murders

Tropical Zodiac analysis

Atascadero State Hospital for the Criminally Insane

Automobiles. See Cars

Avery, Paul

health

meeting with Riverside P.D.

retirement

suggestion for information clearinghouse

theft of Zodiac files from

theories on Zodiac

threats to

witness to stabbing

Ayers, Sue

Badlands

Baker, Detective

Baker, William

Baldino, Steve

Balmer, Thomas D.

Barca, Charles

Basement. See Allen, Arthur Leigh, Vallejo home

Bates, Cheri Jo:

and Allen

evidence

murder

surveillance at burial

Zodiac letters about

Bates, Joseph

Bawart, George:

case summary

and death of Zodiac

during DNA analysis

and Emmett

on Ferrin

interviews

investigation

Bawart, George ( cont. )

on jurisdiction issues

on polygraph test by Allen

re-opening Zodiac investigation

Report of 1992

retirement

Beeman, William Steadman

Behavioral Science Unit

Belli, Melvin

Benecia, Calif.

Benecia Police Department

Bennallack, Nancy M.

Berkeley, Calif.

Berkowitz, David (Son of Sam)

Berryessa. See Lake Berryessa

Betts, Sandy

Bianchi, Kenneth

Bidou, Pierre

Black hood. See Hood and executioner’s costume

Blocker, Dan

Bloodlustn.

Blood tests

Blue/black felt tip pens. See Letters, blue/black felt tip pens used

“Blue Meannies,”

“Blue pigs,”

Blue Rock Springs murder/shooting. See also Ferrin, Darlene; Mageau, Mike

and Allen

and Andrews

investigation

timing of

Boasts to police. See Zodiac, boasts

Boats, owned by Allenn.

Bobbie (first love; mother of Karen Harris)

Bodega Bay, Calif.

Bodies:

positioning of

strategy for hiding

Bombs:

engineering diagrams

of New York Zodiac

in plan to escape Atascadero

supplies in Allen home

supplies in New York

threats in letters to Belli

threats to children. See School bus attack threats

by the Unabomber

Bonine, Dave

Borges, Stella

Borrelli, Joseph

Bow and arrow

Box, gray metal

Brandon. E.

Bronstein, Phil

Brooklyn, N.Y. See New York Zodiac

Brothers, Joyce

Brown, Earl

Brown, Lee

Brown, Steve

Bruton, Tom

Bryant, George R.

Bullets

Bundy, Ted

Burke, John

Butterbach (officer)

Cabdriver murders. See also Stine, Paul Lee

Caen, Herb

Cahill, Tom

California Department of Fish and Game

California Department of Justice (DOJ)

California Polytechnic State University

Cannibalism

Capital punishment

Cardimone, Andy

Carlstedt, Butch

Carney, Jack

Carpenter, David

Cars:

Bates murder

Blue Rock Springs murder/shooting

Ferrin murder

Lake Berryessa murders

Lake Herman Road murders

owned by Allen

white Chevrolet seen by witnesses

Case summaries

Caulfield, Jim

Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)

Charlie Chan at Treasure Island

Cheney, Ann

Cheney, Donald Lee:

Allen on

Allen’s visit to

Cheney, Donald Lee ( cont. )

and Armstrong

conversation with Voigt

daughter and Allen

handprinting from Allen, attempt

handprinting of

polygraph test

testimony and opinions

Child molestation:

by Allen

and Cheney’s daughter

loss of jobs due to

notes in gray metal box

psychology of pedophiles

sister-in-law on Allen

Children. See School bus attack threats

Choppelas, George T.

Ciphers, symbols, and cryptograms:

Allen showed to friend as Zodiac’s

crossed circle. See Crossed circle symbol

in gray metal box

in letters

chemical

CIA analysis

FBI analysis

and Mt. Diablo

Post Office symbols

proofreader’s symbols

semaphore flags

three-part

-symbol code

and Mad Magazine

from “The Most Dangerous Game,”

used by New York Zodiac

use of mirrors

“Cipher Slayer,”

Ciravolo, Mike

Clearinghouse for investigation. See Criminal Identification and Investigation

Clothes, worn by Zodiac:

hood and executioner’s costume

jacket and pants

shoes

“Code Killer,”

Coffey, A. L.

