by Mark Hewitt
The Examiner reported that the Internal Affairs Division of the SFPD had investigated the matter, but Captain John Mahoney, head of that division, declined to comment. The SFPD Chief of Police also refused to give a statement, as did officers in the Intelligence Division who also participated in the investigation. In spite of their silence to the media, the administrators had found malfeasance in Toschi’s activities.
Toschi was identified as the writer of the fan mail. When confronted, he readily admitted to penning several letters in 1976 in support of Maupin’s serial, which debuted with Toschi’s namesake character on September 10. In what the investigator later described as “harmless fan letters,” he had praised his representation in the author’s column. The letters had requested additional escapades featuring the character. Toschi had been exposed promoting himself behind the scenes. Though deeply embarrassed and ashamed, he adamantly denied any involvement with the new Zodiac letter, however, calling it “totally absurd” that he could have written it. A “high” official at the SFPD acknowledged to the press that there was no evidence that Toschi was responsible for creating the 1978 Zodiac letter.
Nevertheless, on July 11, Toschi was relegated to pawn detail, a horrendous purgatory for such a high profile detective who had single-handedly overseen the SFPD investigation into the Zodiac for the previous two years. By the time he was removed from his post, Toschi had run down over 3,000 leads and looked into the backgrounds of over 2,500 suspects. Within 24 hours of Toschi being removed from his position for the fan mail, Deputy Chief of Investigations Clement DeAmicis initiated a secret investigation into him as the possible author of the new Zodiac note.
A hastily-formed Zodiac investigation team—comprising Toschi, Inspector James Tedesco, and Inspector James Deasy—established in April, 1978, had also led to doubt about whether the Zodiac had authored the new note.
But the handwriting experts could not agree. Robert Prouty, chief of the Questioned Documents Section of the CII, said he didn’t think the April letter was genuine Zodiac. He explained that there were so many differences that it must have been produced by another hand. Morrill disagreed. Now retired and in private practice, he declared that if Toschi wrote the last letter, he wrote them all, and was himself the Zodiac. He vouched for Toschi’s honesty (as well as Armstrong’s). In proclaiming the authenticity of the 1978 letter, he agreed with John Shimoda, Director of the Postal Service Crimes Laboratory, Western Regional Office, in San Bruno, and Pleasant Hill handwriting expert David DeGarmo. He thought someone was jealous of Toschi’s publicity. With great criticism of Prouty’s experience, he vowed he’d no longer be available to do any work for the SFPD.
On May 16, in the wake of the new Zodiac letter, the City and County of San Francisco requested that the FBI lab in Washington, D.C. re-examine the entire Zodiac collection of letters to determine if possible which were authentic and which were not. They also wanted to know the number of authors involved in their creation. In the letter to William Webster, Director of the FBI, San Francisco confessed that there currently was no suspect in the case, believed now to comprise 6 murder victims. It was noted that Sherwood Morrill had previously, before his retirement in 1973, authenticated all of the current collection of letters, including the now-disputed Riverside letters. By contrast, John Shimoda had formed the opinion that the three Bates letters were not the product of the Zodiac, and therefore not done by the same hand as the other authenticated Zodiac letters. The request was signed off by Charles R. Gain, Chief of Police, written by Captain Charles A. Schuler, Commanding Officer of the Personal Crimes Division. Sixteen purported Zodiac letters, as well as an inventory of the Zodiac communications, accompanied the letter.
The FBI lab declared that a match for all letters was “inconclusive.” This was due to the range of variations, writing speed, and a possible disguise or deliberate distortion of the writing. Nevertheless, one person may have been responsible for all of the letters, including the three Bates letters and the desktop poem, the lab reported.
Also on May 16, the City and County of San Francisco made an additional request. They petitioned William H. Webster, attention FBI laboratory, to take another look at the Zodiac case ciphers. The first three pieces had been decrypted, of course, but investigators were interested to know if any headway could be made on the other three as-yet unsolved ciphers. The request was from Captain Charles A. Schuler, Commanding Officer Personal Crimes Division (on the letterhead of Charles R. Gain, Chief of Police).
On June 19, the FBI in San Francisco requested that the Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) at Quantico, Virginia develop a behavioral profile of the Zodiac killer—a brand new science at the time. Included was an additional request for a reply, and the instructions that materials were to be returned to the Police Training Unit of the San Francisco Field Office.
The FBI didn’t need to be asked to look at the ciphers. The reply to the City and County’s request came July 27. The FBI Cryptanalysis Unit had been analyzing the unsolved Zodiac ciphers, especially the 340, since their receipt in November of 1969, without solution.
The Sacramento Field Office of the FBI contacted Washington, D.C., in a letter dated July 12, urging the Bureau to reexamine the 1978 letter in light of the scandal that swirled around Toschi. Attached to the request was a copy of an article from The San Francisco Examiner where doubt was raised about the authenticity of the last Zodiac communication. The FBI, receiving reports of Toschi’s reassignment due to the phony fan letters and reports challenging the authenticity of the 1978 Zodiac letter, conflated the two issues, questioning whether Toschi had also written the latter. It instructed Quantico, who had been tasked with creating a psychological profile of the Zodiac, to continue the work, but to do so without the inclusion of the new letter. The FBI replied on August 23 that its BSU training unit would continue as urged, excluding the 1978 document.
