The Most Dangerous Animal of All

by Gary L. Stewart

  I had my answer.

  My father was alive!

  44

  “I think I’ll call my friend at the Department of Justice,” I said to Loyd and Leona. “The cop in San Francisco won’t tell me anything, but I know he knows something.”

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Loyd said.

  “I have to try to find him. He’s alive.”

  “But what if things don’t turn out the way you want them to? What if the cop isn’t telling you for a reason?” Loyd said. “You might want to slow down and think about things.”

  “Don’t worry,” I reassured him. “Judy found me, and that turned out all right, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, it did,” Leona said. “But this seems different. This man married her when she was fourteen. I don’t like it. I don’t like it one little bit.”

  “I don’t either,” Loyd said.

  “You two worry too much,” I said, kissing both of them before I left. “I’ll let you know what I find out.”

  Not heeding my parents’ advice, I contacted my friend at the Louisiana Department of Justice.

  “All I have is my father’s name and Social Security number,” I said, explaining the situation. “Do you think you can find anything with that?”

  He promised to try and enlisted the help of some of his friends in law enforcement.

  A week later, he called and said he had learned that a man with my father’s name had been arrested in 1996 and was incarcerated with the California Department of Corrections.

  That was the last thing I wanted to hear. I knew my father would be sixty-two years old by now. What was he doing in prison?

  I e-mailed Judy. “Why didn’t Butler tell me Van was arrested in 1996?” I asked her.

  “I’ll call him,” Judy responded.

  That day, I called every prison in California, to no avail. They had no record of my father’s being incarcerated in 1996. I should have paid attention to that, but I was so eager for new information that I accepted his incarceration as fact.

  I would pay for that mistake dearly.

  “Harold said he knew about the arrest and that your father had been turned over to the FBI, but he doesn’t know anything else,” Judy reported a few days later.

  “Why didn’t he just tell me that in the beginning?” I vented.

  “I don’t know,” Judy said, “but I’ll talk to him. Look, I don’t want you to think anything your father did was because of you. He hated me, remember? If he turned bad, it was because of me. I don’t ever want you to think anything we find out is your fault.”

  I didn’t understand what she was trying to say. What had my father done that had been so bad? Why had he hated my mother?

  I sent an e-mail to Butler, asking again for my father’s file. “I don’t care what’s in it. I’m entitled to know what he did,” I wrote.

  Back then, I really didn’t care what he had done. I just wanted to meet him. Leona had raised me to have love and forgiveness in my heart. I had forgiven Judy. I was confident I could forgive my father.

  Butler did not answer my e-mail. Instead he contacted my mother.

  “I am not going to reveal what is in that file. It would make what he did to you look inconsequential,” he told her.

  “How could rape and kidnapping look inconsequential?” I asked Judy when she told me what Butler had said. “What could be worse than that? If it’s that bad, I have a right to know.”

  “I don’t know, honey. That’s all he would say,” Judy answered.

  “I have to know what my father did,” I said. “I am his son. I deserve to know.”

  Judy started crying. “I know. This is all so upsetting. I didn’t mean for any of this to happen.”

  “It’s not your fault, Mom. This thing is just eating at me. My father is out there somewhere, and I need to find him, or at least know why I shouldn’t.”

  “Okay, honey. I’ll call Earl Sanders and try to find out just what your father did.”

  A few days later, on April 6, 2004, I was out celebrating a victory with my co-workers when my phone rang. My company had just successfully completed its first major project engineered and executed by my employees in our Baton Rouge office, and we had gathered at the Lager’s Ale House, on Veterans Boulevard in Metairie, a suburb of New Orleans. When I saw my mother’s number on the caller ID, I left our noisy table and went into the bathroom to answer the call.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Hi, honey,” she said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. I’m out celebrating our first grand-slam project. My boss is here from California, and we’re doing great. How are you?”

  “Well, I just left the coffee shop where I met Earl. He says he can’t tell us what your father did. He says what your father did was so heinous it would destroy us. I know this is not what you wanted to hear, but he begged me to tell you just to drop this thing with your father. He was very adamant about that.”

  I could hear how upset she was.

  “It’s okay, Mom. I know you’ve done everything you can. So we will never know. So what? We still have each other, right?”

  “Honey, I think we just need to let go now.”

  “I guess you’re right. Besides I have the best gift of all—you. That’s good enough for me,” I said, trying to cheer her up.

  Inside, I was conflicted. Something wasn’t right here. Why did Earl Sanders care about what would destroy me? We had never met. And why would Harold Butler say that what was in that file would make what Van had done to Judy seem inconsequential? The more I thought about it, the less it made any sense at all.

  Discouraged, I resolved to let it go. Maybe Loyd and Leona were right. Maybe it was best I didn’t know what Van had done. For the next few months, I pushed all thought of learning more about my father out of my mind.

  45

  July 31, 2004

  I remember that day, the feeling of horror that swept through me, like it was yesterday.

  Zach and I had spent the afternoon outdoors, grilling his favorite food—baby back ribs. After dinner, we washed the dishes, and I went to shower the smell of mesquite from my body. When I got out of the shower, I noticed that Zach was in his room playing a video game.