Cohen, Mickey

Coleman, Kate

Comics

Communication problems, police . See also Jurisdiction issues

Composite drawings

Computer files, of Allen

“Concerned Citizen,”

Concord Police Department

Conferences on Zodiac case

Confessions

Connell, Richard

Connley, Robert

Contra Costa County Sheriff’s Department

Conway, Roy:

Ferrin murder

on handprinting

on Hines’s theory

interview by Williams

on police communication problems

re-opening of Zodiac case

retirement

search of Vallejo home

Stine murder

Stoner murder

work with Bawart

on Zodiac case closure

Zodiac case summary

“Copycats.” See Imitators of Zodiac; Letters, copycat

Cotati, Calif. See Sonoma State College

Count Marco

Count Zaroff (film character). See Most Dangerous Game, The (film)

Court of Last Resort

Crabtree, Rick

Cracked Magazine

Crank calls. See Telephone calls

Crenshaw, Gary

Crime and the Sexual Psychopath

Criminal Identification and Investigation (CI&I)

Crocker Bank employee suspect

Cross, Irvin

Crossed circle symbol:

in American Indian carvings

in ancient Hebrew

on British police car

on clothes. See also Hood and executioner’s costume

on film leader

at the Lake Berryessa murder scene

in letters from Zodiac

and murder in Japan

as polar co-ordinate site

as proofreader’s symbol

and Satanism

at the Stine murder scene

on the Zodiac watch

Crowley, Kieran

Cryptograms. See Ciphers, symbols, and cryptograms

Cunningham (police sergeant)

Dacey, F. Paul, Jr.

Dagitz, Bob

Dahlbren, J. B.

Daily News

Dandurand, Joe

Davis, Carolyn Nadine

Deasy, James

“Death Machine,” 5. See also Allen, Arthur Leigh, Vallejo home

Del Buono, Linda

DeLouise, Joseph

DeLuca, Chris

Department of Justice. See California Department of Justice

Derham, Gerald

De River, J. Paul

“Devil Rose.” See Zodiac III

Dick Tracy comic

Dietz, Park

DNA analysisn.

Dr. Zodiac (character)

Domingos, Robert George

Douglas, John

Drawings of Zodiac. See Composite drawings

Drexler, Dean

Dunbar, Jim

Dunham, Wayne

Durham (deputy)

Dusseldorf Ripper

Eastman, Dave

Ebersole, Ron

Edwards, Linda Faye

Eisen, Jay

Ellis, Charles

Elmer Cave Elementary School

Emmett, Robert “The Hippie.” See Rodifer, Robert Emmett

“Emmy Lou.” See Rodifer, Robert Emmett

English, Frank

Ephron, Henry

Erakat, Zuheir

Escapen.

Exorcist, The

Exorcist III

Eyeglasses

Fairfield, Calif.

Fairfield Daily Republic

Fallis, Greg

Faraday, David. See also Lake Herman Road murders

Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

Felt tip pens. See Letters, blue/black felt tip pens used

Ferdon, John Jay

Ferrin, Christina

Ferrin, Darlene:

investigation

Jensen mistaken for

murder

and the occult

painting party

Ferrin, Dean

Ferrin, Pam:

in Allen’s home

on Beeman

on Sally Jesse Raphael Show

testimony and opinions

threats to

“Fiddle and fart around” phrase

Films. See Zodiac, love of movies; specific titles

Fingerprints:

FACES System

FBI files

hiding/forging

from Lake Berryessa murders

from Napa phone booth

of New York Zodiac

points of analysis

from Riverside murder

of San Francisco Chronicle staff

from Santa Rosa trailer

from Stine murder

Fire, Refugio Creek murders

Fisher, Carol

Fluor Company

Fogarty, Al

Fong, Ronald Henry

Fonte, Patricia

Footprints. See also Shoes

Fort Point, Calif.

Fouke, Donald A.