While many phrases, and the handwriting, bore resemblance to earlier letters, there were problems as well. In tone and in topic, it appeared phony. While some harbored the belief—and maybe also the hope—of its authenticity, handwriting experts with the FBI confirmed the suspicions held by many.
If authentic, the letter added little to the investigation. No new themes, clues, or threats were presented clearly enough to be investigated—a prime reason for doubting its authenticity. It appeared to be a rehashing of old ideas and pet phrases, with a familiar layout on the page, precisely what might be expected of a very good faked Zodiac letter. It did let the authorities know that he was still alive and in the area, exactly what might be expected from a hoax that originated from the pen of someone who did not want the case to be forgotten. If from the Zodiac, after four years of silence it could have been instigated by something in the Zodiac’s life or the culture of the day. If something had nudged him out of the metaphoric suicide he presented in the Exorcist letter, it was never identified. On too many levels the new letter screamed “FAKE!”
With the removal of Dave Toschi, the last of the original investigators on the case and the final full-time investigator searching for the Zodiac, the case entered a new era. No longer was anyone tasked on a full-time basis to find the perpetrator, and no one who knew the case from the outset was fully-engaged in pursuing it. From that moment on, the Zodiac was merely another case—one that garnered much attention, to be sure—drawing whatever manpower it could from other, more pressing cases.
But the 1978 letter was not the final letter to be considered authentic communication from the Zodiac. In the early twenty-first century, as production got underway for the Hollywood movie Zodiac based on Robert Graysmith’s book of the same name, staff at The San Francisco Chronicle decided to scour the newspaper’s letter files to find anything from the killer that may have been overlooked. To their astonishment, they found a mailing that may have originated with the Zodiac serial killer.
1990 Card
An anonymous card in a red envelope emerged from The Chronicle’s files. Postmarked in Eur
eka, California, in December, 1990, it was addressed:
Editor
San Francisco Chronicle
901 Mission Street
San Francisco, California
94103
The festive red envelope contained a greeting card, which sported the picture of a snowman on the front. In a tone reminiscent of the Zodiac greeting cards with their droll sense of humor, this one read, “FROM YOUR SECRET PAL CAN’T GUESS WHO I AM, YET? WELL. LOOK INSIDE AND YOU’LL FIND OUT…” There was no additional writing applied to the card, inside or out. Preprinted words inside the card completed the tease from the front, “THAT I’M GONNA KEEP YOU GUESSIN’ HAPPY HOLIDAYS. ANYWAY… ” Inside was a small piece of paper with a photocopied picture of a metallic key chain with two keys on it, the source and significance of which have never been explained.
Similarly, what exactly the entire mailing was designed for, what it meant to communicate, and at whom it was aimed are questions that suggested no clear answers. The Chronicle did nothing but file it when it arrived, for it made no threat, comment, or demand. It pertained to nothing illegal so the SFPD was never notified of its existence. The name, “Zodiac,” was not present, nor was the iconic phrase “This is the Zodiac speaking,” and no crosshairs symbol was included to give any indication that the Zodiac had any connection to the letter, or to propel its words to anyone’s notice. Only when reviewing its files was it found by The Chronicle, and only then was it noticed that the limited amount of handwriting on the envelope appeared faintly similar to that of the Zodiac.
When compared to previous Zodiac communications, there was some similarity. The guessing game posed by the card was identical to that of the Halloween card of 1970, and reminiscent of the words of the 1966 Confession letter, “THAT WILL NOT STOP THE GAME.” If the message was the same—try to figure out who I am—it had been conveyed across two decades.
The occasion for the letter—if it was sent by the Zodiac—may have been the work of a copycat murderer operating in New York City. Calling himself the Zodiac, a new serial killer was collecting victims and reporting on their astrological signs. He was apparently attempting to take “slaves” from each of the twelve signs of the Zodiac. New York detectives suspected that he was asking potential victims their horoscope sign before attacking them. He was responsible for killing 3 and wounding 5 from 1990 to 1993. Though the copycat wrote “Zodiac” on all his communications, the New York investigation was not fooled for a minute.
The real Zodiac, not wanting to share the limelight with an East Coast impostor, may have sent the anonymous card to inform the public that he was still around (on the West Coast), and not responsible for the shenanigans in the Big Apple.
The perpetrator of the New York murders, Heriberto Seda, was caught in 1996, convicted, and sentenced 232 years in prison for his violence as the copycat Zodiac killer. He will not become eligible for parole until he is 113 years of age.
If authentic, the card provided little new information beyond the obvious that the Zodiac was alive in 1990, present at one time in the area of Eureka where it was postmarked, and possibly cognizant of the copycat killer in New York. If not from the Zodiac, the note could be from anyone with just about any intention, up to and including the idea that some hoaxer wanted authorities to believe that the Zodiac was alive and possibly active. Accordingly, it had limited investigative value beyond any forensic evidence that might have survived more than a decade in The Chronicle’s filing cabinets.