  I walked into the living room, sat down in my chair, grabbed the remote, and flipped through the channels to A&E. I enjoyed watching true crime shows and saw that a special on the cold case of the Zodiac killer was airing. I didn’t know anything about this serial killer, and at the time, I thought it would be interesting.

  Not life-changing.

  It happened in an instant.

  The police sketch of the Zodiac flashed across the screen.

  I sat there transfixed for a moment, unable to take my eyes off the image on the television.

  Sanders’s words to my mother began running through my mind. The things in that file are so heinous that it would destroy you and your son . . .

  “Zach, come in here,” I called out. “Hurry!”

  Zach rushed into the room but stopped in his tracks when he looked up at the screen.

  “Hey, Dad, it’s you!” he exclaimed.

  I got up from my chair, walked to my office, picked up the picture I had printed of my father, and walked back into the living room.

  “It’s not me, Zach,” I said, staring from the picture to the television and back. “It’s my father.”

  It was as if someone had taken a snapshot of Van and placed it on the “Wanted” poster.

  I sank into my chair, staring at the picture, only half listening as the narrator on the television described Zodiac’s reign of terror all over California.

  It would make what he did to you look inconsequential . . . Butler’s words reverberated through my thoughts.

  It’s impossible, I told myself. There is no way my father could have done such horrific things. He kidnapped Judy. He raped a fourteen-year-old girl. Who knows what this man could have done?

  When the show was over, I went
into my office and pulled up sketches of the Zodiac on the Internet, comparing the picture of my father and the two faces on the “Wanted” poster detail by detail. The similarities were stunning.

  Too upset to talk, I e-mailed my mother. “I think I just discovered what is so horrible,” I wrote. I told her about seeing the sketch on the show and comparing it on the Internet.

  Twenty minutes later, I nervously sent an e-mail to Butler, telling him the same thing, aware of how crazy my suspicion might sound. “If I fly to San Francisco, will you meet me for coffee to discuss this?”

  Butler did not respond.

  Judy wrote back the next morning, explaining that she had done some research overnight. “There’s so much out there about the Zodiac,” she wrote. “I hope you are wrong in your assumption, but I can’t give you an opinion.”

  For the next week, thoughts of Van plagued my mother. She remembered how cruel he could be, how much he had loved to kill animals, how she would come home to find me barely breathing after he had closed the lid on the trunk. Someone who could do that was certainly capable of murder.

  On August 8, she called Butler. “Please, just tell me what’s in that file, Harold. The thought that his father might be the Zodiac is upsetting Gary. I don’t want him to have to live with something like this.”

  “Don’t worry,” Butler said. “The Zodiac case was solved and closed ten years ago. A guy named Arthur Leigh Allen matched the Zodiac’s DNA. Tell Gary he doesn’t have to worry about that.”

  “Harold said the case was solved,” Judy reported back to me. “That’s such a relief. If I had thought your father was the Zodiac, I would have never tried to find you and subject you to something like that. Harold won’t say anything else, but at least we don’t have to worry about that anymore.”

  I wasn’t so sure. All of the research I had done over the past week indicated that Zodiac had not been caught. I went back to my computer to double-check, looking for details about Arthur Leigh Allen. I was shocked by what I found. Allen had been a suspect in the Zodiac case but had been cleared two years before when it was determined that his DNA did not match a partial profile of the Zodiac’s DNA that had been extracted from beneath a stamp. I noted that police were not certain the DNA they had was actually from the Zodiac—that it could have been from a postal worker who might have affixed the stamp to the envelope. But regardless, the case had not been solved.

  Butler had lied to my mother.

  A few minutes later, I found an article written by Tom Voigt and posted on Zodiackiller.com that reported that the Zodiac case had been closed by the San Francisco Police Department on April 6, 2004. It had been almost thirty-five years since Paul Stine had been murdered, and his cold case was to remain unsolved.

  Oh, my God. That was the same day my mother had met with Earl Sanders, the same day he had begged her to make me stop trying to discover what was in my father’s SFPD file.

  The article mentioned that the SFPD was restructuring its homicide division and intended to direct its resources toward more recent homicides. Lieutenant John Hennessey was listed as a contact if anyone had new information to report about the case.

  I printed the article and put it in my briefcase.

  The next week was a difficult one for me. I tried not to think about my father and focused instead on the good things in my life—Loyd and Leona, Zach, Judy. I didn’t want to think about the man who had hurt my mother. I wanted some normalcy back. The idea of murdering someone was so far beyond my realm of comprehension that just the thought that my father might have done something like that made me nauseated.

  But the unsettling thought would not go away.

  Finally, I decided I would keep investigating, if only to prove to myself that my suspicions were unfounded. I knew now that I could not trust Sanders or Butler, so I made another plan.

  On August 17, I traveled to the Bay Area on business. When I settled into my hotel, I pulled the article out of my briefcase and dialed the contact number listed. I was directed to Lieutenant Hennessey’s voice mail, which indicated he was on vacation until the 21st, the following Monday.