Fourth of July murder. See Blue Rock Springs murder/shooting; Ferrin, Darlene

Franz Valley Road murder

Freeh, Louisn.4

Friedman, Larry

Gacy, John Waynen.2

Gain, Charles

Galvin, Gerald

“Game,” hunting man as. See Hunting, man as “game”

Game of Death, An.9

Gardner, Earle Stanley

Gasser, Frank

Gavin, Steve

Geberth, Vernon

Geographical Profiling

George, Herman

Germany, “The Hippie” from. See Rodifer, Robert Emmett

Gilbert and Sullivan operas

Gilford, Rotea

Gilmore, Sue

Ginley, Jackie

Giubbini, Walter

Goding, Bud

Goettsche, Jo Anne

Gordon, Howard “Buzz,”

Grass Valley murders

Gray metal box. See Box

Graysmith, Robert:

effects of investigation on

initial interest in Zodiac

interview in Central Park

on use of Zodiac by New York Zodiac

views on Zodiac

on why Zodiac was written

Greater Vallejo Recreation District. See Kidder, Ted; Tucker, Phil

Gren, LeRoy

Grieg, Mike

Gugas, Chris

Guns:

“electric gun sight” penlight attached to

owned by Allen

used by New York Zodiac

used by Toschi

used by Zodiac

Lake Herman Road murders

Refugio Creek murders

Guttmacher, Manfred

Haas (deputy)

Hakari, Judith

Hallissy, Erin

Hall of Justice

Hamlet, Bill

Hammett, Dashiell

Handprinting. See also Ambidexterity of Allen

Cheney’s attempt to obtain

remembered by sister-in-law

on Riverside desk

from Santa Rosa trailer

analyses

by FBI

by Morrill

by San Rafael graphologist

effects of mental state on

evidence by Mulanax

how to disguise

of New York Zodiac

of Rodifer

spacing of individual letters

from theater poster

Hanley, James

Hanophy, Robert J.

Hard Copy

Harden, Donald Gene

Harris, Karen

Harshman, Steve

Hartnell, Bryan

Hase, Jun

Hatred:

of police, six reasons to hate

of women

Hawkes, John

Haynes, Larry

Healy, Thomas N.

Heirens, William

Hell’s Angels

Hennessy, Michael

Heral, Bill

Herbert, Joseph

Hieb, George

Highland, Dennis Earl

Hilburn, Carol Beth

Hinckle, Warren

Hines, Harvey

“Hippie, The.” See Rodifer, Robert Emmett

Hitchhiker disappearances/murders

Hockaby, Vernon

Hoffman, Richard

Holidays, as timing for murders

Holloway, Gilbert

Hom, Paul

Homsher, H. L.

Hood and executioner’s costume

Hopkirk, John D.

Horan, Dan

Horoscopes. See Astrology

Huffman, Harold

Huffman, Kay

Huffman, Rob

“Human Fly Bandit,”

Hunter Hill Rest Stop murders

Hunting:

of chipmunks

conversations during trips

of deer

man as “game,” xi

Hurba, Harriet

Hurkos, Peter

Husted, Jim

Hypnosis

Imitators of Zodiac . See also Letters, copycat; New York Zodiac; Zodiac III

Information. See Sources

Ink blot test

“Insanity Defense,”

Jackson, Lance

Jack the Ripper

Jack the Zodiac

Japan, Zodiac III murder

Jensen, Betty Lou . See also Lake Herman Road murders

Jensen, Bill

Jim (friend)

Johnny Allegron.

Johns, Kathleen

Jones, James, Jr.

Jones, Victor

Jordan, Jack

Jurisdiction issues

Kaczynski, Ted (Unabomber)

Kamahele, Jeanette

Kanes, Lynda

Kay (friend)

Kay, Pamela

Kee, Steven

Keelen, Carmela (Leigh)

Keeler, Leonarde

Kelleher, Thomas, Jr.

Kelly, Bud

Kemper, Ed

Kennedy, Craig

Kennedy, John

KGO-TV

Kidder, Ted

Kidnapping. See Abduction and abduction attempts

Kimura, Masahiro

King, Martin Luther, Jr.

Kinkead. T.

Kinnicut, Harry S.

Kirkindal, Bill

Kleinfeld, Daniel L.