***
The end of the Zodiac’s attacks and letters, and the failure of the early investigation into the crimes by numerous police departments, sometimes working together and sometimes conducting parallel efforts, did not signal the end of the case. Citizens wouldn’t allow it. Public interest in the killer’s acts would, over the ensuing decades, spawn a shelf of books, countless magazine articles, a handful of movies, a journal and, with the advent of the Internet, scores of websites, all haphazardly doing their part to erect a cottage industry dedicated to the mystery of the enigmatic killer. To law enforcement already wearied by incessant public involvement and an avalanche of tips, the case would sit on the back burner, only occasionally generating interest and the needed funds to pursue one new lead or one new test. But the killer would not be forgotten.
The investigation would continue one way or another.
12 | EPILOGUE
“The police shall never catch me”
The story of the Zodiac serial killer refused to follow a tight script. Its twists and turns, coupled with the many unknowns, provided a vast narration of ever-increasing complexity. Even the facts that were known, or believed to be known, were spread across numerous levels of uncertainty. Investigators eventually realized that this was no ordinary case, the perpetrator no run-of-the-mill criminal. There was no conviction, indeed no trial. The killer could not be found. All promising leads went nowhere. The investigation could provide no crisp Hollywood ending and no “happily ever after” conclusion. At each and every phase of the work, the police met unequivocally with insurmountable frustration. The victimized families found no justice.
This was a surprising turn of events because the killer left behind far too many clues to elude capture, many felt. Some of the hints may have been so subtle that they were missed entirely; others may have been shrouded in a disguise as clever as the one the killer boasted that he wore during his attacks. The detectives could not read the tea leaves. The police attempted to follow the bread crumbs of his letters and violence, but were never able to pick up a clear trail. His disappearance, whenever it happened, discouraged the police. The pace of the investigation into the case slowed to a crawl.
As the 1970s drew to a close, there were no more police officers working the case full time. Dave Toschi’s high profile exit in 1978 saw the last of the concerted effort on the part of law enforcement to unravel the Gordian knot. There was no lack of interest in solving the most enigmatic of American criminal riddles, both from within police departments and among residents in the communities they served, but budget shortages and other, more pressing current crimes pushed the case out of the forefront, and new murder investigations supplanted the old. Great excitement welled up any time a fresh and promising lead emerged. Unfortunately, these never panned out, and as the years marched past, fewer and fewer of them could be found.
The case finally emerged as the most perplexing unsolved murder spree in American criminal history. It continued to mesmerize. Worldwide, it received second billing only to Whitechapel’s Jack the Ripper, who in the late 19th century England tore open the bodies of five prostitutes without being captured. As in the Ripper case, the Zodiac’s crimes were never solved, the criminal’s motives were never uncovered, and the extent of his violence was never definitively documented. Many of the case details continue to be debated.
No amount of frustration and lack of progress could deter a certain segment of the public, however. Interest in the case has not diminished, and in fact grew to a furor at times. Websites, magazine articles, popular books, a scholarly journal, and several movies about the Zodiac serial killer have staked their claim to the criminological landscape. Each new generation introduced to the case brought forth patrons to the tiny subculture of Zodiologists, those who spend their spare time researching into, cogitating over, and writing about the man who killed, taunted, and then vanished as if into thin air. The hunt became a juggernaut despite the apparent apathy on the part of law enforcement.
The 2007 movie Zodiac, based on the book of the same name, provided a lit match for the public’s oil-soaked rags. While never a blockbuster, it earned a respectable $33 million at the box office, plus additional DVD and Netflix revenue. As of April 2013, the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office was still fielding on average more than two tips on the case per week from the public. The Napa Police Department continued to take in stray leads, even providing a link on its government webpage to a “Zodiac Tip Line” with the promise that all information would be co
nsidered. The San Francisco Police Department became less accepting of public participation, understandably tepid in its interest following decades of unproductive leads, but tips still poured in to that West Coast department, as they did to the FBI and to a lesser degree other agencies.
The Zodiac himself, whoever he was, may have felt some relief as the years passed and no new attacks were attributed to him. He may have felt free from capture. But not everyone forgot about him. A warren of armchair investigators meant to bring him to justice. First, the details of the case would have to be teased from the case files and participating witnesses, and then a profile of the unknown offender would have to be generated. With or without the aid of law enforcement, the pursuit would continue.
As the faithful kept vigil, the killer’s whereabouts remained fodder for speculation.
Some believed he died long ago; others, that he lived with only vague memories of his actions—if he even remembered them at all. Some wondered whether he lived far away and never fully became a participant in the Bay Area culture, his attacks and letters merely a diversion from a sales job, military service, or travels that took him to the area without leaving him there. Others were convinced that he lived among his victims but departed, later residing in another city, a different state, or one of the many foreign countries spread across the globe. The inevitability of the aging process suggested to some that he may have recently died, or was quickly approaching the end of his natural life.