  I called Judy on the weekend and told her what I planned to do. She had moved to Tucson, Arizona, and I hated that I could no longer visit her when I was in San Francisco.

  “You’re not going to drop this, are you?” she said.

  “I can’t. I’m sorry, Mom, but I have to know.”

  Judy sighed. She had not bargained for all of this when she had decided to search for her son. But she didn’t understand: I had spent a lifetime wondering who I was, and now I needed to know the truth about my father.

  When Monday arrived, I went to work preoccupied with how I would present my story to the lieutenant. I didn’t have much hope that he would take me seriously, but I had to try.

  After work, I returned to the hotel and dialed the number again. Hennessey’s secretary informed me that the detective was in a meeting.

  “He should be out in about thirty minutes,” she said.

  Thirty-two minutes later, I called back.

  “Lieutenant Hennessey, homicide,” the voice on the other end of the line said.

  I wasn’t expecting that Hennessey would answer the phone, and I was speechless for a moment. Now what do I say?

  I cleared my throat.

  “Lieutenant Hennessey. My name is Gary Stewart, and I live in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.”

  “How may I help you, Gary?” the lieutenant responded.

  “Well, sir, I was wondering,” I stammered, “has the Zodiac killer case been solved?”

  The lieutenant chuckled. “No. If it was solved, I’d be retired.”

  “Well, sir. I have a story, a situation that developed as I was researching my family roots. You see, I was adopted as a child. My father, my birth father, had a criminal record there with the San Francisco Police Department, and one of your fellow employees, Harold Butler, helped me determine who my father was. But Harold is close friends with my birth mother, and he told her that you guys have solved the Zodiac case. My mother was married to Rotea Gilford, and when she called Earl Sanders, he told her to tell me to drop it, that the things in that file would destroy us.”

  I realized that I probably sounded like a bumbling idiot, but I took a deep breath and continued when the lieutenant said, “Go on.”

  For the next twenty minutes, I related the events of my life that had led to this point. Hennessey listened without interrupting.

  When I was finished, he said, “Can you write a summary of what you just told me and mail it to me at the Hall of Justice?”

  “Yes, I can do that,” I said, jotting the address on the article that had listed his contact information.

  “Do you have handwriting samples from your father?” he asked.

  “No, sir, but I have something better.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have DNA,” I said.

  “You have his DNA?” the lieutenant asked incredulously.

  “No. I have mine.”

  Hennessey paused for a moment. “The costs of DNA analysis are prohibitive,” he said. “We would more than likely not be able to justify testing your DNA, especially with the change in city management. I tell you what: I’ll read over what you send me and get back to you in a few weeks.”

  “Can we keep this confidential between us?” I said. “I would rather you didn’t discuss this with Harold Butler or my mother.”

  “I have no idea why Butler would have told your mother the case was solved, but I won’t mention it. I did know Rotea Gilford, but I’ve never met your mother. For now, this will be between us.”

  “Thank you,” I said before hanging up.

  The next morning I wrote the letter to Hennessey.

  And then I waited.

  When two weeks had gone by and I had not heard back from him, I could wait no longer. I dialed Hennessey’s number.

  “Did you have a chance to read the summary?” I asked when the lieuten
ant picked up the phone.

  “Yeah, Gare,” Hennessey said, surprising me with a shortened form of my name.

  I wondered if he was patronizing me.

  “You have quite a story here. I’d like to sit down with you and discuss the details further. When are you going to be in the Bay Area again?”

  “My next scheduled trip isn’t until December 8, but this is important enough for me to get on a plane tomorrow.”

  “No, son. That really isn’t necessary. After all, it’s been thirty-five years. The Zodiac hasn’t spoken in that long. I guess it can wait a little longer,” Hennessey said and laughed.

  “Well, sir, if I see that I have to travel out before December, I’ll contact you first to see if your schedule is clear for us to get together. How’s that?”

  “That’ll be fine, Gare. You have a great evening.”

  “Same to you, sir. Same to you,” I said, smiling.

  It sounded like he wanted to investigate this further.

  46

  In September 2004, Judy called to say that she had finally decided to scatter Frank’s ashes. Her partner of five years had suffered a pulmonary embolism the year before, and she had seemed a little lost ever since. Frank had filled the void after Rotea passed away, and she had struggled to deal with the loss of two fine men in such a short span of time.

  I had admired Frank, mostly for the kind way he treated my mother, but also because he had always done his best to be a good grandfather to Zach. Whenever I visited them, Frank had taken my son to amusement parks, Fisherman’s Wharf, anywhere, so that Judy and I could have time alone to get to know each other.

  Frank had half-jokingly told us that when he died, he wanted his ashes to be scattered out of the convertible with the top down as Judy drove through Golden Gate Park. Although we had often teased him about this when he was alive, after he died, my mother couldn’t bring herself to commit such an irreverent act.

  “I’d like to do it October 30,” she said, “in Golden Gate Park. That was Frank’s favorite place in the world.”

  I laughed. “Every place was Frank’s favorite place,” I said.

  “I know,” Judy agreed, “but I finally figured out the perfect spot. Can you meet me in San Francisco on that date?”