Knives:

Lake Berryessa murder

owned by Allen

Refugio Creek murders

Riverside murder

used by Zodiac

“Kobe Killer,”

Ko-Ko, Lord High Executioner

KPIX-TV

Kraus, Kim

KSFO Radio

KTVU-TV

Kursa, Lori Lee

Kurten, Peter

Lafferty, Lyndon “Lynn,”

Lake Berryessa, Calif.

Lake Berryessa murders. See also Hartnell, Bryan; Shepard, Cecelia

and Allen

cars

handprinting on victim’s car

investigation

knives used

position of bodies

psychology of Zodiac

questioning of Allen

re-opening of case

Lake Herman Road

Lake Herman Road murders:

cars

and Ferrin

guns used

investigation

jurisdiction issues

questioning of Allen

Lake Herman Road murders ( cont. )

second, in 1979

timing of

Lake Tahoe area

Land, Dennis

Lang, Jim

Langstaff, Art

Larson (doctor)

Lass, Donna

La Vey, Anton Szandor

Lee, Dalora

Lee, Marty

Legion

Legrow, Dave

Leigh . See Allen, Arthur Leigh

Leigh, Bill

Leigh, Carmela

Letters. See also Handprinting

absence of, while Allen in Atascadero

from Allen

about ultra-light “aeroplane,”

forged clearance of himself as Zodiac

to Toschi after jail release, Aug. 31, 1977

from “Armchair,”

to Avery

Oct. 5, 1970

Oct. 27, 1970, Halloween card

“Bates had to die,”

to Belli

blue/black felt tip pens used

copycat . See also Imitators of Zodiac

DNA analysis of

to Feinstein, Aug. 27, 1976

the first signed Zodiac

forged, from Allen clearing himself as Zodiac

on his own appearance

on John’s abduction

loneliness in

to Los Angeles Times

Nov. 16, 1970, school bus threat

March 13, 1971, blue meanies

misspellings

from New York Zodiac

paper and watermarks

phrases used in handprinting test

to police

Aug. 10, 1969, key to cipher

Aug. 20, 1969, swamped by rain

April 20, 1970, Mad Magazine and flooding

Jan. 30, 1974, number of victims

claiming Radetich murder

postage

to Riverside Press-Enterprise

Nov. 29, 1966

April 30, 1967, Bates had to die

confession

to San Francisco Chronicle

July 31, 1969, this is the murderer

Aug. 9, 1969, death machine

Oct. 13, 1969, Stine murder

Nov. 8, 1969-character cipher

Apr. 20, 1970, bomb diagram

Apr. 28, 1970, dragon greeting card

June 26, 1970, Mt. Diablo

July 24, 1970, Mt. Diablo

July 26, 1970, got a little list

Nov. 17, 1970 about hair color

March 22, 1971, digging with a shovel

Jan. 29, 1974, The Exorcist

eb. 14, 1974, SLA

May 8, 1974, Badlands

July 8, 1974, The Red Phantom

April 28, 1978, possible hoax

July 19, 1978, I am in control

Jan. 28, 1980, moved to higher country

to San Francisco Examiner

July 31, 1969, here is part of a cipher

Aug. 1969, correction of Vallejo paper

Aug. 4, 1969, first signed as Zodiac

to Sonoma judge

summaries

symbols used in. See Ciphers, symbols, and cryptograms

technique used

typewriter usedn.1

to Vallejo Times-Herald

July 31, 1969, I am the killer

Oct. 28, 1987, car as weapon

to Williams

to Zodiac, Jan. 4, 1971

Lieber, Arnold L.

Lie detector tests. See Polygraph tests

“Lipstick Killer of Chicago,”

Lister, Sam

Little, George

“Lorna” (witness)

Los Angeles Coroner’s Office

Los Angeles Times. See under Letters

Lovett, Jim Ray

Lowe, Bob

Luce, Bob

Lundblad, Les

Lundblad, Les, Jr.

Lunde, Donald T.

Lynch, John:

Bawart on

on Ferrin murder

on Hell’s Angels

interview with Southard

Lake Berryessa murders questioning

Lake Herman Road murders

letter to, from Concerned Citizen

Mulanax on

Stine murder

summary of case

MacHalhatton, Dave

Mad magazine

Mageau, Mike

Malden, Karl

“Man from Zodiac, The,”

Manhattan Beach, Calif.

Manhattan Beach Police Department

Mare Island, Calif.. See also U.S. Navy; Vallejo, Calif.

Martin, David Odell

Martin, Harry V.

McAlary, Mike

McKenna, John

McNamara (personnel)

Melton, Shawn

Mendocino, Calif., car accident

Menkin (chief of police)

Mikado, The

Millennium

Mind of the Murderer, The

Miron, Murray S.

Misogyny

Misspelling of words

Mitchell, Loren

Modus operandi (M.O.) of the Zodiac

Moncure, Robbie Lee

Montenesdro, Jermaine

Moon, phases of

Moore, Kevin

Moore, Lex

Morrill, Sherwood:

analysis of letters

background information

handprinting reports

Sacramento Bee article on

testing sequences by

Moses, Ken

Most Dangerous Game, The (film)

Most Dangerous Game, The (radio adaptation)

“Most Dangerous Game, The” (short story)

Mt. Diablo map

Movies. See Zodiac, love of movies; specific titles

Mulanax, Jack:

during Allen cross-examination on Ferrin investigation

on the Zodiac case

Murder and Madness

Murder weapons. See Weapons

Murphy, George

Murphy, Vince

Murray, Anne

Nail, Mike

Naked Prey, Then.

Napa County

Napa County Sheriff’s Department. See also Narlow, Ken

Napa Police Department

Napa Sentinel

Narlow, Ken:

investigation

jurisdiction issues

reaction to Bawart Report

retirement

Riverside P.D. conference

with suspect

work with Lundblad

Nash Bridges

National Security Agency (NSA)

Navy. See U.S. Navy

Nelder, Al

Nelson, Fay

New York City Police Department

New York Post

New York Zodiac (Zodiac II) . See also Seda, Heriberto “Eddie”

Ng, Charles

Nicolai, Mel

Nightline

Norm (friend)

Now It Can Be Told

Noyes, Pete

Numerology

Oakland Police Department

Occult

“Old Tom,”

Olson, Evelyn

Orosco, Mario

Overstreet, Jim

Oxnam, Bobbie

Pacific Multi-hull Racing Association

Palm prints. See also Fingerprints

Panzarella, Santo “Sandy” Paul:

on Allen

and Armstrong

owner of RKO Pictures

at Science Dynamics

testimony and opinions

Parham, Larry

Parker, Brant

Pascoe, Terry

Pearlman, Dave

Peeler, Violet

Pelle, Bruce R.

Pens. See Letters, blue/black felt tip pens used

Perry, Ralph

Peterson, Dave

“Phantom of Cordelia, The,”

Phillips, Jim

Piano, Nancy

Pitta, Daniel

Planetary forces, effects on psychology

Pleasanton, Calif.

Poisoning murders, with strychnine

Police groupies

Polygraph tests

Pomeroy, Wes

Pomona Police Department

Popp, Bob

Postage stamps on letters. See Letters, postage

Practical Homicide Investigation

Prints. See Fingerprints; Footprints; Palm prints

Probation Officer. See Pelle, Bruce R.

Proce, Joseph

Prouty (handwriting analyst)

Psychiatric tests on Allen

Psychics

Psychic trauma of survivors

Psychological profiles of Zodiac

Race, Mike

Radetich, Richard

Ramos, Bobbie

Randol, Earl

Raspino, Susan

Rayfield, Clifton

Rayfield, David

“Red Phantom, The,”

Reese, Mrs. (trailer court manager)

References

Refugio Creek murders

Repetto, Vince

Rhodes, Janet Lynn

Rice, David

Richmond District Police

Rinehart, Glen

Rings:

blood stone, on tape to Belli

with “Z” emblem

Riverside, Calif. . See also Bates, Cheri Jo; Handprinting, of Allen, on Riverside desk

Riverside Police Department

Riverside Press-Enterprise. See also under Letters

RKO Pictures

Rodifer, Robert Emmett

Rodman, James

Roenik, Wilfred

Rolanda Show

Roman, Tomas

Rope

Ruby, Jack

Run for the Sunn.

Rust, Ed

Rykoff, Thomas

Sacramento, Calif.. See also Criminal Identification and Investigation

Sacramento Bee

Sadism:

of Allen. See also Animal torture

evidence from Hwy. 12 car crash

in Kursa murder

in Lake Berryessa murders

profile of sexual sadists

Salem, Robert

Saliva tests

Sally Jesse Raphael Show

Sanford, Byron

San Francisco, Calif.:

cabdriver murders. See also Stine, Paul Lee

Caen on crime trend

San Francisco Chronicle. See also Avery, Paul

ad on Imperial Wizard

articles

on Allen after his death

on Hines’s theory

interview of Allen

on Riverside murder

building security

interoffice memo

letters to. See under Letters

personals ad

phone call to

publication of cipher key

Zodiac as possible employee

San Francisco Criminal Grand Jury

San Francisco Examiner:

building security

letters to. See under Letters

strategy with Zodiac

San Francisco Police Department (SFPD). See also Armstrong, Bill; Jurisdiction issues;

Toschi, Dave

bomb detonation

evidence misplaced by

evidence stolen from

fingerprint analysis

handprinting analysis

manpower shortage

re-opening of Zodiac investigation

Stine murder investigation

Zodiac bulletins

Zodiac taunting of. See Zodiac, boasts

San Jose Police Department

San Pablo Bay

Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department

Santa Rosa, Calif.:

Allen’s trailer in. See Trailers, owned by Allen

attempted abduction

evidence from car wreck on Hwy. 12, Aug. , 1976,

Sterling and Weber disappearance

Santa Rosa Junior College

Santa Rosa Police Department

Santa Rosa Press Democrat, witness program

“Sartor Cross,”

Satan, and Zodiac

Satanism

Satten, Joseph

Schechmeister, Bryan

Schizophrenia

Schlossberg, Harvey

School bus attack threats

Schuler, Charles A.

Schwartz, Marshall

Science Dynamics

Scott, Don

Seal of Vassago

Search warrants

Sebastopol, Calif.

Seda, Heriberto “Eddie,” . See also New York Zodiac

Sex offender notification

Sexuality, of Allen. See also Child molestation

Sexual sadists, psychological profile

Shepard, Cecelia

Sheppard, Al

Shimoda, John

Shirisago, Fred

Shoes:

footprints

worn by Allen

worn by Zodiac

Siebe (investigator)

Silver, Jim

Silverman, Gene

Sins, Phil

Skrapec, Candice

Slaight, David

Slover, Nancy

Slugs. See Bullets

Snook, Hal

Sociopathic murderer. See also Sexual sadists

Solano County Sheriff’s Department

Son of Sam

Son of Zodiac. See New York Zodiac

Sonoma County Jail

Sonoma County Sheriff’s Department

Sonoma State College

Sources of information

federal, state and local law enforcement files

newspapers and periodicals

for New York Zodiac

Southard, Thomas Leonard “Lee,”

Speech patterns, of Zodiac

Spinelli, Marco (Count Marco)

Spinelli, Ralph

Stabbing murders. See Knives

Stamps on letters. See Letters, postage

Stanislaus Sheriff’s Department

Starr, Bernice. See Allen, Bernice

Starr, Karen. See Allen, Karen

Starr, Robert Hall, use of pseudonym. See also Allen, Arthur Leigh

Starr, Ronald. See Allen, Ronald

State Farm Insurance

Sterling, Maureen Lee

Stiltz, Jack E.

Stine, Paul Lee:

bloody shirt

connection with Spinelli

fingerprints from cab

ink blot test of Allen and

investigation

murder

and police description of Zodiac

Stone, Charles H.

Stoner, Jeremy

Strangulation

Striepeke, Don

Strychnine poisoning

Suicide

Summaries of case

Suspects

Symbols. See Ciphers, symbols, and cryptograms

Syzygy

Tahoe area

Taunting of police. See Zodiac, boasts

Taylor, Charles

Tedaldi, James

Telephone calls:

about Zodiac

to Belli

breathing sound

hang-up

to police after crimes

to victims’ families

Television programs on Zodiac

Theater on San Bruno Avenue

Thiffault, William

Thompson, Leonti

Thorazine

Times-Herald. See Vallejo Times-Herald

Timex brand watch

Tire tracks

Torrance, Calif.

Toschi, Dave. See also San Francisco Police Department

after leaving the Zodiac case

authority for Avery to carry a gun

on case’s 30th anniversary

family

health

investigation

analysis of letters

and Belli

interviews with family

questioning of Allen

search of Santa Rosa property

Stine murder

work with Armstrong

work with Mulanax of Vallejo P.D.

work with Riverside P.D.

of Zebra murders

on missing box of evidence, 1997

on perseverance

reassignments

relaxation activities

retirement

State Senate commendation

on why they did not arrest Allen

Townsend, Donald A.

Trailers, owned by Allen:

Bodega Bay

#GS8803

#ME8636

parked on neighbor’s property

Santa Rosa

Trauma reaction, of survivors

Travis Air Force Base

Treasure Island, Calif.

Tucker, Joan

Tucker, Phil:

in Allen questioning

Allen’s use of car

Bawart on

testimony and opinions

Ultra-light “aeroplane,”

Unabomber. See Kaczynski, Ted

Union Oil of California

Union Richfield

Unsolved Mysteries

UNSUB

U.S. Navy. See also Allen, Ethan; Mare Island; Shoes

Vallejo, Calif.:

Allen’s familiarity with

Allen’s home in. See Allen, Arthur Leigh, Vallejo home

description

Vallejo County Sheriff’s Department

Vallejo Independent Press

Vallejo Police Department (VPD). See also Jurisdiction issues; Mulanax, Jack

Allen examination

Allen’s employment application to

closure of case

Ferrin murder report

manpower shortage

prior arrest of Allen

tapes on Allen

use of Zodiac

work with San Francisco P.D.

Vallejo Recreation Department. See Kidder, Ted; Tucker, Phil

Vallejo Times-Herald:

Allen interview

articles on Zodiac

letters to. See under Letters

Zodiac file stolen from

Valley Springs Elementary School

“Vampire, The.” See New York Zodiac

Vance, Jack

Vaughn, Robert

“Vaughn,” in Ferrin’s personal directory

Villareal, Ben

Violent Criminal Apprehension Program

Virgin Islands

Voigt, Tom

Vollmer (police chief)

Walsh, Theresa Diane

Warner, William T.

Watches. See Timex brand watch; Zodiac brand watches

Water, as murder location

Waterman (police officer)

Watsonville, Calif.

Watsonville Police Department

Weapons . See also Bombs; Bow and arrow; Guns; Knives; Rope

Weber, Yvonne

Webster, James W.

Webster, William H.

Welner, Michael

Wesher, Bingo

White, Archie and Beth

White, William (police sergeant)

White, William Langdon (neighbor)

Whit Monday murder

Whiz Comics

Wiccan Rede

Williams, Rita

Williams, Walter “Willie the Woodcutter,”

Williams, Wayne

“Willy” (suspect)

Wilson, J. R.

Wilson, Ralph

Wissmann, Frank

Witchcraft

Wogan, Harry

Women, hatred of. See Misogyny

Woolridge, Bob

Writing. See Handprinting

Yamas, G. J.

Yamashita, Ayaka

Yellow Submarine, The

Yonkers, Dick

Younger, Evelle J.

Zebra murders

Zelms, Eric

Zodiac. See also Cars; Composite drawings; Sadism; Weapons

boasts

Zodiac ( cont. )

closure of case

clothes worn by. See Clothes, worn by Zodiac

communication from. See Ciphers, symbols, and cryptograms; Letters; Telephone calls

conference and case summary

gait and body language

linguistics of

link to Allen

in the Bawart Report

the big tip

positive identification by Mageau

love of movies

main suspect. See Allen, Arthur Leigh

in the media

murders and murder attempts

begging to be stopped

hair disguises

M.O. See Modus operandi

total number estimates

trophies

origin of name

people claiming to be. See Imitators of Zodiac

physical appearance

psychiatric profiles . See also Sadism; Schizophrenia

referral to himself as “The Zodiac,”

relationship with mother

re-opening of case

and Satan

sexuality

special skills

speech patterns

tape to Belli about

unmasked

use of police confusion. See Communication problems; Jurisdiction issues

voice

Web site on

Zodiac (book):

and Allen

effects of

police views on

use by informants

use by police

use by Zodiac imitators

Zodiac (film)

Zodiac brand watches

owned by Allen

Sea Wolf #26894

Zodiac car

Zodiac club

Zodiac II. See New York Zodiac

Zodiac III

Zodiac of New York. See New York Zodiac

Zodieical lightn.

Zygomatic arch

1

The FBI believed the typewriter to be a Royal Merit Pica 508. Pica provides ten characters

to the vertical inch. Elite provides twelve. The anonymous writer, working with

multigenerational copies, used the larger font.

2

Another Gacy personality was a party entertainer, Pogo the Clown. Gacy painted an oil of

Zodiac in costume and auctioned it off one spring. Actor Johnny Depp owned a Gacy

painting. “They told me when I got it that the proceeds went to a charity or to the victims’

families....” Depp said. “But I found out that wasn’t the case. So I got rid of it. Fascinating

from a psychological point of view, but really dark stuff.”

3

This name has been altered.

4

When FBI Director Louis Freeh ordered stepped-up polygraph testing of agents to bolster

the bureau’s internal security system, the agency’s nine thousand agents were troubled.

5

This name has been changed.

6

This name has been changed.

7

#CF 9127 FD License, Sticker # H107782.

8

Located at the Napa Car Wash, 1200 Main Street, twenty-seven miles from Lake Berryessa.

9

RKO, A Game of Death, directed by Robert Wise, starring John Loder and Audrey Long.

Edgar Barrier played the Zaroff character, General Kreigner.

10

Johnny Allegro in 1946 used elements of the story. In 1956, Run for the Sun, starring

Richard Widmark, Jane Greer, and Trevor Howard, was set on a jungle plantation rather

than an island. In 1961 came Bloodlust, another variation. Cornel Wilde’s The Naked Prey

showed five years later.

11

Two years later, Finke’s script was used again, this time starring J. Carrol Naish and

Joseph Cotten. Two years after that, Les Crutchfield adapted the story as a thirty-minute

program for producer-director Norman Macdonnell’s Escape.

12

This name has been changed.

13

It is also a diffuse glow seen in the west after twilight and in the east before dawn.

14

LA 554 121790 43/5005 100 32.

15

A collection of trading cards: True Crime Series Four: Serial Killers & Mass Murderers,

clippings of Daily News crime stories on Zodiac, and a copy of Michael Newton’s Serial

Slaughter, A History of 800 Serial Killers including a short entry on the original Zodiac.

16

Conversation quoted in FBI report 9-49911-88, January 14, 1970.

17

See Appendix for complete report.

18

The FBI has been conducting forensic DNA (an acronym for deoxyribonucleic acid) testing

since 1989.

19

This name has been changed.

20

Other Zodiac victims and relations seemingly fit this name game: Arthur David Faraday,

first Northern California victim; Arthur Dean Ferrin, husband of the third Northern

California victim; Bill Leigh, her boss, Santa Rosa students Lori Lee Kursa, Maureen Lee

Sterling, Kim Wendy Allen.

21

“The theory holds that Stine’s murder occurred one block further [than Washington and

Maple Streets],” wrote John Douglas, “because the killer needed him at a precise point on

the map. That’s why the Zodiac switched his victim choice from couples to a cabdriver.

Whom else could he get to a precise set of coordinates so easily?”

22

Mailed November 17, 1970, from Aptos, California, at 1:00 P.M.

23

This name has been changed by request.

Table of Contents

Chapter 2 - robert hal starr

Chapter 12 - witches

Chapter 14 - suspects

Chapter 17 - zodiac suspects

Chapter 24 - zodiac I

Chapter 36 - zodiac I I

epilogue

epilogue